The Business & Brand Behind the Beard w/ Brandon Turner

Brandon Turner. Hey buddy, dude.

Dude. This is awesome. Thank you for having me. This is gonna be fun,

dude. Thank you for coming on, man. I am pumped. You are my favorite one third of a triathlon runner that I know . brandon: Oh good. Yeah. You know, it was tough work, but somebody had to run the, or swim the whole 1.2 miles and I struggled through it. I got a whole lot of lessons there. But the ultimate, the end is I, I completed it and I didn't die. And that's what's important in life is that we don't die one extra day, man. one extra day, extra day, Heather's pumped, Rosie water pumped. , before we get into the wonderful world of you, , for people listening, this is big. It is a wonderful, wonderful world. Yeah. It's fantastic. We are not gonna get into your backstory. I love you, buddy. If you guys wanna listen to Brandon's backstory there's 10,000 hours of brain and Turner live in color, documented across this entire journey. So we're gonna get into the meat and potatoes today. All right, man. , first thing I wanna ask you about, man, , I was very happy to see that you were international with the. That's freaking sweet. I did. That's not something that you normally do.

Talk about that. Yeah. Spent a year and a half in North Korea. No, we didn't know we were ever to just Russia. Yeah. Yeah. We just wanted to go see Russian Ukraine for a little while. It was a great trip. Lots of memories. No, we went on a road trip around the country. I, so I stepped down from the podcast bigger pockets back in December. It was my last episode. So then January on, I was I had the freedom to kinda do what I wanted to. I mean, I love bigger pockets. I still do. And I'm actually back on their show this week. But I didn't like having to do it every single week. Right. It was just like, it was like my identity and I like had to do it. So I was like, all right, I need a break. I need to step aside and then open door capital. I'm sure we'll talk about that later. It's been just killing it and I'm like, I need to focus energy there for a while. So anyway, took some time off and then I was like, well, I, you know, why don't I get on the road? And. Since I don't have to do a podcast anymore. I wanna go see the country. So I went and saw the country and then we had some car trouble issues halfway through it. And so we're like, well, we gotta wait three weeks for a part to come in. Why don't we go to Europe? So, yeah, we went over to Europe, went to Barcelona and then Paris and then London, and then ended in Scotland. And it was it was difficult with kids, but it was amazing. But yeah, I travel officially international travel with little kids. Oof. It is

a is adventure. It's a task man, but I was, I was really happy to see you do that, man, because you know, you, you don't take time , for you. You,

It's, it's important to do so, but yeah, it's easy to get caught up, you know, this whole world of we wanna get into real estate for our financial freedom so we can do whatever we want and then we get that. And then we end up yeah. Working, working 90 hours a week and yeah, it's no different, right. So unless you make an intentional point, like I'm going to take time off and, and add those areas of margin or of rest in my life. People don't.

I love the concept of margin. And I also like the concept of digestion, right? Yeah. Because like we go through different seasons in life and we go through dis like you listen to a podcast and then everyone's default is to move to the next podcast, to the next podcast. Yes. To the next podcast. It don't take that time to drive and let it simmer. It's so true. I mean, it's so true. Yeah. So, man, so that's actually, one of the things I wanna hit on about is with you. You have great monetary success. You've got great family success. You've raised hundreds of millions of dollars. You've impacted millions of lives and all of this stuff. And it's all very impressive and you've put it on paper and you're like, holy crap. Look at this guy. The thing that impresses me the most about you, man, is not any of that, ironically, but the fact that you. We're on a webinar every single week, like clockwork teaching beginner level, real estate, like how you do one thing is how you do everything. What kept you going? Because as you were rising up and as you were blowing up and you had all this following and you're doing bigger and bigger things progressively, that was one thing that you kept doing, like clockwork and you don't see that. Yeah. Anymore. Can you speak on that a little bit?

Yeah, man. I'm glad you brought that up and I, not just to pat myself on the back, but to, to just talk about like success in general, , what I often see is like a lot of people think success is like this event. It is oh, I won the contest. I won the trophy. I got the girl, I. Got the contract or , the, whatever, like the deal, everyone like sees it as like the event in reality. Success is just like a whole lot of very man, fairly mundane actions taken in rhythm. I love the idea of rhythm, right? Like just over and over and over a drum beat. And an example of that be like, In, in my company, open door capital, we wanna buy a bunch of real estate deals. So like we have a, a rule, like we make 75 offers, a quarter 75 offers a quarter 75 offers quarters, basically one a day. It works out to do almost when you figure out like weekends and such 75 offers a quarter and we just do it, it just, it's not always fun to, and then in order to make an offer, of course we gotta analyze probably 10 deals. Mm-hmm so it's just like analyze, analyze, analyze, analyze, offer, right? So there's this rhythm to success and, and to build anything that most people don't see, it's kind of like. A magician, you know, you go to a magic show and you see the magician do the trick. You don't see the 10,000 times they practice that trick and they were bored of death the entire time. So the webinar that I taught for bigger pockets was in a large part that way, that was the thing that I could just do over and over and over and over. And a, I love teaching new investors, how to get started. I love, like I never get bored, get like talking people through how to buy a duplex. Like it's always fun. I'm like, no, then you can get, you could rent out the other unit and live in one and live for free. And it's amazing. And I get pumped up just talking about it. So one, one, it's fun. Number two, when you talk over and over and over and over about a subject, you start like finding. Your voice in it. , , so I, I crafted like most of my speeches and my later books , and, and all that off of the things that I would teach on that weekly webinar. And so, the questions that would come in that was all useful as well. And then of course I would record it and I could then take the clips later and throw 'em on social media. So there's a little bit of you know, two birds with one stone aspect. But really, and then at the end of the day, the webinar at the end of it, it was an hour of education. And then, you know, 15 minutes of me talking about the bigger pockets per me, The pro ship is where bigger pockets makes most of its money from. And so, and, and at the end of the day, it's if I just do that every single week and I get better every single week at selling pro membership over time, income goes up. And then the fact that we do it every single solitary week is a new group of people every week. And that is what made bigger pockets, just tens of millions of dollars over the years of. Of just week after week after week some, I mean, so many entrepreneurs will go and do a webinar, right? Mm-hmm , they'll do a webinar. They will do a race for a deal. They will go make an offer, but it's the rhythm where the magic is found.

