5 Tips For Financial Independence That The 99% Ignore w/Brandon Turner

this is the BiggerPockets podcast show 787. you know there's a uh a quote Gary Keller uses in the millionaire real estate agent and it says the that Financial Freedom is the unearned income to finance your life's Mission without having to work and I'm a big fan of that idea right like I often say in Financial Freedom as doing what you want where you want when you want how you want with whoever you but that can lead to slavery that can lead to slavery but instead the idea of the unearned income uh meaning like money's coming in despite the hours you work to finance your life mission yeah without having to work so what is your and if you don't have a life mission maybe that's a good place to start like why are you here uh what are you doing this for otherwise you end up making a lot of money and not having any freedom what's going on everyone it's David Green your host of the BiggerPockets real estate podcast here today with another episode with Brandon Turner Today's Show we talk about the five podcasts that had the biggest impact on both of us the lessons that we learned how they helped them with our business and how they shaped our views on life this is a wild ride full of tons of information if you've never heard Brandon talk you want to buckle your seatbelt because the guy goes a million miles an hour and I've been told that I can do the same thing we'll be coming to you live from Hawaii where we had this conversation that range from Jocko willing to artificial intelligence to holding toilets full of feces on purpose to save a couple bucks in real estate it's a blast and I'm sure you're gonna love it so if you are struggling with this very tough real estate market and you're thinking about giving up don't we've been through changes like this before there's an adjusting period what worked yesterday today isn't working today as rates have gone up but prices have not come down but that is okay there's still ways to win in today's market and in today's show we are trying to mold your mind so you can see some of the same angles that Brandon and I see that help us succeed in life in business and with finances all right let's get into it uh I know Eric who's a wonderful amazing good-looking producer for the show hi Eric uh he uh pitched me on this idea of the five things right and he's like he's like because they're all kind of revolving around this idea of Financial Freedom and I think being that this episode's coming out on the 4th of July I think all Five Lessons should be somewhere in the vicinity of Freedom what do you think yeah well that's what we do right it's also for some form of Freedom whether it's freedom from things that enslave you freedom from poverty freedom from not hitting your potential in life freedom from bad relationships freedom from not hitting your potential I mean all knowledge when used correctly should be for the purpose of some type of Freedom wouldn't you agree I I would I would love to know I'm gonna take over the whole seat and ask you a question how do you define Financial Freedom we made it about three minutes into this thing before we got there didn't we I need to find Financial Freedom man to me Financial Freedom is not having to sell out your values in order to pay the bills oh not having to sell your values in order to pay your bills so if you're working at a company that you don't feel good about working or you don't like the things that they're doing but you have to to make the bills there's there's people that can't get around that I don't criticize someone like that in fact most of the time the world has been spinning that's where human beings found themselves survival is much more difficult than for most of the time the world's been around what it is for us we're very very privileged to live in a time where we don't spend very much time worrying about surviving I mean we spend more time at least me worrying about not eating too much versus not having enough to eat which is a very unusual thing for human beings we have food everywhere that's like screaming come eat me where for most of the time the world's been around what am I going to eat that's all you could think about Financial Freedom wasn't a thing so yeah here's a deep thought okay I'm gonna I'm gonna probably this is gonna sound down but interesting enough we have the freedom to eat whatever we want and then we get overweight and unhealthy yeah so yeah Freedom actually leads leads to uh slavery right at a certain point and there's a there's an interesting dichotomy there between freedom and slavery uh or um misery yeah that's exactly right speaking of the word dichotomy which is a Jocko willink word he actually has a concept of discipline equals Freedom so if you are not disciplined enough to handle the freedom that you get it will absolutely lead to enslavement you know there's a uh a quote Gary Keller uses in the millionaire real estate agent and it says the that Financial Freedom is the unearned income to finance your life's Mission without having to work and I'm a big fan of that idea right like I often say in Financial Freedom as doing what you want where you want when you want how you want with whoever you but that can lead to slavery that can lead to slavery but instead the idea of the unearned income uh is meaning like money's coming in despite the hours you work to finance your life mission yeah without having to work so what is your and if you don't have a life mission maybe that's a good place to start like why are you here uh what are you doing this for otherwise you end up making a lot of money and not having any freedom which is how you end up in slavery which is how you