Transcript

Become a Real Estate Expert with Brandon Turner

From Home Service Expert · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 58 min · 12,678 words · 84 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Become a Real Estate Expert with Brandon Turner", an episode of Home Service Expert published May 26, 2025 (58 min, about 12,678 words). It mentions 13 people, works and ideas, including Brandon Turner, Open Door Capital, Mobile Home Parks, Instagram, Bigger Pockets.

What this episode is about

Brandon Turner, a renowned expert in real estate investment and marketing, discusses his journey in the industry, his successes, and his motivations, including the challenges of achieving financial freedom and the realities behind living in paradise. As the founder of Open Door Capital and a best-selling author, Turner emphasizes the importance of understanding the market and personal aspirations in building a successful real estate career.

Key takeaways

  • Hawaii: paradise for some, but a hedonic treadmill for those who crave more than beach life.
  • Brandon Turner's journey shows that one can go from clueless college grad to real estate mogul with the right mindset.
  • Retirement isn't an endgame; it's often just a pit stop before the next big adventure.
  • Real estate dreams can come true—even 18-year-olds with no income can score big with a mortgage!
  • Podcasting success is a wild ride—from basement blogs to top-tier influence in just a few years.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Bigger Pockets, Law and Order, Brandon Turner, Open Door Capital
  2. – 10:00: Bigger Pockets, The Social Dilemma
  3. – 15:00: Billion Dollar Portfolio, Mobile Home Parks, Self Storage
  4. – 20:00: Instagram, Better Life Tribe
  5. – 40:00: Instagram, Self Storage
  6. – 45:00: Ken Moyoy
  7. – 50:00: Instagram, Brandon Turner, Bigger Pockets, Bigger Pockets Podcast
  8. – 55:00: Instagram, Bigger Pockets

Notable quotes from "Become a Real Estate Expert with Brandon Turner"

  • All right, welcome back to the home service expert. Today we have Brandon Turner. This guy is a legend. Brandon's an expert in real estate marketing investments. He's he's the founder of Open Door Capital and.
    about Brandon Turner · at
  • That like financial freedom number. But we did it. By 27, I was retired. And yeah, I watched a lot of Law and Order for a few months before realizing that retirement wasn't for me.
    about Law and Order · at
  • It was a job working for Bigger Pockets which was a tiny little website with no employees at the time. I jumped at that.
    about Bigger Pockets · at
  • Hired a bunch of employees. We can talk about that process. Made a bunch of mistakes, but ended up acquiring just we just crossed the billion dollar mark.
    about Billion Dollar Portfolio · at
  • Exactly. And so I'm spread out across we've got almost a hundred deals across our portfolio mostly mobile home parks. that's kind of been our bread and butter. I like mobile…
    about Mobile Home Parks · at
  • What I can make a few, 100 thousand or a few million bucks by teaching it. In fact, the yeah the education program I have, it's called the Better Life Tribe. We got like 1,200 people in it paying 300 bucks a month.
    about Better Life Tribe · at
  • And I was Instagram. Like it's just it's silly, but it's like he was so like he realized he was born in the wrong era, you know? Like he spent his whole life to do what I did in a year.
    about Instagram · at
  • There's after a certain number of years it changes. but yeah, one of the one of the smartest real estate investors I know, a guy named Ken Moyoy, he's down in the Phoenix area, but Ken does a lot more. He advised me, we went.
    about Ken Moyoy · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Brandon Turner — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at
    Primary interview subject explaining his path from small rentals to large-scale syndication, and how personal branding/podcasting enabled capital raising and hiring.
  • Ken Moyoy — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    Cited as a trusted advisor who recommends simplifying investor deal structures (e.g., 100% until return of capital, then split).

Companies & orgs

  • Open Door Capital — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at
    Brandon Turner's company focused on real estate investments, particularly in mobile home parks.
    Service expert. Today we have Brandon Turner. This guy is a legend. Brandon's an expert in real estate marketing investments. He's he's the founder of Open Door Capital and…
  • Bigger Pockets — Company · Business focus · 5 mentions · first at
    Real estate education platform where Brandon Turner previously worked and contributed significantly.
  • Better Life Tribe — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at
    Brandon Turner's education program focused on real estate, mentioned as a charity initiative.

Concepts & topics

  • Mobile Home Parks — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at
    Primary investment focus of Open Door Capital, discussed as a lucrative real estate strategy.
  • Billion Dollar Portfolio — Concept · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at
    Brandon Turner's achievement and goal in real estate investment, showcasing his success.
  • Self Storage — Concept · Strategy · 2 mentions · first at
    Part of Open Door Capital's diversified real estate investment portfolio.
    Can talk about that if you want, but I've been a big fan of mobile home communities. I got some self storage got apartment complexes in there. I do a little bit of private…

Media & podcasts

  • Instagram — Media · Strategy · 7 mentions · first at
    Highlighted as a powerful tool for personal branding and raising capital in real estate.
  • Bigger Pockets Podcast — Media · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at
    Previously hosted by Brandon Turner, it's mentioned as one of the largest podcasts for real estate.
    Marketing investments. He's he's the founder of Open Door Capital and previous host of Bigger Pockets Podcast which is probably the largest podcast for real estate.
  • Law and Order — Media · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned as part of Brandon Turner's activities during his brief retirement.
  • The Better Life Podcast — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Podcast where the host was previously a guest, mentioned in the introduction.
    Am I am so pumped and honored to be here. I got to tell you, when I when you came on my show, when you came on the Better Life podcast, I've interviewed 500 plus people in my…
  • The Social Dilemma — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in passing, possibly as a reference to social media's impact.
    20-year period. Even a 10, I think even a 10-year period, it's never not been higher than it was 10 years earlier. I think I read that stat recently. So, you make money by…

Full transcript with timestamps

All right, welcome back to the home service expert. Today we have Brandon Turner. This guy is a legend. Uh Brandon's an expert in real estate marketing investments. He's uh he's the founder of Open Door Capital and previous host of Bigger Pockets Podcast which is probably the largest podcast for real estate. Um, he's the best-selling author of several books, including the book on rental property investing and how to invest in real estate and more. Brian what's going on today, brother? Dude, I am I am so pumped and honored to be here. I got to tell you, when I when you came on my show, when you came on the Better Life podcast, I I've interviewed 500 plus people in my life. That was one of my favorite if my my favorite episodes I've ever done. I'm not I'm not just blowing smoke either. was such a phenomenal time talking to you and I was like, man, how did I not like like h how do I get into this guy's world more? So

then when you invited me on here, man that was uh it's an honor. So, thank you for having me. Yeah, man. You've you've done a lot in your life and you've it's kind of interesting to me because don't take this the wrong way, but I just couldn't live in Hawaii. my like like there's people that would would give their life like that is their mecca and I get it. I just but but that's not what I wanted to start. I wanted to go into like what got you into business? What got you into real estate? What got you into podcasting? What are you up to today? What do you look forward to in the future? Yeah, man. That's great.

