401: How To Make $1.5 Million Per Month Investing In Real Estate With Brandon Turner

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I have my longtime friend Brandon Turner on the show. And Brandon was the former VP of Bigger Pockets before he left to start a real estate fund over at Open Door Capital. He has two successful books on investment property and the man makes $1.5 million per month with his 3000 plus properties. Now in this episode, we’re going to talk about what it takes to become a real estate entrepreneur.

00:30
But before we begin, want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash d.

00:58
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I would also like to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. I’m always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my eCommerce store and I depend on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for eCommerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who is shopped in your store and exactly what they bought.

01:26
So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a Red Handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there’s full revenue tracking on every single email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used, and you can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony.

01:53
And unlike this podcast where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now on to the show.

02:19
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. And today I’m thrilled to have my longtime friend, Brandon Turner. Brandon is a real estate entrepreneur and the former VP of growth at BiggerPockets, but he recently decided to leave to focus on his family and his main business venture, Open Door Capital. Now, Brandon is one of the most successful real estate entrepreneurs that I know, and he makes 1.5 million per month with his 3000 plus properties, probably more than that now.

02:43
He also wrote the book on rental property investing, which is a best seller and the book on managing rental properties. Now I’ve actually known Brandon for a very long time. And just to give you an idea of us, of his personality, before we start the interview, I’m to tell a quick story. I remember having dinner with him. We were deciding what to order. And then all of a sudden he checks his phone and he says to me, Hey, see, what are you going to order? By the way, did I tell you my house burned down?

03:10
I was like, what? And then he was like, hey, look at these pics. And then he said, sweet. And then he proceeded to tell me how he’s grateful for it burning down because he was gonna make some money on it. And today I figured we talk about how Brandon established his real estate empire and how he helped grow bigger pockets to become the largest real estate investing site on the internet. What’s up, Brandon? Dude, this has been a long time coming. I am pumped, I’m excited. And I will say this though, that…

03:38
Okay, I did make money on the house burning down, but I didn’t make a ton. But at least that’s the great part about real estate. And we’ll talk about that I’m sure later. Is that like even the worst, like, oh, your house burned down, your tenant tried to burn your house down. Like that’s, that’s okay. We survived. I’m surprised you were there for that one. I forgot all about that. We were having dinner. literally happened. We were, we were having dinner. It was at FinCon. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. That was a crazy, uh, yeah, I got a call from the fire department and then I got a bunch of pictures from the tenant who we were evicting and the house was burned down. So anyway, the house, we fixed it up with the insurance money.

04:08
And we sold it and made a little bit of money. win-win. thing is, it’s like you weren’t even fazed at all. You were cheerful. You were happy. You might even have bought some drinks for everybody. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I probably did. probably am. No, am. I’m generally of the persuasion. I don’t know if that’s the correct terminology there, but that things generally generally just work out. And so when you freak out about stuff and get all stressed, it’s like, well, that’s not going to change anything anyway. So the house is burning. Might as well.

04:37
You know, see what happens. It’s an adventure. May as well have a good time at FinCon. That we did. That we did. All right. So Brandon, I watched your Graham Stephan episode and I had actually had no idea you were doing 1.5 million a month. How have I known you for so long and not know that? OK, so first of all, 1.5 million is is internet marketing growth.

04:57
uh, growth income, right? So I, it’s not profit of a million and a half. That’s revenue though, right? It’s revenue. is, it is revenue. And honestly, I didn’t know that until Graham asked me that either on the show and we were just doing some numbers, uh, which yeah, that was what we recorded that two months ago when I had 3000 units, we just crossed 4,000 here a couple of days ago, I think. So now it’s, I don’t know. It’s probably a little higher than that. Wait, you bought a thousand properties in two months, units, not properties, right? We buy big stuff. So I bought a 500 unit or 400 unit.

05:26
It was big. It was a big apartment. I don’t even know. That’s, uh, I don’t want to that’s how far I’m removed, but that’s how awesome my team is in that, uh, they just take down stuff all the time. It’s like every couple of weeks, I’m like sitting at a closing table, signing more papers. And I would actually love to talk about that later today. I’m like that transition between like, was selling, I was selling, I took your course and I was selling kites online, like selling kites because I wanted my wife to quit her job. And I went, I went from that.

05:55
to yeah, bringing in, I don’t know, buying $70 million properties and not even sure how many units are in there. So yeah, we can talk about whatever in there, but see, that’s the other thing. I didn’t even know you were in the class. Like, how did I not know that you were in the class? It probably is a fake name. Okay. I really did. I felt like I’m not going to tell him. I was going to surprise him and be like, look, I made millions of dollars.

06:17
Really, I made like $12 and I spent a lot of time, but that was not because of your lack of knowledge or lack of teaching ability. Man, I, again, I can, we can tell some stories there, but man, I learned a lot through that experience and I learned that I’m not good at the e-commerce stuff. Okay. It makes me wonder what else I don’t know. Plus you took Graham to our place in Hawaii, our restaurant. Oh, did we monkey pod together? Yes. Yes. Yes. I did cheat on you with Graham.

06:45
Yeah. Girlfriend was there too though. So it’s okay. It was great. Since we’re talking about this, like whatever happened to court. So you signed up, what happened? All right. So let me, so when I signed up, I had this brilliant idea that like, I, I was busy with bigger pockets. was building busy, you know, doing the podcast and I was making a little bit of money here and there. Like I’m like, at the time I was probably bringing in, I don’t know, call it 50, 60, 70 K a year, something like that. And I’m like, I really need to make some more money. And I,

07:12
The real estate market was crap still. It back in like, I don’t know, it sells in, I don’t know what, 15 maybe. So was getting better, but it wasn’t where it is today, that’s for sure. And so I was selling a couple of houses a year as like a house flipper, but needing more money. So I thought I’m to make my millions off of Amazon and, or some e-commerce site, right? So I went to Walmart. walked, oh, I bought your course. I went through it. And I don’t remember if you suggested this or I think you did, but maybe it was somebody else, but I walked through Walmart with a pen and paper.

07:42
every single solitary aisle and just kept writing down things that I thought would be cool to sell online that people would just go and buy at Walmart. They don’t really care about the brand necessarily. That was the original thought. So anyway, in one aisle, I saw a kite, like, know, let’s go fly a kite Mary Poppins style. And I was like, that’s it. Kites are lightweight. They’re inexpensive. A lot of people buy that. I mean, some people buy them like the enthusiasts buy like hundreds of dollars for one kite.

08:07
But a lot of people just want to kite to fly with their kids. And I go to like Google and I type in like kites for sale and like the first few listings were like not mobile optimized and they were like crap websites. like, they’re just like, I was like, this is it. This is the golden like ticket for millions. It was like everything they say to do and you say to do anyway. then I’m like, wait, I don’t have time for this. I’m working like a hundred hours a week for bigger pockets and trying to build this podcast. I will hire my brother to run the entire business.