I love that man. And also I'm noticing too, as I'm on this journey, creep it up on one year. Now I've realized that as you learn things, and then you. Teach things, you retain them better. Yes. A hundred percent. , and then you sharpen and you get better and you sharpen, you articulate, you get better. And then all of a sudden you got a newsletter. And now not only are you doing the interviews and you're asking interesting, entrepreneurs that are successful and free now, not only are you learning from them, but then you're taking everything that they're saying. And you're like, okay, how do I chop this up? And describe this in five minutes. You

know what I mean? Exactly. You just refine your skills over and over and over. So when people were like, wow okay, I heard somebody yesterday I went to a dinner and had a woman cook who was a really good cook. And then I heard one of the other guests at the dinner say, man, she's such an amazing cook. I just don't have that gift. And it was, it's almost like it's almost insulting cuz I know the lady who cooked it. Yeah. Has. Thousands and SS of hours to get good at cooking. Right. But it's that's their approach. We'll take, it's I just don't have that gift. So when people say that I'm good at talking on stage, or I'm good at writing a book or whatever, that thing that I happen to be good at doing is I'm like, yeah, you, you get good after 500 episodes of a podcast over 10 years or over 500 webinars over the course of 10 years. Like you get, you get better. And so, yeah, my encouragement, anybody listening to this is anytime you're tempted to say must be nice to be good at that, or while they were born with that, just know that it's almost never the case. It's always just years and years and years and years of practice. And that's what gives you the results?

Exactly. And I wanna hit on something that you just mentioned a little bit briefly before, and that is, , you hit financial freedom and then you're working 90 hours a week. Yeah. So , what's cool about that is you, you're one of the contributors right. To this where , it seems to me to be the default of , $10,000 a month. That's what everyone. No matter where like I want $10,000 a month in real estate, so I can go folks real estate full time. Yep. And so you and bigger pockets and that whole community is what, what launched this. And now here we are where people are either getting closer or hitting that mark. And now they've realized that they've done none of the mindset work, none of the vision work to know what the heck they want to do and who the heck they are when they don't have that. Yeah, so, yeah, it's so true. , how was that for you? Especially post bigger pocket.

Yeah. I mean, the number of people that I know who have achieved financial independence and financial freedom and wealth, or sold some company for millions of dollars or tens of millions or hundreds of millions, and then are just stuck. It's it's stagger green. Like they just, they don't know what to do with themselves. Most, most, most, yeah. Most people are that way. Most athletes, most celebrities when they get done with whatever. And I think a huge piece of that. is that their identity has been wrapped up in that thing. Like they are the guy from that company. Right. So I had to tear before I did kind of the work ahead of time. I knew that my time at BP was winding down. And so I worked for several months. Maybe even several years, you could say I'm tearing away my identity. I mean, really, if you go back. I started open door capital four and a half years ago. That was an initial tearing away of Brandon's the bigger pocket guy. I didn't wanna be the bigger pocket guy. And I mean, this is where, like my entire company, we started cuz I was on stage at this conference of like really high level like real estate, like developers and syndicated like really like multimillionaire millionaires and all this. I was on stage at this conference and I looked out there and I was like, I I'm the least qualified person in this room to be on stage mm-hmm I'm here because I have a big mouth and a big platform and I could sell tickets. I don't deserve to be here. And so like I swore like to myself that day, like I was gonna deserve to be on that stage. I was gonna be there because I, not because I had could sell tickets, but because I could I deserved to be there. I was good enough to be there. And so that was kind of the initial, I guess you could say that Terry in a way of that identity, but I'm not just the bigger pockets guy. So if anybody. Work on that. Who, what is your identity really? I don't wanna be the open door capital guy either. Right? What exactly is that identity? And, you know, only you can only, you can say that and it shifts constantly, but I wanna know that if I lost Opendoor capital today entirely and bigger pockets went away entirely in my real estate education and my niche famous life, right? Quote unquote, niche famous, which like means I can go to an event and people know me like. If that all went away, who am I? Am I still yeah, I'm totally comfortable with myself. That's where I wanna be. And I'm not, I'm not perfectly there yet, but I definitely had pulled away and I kind of tore that identity from bigger pockets before making the leap. And, and I, I want my identity to be like, you know, I'm a family guy. Like I'm a dad. Yeah. I'm a husband. Like that's, that's, doesn't go away.

That's important. I love that. And we'll get a little bit into tearing identity and mindset shifts and the whole relationship that you have with Jason DRES, because I'm part I coach with him too. Oh, nice. Yeah. So , my Mo is, I'm just like, what does the six foot six Hawaiian dude do? And I just do that. So I don't there. You what's. I gotta do invent the wheel. So I was like, okay, Jason's reach real estate check. There you go. That's all you need, man. It's funny. I was like, okay, I'm gonna start a text letter, start a newsletter, start a podcast. Yeah, there you go. So just follow that guy.

That, and what's funny though, is you know, you joke about it, but in reality there's so much value, right? It. Just find out. I don't I copy everything. Like my entire like open door capital was copied. Cuz I saw what grant Cardone was doing. And I was like, wait exactly right. He's building a, a social media following, but rather than selling like hair care and makeup products, like every other influencer, he's I'm gonna go raise money. And I was like, that's genius. So I just did the same thing. Grant. I try, I try. That's what I idea where you go, okay. I like what they're doing. I'm gonna take that aspect. How do I improve upon it? Or, or add my own twist to it. So when people see grant, they see the private jet and they see that kind of make more money, money, money, what I want, when people to see me I want these words to come to their mind Hey, I like that guy. That's what I want my brand to be is like, Hey, I like that guy. I don't think grant cares if people like him or not. He, in fact he said on our podcast, when we interviewed him, he's you can get half the world to hate you become P. He's I don't want people to, you know, who like me, I, he is I don't wanna be happy. I wanna be, no, I wanna be happy. I, I like anyway, so it's you look what works for them. Take what works. Add your own twist to it and build your own identity off of that. It's a, it's a

powerful thing. Yeah. You're like if grant Cardone went to youth group a little bit more. When he was growing