Okay. Yeah. So, let me let me tackle the Hawaii thing. You're 100% right. I actually struggle with it, too. You know, it's kind of everyone's dream is like, "Oh, I want to get financial freedom so I can go live on a beach." Like that's like a common like theme that people have. And uh I'll tell you I mean, it's it's cool, but what do they call that? The hadonic treadmill, right? Like when no matter how good something in life is, like you just it becomes normal really quick. And so Hawaii is just normal, but more inconvenient right? Like it's six hours to do anything. Uh so we spend about half the year off island, maybe maybe a third of the year to half the year off island.

So, uh, yeah, it's just it's interesting like, yeah, people who have that whole goal is just to retire. Like, man, if you can retire early, like you won't retire early. You can't like it's it's just like ironic nature of things. You just couldn't do it. You couldn't just stay around. So, anyway, so yeah, my story., Let, me, go, back., I, got, kind, of a few phases and you can feel free to interrupt me and uh ask questions anywhere. I mean, bluecollar Midwest family. I grew up in Minnesota. My dad's a butcher. Mom did daycare in our house.

So, very like lower blue cla blue collar. um you know, went to college kind of worked my way through five different colleges, trying to stay out of student loan debt, a bunch of community colleges and and all that. Got done with it and decided I'd go to law school because I didn't really know what else to do. And as I'm studying for law school, I bought a house. Back then it was like 06, right? 06 07. They were just throwing mortgages at anybody. So they're like, "Hey, 18-year-old kid with no credit, no income, get a mortgage."

And so I got one, uh bought a house, and then I sold it. I first rented out all the bedrooms and I sold it. And I was like, shoot, I just made like 25 grand. Like 25 grand was more money than any person I had ever known had ever made on anything. Like that was such a tremendous amount of money. And I was like, this real estate thing is kind of cool. I mean, the starting salary for a lawyer was only like 50k if you didn't get, in, one, of the, top, schools., So, I'm like, maybe I'll just do the real estate thing. So that's what I did. I jumped in and just started buying little just dumpy, crappy little houses. And my wife and I would just fix them up and, you know, be at the painting the unit till 2:00 in the morning and renting it out to a tenant the next morning at 8 a.m.

And it was just like just chaos for a few years as we just struggled to hit that like financial freedom number. But you know, we did it. By 27, I was retired. And uh yeah, I watched a lot of Law and Order for a few months before realizing that retirement wasn't for me. and I jump back into uh kind of the next phase which ended up becoming the internet entrepreneurship phase, but anything you want to go in on that before I move on? Well, I still feel like you're kind of in the real estate world. I mean, yeah. What? You're just more of a guru now and I think you've become more of a u influencer, but you're still doing real estate, right? Yeah. You know, I I did you know, when I started teaching real estate online, it was like I hit 27. I had like 30 rental units making three or four grand a month and I'm like h I don't need to do real estate anymore.

I'm done. So, I just like sat on a couch, watched Law and Order, and I started blogging on the internet. That turned into uh getting a basically a job. I mean, there's equity there, but it was a job working for Bigger Pockets which was a tiny little website with no employees at the time. I jumped at that. We started the podcast, Josh and I, who was the only I mean, he's the founder. He was a guy had a blog in his, you know, basement. And uh together we started the podcast and it just blew up. Ended up becoming yeah like you said one of the, bigger, podcasts, in, the, world, you know 100 plus million downloads. Uh but yeah I the idea of the guru right like there this like the real estate investor who's out there selling education and not actually doing it that always plagued me. So like I always made sure I was still investing a little bit. And then I remember I actually remember the exact spot I was I was on stage at this

big conference. There was a thousand there was a thousand like syndicators like big real estate investors with thousands of units and they're out there in the audience and here I am on stage with my 30 35 units something like that and the only reason I was there is because I had a big podcast a big mouth and I could help sell tickets. I didn't deserve to be on that stage. And I remember just thinking that like shoot I do not deserve to be here. And uh I made a commitment that day. I was like I want to be back here someday and deserve it.

So, I went home and I I jumped into real estate heavy. Uh I built a company hired a bunch of employees. We can talk about that that process. Made a bunch of mistakes, but ended up acquiring uh just we just crossed the billion dollar mark. So, 13,000 units, a billion dollars. We've raised 350400 million uh just from normal people uh across the internet across the world. And uh yeah, hired 150 employees in that. Uh that's where I am today. So now I'm running I'm not doing the podcast the Bigger Pockets one anymore because it wasn't mine. I mean at the end of the day I'm it was it was somebody else's. It was ended up being private equity and that's great for them. I love I love the team but you know I'm I'm an entrepreneur at heart.

So started a new podcast started still buying real estate going to buy probably 40 million this year and uh yeah that's my story man. I got a lot of questions. Yeah. Let's dig in. So you explain to me how do you make money in real estate? There's so many different, you know, I was involved with highest cash offer Jared Carlos Reyes back in the day, Hillary, like Danielle. Um, smart people that have done well in the real estate industry, but I know there's people that are like I'm trying to, think., Um,, I, I, know, a, lot, of the, guys cuz they they would buy all my leads and there was times we're getting a 100 leads a day and I know the guys that said they had such a high conversion rate, they never asked for a refund.

See, I've had the the the greatest honor of knowing some of the best people in that because they knew how to do business. And so they never asked for a refund. They never said the leads are down. They never they didn't care. There was one of their lead sources. You know what I mean? It was like that was one of their lead sources out of a hundred. and they were just like, "Yeah, we'll pay. It's good." So, I I guess how do you and what's your investment portfolio strategy? Yeah, man. So, I mean, like you said, there's a lot of ways to make money in real estate, right? Like early on, the way that I usually teach it for those who are just like not super familiar with how real estate investing works. There's like four primary ways you make money, right? There's cash flow, and this is true for business too, I suppose, but there's cash flow which is like the profit you make every month, and then there's the

appreciation, like your property should go up in value over time. Uh, you know obviously there's dips and there's times where it slows down, but if you look over a long period of 30 years, there's never been a time in American history that real estate didn't go up pretty significantly over a 30-year period or 20-year period. Even a 10, I think even a 10-year period, it's never not been higher than it was 10 years earlier. I think I read that stat recently. So, you make money by appreciation. That's the second way. You make money by paying off the loan. This one people don't think a lot about, but if almost all real estate's bought with a loan, then of course, you know, whatever's left over after paying the mortgage and all your bills, that's your cash flow. But the loan gets paid off every single year. So imagine you bought a property had no cash flow. You broke even every month for 30 years. You It never went up in

value. You bought it for a million, it's still worth a million. But if you had a loan that got paid off every month, 30 years from now or however long your loan was for, it's at zero, which means now you're a millionaire, right? So like you automatically build wealth every single solitary month by paying off the loan. That's the third way. And the fourth way is just by tax savings. like you can actually offset your earned income from you know, from other things. My like I I make a lot of money from book royalties.

I sell I don't know half a million books a year or something like that. I make good money from book royalties. I don't pay taxes typically on that book royalties even though it has nothing to do with real estate. I mean other than the real estate books, but I there there are unique strategies for offsetting income. Uh so it's kind of like making money because it's money that you're not losing to the government. So you make money in those four ways. Now I do it in a slightly different well yeah I do it I do it the same way I just do it at a much larger scale. So today I raise money from just normal people who have money like accredited investors. So wealthier people lot of entrepreneurs lot of business owners a lot of actual real estate investors. They chip in.