08:35
and I’ll just pay him and then give him some equity in the company and I’ll have my brother do the whole thing. Now I love my brother. My brother’s extremely gifted and talented and smart. But the mistake I made is I hired somebody who had never done e-commerce before. Now when I look back, I’m like, why did I just hire someone who was actually like had years of experience? I mean, I could have afforded somebody halfway decent and I had an audience a little bit of my own. So I could have had a little get going with it. So anyway, my brother worked for a solid year at it. And we did Kites and then we switched from Kites to

09:05
wooden sunglasses and neither took off like in a great way. I think I sell the domain name happykites.com I think which I probably should sell at some point but I doubt it’s even working anymore. But anyway, that was my story. Let me get my story. Yeah, tell me. my class and you decide to sell two of the most saturated products on the internet. I didn’t know at the time. We’re going to say that they weren’t saturated before I did it. I’m a trendsetter, all right? Okay. That’s what made those things popular, clearly.

09:35
So, you know, at the time I thought I was a genius. Yeah, exactly. Terrible idea. So, uh, no, I, uh, I decided I wasn’t good at e-commerce and instead I wrote a book called the book. Well, I wrote one on no and low money down real estate. And I started bringing in some money that way through bigger pockets. And then I wrote a book called the book on rental property investing, which you mentioned, and that one just sold a stupid amount of copies. became number one real estate book in the country and has been sitting there since I published it six years ago. And so now, uh,

10:04
I guess that is the real estate, I guess, Bible. don’t know. it’s that it’s, I don’t know. It’s not actually, it’s probably not that good of a book. The thing is bigger pockets is such a massive, massive website with millions of people. It’s like, like, I don’t even know who number two would be in terms of like real estate investing websites. It’s just so huge that like, I could have written a book called like, like, I don’t know how to.

10:31
make your wife quit her job and I probably would be a New York Times bestseller out of that book. you know what? It’s it’s okay. I wasn’t meant to do e-commerce, but the real estate thing has been all right. All right. Let’s let’s take a step back before the book. How did you get started? I actually don’t even know this stuff. So this is all new. All right. Get started. Yeah. Yeah. So I bought. All right. So let me go. It all starts with bowling. All great stories start with bowling. All right. So I’m bowling. When’s the last time you went bowling by the way? I think it was with Pat Flynn at FinCon. That was the last time. Nice.

11:00
Yep. All right. Actually, I think I might have been there for that. You might think I there. Yeah. OK. I don’t I didn’t I remember I didn’t play, but I was there for some reason. I stopped by for something. You’re right. Anyway, I think that was the last time I was in a bowling alley also. But this this story begins in a bowling alley. I’m 20 years old. I just graduated college and I had moved across the country to be close to my what was my fiancee, basically, who became my wife.

11:26
And I’m talking with a friend while we’re bowling and I say, Hey, I need to rent a house because I’m new in town. need to rent a house. And she said, well, why don’t you just buy one? And I’m like, cause I’m 20 years old. I have no credit, no, uh, money and no income and no beard. they don’t, and she laughs and she said, just talk to the mortgage person. So I talked to the mortgage person. like, I got no credit. got no income hardly at all. I’m making like eight bucks an hour and, uh, I got nothing. And the.

11:55
person on the other end of the phone says, okay, sure. You’re approved $250,000 by whatever you want. And I’m like, this is amazing. Now, of course this is 2007, right? So they, that’s what every mortgage was like back then. And people wonder why we had a real estate crash. So thankfully I did not go and buy a $250,000 house. Even though I was approved for that, I went and bought the cheapest house I could find. was $80,000 and it was a complete like fixer upper. looked really ugly and smelled bad. And I was, I bought that cause I thought, well,

12:25
It’s the cheapest thing I can buy. And my mom was a garage sale mom. So I always learned to like buy the cheapest thing you can buy. And that’s what I did. So I started with a single family house where I rented the bedrooms out to a bunch of buddies from work. And that was the first of many to come. All right. So here’s the thing. I’ve always been a little apprehensive about real estate investing. And whenever I talk to people about this who don’t have that much money, there’s this belief that you need a lot of money to get started. Right. I you, you, bought your house back during the ninja days, right?

12:55
Yeah. Yeah. I bought it when it was easy. No, it’s actually still pretty easy. In fact, the loan that I did back then is very similar to what you can do today. In fact, this concept is like one of the number one things I teach. We call it house hacking. House hacking means you buy a house or a duplex, a triplex or a fourplex. So like one unit, two unit, three or four. Why is that important? Because

13:17
The government, the U S government, at least in the U S here has a loan program. They actually, they actually basically guarantee or sponsor banks to give loans to people for just 3.5 % down. So if you’re to buy a $200,000 house, you’re talking about seven grand to buy this property. Uh, now the key is you have to live in the property for a year, but you can buy a single family house or a duplex or a triplex or a fourplex.

13:43
So I bought this very first house for basically the same, I think it was 3 % down at the time. Now it’s three and a half percent. I bought this house for what’s that? 3 % of 80 grand. do public math here. Yeah, yeah. It’s terrible idea. Yeah. Yeah. It’s terrible idea. So roughly whatever, call it three grand and then, you know, a bit of closing costs and that was about it. And then I actually put most of the repairs on credit card that I needed to fix it up. I went and we got the book from Home Depot, like one, two, three home improvement. I like learned how to do stuff.

14:12
And it totally worked out. So yeah, when people think they don’t have money to get into real estate, like, I mean, I wrote an entire book on it. It’s called the book on investing in real estate with no and low money down. And there’s like dozens of ways to do it with no money. In fact, most of the $300 million of real estate that I’ve bought over the past decade, I think I’ve maybe invested like less than half a percent into all of that.

14:34
Now I don’t own all of it because one of the strategies is partnerships. And that’s what I use a lot of today, but there’s so many ways to do it. But house hacking for people just thinking about getting into real estate, it is phenomenal, especially in an area like that’s expensive, right? I live in Maui. You live in California, but you can buy a house and rent the bedrooms out because if it’s you’re an expensive market, the rent’s also high. So like, for example, I bought a triplex here in Maui is three, three units in this property. Each one rents for around $2,500 a month. So.

15:01
total that property brings in whatever $7,500 a month, my mortgage is like four grand. So I’m like, you can, you can make it work. Uh, no matter, know, no matter where you are, no matter how much money you have, I mean, worst case scenario, you can go find somebody else who has the money for a down payment. Like I go to you and I’m like, Steve, uh, I got this really awesome, amazing deal. You’re going to earn like a 20 % return on your money from the first year, but I need 40 grand. You want to partner on it? You’d be like, yeah, man, let’s do it.