end up because you start looking through things like food for Comfort or uh I mean gratuitous Hedonism for Comfort right there's a lot of things out there when you don't have a purpose you don't know what you're going for what you're going to that's when the Billboards on the side of the freeway they say pull over here become much more enticing if you don't have the the end destination in mind oh look at that that was an analogy that was a good man did you still do those every once in a while we do them I mean I don't like to go overboard with it I like to be known for more than just analogies unfortunately I don't think I've been able to pull that off it's not like you who's zoned for many many many things no I'm going for one thing acronyms making me look you are good with acronyms you are great in fact my entire uh Burr book and the salary that's provided me thank you for coming up with that acronym people like acronyms man so yeah there's this idea of life mission like what are you doing it for what's cool about that also is it keeps you motivated along the journey to Financial Freedom so I mean we ask people all the time what like why are you doing what you're doing why are you pursuing real estate investing like for Financial Freedom it's okay well why uh for Freedom yeah okay well why well for Freedom all right and then some people will go into I want to spend more time with my family and that was my that was my mission for years with more time on my family and then I did it right when I left the BiggerPockets podcast to go spend time with my family and build Open Door capital I went and traveled the country for four and a half five months like when I went to Europe around the country did all this amazing stuff with my family I was with him 24 7. and then I realized that freedom doesn't necessarily mean spending 24 7 with my family either it was like I needed something more than that uh that's a huge piece of it was being able to choose to spend time with my family but that just alone spending time with my family was not my life's Mission so you know why that happens because most of us only look at one step ahead of where we are we know I don't want to be here what do you want I don't know yeah ever no add someone what do you want to eat for dinner tonight and yeah they always don't know but when you propose something what do they say okay I don't want that oh yeah I don't say okay I know which was that easy right people know what they don't want but they don't know what they want sometimes you have to start with eliminating what you don't want and moving forward and as you take that Journey what you want startup becomes clear and you get better you get a better understanding now you also have tools like the Vivid Vision that you've come up with that kind of force your brain to figure out what do I really want but it's much easier to know what you don't want so you knew that I don't want to miss out on my kids childhood I don't want to miss out on my family so you made choices but then you get there you're like well this is great but I know there's other people in the world other than my family that need help yeah right so like the human trafficking thing which we could get into later is something that you've become really passionate about but you probably wouldn't have been exposed to that if you didn't start the journey somewhere else not knowing where you were going to be heading oh man that's so good and it leads into like this I I did it's been I've been talking about a lot lately in fact just a speech I gave at the the real estate better life thing the other day I talked about how when you're my like your mind is actually a piece of real estate right I love this concept your mind is a piece of real estate and it is a finite piece of real estate there's only so much land in there that can be used and so when 70 of your mind eighty percent of your mind 90 of your mind is consumed with survival which is what most of the world is you do not have the land needed to cultivate the better crops right like because you're like it's just consumed with paying the bills and when I say survival mode I'm not talking about like words of food but in a way it is that's what our our brains are kind of cavemany brains are like we got to get money so we can pay the bills once you take that off the table once you are set for life to quote Scott trench's amazing book now you can actually plant better crops but people are in survival mode 24 7. and so they can't think the next step and I'll give a very tangible example of that when I was 21 I got into real estate a lot of people have heard my story if not I think I was episode 92 maybe somewhere around there my original episode which was been 10 years ago nine years ago but uh when I got into real estate the first six seven years was like build real estate build rentals build cash flow I need it need it need it need it but when I hit like 27 I had enough cash like three to four thousand dollars a month coming in and I lived in a cheap area with a cheap house so I could do this and I quit my job and all of a sudden I had Level One Financial Freedom now did that make me super happy all the time no not really him I know it's fine but uh it was nice not having that crappy job I had but what it did is it gave me the opportunity to start volunteering my time for this little blog that existed back then a little blogging Forum I started just volunteering my time editing blog posts and write writing blog post it was run by this guy Josh dorkin and it was a weird named blog called BiggerPockets and I started just writing for him because I had free time to do that and then when it was like Josh and I started talking more and