Everyone puts in like 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand, whatever. We'll raise 10, 20, $30 million in a fund and then we'll go buy 10 properties. Then over time they get the majority of the profits. they'll get 70% sometimes 80 even 90% of the profits and I'll just get 10 20 or 30 just depends on the deal and and how good it is. And so I'm just betting that getting you know call it 20% of a billion dollar portfolio is better than me doing it on my own. And so by raising the capital I don't mind giving away 80 diversified. I'm Yeah.

Exactly. And so I'm spread out across we've got almost a hundred deals uh across our portfolio mostly mobile home parks. Uh, that's kind of been our bread and butter. I like mobile home parks. We can talk about that if you want, but I've been a big fan of mobile home communities. I got some self storage got apartment complexes in there. I do a little bit of private lending and mortgage stuff in there. But the primary primary amount of that, most of it is uh mobile home parks. Unlike most, and actually, no, I shouldn't even say unlike it because like most businesses I get paid at the end. Like the bulk of my money goes at the end. My investors get most of the money up front. And when you own a big business, typically your employees, get, a, lot of, the, money, up front and it gets reinvested, but you sell your company someday and that's when the owner gets paid big. Exact same thing for me. Um, in fact, uh, one thing

that's a little different is I actually don't make any money uh, really from open from my billion-dollar portfolio. And that sounds insane, but the reason why is because I one my salary I get a salary just like a business owner would but I donate that to charity. Uh because because of what I'll say in a second. So, I donate the salary to charity. I then only make money after the investors have gotten their like what it's called the preferred return. Like the investors get paid first and that takes years for them to get a most of their you know like to get their preferred return. That can take years.

So once they get their money back or chunk of it what was that? What what's the play? How long do I leave my money in? Yeah. Could could be f our our aim is five years you have your money back. That's our goal. Now, it might be because you have your money back because we sold the property. Could be because you have your money back because we refinanced it and we got all your money back, but typically we say five years is what we aim for. I think the current slowdown in the market's probably going to add a year on some of our deals for that.

Might be six or seven. Um, but yeah, the goal is to get people their money back. And the best thing is if you don't sell imagine this, Tommy. I get your money back. You put in 250 grand. Five years from now, you get your 250 back. But you still own the deal with me. like we're still in the deal forever. And so a lot of our deals, we call them forever funds. There's no plan to ever sell ever. We just every few years we refinance, we distribute more capital because you own, let's say you are the only investor, you own 70 80% of it. So you get a big chunk of money every time we refinance. And the great part of that is it's taxfree. You don't pay money on refinances. So you can we can just keep refinancing every five years and you get more and more and more money and you never have to pay taxes on that. You only pay taxes when you sell. Borrowed.

Yeah. Yeah. Until you sell the property now. What about um I got some questions. So yeah I was just thinking you got a fiveyear period sevenyear. Yeah, I've got all these PE deals that typically after 5 to seven years your money is going to triple. So you put in now now literally like we know the rule of 72 and typically seven years at 10% return annualized compounding I'm going to double. Yep. But with PE most of the funds have proven over time that they could do a little bit better than triple the money. How does yours compare to that? Yeah, I would say it I would say it's generally considered real estate would be generally considered more stable or maybe more predictable is a better better word. Yeah. than most private equity. And I I don't have all the data in front of me to back that up but I would say generally speaking, when people invest in private equity or venture capital or any of that, there's

a percentage that they know are going to do really well and a percentage they know are not going to do so well. With real estate, it's much more predictable. I'm not saying we can perfectly guarantee it, but like we can see the trends that real estate tends to appreciate by 3% per year. Uh the value of a property doesn't mean your money's making 3% per year. Hopefully, you're making a lot more than that. Uh we probably average about 15%. our our target is 15% of an average annual return. So if you're in the deal for five years, that's roughly doubling your money. It's not quite that, I don't think, if you if you look at the compounding of it. Uh but that's that's kind of our our target there. But again the idea is we're not saying, hey, you know, some of the deals are going to go to, zero,, some, are, going to, go, to,, you know, 10x, some are going to just be at 3x and we're going to average here.

We're just like, yeah, we shouldn't lose any like there shouldn't be a loss ideally. Now, again, there are people who lose in real estate. I don't want to make that claim. Uh I hope I never lose in real estate, but that's probably how it about that com that fits in there. So most people who invest heavily in real estate, it's because they like the predictability or they're just diversifying. They say, "Hey, I love the more, you know, ups and downs of venture capital or private equity, but I like the stability of knowing it's a real asset that it's just sitting there. It it always going to be in demand. If somebody's bad at managing it, they'll just have another manager come in. It's just much more stable.

What What would you say? You know, you made the comment that you were on stage and you felt like an impostor. Yeah. Um, how many coaches do you know? How many people that aren't making it in the real world that literally are all over social media. They're writing books. They're selling courses. What percentage would you say it? Like I still own A1 Garage. I'm still the CEO. I'm still the fighting the fighter, the greater fight. So I you you can't you can't really argue with the results. They're they're everywhere.

But I'm just curious because a lot of people they they decide I want to teach now. Uh but they never really made in the real world. Yeah. You know, here here's what I see in real estate. There's a there's a this guru cycle we'll call it. What happens was what happens is somebody will do well in real estate. Now, that's a that's a subjective kind of term, but like let's say they buy a dozen Airbnbs and they they're doing pretty well with those Airbnbs. They're making 510 $15,000 a month in profit. And then the Airbnb game changes and that investor because I mean real estate goes in cycles, and, all, of a, sudden, they, can't, do Airbnb anymore and they're like, "Oh shoot. What do I do?" Oh, I'll go teach it. So now they're not doing the thing that they ma that made them successful.

They're teaching the thing that made them successful. And ironically, that thing doesn't work anymore. And so they're they're doing that. They're not doing the thing anymore. They're teaching it and they have great stories and testimonials of, you know, of themselves saying, "Hey, no, this is literally what I did." It just doesn't work that way anymore. I don't know percentage- wise, but I'd guess that half of the people online teaching this stuff is in that category. You also find a lot, and this is true in business too, is a lot of people have just done very few things. You know, they buy their first three properties, and they're like, "Well, that's fun, but I could teach it and make a lot more." And it's true. You can make more teaching than you can buy three properties. But you're not going to become a billionaire by teaching it. And like you know my ambitions, not that I really care about

being a billionaire, but I want to give away a billion dollars in my life. Like that's literally my like life goal. If I if I could give away a billion, it means that I earn more than that. Uh which sounds pretty cool. And so, you know, my ambitions are a lot higher than just what I can make a few, you know, 100 thousand or a few million bucks by teaching it. In fact, the the yeah the education program I have, it's called the Better Life Tribe. We got like 1,200 people in it paying 300 bucks a month. That's a complete uh charity. So, I don't take a salary from that either. I donate all of it because it just goes towards that. So, I don't want to be known as the guy who made money off of education like probably like you don't either. You want to be known as the guy who made money in business and therefore you can believe you. That's why I enjoy talking to you. Yeah. No, this is killer, man. I love this stuff. How much

do you think your personal brand because of the podcast? I mean, how much I talk about this a lot because A1 made my personal brand. and now I'm trying to repay A1 for making me who I am. What are your thoughts on that, dude? Yeah. I mean, personal branding is is it's everything that I've done. I mean, there are people who have done it uh and built big portfolios. Dude, I I have this great I'm at this conference one time and the I'm speaking there, a different conference. I'm speaking there and this uh conference organizer, the guy in charge, comes up to me with this old guy. This guy's probably 80 years old.