15:30
And then we would do it together and I didn’t know money and you put in some money and you had to do no work. So like, there’s so many ways to do it. So I guess that that’s the thing about no money. back up here. So 3.5 % in order to do that, you have to actually get a duplex or a triplex or a fourplex. Or a single family house. It works for a house. You just got to rent the bedrooms out and that’s not for everybody. Oh, I see. Okay. I mean, so after that very first house, I was telling you that first house I bought, I rented the bedrooms out, I fixed it up, I sold it. I made 20 grand and I was like the richest person in the world.

15:58
Like I had $20,000 in my checking account when I’m like 21 years old and like that’s rich when you’re 21, right? So I took the money and I paid for my wedding and I was broke again. So then I went and did exactly what I just said. I bought a duplex. Now I like to pretend I’m like really smart at the time. And I like had this whole master plan, but I didn’t. just like, I saw a duplex come up on the market, two houses on one lot. And I was like, well, if I lived in one of those, I could rent the other one out and it would probably help pay the mortgage. So I did and ended up paying the entire mortgage.

16:27
The other unit rented for $650 a month. My mortgage was 620. Boom. I’m living for free at 21 years old. And again, that was only 3 % down. And so it’s a, it’s a cool strategy for, and that works. mean, okay, honestly, I live in a $2 million house right now in Maui that overlooks the ocean. not like on the ocean, but like, I’ve got this amazing ocean view and a pool and like all this cool stuff. And I’m still house hacking. I live in a three unit property, different three unit property, but I live in a three unit property where I rent out the back.

16:57
a separate house to a buddy of mine, which generally is a bad idea. Don’t rent to your buddies, but I broke my own rule on that one and it’s been great. And then I have a downstairs unit that I generally keep available for family and friends, but I could rent out on Airbnb if I wanted to. And I could live for free in Maui in a $2 million house. So this is not like something that’s only good for 21 year old kids, you know, that are single. Like this could work for anybody. So if you only put 3.5 % down, is that like a super duper jumbo loan?

17:26
Okay. So this house that I live in here, Maui, yeah, that one was a jumbo loan. had to put more like, I put 10 % down on this one. Okay. But yeah, even that 10 % down on a, I paid 1.7 for it. It’s worth a little over two today. Yes. I had to put 170 down, which is a lot, obviously not everyone has $170,000 lying around, but it, again, it scales. If you can do three and a half percent, it’s even better if you can.

17:48
Yeah. If you can partner with people, it works that way. just, the bottom line is there’s ways to do it, whether you have money or don’t have money. It doesn’t matter. mean, Donald Trump like uses creative financing and does zero money, zero down deals all the time. So like you can be like the richest real estate investor or the poorest. It doesn’t matter. One point at 1.7 million. That’s only like a month for you, right? A month of a month of rep. Yeah. I don’t think my, I don’t think my investors would like me taking, Oh, Hey guys, I got this really good idea where to take.

18:17
all the rent next month and half my house. What about what about all the bills? Don’t worry about it. We’ll get some later. You this requires a mind shift because I feel like in order to succeed in the US, you have to leverage. You have to leverage your money, right? And it’s almost like a hack that that a lot of people use to get wealthy. Yeah, I there’s it is such a hack. And it’s also such a debate, right? You get on one side of the bit. got like Dave Ramsey, who’s like no debt, no mortgages.

18:44
pay cash for everything. And then there’s a lot of people that are Dave Ramsey fanatics. And I mean, I like Dave. He’s got really good advice on getting out of debt and all sorts of stuff. But then it’s like, man, if I was going to wait to pay cash for a house, would still be at 36 years old. I would still be working at a bank making $14 an hour today because I never took any risk. was just saving up my money. And finally, maybe by now I’d have enough to buy my first house, but like, shoot, no risk, no biscuit. That’s my, that’s my theory. know, what’s funny?

19:14
I’m exactly the person you described. I don’t like leverage. I’m not really into Dave Ramsey, but I kind of follow the philosophies of, don’t like to have debt. But I guess you have to have something, right? Whether that be like a business or you’re leveraging for real estate, like you’ve done obviously very successfully. Yeah, you know, it’s one thing I like about business more than, I mean, I like real estate and I like business. One thing I like about business is that the no money or low money thing is a little bit easier and less risky, right? So business.

19:41
I would argue that business has less of a chance for success than real estate. Like real estate is pretty like when I buy a real estate deal, it’s like 95 % sure, 99 % sure it’s going to produce the returns that I want. If you start a business, like a lot of businesses fail. But a business you can start with almost no money or very little money and your own sweat and blood and tears are what you put into it to grow it. So yeah, I like both. I think both have their places. My favorite thing is making money in business.

20:07
and then dumping all of that money into real estate. That’s my favorite cycle. That’s what I want to do. That’s why I want to invest in a fund. Yeah, you totally should. So for people that make good money, I call it massive income to passive income. How do you take mass amounts of money when you make good income? People making six, seven figures a year, how do you dump that into generational wealth? I mean, I talk to celebrities and athletes and stuff, not all the time, but a fair amount, right? Because I’m the YouTube guy in real estate. And so like,

20:35
They’ll call me they’re like, okay, I’m making, like, I was talking to somebody who was like a wrestling star, like one of the top, like us, like, whatever WWE wrestling people. Right. And they made this comment. Like my career could end tomorrow. Like I could be out tomorrow if I get hurt or if my contract gets cut or whatever. So I need passive income. need money coming in. So I’m a big believer in doing exactly that. Do what you’re doing right now. Make money in business, selling linens or whatever you got to sell and then dump, dump that into some kind of investment that fires you up. That takes none of your time.

21:05
If that’s real estate, do it in real estate. you’d rather put it in the stock market, do that. don’t care. Massive income to passive income. Okay. So for the people listening to this, just walk me through the process. uh, you know, you’re to tell me to read your book, but I have my book. Why do you need to anything? mean, didn’t read it. Reading’s overrated. mean, who does that? Okay. right. So where do you buy personally? Let’s let’s go with that. Yeah. All right. So

21:30
I’ll start on the small side. So I actually buy my own real estate deal still a little bit. I buy condos out here in Maui. I bought two of them in the past year and I might buy some more. We’ll see if they come across my plate. So I like vacation rentals. That’s a fun niche. I’ll give you an example. So I bought a property. was, what did I pay for it? 800,000, something like that, roughly 750 maybe. So I bought this condo for like $750,000. It’s in a, what we call condo tell, which means it’s a condo.

21:59
that is legally like operates like a hotel almost like with Airbnb, right? It’s all vacation rentals because it’s oceanfront Maui. So I pay $750,000 for this property. I got to pay for management. I got to pay for the water bill and electricity and internet. And I got to pay for all that stuff. Now I don’t manage it. I actually have like an assistant that manages it for me. But after all is said and done, that one condo brings in about $7,000 every month in profit, just profit.