up but that's funny. Cause I was actually, I was a youth. I wasn't, I wasn't ordained. I was, I was a youth leader. Yeah. I was about say you had a group a long time. I did, I was a junior high youth leader for about a decade. So, so that

on the Instagram bio,

I know. Yeah. That's I mean, if you put that on a resume, like I hire you I'll hire you. Like it's like you're you are a junior high youth leader. You can do anything. Yeah. It doesn't matter. You can do anything. So, so

speak, speak of the. I wanted to actually this is all like working perfectly all according to my plan. Oh, right,

man. You're a good interviewer. Aw, Brandon

make me blush. speaking to grant speaking to grant. He comes to mind grant Alex hormo Ryan Pinda, all these cats that are growing up and as they are building their brand, as they are coming on the scene in their online brand and their online presence, they are. Ryan Pinta is the Ryan pinata show. Alex Orosi just popped up outta nowhere with a beard and a wife beater and said I'm worth a hundred million dollars listening. Yeah. And yeah. And everyone listens. Yep. There's a lot of creators myself included right now that are in, they see what you've done and they see what Grant's doing. They see what Ryan's doing. And they're like, okay, cool. I'm doing big things in real estate, but I need, I see the power of personal brand. Yeah. I see where this is leaning and where this is heading towards. If you were to go back, this is the question I've always really kind of wondered about you. If you could go back, especially in today's climate, would you. Hit your wagon to a bigger pockets to a publication, to a HubSpot or yeah, one of those publications, or would you try to build from scratch as Brandon Turner if you were to go back?

Yeah, I think when you are. When you are paid to do something, it is way more likely you're actually going to do it. I mean, in fact that this it will go back to what I said way earlier, but like most of like success is just a mundane, boring thing. So I, I encourage people all the time, straight entrepreneurs. I ask them what if you did it every single day for six months straight would almost guarantee you success in anything, right? If you wanna grow your blog, if you wanna grow an e-com like what, what action or actions, if you did it every single day without. Would you almost guarantee you'd be surprised not to get it. So for real estate, it'd be like, if you made an offer every day for six months, I would be shocked if you didn't have one deal, right. We'd be shocked. You'd be like, oh, come on. That's a lot of offers. So the second part of that question though, is who's gonna do that for you because I, I, as an entrepreneur am not good at doing the day to day to day stuff. I'm just not, I'm not wired that way. You're not wired that way. Most of us that are entrepreneurs are not wired that way. That is why we are entrepreneurs. But I was not an entrepreneur. I was not good at it. I guarantee you, I would not have stuck with it. Had bigger pockets, not paid me money to go on a webinar in the beginning and teach the stuff. Or if there was not that This is something I'm doing. I, I, I obligate myself today, commit it's commitment. Right. I am, I am the biggest liar in the world to myself. Like I will lie to myself all day long and not feel bad about it. And I hate that about myself, but I just can't seem to fix it. So instead I just hack my way around it and I say, okay, well instead. For example, if I say I'm gonna go on some podcast because I want to get my name out there and I wanna build my brand. And then it comes down to actually doing the work, to reach out to podcasters and say, Hey, can I be on your show? Or even if somebody asked me to be on the show, I'm like, oh, I don't want to, I'd rather go play video games. Right. I will. Instead I tell my assistant in a, in a brief moment of clarity, I'll be like, Hey, just schedule me on eight podcasts in the next couple months. Now it's now it's actually gonna get done. Now I'm obligated to get that work done. So to go back to your original question, like I was not a good. Entrepreneur to get that stuff done, nor did I have the skillset to lead others, to get those things done. Therefore, I do not believe I would've succeeded without going through the bigger pockets channel first, without being going through that fire and learning all these things like the boring things matter and how to lead and how to hire and how to fire and how to inspire and all. Stuff. I learned through bigger pockets. What I've done it on my own maybe, but I would give it a 5% shot doing it through somebody else getting paid to do it. I'd give it like a 90% shot. That's why I love internships. We do so many internships at open Dirk capital. Cause I'm like, like I want people to get in there and do the work and figure out how it's done and then go do it on their own if they want to or stick with me and make a lot more, hopefully.

I love that man and that, , I mean, and we all go through different seasons. Right. And to that point, . So grant had already had some success entrepreneurial. Yeah. And then Ryan, and obviously Alex, like they were already kind of where they had systems in place and then they just saw the wave and then they were just like, okay, let's get on our boards and ride this thing. Yeah. So that's a, it's a little different, cuz you were still in your process of building yourself to become that architect, which will get into in a little bit. Yeah. But I want to go into that. Transitioning your mindset from that, that level 10 to that level, 100 with Jason. And I wanted to see if there's kind of like an inflection point. I know you were on stage and you were surrounded by all these people that were doing all this huge stuff. And you were like, okay, I need to get over my fear of raising money, raising capital, all this stuff. You go from Brandon. That's the single family real estate investor. To Brandon that's now employing people for open door capital. What was that transition like? And what was your biggest friction point associated with that with hiring your first couple people?