He walks up to me and he says, "Hey Brandon, I want you to meet Charles or whatever the guy's name is." He's like "This is Charles. Charles does what you do. you guys are in the same game. And I'm like, oh great. And then the guy the the conference organizer says, "Yeah Charles Brandon here has raised $100 million this year uh to buy real estate." That was like I raised 100 million that year and I just spoken on that. And the guy looked at me like with this half like shock and half anger and he said this. He said he said, "Brandon I've been in raising I've been raising capital for 50 years." For 50 years straight. every week traveling across the country and across the world speaking at events, going to seminars hosting my own seminars, and I have not raised that much and you did it in a year. He's like, "How'd you do that?"

And I was like, "Instagram." Like it's just it's silly, but it's like he was so like he realized he was born in the wrong era, you know? Like he spent his whole life to do what I did in a year. And granted, I didn't build my brand in a year. It took me a decade online of podcasting and writing books and working social media a lot. But yeah, man. Social media is a superpower. And uh when you can get a million people or more to know, like, and trust you, you can do anything you want like with that. Like it's I w if somebody I shouldn't say this, but I'll say it. If like somehow my account, my Instagram got hacked and somebody was like, "You want that back? Million dollars?" Done. You know, like if like that was the only option, I think there's other options that I It's worth much more than a million dollars to me.

Much, much much, more., Oh,, dude., I'm learning a lot more every day about this stuff. And and listen, it's eyeballs especially if you're out to do the right thing and you're out to help people. I mean, end of the day, I feel like I've got a moral obligation. You know, Dan Martell was talking about his trainer and his trainer super chiseled. And he looks at he's looking at his trainer, he goes, "Why don't you post more pictures of your muscles?" And trainer goes "Well, I'm not a douchebag, dude. I'm not going to post pictures of myself."

He goes, "Well, who's that guy on the wall?" He goes, "Dude, you know who that is?" You know, it's um it was like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger or something. I think it was Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the Mr. Olympia. And he goes, "Does that why do you have that on your wall?" He goes, "Well, he motivates me, man. He's one of the best of all time. Like he won Mr. Olympia. Like dude, every time I don't feel like working out, he's there, you know, to motivate me." And he goes, "Don't you think you'd have that effect on everybody?" And the point is you you kind of got a moral obligation to grow your audience when you've putting out the truth, especially if you're not I always make it a very big statement to say I make a lot of money and I do a lot of garage doors.

That's people I put out a newsletter and I think we charge like 15 bucks a month. I lose money on it like postage and the time we take to put it together. I I'm like, guys, even if I sold 10,000 of these and made a buck, you know, if I do the math, I I pretty much every day that I don't go into work, every day including the weekends is worth 700 grand profit to me that going on the next turn with PE. My percentage 700 a day. Wow. So, like I don't care about the newsletter. I'm trying to get the I don't market in the newsletter. Like, I just wish people understood that. But yeah, people people don't, though. I mean, you you see the comments on like YouTube and social media on yours and mine, everyone else is like some guy told me yesterday, "Go get a job." He's like, he's like, "There's no way you own that many units. Go get a job, loser."

And I'm like, "No, I I legit do." But people cannot fathom that one, that this is possible. Or two, that you can do it and actually still be a good person and want to give back. I mean, yes, I've got selfish reasons for everything I do. We all do. Like, I would still like to give away a billion dollars. That'd be fun because it's going to make me look like a really cool dude. Like, that'd be fun. Maybe I'll run for office someday. That's a good way to get there, right? Like like there's still selfish reasons in there. But it could also be true that we actually want to help people because I feel like you said a moral obligation.

Like I remember what it was like to live in an alley. I lived in this crappy 400 foot house in the alley of this crappy little town and like cars would drive by six inches from my bedroom window. Like I remember that and I remember like that we had a storm hit our area and I didn't have enough money for food back then. Like I we were scraping by. So, I went to stand in line at the government whatever it was called, and they were handing out gift cards for food. Like, I remember that having to do that. So it's like a lot of people, I think maybe people forget when they get wealthy, but most wealthy people I know, like they genuinely want to give back because they remember what it was like to not be successful and wealthy, and they just want to see more people get there. I don't understand how people just scroll the internet and just leave bad comments. Yeah, they're they're living somewhere. I I feel like they're really

just there there's so many victims and they have nothing better than it's like over and over and over. You know why? Go ahead. Well, they they would have to admit that they're at fault. If they're not the victim, it means they're they're the cause. And nobody wants to be the cause of why they're struggling. And so if instead if they can play a victim or it's it's either not possible, you're lying, you're a douchebag, you're the problem, then they don't have to admit that they might be the problem. People's egos just can't handle that. They might be the problem. Ironically, that's the solution to all of their problems is to admit that they're the ones that caused it and therefore they have the power to fix it, but they don't. So today I I literally I stood up. We have our bring the fire meeting. every single employees on there. And I said, we've analyzed the numbers and in true form, the 20 top 20%

of the company is bringing 80% of the profit. Yeah. And I'm like, there's there's about 60% of you in the middle and 20% on the bottom. I said, I'm going to make you guys a deal right now. Um, I'll Venmo you guys $500 to quit. I said, "Because I'll write you the best recommendation letter you've ever had." I said, "Because quite honest, honestly, I can't believe in you when you don't believe in yourself. I'm going to give you every opportunity to win. And if you want it, I'll bleed for you. But this bracelet right here says, "Aspire to be number one." And guys, I can't do this. I cannot get behind people that don't like to win. And I hate to lose more than I like to win. And you know, some of you guys are okay being okay. And I don't want you to say in 20 years that I worked under Tommy because the people that I want working with me are going to say they got more than they ever intended to, that their dreams came

true. And you guys, if you don't want it, I'm sorry. Just let's do each other a favor and leave. I'll write you the nicest letter. I'll send you 500 bucks. I'll send you more than that if you need that. But just if you're not willing to push yourself and admit you need more help and ask for it, then you know this is a lose-lose for us. So you need to decide whether you get up or get out because it doesn't it's not even about the money. This is about changing your life. This is about showing up for your kids. This is about showing your wife that you're a good man when you come home and you're not worn out and and it's be it's starting to eat healthy and it's starting to look people's in the eye when you talk and it's showing up for your family in a whole new way and I don't care if we set records. I don't even care if we freaking lose money this month this year. Like I I'm going to be okay. But I'm not going to be okay

knowing I didn't do the best I could for you. And if I can't help you, I don't think you should be here. Just admit it. I I harp on this all the time. people. One of the number one things people complain when they want to get into real estate, they say, "Well, how do I get my spouse on board? My spouse doesn't want me to do it. My spouse doesn't doesn't want to support me in my dreams." And my answer almost every time is because you have let them down because you are not the man or the woman that you should be. And so they they believe like you that you don't want to win, that you don't have the heart of a winner. And so they see you trying to do some new thing.