I was like hey why don't we start a podcast I had the ability to do that and so I was able to plant those better crops I was able to take advantage of incredible opportunities because I was no longer in survival mode and Matt is right there a picture now I'm not saying everyone wants to go to start a podcast but you will likely not see the opportunities that are in the world if you are consumed with the thought of how do I get out of how do I survive right because not live a better life because you have to figure out what do I don't want I don't want to be hungry yeah yeah so I have to go work for food that's kind of the idea of Maslow's hierarchy it means you know it's a self-actualization until you know your immediate needs are going to be met and so and this goes back to the very beginning and then I'll shut up but like this idea of once you have a life's Mission and you take care of the bottom levels of the pyramid you have Financial Freedom you don't worry about survival mode and you have a mission in life now all of a sudden you can move right so my mission back then a large piece of it was also like to educate people in real estate so like I had to I had the basic bills paid for and I wanted to educate so I could put a lot of time and effort and money and and tension into that and that's why one of the reasons why Bigger Pockets blew up because I was put in 100 hours a week doing something I loved uh so it was Josh and so were you when you get in so Financial Freedom if you're not sure why you want it maybe just think about that way is you have a life's Mission or something you want you know let's solve the Financial Freedom level one let's get you Financial Freedom on this episode I want every person by time we're done talking today to go I know why I want it how I want it and I'm working towards it and five years from now if you're if you're not Financial free then we didn't do our job today yeah because money can solve a lot of those immediate problems I need something to eat well if I have money that's going to be solved I need somewhere to live I have money that's going to be solved I need to have a little bit of money left in the bank or I need to have less pressure on me so I can think about other people in my life right we've all heard that example of the drowning man in the ocean that can't save anybody else if he's drowning if you're in that point of I have to solve this problem there's nothing left over like you said yeah and I don't think a lot of people realize that when they get those immediate problems solved they think that was the goal of life that was just the goal of what they could see from that position it gets more complicated it gets more difficult you start to feel pressure and responsibility you start to realize you have influence and people are watching what you do and you can easily lead other people into the same vices that you're in when you're in a bigger influential position so I'd like to talk about that with you more because you've got more influence now than ever before but before we do I one hour harrowing Paths of Financial Freedom we wanted to share some of the most impactful moments or lessons that helped us along the way and will help you move along your path as well as you listen to this a couple of stories from the podcast that were particularly impactful that you and I went through the first one is my favorite one impact particularly impact that's a Nimble book right there particularly impactful by David Green coming out is that what you think of when you think of me a particularly impactful I don't know that anyone else would particularly okay I think you should do that with a British accent accents oh I like that one that's good all right the first story this is one of my favorite ones we call this the toilet story oh geez can you share The Abridged version and how that impacted assigning value to your time jeez okay uh it starts with four friends four friends of mine well one friend of mine three of his buddies uh young 20s living in my apartment complex back in Gray's Harbor when I was like 25 years old ish and they texted me and said hey one of my buddies texted me said hey it's well it's not working I said okay I'll take care of it and then I just forgot right because it wasn't my system I had I had like a system for calling for repairs it wasn't texting me but he texted me and said it wasn't working I'll take care of it what I should have said is sure can you call this person like call my maintenance person whatever I didn't I'll take care of it I forgot a week later he texted me back and said hey man it's getting real bad this uh it's about to overflow really crappy yeah it's really crappy he's like it's getting real bad you really should come take care of this because they had continued to use the toilet for a solid week of course because they're 21 year old kids and that's what they do so they continue to the toilet they had all had the flu during that period so the toilet was completely full I go there and this is the era of how not who so not who not house so I said how am I going to fix this I would never call I'm not going to call plumber plumbers are 50 an hour of course today they're much more I'm not gonna pay 50 an hour so I try to plunge it doesn't work I try to snake it with one of those little hand snakes doesn't work I try plunging again doesn't work so I get the brilliant idea I'm gonna unbolt it from the floor and so I unbolt it from the floor and I pick it up like I'm doing a squat and I'm carrying it across the bathroom and I heave it up into the bathtub and it it covers me in everything trying to put it in the bathroom I was trying to put it yeah you're hoping they would just