You know, my favorite movie, if I had to pick a favorite movie, it's probably office space. You remember that movie office space, like some covers on Lu reports. Yeah, exactly. TPS reports and bill Loberg and all that. Like for those who haven't seen it, the movie's about just like cliche, horrible you know, cubicle work, like where you just work for this tech company in a cubicle and it's you have a boring life and your, and bosses are annoying and it's worthless work. That doesn't mean anything. I was so. Affected by that movie. And I was like, I do not ever want that. And so I maybe rebelled, like that's one thing that pushed me towards real estate is I didn't have to have that. So then as my real estate started to grow or as I aged and I got older The simple revelation became clear to me. And I don't know if it was Jason juries that said this to me, or if it was like in conversation or somebody else did. But basically what I realized is as an entrepreneur, in order to obtain the freedom that we got into entrepreneurship for, you have to elevate your position and your leadership skills. Like it's, it's. It's required. I mean, it's very rare to be able to achieve like real big successes entrepreneur without bringing in people and inspiring them and hiring them and all that stuff yet. So I was at this position where I'm like, no, I do not want to be bill lumber. And I do not want to keep working the nine to five of my entrepreneurship where I'm, I'm fixing toilets in the middle of the night for my tenants. That was old. Brandon was like, do it yourself. I'm that guy. And then there. I want the freedom that comes with entrepreneurship and that cannot happen without that mental growth of that mindset shifting. And so it was hard. In fact, like one of the work I did with some of the work I did with Jason a lot was around the idea of like management. I kept saying, I don't wanna be a manager. I hate being a manager. And then at, at bigger pockets for a while, I got shoved into a management role and I hated it. I hated it. Like I didn't get along with people I was supposed to manage and they didn't like me. And It was, it was a really, really rough time. And they were all good people. I love everybody at bigger pockets. And there were great people. We like, it was my, I did not fit. And as a manager, therefore I said, I don't wanna ever do that. And that's what Jason, for years worked with me on this idea of like management is not leadership. Leadership is not management. Those can be two separate things. So today, I mean, I've got, I dunno, 60 or 70 employees. I don't do any TPS reports. I don't do any quarterly reviews with them. I don't do any one-on-ones each week. Like I don't do that stuff because it's different from, I'm not a manager, I'm a leader. And that was probably the biggest shift I had to go through over many years. And in fact, the phrase. That Jason would use with me all the time as like a phrase from like war or like a military phrase. And that is a cadet versus a general I was very much in a cadet mindset for a long time. Like I was on the front lines and I was doing the work and, and he would now, even to this day, he'll ask me, Brandon, is that what a general would do? What does a general do in a war? Right. A general fits in the back, looking over a. They're strategizing, they're meeting with the president, they're going they're going to a fundraiser dinner. Like they're doing like these big, high level stuff. They're not picking up their gun and unplugging a toilet with it. Right. That's just not what they're doing. So again, I did it all wrong

that. You're telling me. So you're telling me this entire time while I've been talking my tenants toilets, the air toilet with the gun. Yeah. I'll show up on my AR 15 to unplug the toilet.

Yeah, man, you gotta, you gotta get out that, man. You gotta unplug this toilet with a map. That's what I'm saying. All right,

there we go. There we go. There's the title? The so nos. That's fantastic. And I want to get into. The business architect role. Sure. So talk a little bit about that framework that you came up with because I literally, I, I sent that to everyone. When I heard you say that, because , let's hit about tell them what the framework is. Sure. And then let's go into the logistics of it, because I feel like , that's an itch that needs to be scratched from people that were listening.