Like if you can't take out the garbage when, you, said, you're, going to, take, out the garbage or you don't go play with your, kid, when, you, say, you're, going to play with your kid, why would they expect you to win in real estate or win in business? So, of course, they're not going to support you because you don't deserve to be supported. And nobody likes to hear that, but it's like my my and I want to just pat myself in the back here, but like if I said anything to my wife that I was going to go start a, new, thing,, no matter, what, that, thing is, she's going to support me on it because I have never I generally never let her down. Like, if I say I'm going to do something, I will do it 100% of the time because I know that I can't lose that trust. I need that trust. So I ju just for people out there, Yeah.

like how do you become the best? How do you aim for number one? One of our core values is be the best. If there's anybody who's better at me than anything, it's not like an I'm not mad at them. I'm just like super I'm like I'm gonna get better at it. Like when I see how well your podcast is doing Tommy, I'm like like it's crush it's crushing mine and I'm like I'm going to beat him. Like I have I have to do better. What's he doing? What's he do? I got to do better. And it drives me plan to get way better. I mean I just hired a cornhole coach like to get better at cornhole. Like literally like I hire coaches all the time. I I want to go back to one thing because I think it's important and like the first thing I just was on stage this week and it was only about 150 people and I said all you guys divest out of the one thing your best investment which is your home service company. Those are typical

stages for me home service. I go a lot of you guys are going to do Airbnbs and VBOs and you're investing in your buddy's barber shop and you invested in a storage facility. You're divesting out of the one thing you need. You spend five years of sweat equity. You go hard in the paint. You give it everything you got and the day it starts returning the ROI card. We need to buy a Harley because we want to go to Sturgeis and we deserve it. We need to buy that second house on the river. We should get into Airbnb. What in the hell? If you double down on the one thing that's bringing you guys everything because there's this crazy thing out there that nobody understands. Brandon, I don't know how to explain this to people. Yeah, dude. I I just did this I I just did a similar talk. I I took out a a big whiteboard and I drew like an exponential graph, you know, like an exponential growth where it starts slow

right? And then it moves up. It kind of hockey sticks up. And I said almost every entrepreneur I know, they get to this point. It takes like like I love you said five years. It's five years to get really good traction generally for most business owners and another five before you really feel like you made it. So it might be five or 10 years for a lot of people to really do it. At about the fiveyear, six, sevenyear mark, it's that hockey stick starts going up and then they get complacent. They get bored and they jump into real estate or Amway or something because the thing that they were doing got repetitive. It got boring and so they jump into something that they have no business jumping into. And then the irony is now they start back over at the beginning and they have to go another five to 10 years before they feel successful at that. And people do it over and over and over their whole

life. So, I'm I'm I talk more entrepreneurs out of real estate than into real estate. Like, you should not jump into real estate investing. If you have a business that has not reached its peak, like stay in that one thing that you're doing. Stay in your lane. And if you are printing out so much money and you can't reinvest in yourself, fine. Go give it to somebody like me or a syndicator or find some way to passively invest it or dump it in the S&P 500. But yeah, don't go try to build another business and try to have, you know, two horses in the race. It just doesn't work. this idea of arbitrage. Nobody understands this. I literally sit down to people and I'm like, "Okay, guys listen." And there's a question I ask. I say, "Listen, when do you want to sell your business? How many people want to sell in under five years?" There's three out of 150 hands that go up. And I go, "Why?" And some of

them go, "Well, we want to do what you do. We want to get to $100 million valuation." Okay. Why? Most broke people know how they're going to spend the money or or or like we want to help everybody and we got the like all you need is 5 million bucks. I'm sorry. Like I've done very well, but like you could buy a nice house. You could have like but when you have money every door opens. There's like you've got access. You could hire coaches. You It's this crazy thing. It's like I if I told everybody like sell your business within 3 years and and and then here's the thing. If I was to tell you we're selling your business in 6 months, what would you do? Well, I know I'd fire this guy. I'd fire this guy. I'd move this guy up. I'd get rid of the bad trucks.

I'd go ahead and clean this up. I'd finally paint this area. I'd make like Why don't you do that today? Yeah. Yeah. Like I was with Robert the other day and Robert said, "Raise your hand." And then he said, "Hire, hire, higher." And it's like you got to tell people like why does it take everything bad to happen or this life occurrence for you to want to change your life or get into shape or eat healthy or get rid of the brain fog? I don't get it. Yeah, dude. It's it's a it's a plague maybe across the majority of the world.

But you know, like I think I think the solution, to, that,, at least, one, of, the solutions to that is you get into a room with guys like you uh who are who are stri like they're not they're striving for greatness and to be the best. And all, of a, sudden, when, that, becomes, the norm, you start to realize, oh, like yeah, may maybe I can reach my hand a little bit higher. Like maybe I can work a little harder. Maybe I can act like this is actually important. It's not just a hobby. I think most people just treat their business like a hobby. It's like, oh, this would be nice to do. I'm going to do a decent job at it. And then as a result, they're not as happy or fulfilled because it's not working as well as they wish it would. And they just just struggle and you get to the end of your life. I I know a couple, an old couple, they worked in real estate for 45 years. They retiredish. They retired and then they lost it all and

got bankrupt in the same year. Like 45 years of building their business bankrupt, divorced, all in the same year. I mean, they're they got to keep two properties, one for the husband, one for the wife at the end at the end of the bankruptcy. And now they're just living on social security waiting to die because they never got great. They just were mediocre at their medioc mediocre at their business their entire life. It's terrible. I know everybody I mean everybody's like that dude. Like everybody like that I meet is like what do I do next? And I'm like well what are your numbers? What's your booking rate?

It's probably 90%. Okay. It's only one of a few things. Booking rate conversion rate, average ticket or cost per lead through that is your answers. You don't know anything. You don't even understand. I had a guy that just sold a business to me. We're closing on the 23rd. He goes "Tommy, this profits EBID is 2.2 million." And I go "Okay." I go, "We still going to do a quality of earnings." He goes, "You don't understand. This is what I paid taxes on last year." I go, "I don't care what you pay taxes on. I've had a lot of shitty CPAs. I You know what? He was at 1.55.

Wow. He thought he was he paid taxes on 2.2 profit. I'm like, "Oh my god." Like like literally and I saw his tax like he sent them to me and I'm going, "Dude like like this is the Brandon, I had to make a lot of mistakes to get here." And listen uh I'm very humble about all the mistakes. And I know, listen, I'm I'm an overnight success of two decades of mistakes, right? Like, and I understand people are listening going, "Dude, it's easy for you to say, and I say this quite a bit, but listen, man. I I fall forward a lot, but then I make calculated choices. I lose money, but I learn, and I don't make this the same mistake twice. I don't make the same mistake twice." And I just wish people understood that. Like, I saw this quote today, and this quote was like banger dude. And I'm actually going to talk about it at my event. It's um a mistake repeated more than once is a choice.