22:27
And it takes maybe five minutes a month for me to have to deal with it. Now we had to do a rehab and we had to find the right property and I had to have the right team, you know, to be able to manage it. But like one property, that thing brings in seven grand a month. Now that’s a really good property, but I just bought a second one. I’m just about to rehab it. Now one should also bring in about $7,000 a month. So that’s what’s cool about the Airbnb stuff. It can just cashflow like an ATM machine.

22:52
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23:20
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23:50
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show. Do you ever buy anything that doesn’t cashflow for the appreciation play? Good question. That’s such a good question. I would say this actually. a good buddy, actually, maybe. OK. A good buddy of ours that I won’t mention on the show in case because I didn’t ask him, but a mutual friend of ours once came to me and said, you know, I’ve got this

24:19
a real estate deal I want to buy, but I don’t know much about real estate and it loses money every single month. I’m like, okay, for 99 % of the population, would tell them, hell no, don’t do it. That’s a stupid idea. Don’t gamble on future appreciation because we don’t know what the world is going to do. But this buddy of mine makes well over a million dollars a year, much more than that, I’m sure at this point. The property was in Southern California and this is like five years ago.

24:46
For him, I’m like, yeah, you can gamble a little bit. I think that’s okay. Like you’re not gonna, like if you’re losing a thousand bucks a month and you held it for 10 years, what are you losing? Like what, $120,000 over 10 years? Will that property in Southern California not make more than $120,000 in appreciation in 10 years? Of course it can. I’m sure that property has probably tripled in value in the past five years and he’s probably made millions. So the answer to your question is I would do it.

25:15
personally, but I would not advise anybody who’s not making at least like, you know, half a million or a million a year to do it. Because if you’re buying property and you, you know, you’re barely paying your own bills and now you’re buying property that may end up costing you a thousand or more a month, that’s just a recipe for disaster. So I would, I would at least try to get a property to break even if not make a good return before you, uh, before you invest in it. Isn’t your philosophy like if you can hold something for

25:43
10 or 15 years, it’s probably going to be profitable. Yeah. So real estate on average has appreciated 3 % per year for the past hundred years. That’s a number that’s thrown around often. so people are like, well, real estate is not as good as the stock market then stock markets average six and a half or 7%. Well, yeah, but the stock market, you don’t leverage like you do real estate. So first of all, when I buy real estate, I want it to, I want it to make money in four ways. So if you’re listening to this, write this down four ways to make money in real estate. Number one, you make it through cash flow. So extra money come in, in every single month.

26:11
That Airbnb I have $7,000 a month in cashflow. Shoot, like for a lot of people, one deal would give them financial freedom. Two deals, three deals, if you buy the right one. And again, that’s one of the benefits of Airbnb is you can just print money. So number one, cashflow. Number two is appreciation, meaning over time that property goes up in value. That’s the 3 % number that we here tossed around in the financial world. So that’s great. It means if you buy a property for a million dollars, it might be worth a million 30.

26:37
you know, $1,030,000 a year from now, and then a million 60 or whatever later. That’s great. And I like it, but I don’t bank on it. I don’t bet on it. It’s great when it happens. The third way to make money in real estate, which is often people don’t even think about it, but it’s called the loan pay down. When you get up, this is the reason why I like debt when it comes to real estate. hate consumer debt. hate credit card debt. hate all car debt. No, none of that. I don’t touch it, but mortgage debt on real estate. Uh, that’s cash flowing. Here’s why I love it because, uh, I’ll give you a real life example.

27:07
I bought a four unit property for my daughter, Rosie, the week she was born. So she’s now five, but when she was born, I bought her a four unit property. Now that property we paid after all the rehab was done and everything about $150,000 to what we have into it. So our mortgage right now is somewhere in the 120 was $120,000. What happens in 18 years? I have it set up to be paid off in 18 years. So every single month we pay the mortgage.

27:36
And I pay a little bit extra so that in 18 years from the time we bought it, it’ll be paid off. Why? Because in 18 years from the time we bought it, Rose is going to be going off to college. So what happened to this property? The property I owed 120,000 on it. Now it’s going to be worth much more, right? Appreciation is going to take that up. So now instead of being worth 150, it’s going to be worth what? 250 maybe, maybe 300. And I’m going to owe nothing on it. It’ll be worth, it’ll own zero on at the end.

28:03
So now Rosie will have a $300,000 property to go do like whatever she wants with it. She can use it for college or what I hope she does is start a business or invest in real estate with it. And so rather than like, and guess what? I didn’t do it. I didn’t pay that. Like my bank paid for the house and then my tenants paid the bank off over the course of 18 years. So that’s the loan paid on it means whatever you buy a property for today gets paid down over the next 15 to 30 years, whatever loan you set for it.

28:31
All right. So number one was what cashflow number two was appreciation. Number three is that loan getting paid down and number four, it gets a little nerdy. So I’m not going to go in depth on this, but it’s the tax benefits. if you make a million dollars a year from real estate cashflow and I, if I make a million dollars this year from real estate cashflow and you make a million dollars this year from Bumblebee linens, am I saying the name right? Yeah. Who keeps more money at the end of the day?

28:59
I would keep out of my million dollars, I would keep a million dollars. I wouldn’t pay any tax on that most likely. Now, I appreciate Is that why? Because I’m depreciating because they’ve got, they’ve got some real, it’s the stuff that everyone yells about, like, you know, the, rich, you know, and all their tax benefits and Donald Trump not paying his fair share in taxes and Elon Musk sucks. It’s that, it’s that game. Uh, the government has some crazy, they shouldn’t do it honestly, but they have some crazy rules.

29:26
that they give real estate investors massive tax breaks. And what’s cool is that even can offset my income on my book royalties. So I make good money on book royalties and on my bigger pocket stuff and on my other, like everything I do, I make good money in that. I don’t pay taxes on that either. I don’t pay taxes on my real estate and I don’t pay taxes on my personal stuff because of these stupid tax rules. anyway, that’s why real estate’s awesome is cause you make money on cashflow appreciation, loan pay down and.

29:53
Let me ask you this, with some of these rules that I’ve been hearing about that the president is going to change, how is it going to affect it? actually, what is the state of those rule changes? Yeah. So every four years, it comes back up again, they’re going to change some of these rules. And then they never really change most of them. Most of them sit there. And here’s why. It’s because there’s always a few senators and congresspeople that try to rattle, you know, the tax the rich and we need to do that. But then there’s this little tiny, you know, significant fact

30:22
that most Congress people are real estate investors. A lot of them, I don’t know the exact number and they don’t disclose that necessarily, but a lot of them own real estate. So it’s gonna, I don’t actually think we’re gonna see any massive changes in the real estate rules. I mean, there are some things that are really good right now that’ll go away and that’s fine. Like Donald Trump did some stuff because he’s a real estate guy that really helps us a lot. But a lot of the stuff will probably be there for life. They’ll change stuff here and there, but.