go down yeah I wanted because I wanted to flip it upside down to figure out what was blocking it uh okay so you needed a place to put so I've dumped it upside down in the toilet or in the bathtub in the meantime it covers me and I found a little contact lens solution bottle thing in the bottom of the toilet so I fixed it uh but then I got dreadfully sick the next week and that was the last time really that I did any sort of Plumbing on any real estate property I ever did did any of it hit that one area of your back that you can't get it's still there man it's still there so here's the lesson right so it took that it took that to get me out to go plumber would have been 100 bucks a plumber would have had a powered router rooter router that they would have yeah rude or router is what you make wood out of or make cool designs a router to Rooter it out and it would have been done in 20 minutes it cost me a couple hundred bucks probably and I wouldn't have had that problem I would have gotten sick but I value that lesson because it taught me the hunot like sometimes I would be much better off in fact this is a much broader topic if you want Financial Freedom the lesson here is a who not how lesson but it's not a who not how entirely like not sit on the beach and do nothing it is everything you do has a dollar per hour attached to it if you want to hear a great podcast about this uh we interviewed Perry Marshall the guy who wrote the book 80 20 sales and marketing and he talked a lot about everything you do has a dollar per hour attached to it if you're mowing the lawn you could attach a 20 an hour to that because you could find somebody to mow your lawn for 20 an hour if you're changing the oil in your car that's probably a 40 an hour task everything you do has a dollar per hour attached to it so 80 20 is driven by power laws and and it says that everything is exponential it's not Edition it's multiplication and so and so there's the value of your time is not 10 20 30 40 an hour gets 10 100 a thousand ten thousand the the fact is if you're negotiating a real estate deal if you are sending out direct mail letters that is likely more like a thousand dollar per hour tasks if you work 10 hours at lead generation in your business and you land a deal that ends up netting you thirty thousand dollars how much money per hour did you just make a lot so what I was doing as I was trying to do everything and I was like I was sacrificing the great for the good I was stepping over dollar dollars to pick up pennies and so that's really what I've learned in this who not how idea is is find my value what is the most valuable thing I can possibly do I'm gonna do as much of that as a humanly possible now in the beginning you have no money fine you might have to do more but as fast as you can even the idea of like okay let's bring back chai GPT if there's things that Chad gbt can help you do that's a dollar an hour great get that work into and you start doing the two dollar an hour stuff and then as soon as you can afford the two dollar an hour five dollar an hour VA hire them to do some of the five dollar an hour stuff stop mowing your lawn hire the kid next door to do that there are things you can afford in fact I would say sell your car downgrade your house house hack do whatever you can to frame as much money as possible and then use that money to buy back your time so you can dedicate your time to doing the higher dollar per hour tasks if you don't know what those higher dollar per hour tasks are listen to any podcast episode of Bigger Pockets and you'll hear people talking about what those things are and just like you didn't walk into the first Jiu Jitsu gym and immediately start training yeah the first VA you hire the first assistant may not be the one that you run with for the entire time it is okay if it takes a couple tries to get that right my first assistant I hired because I need an assistant to help me with digital stuff like bigger pocket stuff and show notes and all that good stuff my email and all that and she's going to be my digital assistant maybe Edison blog posts maybe edit photos upload the social media all that so I hire this woman that I know because she applied that was the only criteria a woman I know and she applied uh and so it was a terrible criteria but I hired her first day I buy her a brand new Mac computer I've ironed I get a renter in office and I go and I set her up in the office and I'm like okay I'm gonna train you today on how to do this stuff that I need you to do so I sit down I'm like okay so uh go to your desktop and she said the words what's the desktop and I was like it's like it's like the the screen it's like everything that's your desktop and I was like so click on my computer or whatever it was and she goes what's that and I was like oh geez and then I asked the question then I maybe should ask earlier have you ever used the computer before and the answer was well I have a phone and I I realize that day she I hired a digital assistant who had never used a computer and you know what I learned that was sitting on the bench I was sitting on the little kid bench that day so good and uh I found a new spot for her she was amazing that new role I worked out in the next assistant a little better a little bit better a little next one a little bit better and they're still getting a little bit my assistant right now Kat is the best assistant I ever had it's just taking me 10 years yeah they've been getting better every time even Brandon Turner has failed and failed and failed and failed I think the difference is you just keep going and so many see when we don't share this people hire an assistant maybe too it doesn't work I just must not be