A mistake repeated more than once is a choice. But yet the definition of insanity. People just keep doing it. And I want I really wanted to ask you how many employees do you have? Somewhere 150 160 maybe across the different companies. Most of that is in the management side, property management. and and everybody says to me, "How do you get great? How do you find so many great people?" And it's I'm curious like what are some of number one, how do you recruit and hire? Let's start there. Yeah. So, everybody, this goes back to personal brand. Almost all of my best pe like all my executives, all of my like in all my companies, all of them have come from my audience of some kind.

They're people who I've met at an event or they signed up for a mastermind that I was hosting or something like that. or even if I I just I put the application out on my Instagram and I get 500 people to apply. Uh again, one of the biggest reasons to have a personal brand, an online personal brand, is to attract great people. Uh because great people and like I don't my people are great and I probably don't pay them enough. But the the reality is they will work for me because of who because of the brand that I've built and what I stand for. And so I get better people than I deserve uh because of the the brand that I have.

And so I'm eternally thankful for those people. And I I try to share equity as much as I can. Like most of my executives have equity in my different companies. But yeah, it it begins with the with the personal brand and my audience. Uh we then funnel everybody through a series of tests. We call it the gauntlet. You have like run the gauntlet. And it's usually like six or seven tests. And the first one here here it goes back to your point of mediocrity. We just talked about the first test is very simple. Now I'm going to, give, away, my, secret, here, a, little bit so people apply. They'll they'll get through the first round. The first round is send me a video explaining why you're good for this job. That's what we That's the test. just send me a video. 60% of people do not send the video. These are people who took the time to apply from my audience and they immediately disqualify themselves right away. They

don't send the video. Okay, so they're gone. And then the next test is usually we like I don't even watch the videos. Like it doesn't matter. Like all they want to know is are can you follow some basic instructions? Anyway, this tests get harder and harder and more specific for the actual role we're hiring for. So, by the time we get down to six or seven tests, there's typically three or four people left. And that's the time that we'll do an interview and then pick somebody. Uh, but by that point, it's usually pretty obvious that one person just stands out. And I've had a pretty phenomenal track record. I mean, I've I've had to let go of very few people uh going through that process. In fact, the only people we've really I've lost have been people that maybe sort of I cheated around that process because I just I like them so much that I'm like, "Well let's just put you at the top. you can

skip the first few tests. Let's just get you in because I know you're going to be great in the Yeah, but I'd be curious Brandon, on that because especially for me in a bluecollar industry, if it's super basic, yes. But some of these guys are technology challenged. Some of them aren't really great readers. They didn't get past 10th grade. But I look for somebody that's just super great eye contact that I go have a beer with that's smiling all the time, that's half cup half full, that literally makes me smile. and you meet his family or her family and they're just they respect one another. Like I don't but I'm not saying you're wrong.

I'd be curious to see. Yeah, I can't hire someone that I always say that I can't hire someone I can't have a beer with. Like that's like a that's like a one of my kind of principles is I can't hire someone I won't have a beer with. So there is that vibe check for sure. And a lot of the tests are simply like you know, for for example in the management department, right? If we're hiring a resident manager at a mobile home park, like you're right, like these people did not graduate high school most of the time. So, like the the the process for hiring them, and again, they don't usually come from my audience, but the process for hiring them is going to be much more simple. Like, I sent you an email. Can you write an email back? Like just something that's actually, you know, in their job, but then I have to know that they're good people. I mean good people doing good. It's one of our like core values in our company is like

they have to be a good person. And I qualify that as somebody I can have a beer, with,, somebody, who's, not, going to cheat me, somebody who's going to put the the higher good above just their own selfish desires. But man, it's uh it's hard and then it's sometimes they just don't work out. You know what? Another challenge. I don't I'm curious if you face this. When I hire people, most people I hire are pretty super ambitious people. And part of that just my audience is real estate investors and entrepreneurs. So they're really excited about growth. And so there's always that challenge of like I know that they are actively trying to get out of the job I hired them for. What I mean by that is like everybody I hire, they're entrepreneurs at heart. And so I tend to hire, which I love hiring entrepreneurs but they typically aren't going to stay for 20 years uh in most of those roles.

And so that's something I've just learned like that's why I have to share equity with people. I have to make them know that they will make more being a small fish in my pond than a big fish on their own. Uh, and and I've been pretty effective at doing it, but you know we've had a few people leave. I had I had one of the best self- storage operators in the country, one of the best guys in the country come work for me. I mean, he might be the best in the country. And like, we got him because he believed in my brand and all that. And he lasted six months and then he went out and did his own thing because he realized, oh, I can make a lot more on my own. I'm I'm the best. And uh, we we still stay in touch and we can, you know, consult with them a little bit but yeah, we uh, it's the challenge of hiring entrepreneur sometimes.

Well, you know, you can make them entrepreneurs and that's where you get equity incentive programs. You gota you got to know the right people when you identify the best of the best. Uh especially on an operational level like a COO, they they need to have something to hold their feet down that they call them golden handcuffs and I don't like that word because really it's an incentive program that keeps you motivated. But I I got a lot of man you got my brain like going crazy. So if you what's you raised 100 million I just I I want to do some math real quick. Let's just pretend Tommy Melo raised $100 million. Yeah. And let's say I averaged the arbitrage. Let's say I'm I'm saying business I'm buying businesses for 5x. Yep. And I would do a little bit better than that. Um depending on the size, but let's just say I'm buying businesses at 2 million of IBIDA. Yep. 2 million of IBIDA. So I'm paying 10 million per per business.

Now, I'd probably leave them in and have them roll equity, but I want to do some quick math. So, that allows me to buy 10 businesses. Are you following? Yep. Because it's 2 million to VBA, I'm paying 5x. Yep. So, 10 * 10 gets me to that 100 million. So there's no doubt in my mind because what I would do is I'd focus on the same industry and I could do this in any I could do this in gutters fences flooring roofing you name it, windows, anything. So what I would probably try to do here is just simply make them walk, talk, and act the same. So I'd put data science FPNA people build the hub and almost like a franchise but they all they report up to us and we make them on the same CRM the same uh it wouldn't be QuickBooks it would probably be a more sophisticated like intact and so my plan would be just fix their marketing get their KPIs dialed and just run them up to 4 million each right Yep. So now we're at 40

million of IBIDA. Now I know in my sleep I could get 15x for this. Yep. So 15x and I would do that in three years. That's 600 million. Yeah. So and listen, nothing's easy, but because I know this stuff's so good. Yeah. Yeah. It depends on if the owners are douchebags or not, and it depends on if they're staying on and how good the company is. How many levers can I turn? But that's $600 million on a $100 million investment. I would if I took 20% I take a hund minus the hundred million to invest. That's 500 million. Now 20% of that not a bad day.

That's $100 million. And the 400 million goes to the investors. That's a good ROI for that would be a phenomenal ROI for them. And you know what what what what some syndicators do in raising capital like this is they do and we've done this before too and it's not bad is you it's it's more simple. You just say hey you get a 100% of all profits and cash flow investors until you get your money back. Once you get all your money back we just split everything 50/50 going forward. So imagine make that way you're not necessarily projecting like all these like different waterfall structures and all that. You say hey I don't get anything but once you have your money back and you put in a million dollars you get your million dollars. everything going forward, we're gonna split 5050.