Yeah, man. So this is yeah. Something I'm super passionate lately on. I've been thinking a ton about it. Maybe some read a book on it. I don't know this is how books come out. Cause I just start thinking about things a lot. But what I notice is , Kiosaki has its quadrants, right? There's like the employee and self-employed, , employee self-employed business, owner, and investor. This is not that that's different. That's like , your role in an organization. I guess I , I would think of it as this is more like a mindset thing. And what I realize is it's not cadet or general either. There is kind of this idea of cadet in general. It was more nuanced than that. It was deeper. , and I wrapped it inside my own story. And here's the two minute nutshell when I started, I was unclogging toilets and painting every unit. That is what I call the DIY mindset. Now, when I talk about mindset, what I mean is the way you solve problems. That's what mindset means is the way you approach a problem. So the, the, when I had a problem, like a clogged toilet, I approached it with the DIY. I will do it myself. Then after a while I got tired of that, doing it all myself. And so then I thought, well, I'm gonna hire someone else to do it. So I hired my, like mother-in-law to answer phones. I hired like a local plumber to go out and unplug the toilet. And then I would write the check to the plumber or even sometimes meet the plumber there and be like, yeah, let me unlock the door for you. Right. So in other words, hate that. Yeah. I hate that. I hate that role. Right. But it's, I call it the project manager. Yeah. It's not like a project manager is like deeply involved, but they're not physically doing the task. They like fit all the little tasks. Right. That's fine. For some people, they might love that. And some people might love the DIY, nothing wrong with it. Some people might like project management, I just didn't fit either one. So then the third level, which I, I feel like most business books will guide you to be, and that is what I call the COO mindset. It's the idea of I'm going to build a company. And the company is gonna solve the problem. So I'm going to be the COO or CEO, whatever title you wanna put there. Again, this is about mindset, my titles. I'm gonna be in charge and around me, I'm gonna have employees. So I'm gonna have a project manager over here. I'm gonna have a acquisitions guy. I'm gonna have this one. I'm gonna have this one. And you are the center of that kind of like web. and the people around you, and that's a great way to run a business. I mean, most business owners would love to get to that level. Cause now at that point, you're not doing much of the day to day at all. You're just leading a team. Yeah. You're just managing a team, but the keyword is that you're managing a team. And so even in that role, when I got to that point, I was like, I don't really like this. Like I don't like having six people that report to me and all these like department heads that report to me. I don't care if I'm running the company. I still have to work 40 or 50, 60 hours a week to run this company that sucks. And. Yeah. Anyway, I, I don't wanna do that. So I, I came up with this like fourth level, cause I looked at guys like Richard Branson, Richard Branson, isn't the CEO or C I mean maybe title wise, but he's not running anything. I doubt what he knows. Half the company he's, he's running. I took my buddy David Osborne who started to GoBundance David Osborne. Right David, like when he buys a company or, or starts a company, he doesn't go hire four VPs and meet with him every week on and or every day. I'm like, so what is that role? What is that thing that very few people can do? And the way that the best word I can say, I've got two words that I kind of interchangeably use. One is the architect, which comes from the matrix. The, our architect in the movie, the matrix was like the guy who gotta plan the whole thing. But wasn't in the matrix necessarily. He was more like above the matrix. That was like the architect, but really the word that I've been using more lately is the energy Richard Branson energy, the energy behind. The Virgin empire David Osborn is the energy behind it. So how does the energy guy, the architect, how do they solve problems? They hire one person. They hire a CEO, or they hire a CEO, whatever the title is, they hire that one person and say, go build me a business. So the difference being, let me tell you two completing stories and then I'll shut up. Number one, I wanted to build a kite selling business on Amazon. Wow. So this is six years ago, right. But I. Selling kites. No one does that, but lots of people like flying kites. Why don't we sell 'em online? and I, this is, this is pre-open our capital. I was looking for a way to make more money. This is even before I wrote my book. So I was like, I need more like cash coming in. And my rentals, you know? Yeah. They make money, but as everyone knows with rentals, yeah, you make money, it's a business and you spend a bunch and then, oh, you need to do roof and you need to do water heater. Anyway, so I'm like, I need more money. Maybe I'll sell kites. And I had a buddy who was making like a hundred grand a month on Amazon and I was like, If this guy can do it, I can do it. So anyway, so the first thing I do, whether I would hire my little brother, I love my little brother, very smart guy. I'm like, Hey, let me just hire you for, for a whole year. And you run the business. So I was basically acting like a project manager, right. I grabbed him and I, I made him do it after six months. We didn't have anything. We ended up shifting to another product that was like wooden sunglasses that didn't sell either after a year and probably $50,000 of lost money. I finally shut it down cuz I didn't care about any of that. Now contrast that with open door capital. When I started that, after that, that conference where I was on stage, and I said, I'm gonna deserve this. I went and talked to my buddy, Ryan, Ryan Ryan Murdoch. He's awesome. I worked with him before on a real estate deal. We had partnered together. I really thought he was a smart dude, but also not just smart dude, but culturally fit. And had the experience needed, right? So he had all, all three, he had the he was smart. He had culture and he had the experience. And so I said, instead, Ryan, this is my vision. I'm the architect. This was my vision. Go build it. I mean, I, I, I didn't yell at him, go build it. But I asked him, I was like, what do you think? He's I love this. I'm like, go build it. And he's yeah, said running. And he went out there, build it. Yeah. Go. Yeah. And Ryan it go build it. go build it, man. Go build it. He built it and I didn't have to build it. And so he built. It was amazing. And so I got to play an architect. I got to cast the vision. I got to see where things are going from a high level. And I get involved sometimes I'll go do a webinar on when we're trying to raise money for a big real estate deal. Like we are right now. I'll go do a webinar. I'll go. I, I mean, I don't, I've talked to two investors out of a thousand of our limited partners. We have, I've talked to two of them on the phone ever. And that was like a very rare case. So I don't do most of that stuff, but so. The difference is mindset. So let me throw like a scenario at you, and then I promise I'll shut up. You're gonna go start a carpet company. You're gonna go lake carpet for me, man. well, you probably got lots of questions. All right. So you're gonna start a carpet lane business, right? Yeah. I'm gonna go lake carpet because I think that's going to be a successful business. Great. Nice. DIY goes to YouTube and types in, how do I lay carpet? Where do I buy a neat kicker? How do I get a carpet stretcher? How do I get ads? Who do I, you know, that's what the DIYer says. The next level, the project manager, the project manager says, who can I find the lay, some carpet for me? You know, I'm, I'll probably still take the phone calls, you know, for now, but like I'm, I don't wanna actually hurt my knees and get down on my hands and knees and lay carpet. So I'm gonna hire these three dudes over here and they're gonna come in and lay the carpet for me. That's the project manager level. The third level says, eh, I think a project or, I mean, I think a carpet company would be great. What does that company look like? Well, I would need a VP of sales. I would need a VP of marketing. I would need a a project manager to oversee the construction or, I mean, you know, the crew that lays it, I would need a finance guy and I would need a whatever, an office building mm-hmm and then they go, boom. And they just build that team. And now they're meeting with their four VPs every day. Making sure the works get done, nothing wrong with that, but the architect, you know, what they do, they go out and buy a carpet company, right. Or, or they find one dude and they're like, Hey, go build me a carpet company. And that guy goes, builds a carpet company. And, and here's the key or here's the two super important points about this number one, no level is bad. This is not a moral or ethical thing. There's no level that's bad. You might love being a DIYer, nothing wrong with that. There's areas in my life. I still DIY my stuff. This video, this quality video in front of me. I DIYed this it's my camera. I set it up. I like doing this stuff. It's okay. Wow. Right now. Great job, Brandon. Thanks, man. So I like that DIY stuff when it comes to technology, nothing wrong with that. However, while there's nothing wrong with every level, every level has a limit. Yes. You're not flipping 50 houses a year. If you're doing all the painting, you're not gonna build a hundred million dollar, you know, business. When you're answering the phones customer service, it's just not gonna be the case. So every level, the higher you go in the level, the fewer hours are required. But the more money you make think about McDonald's who makes mostly there, the owner who works the most. The frontline worker making $9 an hour, right? Mm-hmm like those people work the most. They make the least, the person at the top works. The, the, the highest level mindset works the least, but makes the most amount of money. So that's point number one is every level has a limit and point number two, and this is vital. You get to choose where you start. And this is the thing that I wish somebody would've told me 15 years ago is I assumed that you had to work through this in order to get to the top level. I didn't even know architect existed. I assumed in order to have a company, you had to start DIY, move up, move up and eventually, you know, hire some people and eventually pull yourself out. That's what everybody does is they say they're gonna pull themselves outta their business. Eventually. But what if, what if you asked the question, how, what if I started this with doing zero work or to pull Tim Ferris's question from the four hour work week? If you had a gun against your head mm-hmm that said you can only work four hours, hours a week at this, what would you do? Right. And that. That just asking that question changes how you think about building a business. And so today the best way to get into that mindset, the best way to elevate your mindset is a hire the one below you, right? If you wanna be a project manager, hire the DIYer, hire the person who's gonna do the work. If you wanna be an architect, hire a CEO or a COO hire your leader. The second way to get into that mindset is to ask yourself WW like EMD or DW. BTD what would Elon Musk. Right. Get that little bracelet, like WW, JD bracelets. We all had back in the nineties, get one of those little bracelets, but like WW tweet about it. Tweet he'd tweet about it. Yeah, exactly. He would tweet about it, but Elon Musk, so Elon Musk actually is probably not the best example because no, he's an architect, but he is, well, he's an architect, but Elon Musk probably also every other role because he's a freak and he's probably not human. Yeah. So like Elon does all of it. That's he's probably. Jeff he's on the floor. Yeah. Jeff bay is just a better example, Elon. I mean, Richard Branson is probably the ultimate guy I can think of. Perfect. What would Richard Branson do if he was gonna start a carpet company, like he would not learn how to lay carpet. Like this wouldn't even occur to him. He wouldn't even investigate whether that market had a, a niche. If there was a need for it. somebody else would do all of that for him, because he is now. Now obviously, you know, you can, you can complain about money and it costs a lot of money to get there, but it doesn't actually like it it's literally mindset and you get to choose. So there you go. Back to you.

and no, for a brief commercial break from Brandon's architect company.