good at this I just suck at Jujitsu it's not for me let me go find something else oh dude if we could just anytime people say I tried that it didn't work like that drives me nuts I'm like no you didn't try every way to do that thing oh yeah I tried sending direct mail it didn't work what would you how many did you send a couple hundred like a couple hundred a day a couple hundred a week no a couple hundred why would that work I tried exercising it didn't work yeah yeah we don't go I went to the gym today I actually left the gym the other day I made a video and then it didn't turn out well so I didn't post it but maybe I still will David gyms are scams completely scams they don't work like I went to the gym the other day I went in there I worked out for almost an hour and I walked out and I'm still fat they're complete scams they say if you go to the gym you're going to lose and I did everything everything they said I even did the ab machine for 20 minutes I went on the elliptical machine which and I didn't lose weight that day so I've never gone back to a gym again complete ridiculous and everywhere I go I'm going to tell everybody else yes I'm gonna go tell everyone the gyms don't work I'm gonna go on Reddit and start a forum just to bring up this topic that's it right oh geez it's it's uh that's a great point I mean that is a great Point what's funny is that in certain areas of life we understand you're not going to get into your first relationship and crush it right away you're not going to go on a diet for a day and crush it you're not going to go in the gym and crush it you're not going to ride a bike the first time you're not going to snowboard you're not going to surf none of that's gonna happen the first couple times you do it yeah with money we have this completely different expectation for how it's supposed to work yeah when I met Heather in college and I fell in just head over heels in love with her and I one day I took her out for a walk and said can we go for a walk and I went out there and I poured my heart out I'm like I I really like you a lot and I don't I I can't I can't stop and I just I I really like you and I I want to I want to uh get closer to you and she said oh that's nice that's nice oh my gosh oh and I'm like oh yeah and she's like I like you too you're a good friend oh here's your little back yeah you know what yeah but you know what I did a week later I took her out again I was like no you don't understand I really like you and I need this I need more that's good man how many people have reached out to a mentor shot their shot poured their heart out got rejected and just said I can't ever do that again yep so many do you think there's a correlation between how much rejection a person is willing to go through and how successful they're gonna be hmm yep very much and that's why the best sales people are just the best at taking rejection yeah like the best daughter or sales people like I know some really great sales people the best ones are the ones that can just get they don't it doesn't fade them get rejected it took me four tries to ask Heather out before she finally said yes and I basically had to give her an ultimatum I was like I can't be your friend anymore I was like I love you too much I don't think I said love but I was like I'm so obsessed with you and I just it hurts every second of every day and she's like well then I was like I can't be friends I'm done I'm breaking this up uh I'm no longer a friend and she goes I think her words were fine then just ask me out like a real man or something like that because she's like you never actually asked me out you did it in like this time yeah she's like pain and personal yeah yeah sure nothing yep she's like you didn't ever ask me out I'm like of course I did I did like four times she's like no you didn't and I'm like yes I did I said I really like you and I don't know what to do with this she's like yeah she was like you were just tell him you liked me and and you know bro my first experience telling Girl I liked her was almost the exact same thing and it was the hardest thing at that time like I'd ever done in my life I think this is before cell phone so I remember like taking the phone off of the receiver and like calling her and it was that same feeling of like I have this ache in my soul that's making me sick like I did not want to tell them how I felt I did not want the rejection I was pretty sure she didn't feel the same way but it was like killing me so I finally did and I think I said it a lot lines of I just think you're really really special like more special than I've ever seen another person and I I like being around you all the time and I think about everything I do I want you there and she started crying okay she still didn't understand bro like she cried on the phone it was like that's the nicest thing anyway yes thank you so much yeah and I was like well how do you feel she's like I don't know I need to think about it I'm like and so I thought oh God I don't want to push her yeah like this was the hardest thing I've ever done she's probably feeling the same thing let me give her time so I said okay well why don't you think about it and call me back she goes okay and I'm holding my breath I'm expecting like in the next five minutes yeah the next morning the next day five days go by she forgot about it oh geez all day long dude this is all I'm thinking about the entire time she forgets we had the conversation she gets in a car accident and I'm like I want to call to check on her but I'm afraid at the time I know women listening to this probably they just think we're stupid and and we are we gonna understand I was thinking if I it would be taken advantage of