Most people are like, "Oh, yeah, that seems fair." Would you ever consider saying, "I'll give you eight% on your money for a five years and then everything after that because the time value of money, would you?" Because if if you're like, "You want to give me my money back in five or seven years?" That sucks. Like I'd want to be guaranteed something, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's so many ways you can spin it. You can definitely spin it that way. You can put you can put numbers on it. You can do Yeah. What we do is waterfalls.

Hey, after certain amounts, we get more. there's after a certain number of years it changes. Uh but yeah, one of the one of the smartest real estate investors I know, a guy named Ken Moyoy, he's down in uh the Phoenix area, but Ken does a lot more. He he he advised me, we went to the, lunch, few, a, year, and, a, half, ago, and he was like "Brandon, you just got to keep it simple." He's like "People don't need to be complicated. Just keep it simple. Give them half." He's like "Give them 100% of everything until they get their money back and then give them half." And everyone's happy with that and you'll make more money on the back end even though like even though it's simple. And I'm like, so using that formula for your your example, you know you go and make whatever it was, $500 million now potentially you're keeping $250 million or you know, they get their they get their hundred million back and

then you're splitting the rest. Still a great return for them. Yeah. Yeah. Know I like that better. Yeah. I got to meet Ken Maroy. I I love Yeah. Happy to make that intro. I failed at and I was just talking to my podcast team is when I get a podcast like someone like you. You probably know 10 people I need to talk to that do just as well as you that you are really entertained. Uh I had Robert Shadin in here the other day. He's given he's got a few to give me. Man, there are podcasts. I'm making a new rule for the podcast that we're going to have a small committee of three or four people. And if they listen to it and don't feel like it was fire, it's not making the airwaves because we've got too many great listeners now. They want to be entertained. They want to be they want the knowledge. They want the motivation. And that's my number one thing is I don't want to put something on there that I wouldn't be very very

like like if I listen to it, I'd want to be entertained. Not even entertained. Like I'm not Joe Rogan. I want to be educational. Yeah. I want to know that my life has improved. Yeah. Like I'm I'm wealthier or healthier or something. You And last year you you raised 300 million which is nuts. What kind of messages are you putting on social media to make people go? Oh yeah. I'm in. Yeah. You know it started organic. So it started I just like throw it on my Instagram story. Hey everyone, I got a deal. Now I will admit it's gotten way harder to raise money right now than it's ever been before.

when you can get 5% in a savings account, people are way less likely to go and invest in a real estate deal because they're like, "Well, I like my 5% guaranteed from the FDIC, you know like it's really it's a lot harder right now. It's 10 times harder now than it was last year or the year before." So in the past, I would just throw a thing on my Instagram story. Hey, I'm raising money and within 24 hours, we'd have $30 million committed. It was it was wonderful and wild. And a lot of that also, we had an email list, you know, we built an email list up. We had 100,000 accredited investors on our email list.

So people who have said that they're wealthy enough to invest in these kind of deals. So you send out an email to 100,000, people, and, you, know, a thousand people raise their hand. Yeah, I can put in 100 grand. Uh so a lot of it just basic internet marketing. Today though we have to do a lot more you know because we've I don't say I've tapped out but I've probably largely tapped out my email list. Like they if they're going to invest, they've already invested with me and they've probably invested all their money. And these aren't short-term deals. These are 5 to 10 year holds. So it's not like they got their money back already. It's only been a few years. So, I've had to expand my audience and through that we've done a lot of paid ads. We spend about a million a year on paid ads right now.

Uh, so we'll put out ads on on, you know, sometimes it's me walking through the property going, "Hey everyone, I'm Brandon Turner, author of the book on rental property investing. Maybe you've read it, sold a million copies, and I'm buying this property, you know, so establish some credibility. I know what I'm doing. I got a billion dollars in real estate and I'm buying this property and I'm looking for some help to take it down. If you want to be a partner with me, you get the majority of the profits. I do all the work." If that sounds good book a call with our team and and and just have a conversation. No obligation.

That's typically the kind of the the angle we approach it with is like uh and I said earlier, I never really finished that thought. The reason I donate my salary away is not because I'm just like a good a goodie two shoes wanting to help people. I do want to help people but it's the best sales pitch in the world. Like it's the best like when I can tell my investors with a straight face and it's it's 100% true that I don't make money unless you make money first. Like I'm not taking a salary. There's no some side gig thing. I'm there's no there's no game here. I literally don't make money until you make money first. This has to work or this is a giant waste of a decade of my life. Like people trust I remember you saying that and I get it more a lot more now. Can I give you a piece of advice please?

So Grant Cardone works with this guy named Brandon Dawson. Yeah. Yeah. I need a Brandon and I've been on their stage. smart guys. Um, they're the ones that found Gary Brea. Yeah. They gave him 300 grand to own something like 70% of everything he puts out. Wow. So, you go find people that you know and you make them and you turn on your social media your personal branding talent. Yeah. You get them co-author, you get them books you start a podcast with them, you get them the first 25 guests, you put the social media team behind it. Now you're not and you find people that are different than you to talk to different audiences. Yep. Now guess what? They got to be interesting, fun they got to be funny and and like get loud and just, you know, emotional. But you get five of those guys, those proteges, and you get the right contract, but they they're excited. And then you just you become a content

factory. Yeah. And they're working underneath you. Think about that because you've already exhausted your list. What if you had somebody like a a Gen Z and you had this generation and this generation and somebody older that's very thoughtful that's talking to this tribe and you know what I would go after? I'd go after somebody that's 60 years old, good-looking, that's entertaining, that understands it, that people trust immediately, that's funny and that brings you a whole new slew of investors. It's a great idea, man. It's kind of the Yeah, I look at Card I mean everything Cardone does, I'm basically just copying at a at a worse way, you know, like he's just so much better at it than me. But we do the exact same game. Cardone actually the reason I didn't say this earlier, but the reason I ended up going in the syndication game that I did because I interviewed Cardone on the Bigger Pockets podcast and I it

clicked while I'm talking to him. I was like, "Oh, shoot. This is awesome. This is what Cardone is doing." And so now that's what I'm doing. It's he's building a social media brand, an online brand to raise money to finance massive apartment deals, commercial real estate deals in which he takes 20 30% of it and therefore he doesn't need any of his own money and he can buy billions of dollars of real estate using other people's money with almost it's all non-reourse debt which means they don't come after you if it goes bad. So there's almost no risk other than reputational risk to become a billionaire very quickly. This is before he was a billionaire. And I saw him do that and I was like, "Oh shit." I don't think he is a billionaire yet. But yeah, I think he says he's a billionaire only because I think the strength of his brand, he probably counts that as a billion dollar, you know, if you 5x his whatever. I love the

idea, of, just, all, this, stuff., I, I I, just love this podcast, man. I You've given me so much good idea. Like, are you in a self-publishing or do you get a publishing house? you know, the five books I've written, we we self we opened a publishing company, so it's kind of a a hybrid, I guess. We we actually went and built our own publishing company at Bigger Pockets. So, technically, it's it's a hybrid. Um, if I do it again I'll probably go traditional because I really want that New York Times bestseller title. It's just an ego thing. I fully admit that. There's no value to it other than my own ego. I would, just, love, to, be able, to, say, I'm, a New York Times bestselling author. And you're not going to get that if you hybrid it or or uh you know, you got to go through one of the major companies typically. When building a personal brand, what what are the top five, you know, whatever three, five mistakes you