There we go. Yes. Let me tell you brilliant. 29,997, I can teach you how to be a

no. Yeah. So that was actually my question. Right? So if, if we're being fully candid, like I've got a couple, virtual assistant, so it's yeah, I'm, I'm probably still, and even in my real estate, I'm probably still technically. You know, I own the company, but I would still probably, if we're being honest, calling myself a project manager, right? Sure. Yeah. If I got, if like I've got a handyman, but I have to call him and say, Hey, you need to go out here and do all this. So let's not kid ourselves here. My, I get what you're saying because it's, it's David says plant trees manage orchards. Right? That's exactly what that is. I feel. So what you just said is kind of contradictory to what I believe in a lot of people listening to this probably believe, which is great. Sounds awesome. Once I hit that certain revenue number. Yes. I can afford to do that. I can get that rockstar right now. I don't even know what my business, like what I'm doing in my business right now, as I'm growing it. Sure. Let alone, what, what the heck does a great CEO look like? Yeah, because I'm figuring out the CEO thing. Yep. So my, my question was gonna be at what levels do you earn the right to graduate to that next level? But you're saying that you can just simply skate through. So I'm curious any, any tips on this cause you've been through every one of

these. Yeah, man I think, okay. So first of all, I wouldn't consider it skating through in that. It sounds really easy on paper and on a podcast. Simple, not easy. Yeah. Right. Yes. But that, yeah, cause that mindset is something that I developed over 15 years of screwing many, many times. Right. I'm just saying now that you hear that and you start asking what would Richard Brenton do? Like again, I wish somebody would've told me this, would it have sunk in? I don't know, but like even on a limited, even on a small basis let's just say I had no experience, no knowledge. And I wanted to start this carpet business, who's to say you can't go out there from day one and try to find somebody, even if, even if that person happens to be your brother-in-law or an intern or some guy at church that you inspired to come work with you to build this, you can still set it up from the beginning and say, no, I'm the visionary, I'm the architect. You are the operator like to use, you know, a line from like traction, which is yeah. EOS, right. Integrator and visionary. I like you can still do that and still play that role. And. When you build your business, just don't build yourself into it. That's really what it is. I was like, we're not, we're like building a house, but we're not gonna build ourselves inside the house. We're gonna stand outside the house. So like it's totally possible to now. Is it easier with money? Yes, of course. You just go out and hire a $500,000 a year CEO to run your company. Yeah, that sounds like a great option, but you know what, when I built open door capital, I didn't even do that. Like Ryan was a partner and made no. Do you know why he worked for for basically no money. He were working for equity. I gave him a percentage of the equity it's cause I had it's cause I had the vision and I had the energy, right. The energy. I actually wrote out my vision and I showed him the vision of where we were headed and how profitable it was gonna be. And I was excited about it and I was like, Ryan, I wanna do this with you. Let's do this man. Like he was. Hell. Yeah, let's do it. Like I like that's part of the energy. It like, that's a huge that this confidence that's huge though.

That's huge. That's huge. So I will this guy, this guy's gonna be so excited that I shot him out. I literally was just talking. So I just met this guy. His name's Connor Connor. Shout out, dude, I literally just was on the phone with him. He was calling me asking about Jason Drew's coaching like this. Guy's should I do it? Should I not do it? What do you think, bro? You know, I've got this coaching company and you know, I'm kind of, you know, nervous, you know, it may go one way or it may go the other I've got young kids and like I'm doing an executive coaching and I was like, Hey. I'm gonna be like a hundred percent honest and transparent with you. If you are going to coach executives, you need to come with such a God fearing, certainty and energy to like with the intensity of a thousand sons. Yeah. If you wanna build this, if you wanna build this. And I was like, just this scarcity that you're talking about right now on the phone with me is the reason that you need to do the.

Yeah, I

agree like this isn't a bad thing. We're not crapping on you buddy. It's just, it's a perfect example . Cuz now with this show I'm like, no, one's gonna outwork me. Like I'm gonna take this to the freaking stratosphere because like I've got that. How you feel with open door capital is how I feel with this and how I'm gonna grow it into a freaking media company. Yeah. Because it's exactly like you said, it's not just a podcast. You're thinking. Okay. This is everything. Like I can see all of it in building the architect into it. So I love that.

There's a great book out there by a guy named Ryan Shan. He's like a real estate agent on like TV, like Bravo or something like that. Anyway, back, Ryan has a big money. Energy. Yeah. Yeah. There's the phrase. I guess the book was, the book was good, but like it's the phrase, big money, energy. That's why he is getting at it's like this confidence, this like vision, this excitement, this energy. And to be honest, it doesn't necessarily have to translate the way that I am talking right now. And you are, we are high energy people. True. But you brought up Alex homos earlier. Yeah me, how you go, Alex, Alex. Hermo those who are listening, who doesn't know what we're talking about? Just type Alex. Yeah. Hormo, H O R M O Z O C I maybe. Yeah. So he thought you probably seen him. He's everywhere. He's blowing up, but the guy literally sits in his chair like slouching and he is let me tell you how to make a million dollars today. And that's about the Tony use. There's no energy there. Nonchalant. I listen to every word. Yeah, very nonchalant. But you just, the word like the, the big money, energy, or the confidence, this energy that's there. It's in the actual words, he says he's so good at communicating a really important, valid point that changes lives. You don't have to have the energy like I might have, but it definitely doesn't hurt. Like people like

it's the confidence. It's confidence about how you, how you display it in your own unique voice.

Very much. Yeah. And it doesn't come overnight. Alex has been doing this for years. Like you watch his early stuff, you watch my early stuff. Watch your early stuff. Yeah. It develops over time, but it's one of the reasons I like podcasting is podcast a good way to, you know, Get better at that energy. Yeah.