her vulnerability now that she's been in an accident to go and ask this question or go talk to her when she hasn't had time to come back to me finally I just called to check on her and at the end of it when I realized she's okay I was like so what do you think about what we talked oh yeah I forgot all about that yeah it's so weird how that can happen and I just wonder how many people who have a goal whether it's real estate investing or anything that are trying to make connections trying to make mentors they want to sell more houses they want to connect with the broker whatever it is that are in there in their own head beating themselves up having no idea the other person doesn't even realize it's happening yeah so the question is for people to think where you been to vague where are you not being direct enough in your life uh are you actually asking to buy that person's house or are you beating around the bush like you love this house yeah I wish they could own one just like this someday right same with like business partners oh man we'd be great together yep it'd be great instead of like what do you want yeah like this is like Jerry Maguire is that the one who was like what are you no no Ryan got no this is Ryan Gosling on the notebook he's like screaming at uh Rachel McAdams like what do you want what do you want and like she's like I don't know he's like what do you want like that's what I'm asking people right now like what do you want you want to buy that house you want to work with that partner you want to borrow that money you want to raise that Capital go ask for what you want you get what you ask for not what you imply but what stops us from doing it is the rejection the rejection the fear we don't want the rejection it's not worth it there's a scene in Rocky Balboa where he's talking to his son and his son's kind of lost his path in life you know that scene I'm talking about and uh Sylvester Stallone's character Rocky is telling him like you need to go after what you want you're making excuses winners don't do that you're better than that and he says in life it's not about how hard you hit it's about how many times you can get hit and keep going I get tingles every time I think about that right like I wonder if you could measure someone's resilience with rejection if there's a clear connection between how successful they are how many times can life punch you and can you stand in there and get punched over and over and over to learn the pattern of what punches look like yeah before you start slipping them and then eventually the other person gets tired you can knock them up pretty easy but all of us want we have this fantasy that we want to walk in there and I hit so hard in one punch it's easy I never break a sweat I'm amazing and that's the person that we're trying to model ourselves after and when it doesn't work out like that we go I guess I just wasn't good at it I tried it and it didn't work because there's people that do Jiu Jitsu that are incredibly good at it that are walking around like complete nerds you would never know but I think it's another thing if you do that for like night there's some kids in the class they go to that started when they were five and they're teenagers and they're just assassins and like there but nothing else in life they're like they've just done it so many times yeah their brain has seen the patterns and they know the movements and they see angles that someone like me that that thinks about it all the time I don't even pick up on if you commit to real estate investing like that if it's anything like that you're going to be successful so thank you for sharing that story could I throw one more piece in there uh in a related way I don't know how this connects to the actual toilet store that we started this conversation with but I will say this when it talks about asking for what you want and being direct that means you need to get clarity on what it is you want in real estate let's talk real estate specifically here uh there's something in a multi-family millionaire volume one that I talked about I call it the crystal clear criteria oftentimes in commercial real estate we call the buy box but Crystal Clear criteria is what exactly do you want to buy next I want you if you're listening to the show right now grab a pen and paper or write these five words down or five phrases down number one uh location where do you want to invest be specific you can have multiple locations if you want but just where you want to invest know exactly where you want to best invest number two property type what type of property do you want to buy number three price range where do you want to buy in with what's your max what's your Min number four uh is uh condition condition like you want ugly nasty girls tear down you want just land you want to build not like what you want a nice property That's a classic what do you want condition and the last one would be what I call profitability what makes it a good deal once you know that it's like hey David I'm looking for some real estate can you help me find some you're like yeah whatever right but if I'm like imagine me as a client what a good deal yeah I want a good deal yeah no David what I'm looking for is I want something in the Bay Area preferably the East Bay Area I want something between four hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand dollars I'd love it to have an extra unit I want to be something a little bit of a fixer-upper uh because I really like that idea uh and again how a house with an extra unit somewhere or the ability to add an extra unit and I just need this thing to break even on cash flow uh that's what I'm looking for are you gonna take me more seriously