30:51
Honestly, just like in business, like smart people figure out ways around everything. It’s sad. Like I’m not saying it’s a, it’s a good thing. It’s just, is the game that we play. And so when you can afford expensive lawyers and you go to conferences and you, you chat about money on your front porch, you know, drinking whiskey at night, those people tend to figure out loopholes and solutions to these problems where the rest of the world doesn’t. So I don’t worry about it. I think that the rules will probably be fine. And the little ones that change, like they’re going to change some inheritance stuff.

31:18
my kids won’t be able to take all my wealth. That’s fine. I don’t want my kids to have my money anyway. Let me turn the interview back on you real quick. Are you going to let your kids in? What’s your view on that? Do your kids have work for everything? mean, there’s a of it. That’s my question. They are. Yeah, I agree. I’m right there with you. I hope that they’re good enough to take over the empire someday, but they got to earn that. not going to get it.

31:44
So we’ll see. Let’s talk about horror stories. Cause that’s actually a fear that everyone has. And you know, I kind of wouldn’t be happy if my house burned down for example. How do you deal with that stuff? Yeah. Okay. So first of all, most horror stories are an example of bad landlording or bad like

32:05
You just did a bad job. It’s, I mean, it’s the same thing, right? Like think how many times, okay. Earlier in this conversation, when I was telling you about my kite experiment, right. And the, the wooden sunglasses, would it be right for me to say, you know what? Look, I told you e-commerce is crappy. Your course sucks. This podcast is horrible because it didn’t work for me. Right. Cause I have a horror story, so to speak, that I spent 50 grand on salary for my brother and we never saw any profit from it. Like, what would you say to that?

32:32
I would have said you should have paid me 50 grand and I would have sold some pipes. I love it, but that’s a good thing, right? So it’s not a reflection on the industry. It’s a reflection on my implementation of it. And I can look back and see that I screwed up on a lot of stuff that I should not have done it the way that I did. And I took the easy way out in a lot of ways. The same thing is true for real estate. my house, okay, so some stuff does go bad. There are fires that happens. Sometimes tenants just decide they don’t want to pay rent.

32:59
Sometimes the government decides to just put a rule that says you can’t evict anybody for two years. And like, we have to just deal with it. So there are some things that happen, but you know what, like by and large, most tenants are good people. They’re hardworking. And even in the depths of the recession or the pandemic, when like we couldn’t evict anybody and like everyone’s losing their job and it was horrible, 99 % of my tenants paid rent.

33:27
It was like 1 % didn’t and 1 % were a jerk. And so you’re like, okay, well, I can handle 1 % being a jerk or, maybe they really had a problem. But the reason I say a jerk is because the one eviction that had to like actually do, the guy didn’t lose his job. He just literally said to us, you can’t evict me. So I’m going to get as much free rents as I can out of this. So there are those horror stories, but when you have, you have reserves, you’ve got systems to follow. There are very simple processes. And unlike a lot of businesses,

33:57
Real estate is so common that every problem you think you could ever have has been had by thousands of people before you. And it’s well-documented on the internet. Right? Like we didn’t think like if I’m going to start a wooden sunglasses business, I’m like, okay, well, I don’t know who to talk to about getting wooden sunglasses shipped in from China. Right? Like I don’t even know who to ask. And I don’t know. Like that’s not a real common problem to figure out wooden sunglasses in China. But if you want to know, how do I get a lower cost mortgage? There are

34:25
what 30 million Americans right now that invest in real estate, they could probably help you figure out where to get a mortgage. So that makes sense. Yeah. So like real, it’s just so common that those problems rarely come up and when they do their, their own fault and they’re usually not that big, like your house burning down. Great. Insurance covers that and more. we deal with it. was just thinking, I mean, it’s the same with business also. I mean, this past year we’ve had the shipping container crisis, shipping is really expensive. And, uh, you know, we took a blow this year. had to pay to airship all of our stuff in time for the holidays.

34:55
And the shipping was more than the product itself. you know, we had product, we didn’t make as much profit as we normally do, but you know, we still had product to deliver to the customers, which is an important thing. So, you just figure it out, right? You figure like smart people always figure it out. Like, yeah, it’s fine. yeah, I think you need to have a buffer, right? Yes. 100%. For incidentals like this and that sort of thing. A hundred percent. You know, which is actually one of the reasons why I like that whole house hacking thing I mentioned earlier, because

35:23
One, you should have a buffer anyway. But also when you’re buying a duplex and you live in half of it and you rent the other half out, if you have a problem like, the dishwasher broke, it’s usually a small enough issue that you could call up your brother-in-law and be like, hey, could you go put in a dishwasher for me? Or you could walk over there and be like, oh yeah, it looks like that just got unplugged from the wall. It’s a lot lower risk because it’s just your neighbor. You just go and deal with it. Yeah, again, it’s like training wheels for real estate investing. I’m a big fan of that.

35:53
Okay, let me ask you this, because I know you got some other stuff going on now. If you were to start all over from the beginning with no money at all, would you start with real estate or would you start with some sort of online business or like YouTube channel or whatnot content? Oh man, I would, I would start with real estate. That’s a good question. If I had to start all over, I think I would still start with real estate. Um, unless I had the skillset that I have today, which would be the ability to communicate

36:23
on a podcast and on YouTube, in which case gives me now very few, no, I’m not trying to like pat myself on the back here. I was like, what’s your view? Yeah, yeah. No, you don’t need like, like you and I have been doing this thing for like a decade, right? Or maybe longer. I don’t know how long you’ve been doing this, but like we’ve been doing this a long time. So if, if I was a normal, like if I was where I was when I started, like if you can go back and watch my first videos on like YouTube, like I was so bad. Like I just, was holding my cat in my hands and I’m like, hi, my name’s

36:52
Brandon and I have a cat. Like it was just like stupid. Like I was so bad. No, there’s like no chance that I was successful in that. I think that it just takes so freaking long to get good enough to start making money that I would start with real estate house hacking. I would buy a house and I would rent out the other units or the bedrooms or whatever I had to do just to take off my like what’s the most expensive expense that most Americans have their housing, right? Like 30 to 50 % of people’s

37:22
bills, sometimes 60 % or more, goes towards housing. When you can eliminate that, like, and just take that off the table where you don’t have to worry about your mortgage anymore or your rent, all of a sudden you have this phenomenal like breathing room to then risk other things like online business and trying to build something because you took off your biggest expense. You took off the mortgage.