And that's why I build in public. So while, while I did this in the beginning, I was like, okay, cool. I'm not gonna post my download numbers. Oh, I may got a thousand downloads this month. Oh. I got 2000 now, 5,000 and 10,000. And I was like, I'm not gonna originally post that. But then I thought about it and I was like, why do I care that Brandon's living in Hawaii in a multimillion dollar house right now? like full transparency because you would just be a. Like living in a house, the reason I care and the reason people care is because we knew you when you were living in the states and you were living over in the other place and you were like crappy grace Harbor watched. Yeah. Grace Harbor dude watched it. Like we watched you grow publicly. Throughout this. And so we feel like we're part of the journey. So that's why I invite people with me. That's awesome. I'm like, Hey, build with me. Hey, here's my first thousand download month. Hey, now I did it in a week. Hey, now I did it in a day. Now I'm doing 10,000 a day. And like people are growing with me. And so I took that from you, man. I love it. That's for the sake of time, for a sake of time, I want to jump into San F. , y'all just got back from the GoBundance champions event. Yeah. Yeah. And I've talked to, I just had Cody BGAN on the show. Yeah. I was talking to Matt. I was talking to a bunch of guys about it. They were telling us their outlooks and it was pretty bleak. So to say the least David David was not not to sunshine and roses about where we're going. So while I don't wanna say, Hey, the sky's fallen we're going to hell in a hand basket. I would like to ask as we close this out where. What was the conversation like and where, what do you recommend we proactively do as we shift into this new cycle, because there's going to be opportunity. We just need to figure out how to proactively plan here.

Yeah, man. So the short answer is no one really knows what's coming. We're an unprecedented, right? We're an unprecedented uncharted waters here. And, and. I think we all see like the, the writing on the wall what's, what's probably happening, right? Inflation is just cranking up. So the government's gonna keep raising interest rates until inflation comes in and, and lowers down, which will probably happen.

Matt got called on his loan for the oh, really hotel for the San Antonio river walk. They, they told him they went up like two points and then they said that he needed to bring an extra million cash.

Dang. Yeah. That stuff happened. We just added low the other day that I can't remember the exact details, but they were gonna do 35 million. And so we had raised enough just that. And then the last time they were like, oh, you need to bring five more. Well, it was like the last second we're like, we already raised the money like last month. What do, like now just threw everything up into We figured it out, but I think we're gonna see a lot more of that. And as a result, I think some people will not be able to handle that. And so I think we will see opportunities coming up. I think we will see more deals. But it's, it's impossible to know, but here's what we, you know, it's like when I go out whale hunting, I love this analogy. I go out well, not actual hunting. We call it whale hunting. What it means that you get a paddle board. Yeah, yeah. On a paddle board paddle in the ocean. Right. And you go look for the whales, but you don't, you Don. Know where the whales are. You just see 'em in a distance, you can see the general direction they're heading. And so we just try to head 'em off, like get, get somewhere in front of them. And then we just know that they're gonna pop up somewhere near us. And then we can correct course to get a little bit closer if we want to, but. That's kinda what I say about the, the economy. We can't see at all where the, where the economy's headed, but we can see the general direction. And we know that interest rates are going up. We know that prices will probably go down a little bit, but inflation doesn't seem to be slowing down, which means rents will probably keep going up. I think most of us under follow those basic concepts that rents will probably keep going up. I don't, I don't think anybody really thinks prices. I mean, not like the mainstream doesn't think prices are gonna tumble. I don't think we're gonna see, you know, 50% off deals like we did years ago. No. And there's just so many people who still wanna buy right now that it's kind of eaten up all the inventory, even as prices rise. But I mean the main takeaway, I guess you just get from groups like abundance is yeah. Things are changing. That's when millionaires and billionaires are created, that's when all the wealth is created. And it's given to people who are not afraid, people who are, are actively, you know, looking at where they're at all the time, but also not afraid to take some risks who are not afraid to see what's moving and, and how they can capitalize on it and all are also being careful about what they do. So, it's, it's a crappy answer to say, I don't know. And, and nobody else does either. Other than that, we're at we're in for some trouble ahead, but. Personally, do not believe it's gonna be anything like, oh wait, I don't think we're gonna see that again anytime soon. Yeah. I

don't think so either. So you're so like right now, like I'm sitting, I'm sitting pretty heavy in cash, yeah. Well also I'm about to go travel around the world for a year. So I mean that also. Impacts that a little bit. Sure. So but that's, that's just my prerogative right now is I kind of wanna sit, but like personally, is that something that you're doing as well? I mean, I know you're using, obviously you have the company and you're putting investor funds. You're still actively investing, but like personally, are, are you being a little, you're like just sitting on the sidelines a bit. What are you doing with your own

portfolio? I wouldn't say set on the sidelines. I'm definitely trying to save more cash. That said. I don't like a lot of it's a balancing act. Right. Cause a lot of cash is getting devalued by inflation. So sure. I wanna have some cash. What I'm I'm doing though, I'm buying real estate, right? That I think will hedge this better than almost any other asset class. Probably. So I'm buying real estate even like I bought a second home. I bought. You know, we're buying a ton, we're buying more apartments now than I think we've ever bought total combined up until now. So I should end the year at like over half a billion of real estate. And so we're buying a lot that said we're not getting 80% loans. We're deliberately choosing 60, 65% loan to value. So more equity. So what, yeah, more equity we're raising more money than we probably need to, because we want to ensure that whatever happens, we can withstand it. Like it's not like the, the crappy thing with real estate is. You know, you can do it right for 10 years and then the 11th year you do something stupid. You lose everything you just built up for 10 years, right? Mm-hmm so that's, that's the danger of just fi finances in general. So we gotta make sure that we don't ever hit that like loss year. And that's, that's what we're doing now. So

yeah, I think the difference at the end of the day, what's gonna white people out is operations. I think, I think it's not necessarily gonna be like, yeah, there's just gonna be some deals that fall to the wayside because people aren't are like, they're getting caught on these loans that they've already agreed to with the bank, but then it is gonna be these operational companies that are just, they're just not what they said they were. Yeah. Like I think that's where the opportunity's gonna be. Cuz these I think it's gonna be a lot in the multifamily space. They're not gonna be able to hold these assets. Yeah. So I agree. I'm curious to see. And then time wise, you wanna go ahead and shut it down. You got it. Cool brother. I got it. So I got, I got eight minutes. Got eight minutes. Yeah, I got eight minutes. All right, everyone. You heard it here. First. Brandon, it's got eight more minutes. you got it, brother. I love it. Talk, talk a little bit. Let's hit on this briefly because this is something that you said forever ago and it kind of got buried in the, in the podcast vault, but are you still actively doing your strategy for RO Wilder with the rental proper.