now oh yeah 100 right you know why people don't do that why they are subconsciously putting the burden of solving the problem on the person they're talking to so what you had done with Heather was You by saying I I I'm a good friend I like you I like to be around you but you never asked her out is you wanted her to figure out well then we should go out sometime so you didn't have to fill that rejection and I'm not criticizing you for that because I think I do it all the time I think a lot of people do it all the time but that's where that comes from oh dude can I take this to a um uh let me I'm gonna take this to a PG-13 level real quick so if you got kids listening to this maybe uh maybe skip the next 30 seconds but men do this all the time in regards to sex with their wives right or their you know girls right they imply what they want like they would love to have more sex they're like oh what a great night tonight right we got some time the kids are in bed um I wonder what we should do tonight right she's like we could have strawberries yeah exactly we could get caught up on The Bachelor yeah yeah it's like what if I was just more direct and I don't mean that in a mean way just saying like I would like to do this tonight yeah I bet you they would love that I bet you they would love because I'm gonna have everyone do a do me a favor right now we're gonna do a little practice here I want everyone to pause this podcast to listen to it pause it right now I want you to text one person something one person in your world what you want now not not talking about the bedroom but like real estate wise unless you're married and that is what you want unless that's what you want right that's fine but yeah I loved it like right now pause it go text somebody what you want and then I want you to do that again tomorrow and then the next day and I want you to get crystal clear on what it is you want if you don't know what you want make it up I don't care it's more important than that you decide than what you decide good stuff all right moving on to number two you and I interviewed Stephen pressfield the author of The War of art one of your favorite books and Steven has a very no-nonsense approach to winning in life and he often talks about you have to treat your goals like a business you want to buy another property but we get stuck in analysis paralysis or you get scared off by some new type of financing or you say I'm not in the mood to take on another rehab I don't feel like it right now professionals don't let their environment or their own mind tell them what they should or shouldn't do they don't follow their feelings professionals do what has to be done how did that show change your life dude uh Steven pressfield is one of my favorite uh people on the planet the war of art is one I mean like literally we send a copy of the war of art to every single person who joins the better life tribe every person gets that book and somebody asked me yesterday why that book why'd you choose that I said because that book if you can master that Concept in the war of art you can Master anything and that's the idea is that there are amateurs and there are professionals amateurs do things when they want to professionals do things because they need to get done a great quote from that book that he's actually in that book quoting somebody else but I love this line I love it so much on my tattoo and on my body someday and the idea is this it's uh the creative habit is the name of the book and she just talks about how um you know there's a famous story in uh I cite this in the war of art where somebody asks the great writer Somerset mom if he wrote when inspiration struck him or if he wrote on a schedule and he said I write only when inspiration strikes me he says fortunately it strikes me every morning at 9 30. sure and so the idea being I show up yeah and the magic happens The Muse is what he calls it it's kind of a metaphor for like this this magic this action the results that result from you showing up and doing the work and if we just that's why it's called the war of art people might have misheard that and thought we were talking about the Art of War we're not talking about the Chinese Sun Tzu whatever or uh art remember the war inside you and this idea of resistance resistance is a force of nature like gravity like anything else and pressfield Nails this and he says resistance is what causes us to lie in bed and scroll Tick Tock instead of analyzing that deal it's the thing that makes us uh lie in bed watching TV instead of wooing our wife right it's the thing that stops us from doing the things we actually want to do and it holds us back it's kind of like a self-limiting belief in a way but it's an i it's a real force and it's very powerful the Bible talks a lot about how broad is the wrong road and many people take it but Nero is the righteous Road and a few people take it there is never a point in this journey of success where you don't feel that resistance there is always the temptation to scroll through social media or sleep in a little bit longer Jocko takes this on when he wakes up every single day at 4 30 right I've noticed that the more I eat of certain foods the more I want to eat those Foods yeah if I eat more vegetables and and steak the more I want that if I eat more noodles and carbs the more I want it like our brain and our body is programmed to do more of what we already did and uh oftentimes when you wake up and you get yourself into the keyboard at 9am it's much easier to write when you've been writing and it can go the opposite like you and I are going to go lift weights when we get done with this the more you lift weights the more your body starts to want to