37:45
So we’re most of the, like most of the financial people out there are saying, you know, cut down on your lattes and you know, you can bike to work and save nine cents on gas. You know, like that kind of stuff. I’m like, just, house hack for a couple of years, get your foundation and then go build your online business. Ultimately the answer to that question is go with whatever fires you up. Like real estate fires me up. If, if NFTs fire you up, go into NFTs. like, if. Exactly. Right. Because here’s ultimately.

38:15
Even more important than what I said earlier about hiring my brother, it’s not my brother’s fault that that business didn’t go anywhere. There’s one person’s fault and it’s mine because I didn’t care about kites or wooden sunglasses or business, right? Like you don’t necessarily have to love your product, but you have to, I think you have to be, you have to love the business of that thing. And I didn’t, I didn’t want anything to do with it. And so because of that, I didn’t have any passion for the product or for the business. And so it suffered and I couldn’t give the right.

38:42
encouragement, couldn’t give the right systems, I couldn’t do any of that stuff. anyway, go with what fires you up, follow the fire. Follow the fire. Let me ask you this because there’s some parts of what you’re saying. Like, why did you join BiggerPockets in the first place then? Yeah, good question. So when I joined BP, so I had, was 27 years old, I was making about $3,000 a month in cash flow for my rental properties, which is, you know, that’s, that’s enough to pay all, it was pay all my bills. I had that 30, 35 units, something like that at the time.

39:11
And so I quit my job. was working at a bank before that, making the 13, 14 bucks an hour. I quit the job and I just sat on the couch for like six months and I like did nothing. And then in that process of sitting there on the couch, I got really bored and you can only watch Judge Judy so much. I remember going, remember those like torrent, like BitTorrent and stuff like you download, right? Okay. So this is where the stuff, I don’t think I’ve ever told this story out loud, by the way, I’m going to tell it right now. So, so I started downloading

39:41
books, like get rich quick books from BitTorrent or one of those Torrent sites. I don’t know why I got them from these Torrent sites, but anyway, that’s what I was doing. And so I downloaded mostly viruses all over my computer. Is that a euphemism for porn? that what you mean? No, no, this was legit. Like, OK, this was not legit, but this was this was actual like get rich quick, like like these ebooks and stuff from people. And I started downloading them and reading them. And one of them I read was the four hour workweek. So sorry, Tim Ferriss, I read that illegally the first time.

40:10
And, uh, and then I, I, I found this guy. Oh shoot. What was his name? Oh, I can’t believe I got his name. No, no. He, uh, Viper chill. Remember Viper chill? Yeah, course. Yeah. Viper chill. Okay. Glenn Elsop. Yes. That guy was the man. I mean, he probably still is the man. I don’t know. I don’t do a lot of internet marketing stuff anymore, but that guy was the man. I read something. He, I got downloaded something from him on a torrent site and got started reading all of his stuff. He led me to this guy.

40:38
very, very not well known. Nobody knows who he is named Pat Flynn. And so then I started listening to Smart Passive Income from Pat Flynn. So it’s all happening now as I’m 27 years old. And of course everyone knows Pat Flynn and that’s how you and I probably met was hanging out with Pat at some point. And that is when I got really interested in this idea of like making money online. So I was like, well, what am I good at? Well, I got some rental properties. Maybe I could teach that. So I started a website called Real Estate in Your 20s.

41:07
It still exists today. In fact, I just looked at it. It has like 15,000 people a month going on there and I’ve not touched it in nine years. That’s amazing actually. Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? 15,000 a month for not going there. Not a single update nine years on that website. I really should sell that one too at some point. so real estate in 20s, I built that site. I blogged on there for maybe six months and just like back in the day, maybe you still do it today. I don’t know. But to grow your blog, you would go and guest post on everyone else’s site.

41:36
In fact, I’m pretty sure I even guest posted for you at some point, but I went to everybody I could find and mostly people in the FinCon community as I started getting involved in that and I was like guest post. So in that process, I started writing for the largest or one of the largest real estate websites. It was a little site called BiggerPockets. And so I started guest writing for him, for Josh, and he was just a one-man show. He’s just a small blog in a forum called BiggerPockets. I started guest writing on that site to try to drive traffic to mine.

42:04
And then I became through that, I became friends with Josh, the founder, and I was making no money. mean, I was selling a calculator, which I still sell today for $19. Nine years later, I’ve not updated it. I don’t know how the technology still works, but it still works. every couple, like every like week I make like 19 bucks. great. Uh, but I was selling this little calculator anyway. Uh, then Josh said he needed help managing the blog, like editing blog posts. And he’s like, I can even pay you a hundred dollars per blog post you edit.

42:34
And I was like, I’ll do it. Cause I had, mean, I was making three grand a month, but you you can’t really go on vacation. mean, you can’t really like buy an X-Box or anything like that. could pay my bills. was it. So it was literally a means to an end. That was a long answer to your question, but it was a means to make some money. And very quickly, Josh and I realized that we were super good friends. Once we started working together, we worked a hundred hours a week. And that’s no exaggeration. A hundred hours a week for the first two years. And, uh,

42:58
I wrote hundreds of articles for hundreds of websites all across the internet, all pointing back to BiggerPockets. And I had Josh on the show like five years ago. Did you really? Yeah. to that. I hope you talk good about me. No, here’s the thing. Like when I think of BiggerPockets and I know Josh started it long before, but I think of you as one of the main guys who caused it to blow up. You know, I was going to say so.

43:22
It looks like I was one of the catalysts that helped it grow and blow up. But here’s, here’s what I think was actually more important. This applies to people listening today, whether you’re in business or real estate, doesn’t matter. What Josh did was it, I mean, Josh had been building the site for eight years before I ever came in the picture. What Josh did though, is he took himself out of being a dual role operator. What I mean by that is I’m using some terminology from a book called Traction by Gina Wickman or Rocket Fuel.

43:50
There are two people at the head of every great company, or least most great companies, an integrator and a visionary. So have like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, whatever his name is, Like Jobs was the visionary, but he wasn’t the one actually individually doing all the stuff to make it all happen. So what Josh did is he was running both parts. He was doing the work and trying to be the vision. And it’s very, very hard for somebody to do that because it’s two different skillsets entirely.

44:17
And so what the reason BiggerPockets blew up is because Josh unlocked his genius of being a visionary and my ability to do the work. And that’s why I blew up. today, the reason that I’ve grown Open Door Capital, my company, you in the last three years, from zero units to 4,000 units is I did the exact same thing. I’m the visionary now, and I brought in an integrator who runs the whole business. And so that’s why I don’t know the exact number of units, because I don’t run it.