Yeah. I am. So for those who haven't heard, what I did is when Rosie was born, I bought a four unit property. I bird it. So I bought it rehabbed. It rented out refinanced, got my money back out, most of it. And then we just held it as a rental property. At property. I still own it today. It still makes over a thousand dollars a month in cash flow every month, but it is set to be paid off. I have it on a payment, like I structure the payment so that it would be paid off when she's 18. She's six right now. So in 12 more years, it'll be paid off. The idea when I bought it was look, if I can pay this off in 18 years. It should be worth. I bought it, you know, I bought it for 50, I put a hundred into it roughly, so I've got 150 into it. I was like, okay, well, this should be worth about $300,000 when she's ready for college. It'll probably double between, you know, over those 18 years now, in reality today, like the market went crazy and now it's worth like 400 today, which is awesome. Oops. Yeah, but it just shows the power of real estate that like, I didn't even have to make the cash flow cash flow is great. But if you just buy a property for your kid, when you're, when they're young, like not even for just buy it with your own money or do bur house hack, I don't care. Just get the property. And then like ear market in your head is this property is this kid's property, put it on a 15 year mortgage or whatever, and then pay it off at the end of it. You can either sell it or refinance it. And it co you'll have hundreds of thousands of dollars for your kid. So for Rosie, this is exactly what I did. I, I bought the property. And you know, we owe a hundred grand left on it, something like that right now. And it'll be paid off when you gotta go to college and by then, it'll probably worth a million dollars. Cause inflation's crazy with Wilder. I did something a little different. But that with Wilder, I just took 50 K like just $50,000 that I had. And I put it into my own fund, like open door capital's fund because if I can, yeah. I said, no, we, we try, we aim for you know, mid to high teens for percentage I would. Yeah. I would love to get 50 18, 20% IRS. Like we we're, that's what we want. I just projected though. If I could just maintain 11% over the next 15 years for Wilder. I'd have about the same amount without, without the headache. Right? Cause like not that there's a lot of headache with that rental that I have with Rosie, but there's some, like we have to deal with things and things break and often put on new roasts eventually. But if I can just put 50 K in it should be worth about 300 K. When Wilder they're ready to go to college. So I'm doing the same thing. I just did two different approaches. Now, one of the reasons I did this is cuz one, I can tell other people, like on this show right now about this topic, they can choose which avenue works for them. Sure. But B like I get to teach Rosie and Wilder about real estate, the power about real estate, the power of financial freedom and, and, and assets versus liabilities and all that. And so from like Rosie knows, she owns a property while there doesn't, he's not, he's only two. He doesn't know what's going on, but Rosie knows it's her property. We drive by. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I know. Come on kid. But RO Rosie gets it. And so in the next couple years, as she gets into like first, second grade, she'll be doing math. When she gets into math, the math she'll be working on every month and every week is gonna be her own rental property. She's gonna learn how to run a profit loss statement, all that throughout the next 15 years of her life, she's gonna be so good at real estate because she had real world experience. And that's what I'm most excited about with. I love

how I love how that does that with his kids too. Yeah. Yeah.

Teaching your kids is

so valuable. Yeah. That's, that's freaking awesome, man. And I, I love that. And somebody, I posted that and somebody like was arguing with me about that and he was like, well, I can get, I can just put my money in into the market and then do this. But then here here's like a, a, another caveat. I'm like, well, first off you completely it was an infinite amount of money because it was an infinite return. You got your money back. Yes. You earned it. Also. What if your kid was positioned to go to college? This. Yeah. You know, in the stock market, like you would be like, whoa, you're not going Harvard. Yeah. Yeah.

You're going, we have to wait a two

years go to grays Harbor community. Exactly, man. exactly. But brother, this has been, this has been freaking awesome, man. I've been well, thanks dude. Been a huge fan. You're one of the ones that inspired me to make this show. And now it's it's like at that. Things happen when they're supposed to happen, not before or after. And I know that you and I were messaging back and forth six months ago about coming on, but this was the time we made it happen, man, because now it's just going gangbusters and it's so much fun. And I just did what you said, man, every single week I'm clockwork every week. I don't miss, like this is rhythm men. Exactly. As we finish up, what is, this is gonna be a difficult one for you. Mm-hmm what is one thing? That you are very proud about in your life or business that most people don't know about you.

Oh, man. I told you, oh, that people don't know about me. That's a hard one. Huh. Let's go. I, I would say people know about it on this podcast. Cause I mentioned it earlier, but I don't really talk about it that the years of being a junior high youth pastor or youth leader that. That made me a lot of who I am today, I think. And it's really, and I got no money for it. There's never any, I mean, it was all volunteer and you go through a, I mean, junior hires go through a lot of crap, a lot of like their friends committing suicide and all these like just really tough things. So I'm pretty proud. I stuck with that for 10 years. So I'm gonna go with that one years. Wow. Yeah. 10, 10 years. I did that. Man.

That's awesome. Well, there we go. Now everyone learned a new thing about the beard. There you go. There you go. The reason this podcast was so good, this podcast is brought to you by the power of flip flops. Cause I'm wearing mine right now, brand. So me and Brandon could communicate telepathically.

It's that's how it's done. That's how it's done. I actually I'm barefoot right now, cause I'm in my house, but I've been wearing 'em all day, man.

Oh, I, I trust me. I know it. The flip flops and jeans king, but its Brandon I appreciate my friend, dude. Thank. Thank you for coming on. This has been that six foot six Hawaiian guy and Brian with the action academy podcast signing off.