made like social media videographers, content strate, whatever you want to go with, I'm just if someone wants to go out there and say they're bought in, I need to build a personal brand. What are some of the pitfalls? Yeah, I think people obsess about quality too much, meaning like video quality, audio quality, whatever. I think that it's more important. I think reps are more important than quality. So, if you spend a week to make one video and it looks really, really good it just like it probably won't hit. It's just it takes a hundred videos for one of mine to hit well. Um, and so I've just learned that volume is the game there. And so, I just pump out massive volume. But it's also it's volume, but volume with the emphasis on like I learned this, you know, Mr. Beast talks about this like 90% of their effort is in the title. Uh, and so on social media videos like 90% of the effort should be

in the first three seconds of the video. And so for a long time I' I'd work a I'd work I' I I wouldn't even think about the first few seconds. I just make the video and and shockingly it wouldn't do very well. And so now today we spend a lot more time focusing on the first few seconds. Uh, I made the mistake of making content when I felt like making content. The same way I used to write when I wrote books, the first couple books I wrote, I wrote when I felt like writing. And then I learned uh there's a great quote from I think Stephen King is the original guy who said it. He said "I only write when inspiration strikes.

Thankfully, inspiration strikes every morning at 9:00 a.m. in my desk like at my desk." It's like, in other words like you show up and do the work every single day and you you're going to start hitting every single day or you know you're going to you're going to get the work done. Um so now like we have a system where it's like I I create whatever 30 pieces of content a week. just I every Wednesday for four hours I'm creating content and that's just it becomes a system. So content becoming a system, is, one, of the, most, important things I can stress. Um and then just steal and what I mean by that is just rip off like R&D like have your R&D department do your rip off and duplicate, right? Yeah. You just rip off and duplicate what other people are doing. You're like, "Oh, that worked for Dan Martell. Like he did Dan did really good at this thing. Why did that do well? I'm just going to not I'm not

going to copy word for word. It's his story. But I'm going to take what worked for Dan and I'm going to go do it to me. And then almost all the time it works. Here's a real clear example of that. I once made I once saw a video on YouTube called How to Analyze a Rental Property on the B back of a napkin. And that video had 150,000 views, but the person that made it only had a few hundred subscribers. And I was like, "Oh, this is this hit." Like obviously people on YouTube cared. So I made a video called How to Analyze a Rental Property. And I didn't want to copy it exactly. So, I was like using the four square method. I made up this four square box and I just kind of used it to teach this how to analyze a property. That video has like four million views today. I didn't in like I just rip off and duplicate what somebody else did. So, you know, rather than trying to just reinvent the wheel

it's like why did this work for that person? I'm going to put a spin on it but, I'm, going to, do, the, same psychological hook to myself. And uh tends to work. And then just consistency, man. Like it's 10 years. Like you said earlier, it's like I'm an overnight success of 10 years of posting on Instagram. So, I need and you are getting together by the end of the year. I I I I got a lot of stuff that I want to talk about, but I want to um would love it. I want to get you back to Celane and and you're going to be at this event this weekend that I I'll be at. So, listen. Yeah. Ryan Pinetta great guy. Another real estate guy. Um yeah, he's only giving me 30 minutes.

I'm like, dude, but 30 minutes I'm just gonna bring my, you know, I think I have 35 or 40. It's tough. It's It's not good. I I get it. So, um Brandon, how can people get find out more about you? My Instagram, Beardy. So,, beardy, beard, with, a, Y, at, the, end of it. Beardy Brandon. And that's pretty much everything you'll find there. Um yeah, there's, you know, the link in bio has all my links to everything, but yeah, Beardy Brandon and I got a text message newsletter I send out every week. You can get to there link in my bio on Instagram. Just I send out whatever book I'm reading and what I'm learning from it every week. So, just a simple newsletter via text. Kind of fun.

Yeah. Listen, I I'd like to get together somewhere in this not in Hawaii if possible because it's I'm actually coming. Are you still down in Are you still down in Arizona? Yeah, I'll be there in uh for a few days in October for a mastermind. I think it's October. Uh and then I'll be up in Celane in August. I'll make sure Allison will reach out. Um yeah, Brandon, the way I close out here is I'm going to give you anything you want to close us out. All right, I'm going to close it out this way. Uh it's actually kind of a recap of what you talked about earlier where there's only a few actions actually that make you successful in like those businesses. And I'll say in life there's only a few actions that actually give you anything that you want. Right? If you want to lose weight there's only a few actions you actually have to do. It's like go to the gym, eat less calories. Like there's a list

right? So in other words, the the the line that I use all the time is you get the result of what you repeatedly do. If you like, if there's one thing you you can take from me and my entire life that's, what, I'm, going to, be, preaching for the rest of my life. You get the results of what you repeatedly do. The problem is people are not consistent and persistent in those things. We all know how to lose weight and get a six-pack but most people don't have it. So, if you can just figure out how to be consistent and you've defined those actions, which you get by listening to podcasts and going to masterminds and going to events, like you just learn from people who have done it. They tell you the actions. Tommy will tell you everything you need to do to grow your home service business. So, like you don't need to read 500 books. You know the actions. Figure out a way to be consistent and persistent and you can

win in anything. And that's your marriage, your faith, your your parenting, your well, any of it. It's all the same. Figure out the three four, five, 10 things you got to do. Track them. Get some accountability. Whatever you got to do, and get it done. That's it. That's all success is. I love it, Brandon. Listen, I appreciate you, doing, this, while, you're here, in Celane, brother. And I'm going to reach out to you, man. I really appreciate you having me out in Hawaii and doing this podcast. I think you're entertaining smart, you're a great dad, a great husband to your wife. You're living the dream that most people envy and uh you're still giving back. So, I appreciate it. A thanks, man. Appreciate you. Let's get together soon. We will.

I'll make it. I I will for sure. You got my brain spinning. So, everybody that listens know I'm a man of action. I'm going to do like I'm going to get the answers I'm out to seek. So, it's it's going to be fun. Love it. Love it. Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Become a Real Estate Expert with Brandon Turner"?

Tommy Melo (Host), Brandon Turner (Guest).

What is "Become a Real Estate Expert with Brandon Turner" about?

Brandon Turner, a renowned expert in real estate investment and marketing, discusses his journey in the industry, his successes, and his motivations, including the challenges of achieving financial freedom and the realities behind living in paradise. As the founder of Open Door Capital and a best-selling author, Turner emphasizes the importance of understanding the market and personal…

What is mentioned in this Home Service Expert episode?

13 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Brandon Turner, Open Door Capital, Mobile Home Parks, Instagram, Bigger Pockets, Bigger Pockets Podcast. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Become a Real Estate Expert with Brandon Turner"?

The episode runs 58 min; the transcript is about 12,678 words in 84 timestamped sections.

More from Home Service Expert

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.