44:45
Like I’m the visionary, I cast the vision, I lead the culture, I’m there for the meetings, but like, I don’t have to do the day to day. And so I would just advise anybody out there struggling in business, if you find the right integrator or if you find the right visionary, those two things together, it really is rocket fuel. So that’s what I think happened when I came out of bigger pockets was just a perfect mixture of rocket fuel. And it’s been a wild ride. I am kind of curious. And this is, mean, you guys have been doing this for such a long time.

45:16
I’m curious, like if you were to start that site again, what tactics do you think work the best today just for promotion of a content-based site or forum or whatever? Yeah, if I were to start over again, I would say I think social media. So what I would do is I would start a podcast. think podcasts are amazing. I think they build trust and credibility better than any other media medium in the history of mankind. I podcast for sure.

45:43
YouTube for sure, because YouTube is a search engine, right? We all know that. if you’re on YouTube, and then I would use those two mediums and probably like Instagram, Reels and TikTok. And I would drive everything to an email list as much as possible. think email still is powerful. SMS too now. absolutely. And text. Yeah. In fact, I actually now I have my own because of that, I started a text message newsletter. So every week it’s called Behind the Beard.

46:11
And every week I send out like a text of like, yeah, it’s clever little idea. I mean, name, I come up with it. I didn’t come up with it. Somebody else did. I did a contest to see who had the best name, but behind the beard one. And I like it. So like every week I send out a text of like something I’m reading, something I’m learning, or I could teach just some random thing, something that I bought recently. That’s super cool. Like some random trinket or whatever. Something I’m excited about. And usually that’s a little bit of self-promotion. Like, oh, I’m excited to launch this book or I’m excited to have this event or whatever.

46:41
And then like something I can teach about real estate so that I’ll answer questions. And it goes out every single week. But why do I do that? It’s because the most powerful thing in business is your ability to get people to like and trust you at scale. If you can get people to like and trust you at scale, you could do anything. Like that’s the currency in today’s economy is getting people to like and trust you. Now, maybe, mean, like, you having a, you know, your audience of like internet business stuff, maybe there’s some more valuable stuff, but

47:09
Man, just like in the world of info marketing or whatever, like and trust is everything. I 100 % agree with you. And I know you’ve been taking dance lessons for a while. Do you actually have a TikTok channel now? You know what? I do have a TikTok channel now, but I’m not using it right now because of, I, I get sucked in on it and you’re not done with your lessons yet. I, know, my dancing is getting better. Uh, my pointing is really good. Like I’m good at the point.

47:38
Yeah, the pointing game on TikTok is so stupid. Actually, my only, I’ve only had one viral video on TikTok and it has now like, I don’t know, million views or 2 million views or something like that. And all I did was I, it was a stitching. Is that what it’s called? No, duet, duet. All I did was duet some other guy’s video and I nodded a lot. I just nodded a lot. And that’s the one that like goes viral. And I’m like, I just look like a moron.

48:04
to like everybody like, who’s this bearded guy that’s just nodding along to like somebody else, but it worked. I don’t know. Do you have a TikTok? you, you in? I do. I just started going on it. Um, I don’t, I don’t dance yet. I just go for like the small audience that’s on TikTok. Actually, you know what? 30 % of the people are over the age of 40 now. Wow. That’s pretty, I I, I believe it. I mean, I know so everybody I know is on TikTok is like, is it consuming so many hours of TikTok? Um,

48:31
So my strategy is to go niche, very niche. So the audience that I do attract are very interested in e-comm and then it’s been actually doing really well. That’s all. Yeah. I’m, you keep going. Cause yeah, I really think TikTok is so powerful. And I think that’s it’s moving. The world is moving that direction. I mean, I don’t need to tell you that. What I like about it is that it’s a meritocracy. Like you put something out like, like what you did with the duet. mean, clearly you did something. My beard, it’s clearly.

48:56
Clearly. So if someone, someone clearly watched that straight through because TikTok rewards people who watch it all the way through, right? Yeah. Like it. So yeah, you were rewarded for doing a good job. And I love that. It’s like there, there, I mean, there’s no guarantee, right? But if you’re consistent and you’re continually improving, mean, that’s the other thing that it’s not talked about enough is like this, the idea of continual improvement in anything you do, like why did the bigger pockets podcast blow up to be one of the biggest, you know, business podcasts in the world?

49:24
Because every episode we ended that show, Josh and I would look at each other and go, that sucked. What do we do better next time? I mean, like maybe it’s not going to be negative like that, but every time we would say, how do we do better? And we would dive deep and try to improve and improve the quality, improve the conversation, improve the guests. And I know you do the same thing in your business. I’ve heard you talk about it. Like just how do we always try to get better? And majority of the world does not operate that way. They have a way of doing things and that’s all they ever do.

49:51
So is that why you’re no longer doing the BiggerPockets podcast? Yeah, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t improve anymore. It was already perfect, man. It was just, it couldn’t get any better. I stopped doing the BiggerPockets podcast mainly because I got to this point where, I mean, Open Door Capital, like I said, it grew to 4,000 units in like two, three years. It’s so fast growing. like, obviously I needed an audience in order to keep growing that.

50:20
but I can get like the same on YouTube, I mean on Instagram and I’ve already had a big email list and eventually I’ll do podcasts and again, I’m sure maybe I’ll just come back on the bigger pockets podcast but I wanted a break to spend a year with my family, spend a week just like chilling and just trying to figure out what I wanna do with my life. that’s why I know your personality, so what do you got cooking? Yeah, it’s tough. In fact, I have a performance coach, Jason, who texts me today. He’s like, we’re a couple of weeks into the new year.

50:49
What have you started building so far? I’m like, well, I got a lot of ideas, but I’m, I’m forcing myself to not do them yet. But, uh, I dunno, I’m intrigued. The real estate thing is enough, right? If I can say, have you read that book, the gap and the gain from Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan? I would add that to your list. It’s probably the best book I read in the past few years. Um, really, really good book. It’s called the gap and the gain. And they tell a story in this book.

51:16
And the story says this, says like the rowing team in London, I’m probably gonna butcher the story, but I’ll do my best. The rowing team in London was terrible for like a hundred years. They’re just terrible. And they never won the Olympics. could barely make it to the Olympics. And then finally back in like 2012 or something like that, they finally made it to the Olympics and they won the gold medal. And the question was, how did they do that? And so the anecdote they tell in the book is that the coach instituted this phrase, does it make the boat go faster?

51:46
And every single decision in each individual person’s life is built around this idea of, it make the boat go faster? So should I attend that party on Saturday night? Well, does it make the boat go faster? Then no. Should I eat this cheeseburger for lunch? Does it make the boat go faster? No. Should I eat this, you know, chicken and broccoli? Yeah, that will make the boat go faster because it’s gonna make me stronger. So every decision gets run by that. So this year is really about, I’m in life. I’m trying to only do things that make the boat go faster.

52:15
Because if I can stick to that and what do I mean by the Boko faster? I mean, open door capital, cause that is the, that is the rocket ship that I’m on. So every time I’m tempted with like, Oh, I should go sell kites on the internet. Well, does that make the Boko faster? No. Uh, should I go and start a online membership for real estate? Does that make the Boko faster? No. Uh, should I start another podcast eventually? Well, that probably would make the Boko faster cause I can raise money and build rep, you know, build the reputation and get deals and all that. So eventually that’ll come back. So anyway, ask yourself that question.

52:44
I want to give you an opportunity to talk about your boat. My boat. Yeah, Let’s talk about the boat. Open door capital, you mean? Yeah, exactly. All right. Yeah. I know it’s a real estate fund. So what that means is, well, it’s a, it’s a company. It’s a, it’s basically like private equity, but, uh, we raise money from wealthy people and then we take that money and we go buy a bunch of big real estate deals, mostly mobile home parks, uh, but some apartment complexes as well. So we just closed in a $70 million apartment complex in Houston. And yeah, it’s, it’s a,

53:13
It’s a really neat business model because it’s not like I didn’t make this up. mean, this has been done by lots of people, but we raise money from people who make money like you. So you go and invest in my fund. You are now a basically a part owner of a apartment complex. So if you put in a million dollars that you might own, whatever 2 % of this apartment complex, the cool thing is you’re what’s called a limited partner, which means you have no legal liability. can’t get sued.

53:41
can’t get hurt. The most you could ever lose is just your million dollars if you, you know, if the whole deal went bankrupt or something. But you’re not going to get sued for damages or losses or anything like that, which is kind of cool. It’s a limited partner. Now you’re also limited though in your involvement. So you can’t go and call me and be like, Hey Brandon, I really don’t like that yellow paint. Can you do white next time? I’m just going to be like, Hey man, like that’s not your job. Your job is to put the money in and then get a return. mean, that wouldn’t stop me from making that call. No, you wouldn’t. You would make that call. It’s okay. I’ll take it. And then, uh,

54:11
That’s how it works. So then we buy property, we fix it up, we hold onto it for a number of years. You get a portion of the cashflow. So you might get a couple percent every year, two, three, four, five, 10%, whatever the deal produces in return for you. And then someday the property, sell it two, three, five, 10 years down the road and you get your money back plus hopefully a bunch more. And so that’s kind how works. It’s really, here’s what the cool thing about it is. I once bought a single family house.

54:39
This is like going back like 10 years. bought a single family house. I mean, I bought a lot of them, but this is one example. I fixed it. I bought it at auction. So I had to learn how to buy it at an auction at a courthouse steps auction. So foreclosure auction. I bought it at auction. I then had to go through a bunch of legal process to get, take possession of it. I then had to get rid of the car and all the stuff that was in the house. Cause some guy died like years earlier and the car was sitting there in the house and been lived in. I then had to fix it up and manage contractors. I then had to rent it out and I put it on Airbnb for awhile. And then I got tired of that. And then I put it on a normal rental.

55:08
I got tired of that. And after like three years, I sold the property and I looked back and I went and decided to do a deep dive into the numbers. I’m like, how much did I actually make on my investment? And when it was all said and done, I made 15 % per year on my money. Now that’s double what the stock market produces. That’s really good. 15 % is really good. But then I looked at my friends who are wealthier and they were investing in these real estate funds like I have today.

55:36
and they were making 15 % on their money each year. Like after you factor in the sale at the end and kind of average it all out, they were making the same amount of money, but they were playing golf and they were doing their internet businesses and they were hanging with their family. In other words, they weren’t doing any work and they were making the same return as I was making doing all that work. And so that’s why I started investing in other people’s funds. And eventually I was like, well, I might as well just do it myself. And so I built my own. So.

56:03
Anyway, that’s where the whole idea of massive income to passive income. If you have a way to generate massive income, don’t do real estate, make money doing the thing that you’re really good at and you’re fired up about. But dump your money into real estate via syndications or funds or people like me. Not to be me, there’s hundreds of us out there, thousands of us. Yeah, do that. There’s only one branded term.

56:24
There’s only one Brandon Turner and there’s I’m pretty sure I have the longest beard of any syndicator in the world. So you probably should just do it with me. And your fund has returned a lot more than what we were just talking about here. Yeah. not going Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we we sold our first fund and we did stupid good. Now don’t expect to always do that good, but you you hope for the home runs and you you project a base hit, but you hope for the home runs and sometimes it work out. So, so, if anyone listening to this wants to invest, where can they find more about your firm?

56:54
All right, yeah, so here’s the, there’s four rules. Number one, small bills. Number two, briefcase. Number three, I’ll meet you at a crosswalk. And number four, no cops. So as long as we’re good on those four rules, that’s how you invest. Either that or you can check out odcfund, odcfund.com. Cool. Where we put the fun in fund. Okay, you just lost my investment. Dang it. Dang it.

57:22
Anyway, yeah. And we have funds every every few months, like every three months or so we’ll launch a new deal whenever we get one. So we’re, we’re hunting right now. We’re in hunting mode right now, but we get a deal once every other month. We’re on average. So it’s always going. Brandon, man. Thanks a lot for coming on show. was long time overdue. It was long time. I’ve been begging you. mean, I’ve been sending you texts every week for almost seven years now in a row now. And every time you just write back, not yet, Brandon, not yet. Just don’t take anyone to our restaurant. That’s what it took. It took jealous.

57:50
That’s what it was. It was jealousy. All I had to do, it’s like when you, when you got a girlfriend, right? But she’s not like, you’re not really sure where you stand with her. So you go get, you hire your buddy’s girl to go on a quick date with you. And then she’s jealous and it works every time. I actually had a friend, true story. I had a friend in high school who is his best dating advice is if there’s a girl you like, you go and find the girl standing next to her and compliment her on her looks. And that’s how you get the girl.

58:18
And I’m not, think he might’ve been a genius because that’s the book with Graham. think it might be probably is one of those pickup artists things. Yeah. It clearly also works for a getting on podcasts. So apparently you’re the hot girl, man. All right. Well, thank you for having me on. This has been a lot of fun. And yeah, if people want to, you know, reach out, whatever, I’m, I’m a social butterfly. hit me up. All right, man. Take care. Thank you.

58:48
Hope you enjoyed that episode, and if you are interested in real estate investing, Brandon is my go-to guy in this area. More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 401. Once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post-purchase flow, a win-back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO.

59:16
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLA v IYO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform, and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash dv. That’s P-O-S-T-S-U-I-P-T dot I-O slash dv. Now I talk about how I these tools on my blog. If you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store,

59:44
head on over to mywifequitter.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.