lift weights the more you start to feel wrong if you don't exercise the more momentum you get when you're not doing it you never feel like doing it yeah yeah it's so true uh and and there's a there's an identity component to this as well right there's a you are somebody who works out and and I I'm not right now like I've been going to the gym I've gone to gym quite a bit in the last few a few months but I I still don't have the identity yet of a gym rat right like a weight lifter of weightlifter yeah now I have to run you like to swim you like to Surf I like to do that stuff yeah I have that identity somewhat I've kind of lost it with running and Jiu Jitsu lately and surfing because I haven't done as much of it um I'm actually trying to change my identity to be as somebody who goes to the gym and so how do you do that how does that become just who I am like at some level it's a chicken or the egg problem right either like my identity doesn't say go I go to the gym every every day yet so I have to force myself manually to do it but if you force yourself manually to do something long enough it becomes habit becomes routine habit turns into routine routine turns into identity so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to craft my identity I call it identity theft I'm trying to steal an identity that I want I don't have that I want that identity because I know what that identity comes a better life at the kind of life that I want so what does what do I have to do in order to get that identity over the Long Haul how do we stick with something though for the Long Haul how do I stick with the gym let me show you exactly what I'm doing brought this in the room because I carry this with me almost everywhere I actually track this so if you have the intention journal from Bigger Pockets you can do it right inside there the intentional we have a section in there called The Habit tracker inside the Habit tracker and I also have this inside the better life tribe and make everybody do this this is literally what we do in the tribe is we report back every week on this thing but I've got this habit tracker here's what my habit that I'm currently tracking these are things that don't come naturally to me that I have to force myself to do on a regular basis so that I can adopt so I can create a new identity number one screen time under two and a half hours did I do it or not I check it out every morning did I do that yesterday or not ten thousand steps did I get it in fact today I'm already got it because I went for a long walk earlier uh did I enter a win into my as my food like for my food I entered there's an app called my body tutor it's 300 bucks a month I have a one-on-one coach that checks my food every single day did I enter my food in and can I call it a win if I can I give it a check mark did I pray with Heather before going to bed did I have a date or or some kind of like no kid time with Heather uh did I do morning like reading devotions Bible whatever with the kids did I have dinner at the table you know the studies that show like there's a amazing study that show when you have dinner at the table with your family it solves almost every problem that a kid has like it's like probably the number one predictor of a good kid uh is the amount of dinner you have at the table with them and then the next one this is why I bring it up gym session did I get to the gym so it's not natural for me right now I have to force myself to do it but by tracking it I'm instantly better well check this out this is my week right now I know you guys can't see this but gym session my goal is three times this week nope nope nope nope I only have three days left in the week but I'm gonna report back to my pod my accountability group on Tuesday and I'm gonna have to tell them that either I didn't or I didn't do it so guess what we're doing after this podcast we're lifting away because we're doing tomorrow we're lifting weights because we're doing Saturday I only got three days left I'm gonna get it right so I am forcing myself through a combination of habit tracking and accountability to get the habit so I can turn it into a routine so I can change my identity so I can change my life and that's what you have to do if you want your life to change that is what a professional does and that is why the war of art changed my life it's a good thing I came to Hawaii it's a good thing helping change your identities it wasn't for me do you have the identity of a weight of a guy who lose weights and so yeah when I don't do it I don't like how I feel yeah I have this natural thing that makes it easier to go to the gym because if I'm not going I feel bad versus when it's not natural for you it's not your identity you can skip it and doesn't bother you yeah and for those who are not understanding the connection to real estate here you know there's a lot of things you have to do in real estate uh on a regular basis analyzing deals getting leads somehow maybe calling Brokers uh making an offer whatever there's there's actions you can do on a regular basis and if that is not natural for you right now Define what those are track them get accountability on them and do them let me add one more point and we'll move on why did I suddenly start going to the gym again I mean yeah why did I add that as a habit on here you know why one identified what it was but two Alex Felice so Alex Feliz is a buddy of mine who uh he's been around the Bigger Pockets world forever he just came on full time to be the creative director of like the whole better life movement tribe whatever so he is video he's going to set up all our cameras here he's doing all that stuff Alex is a gym rat he loves it goes every single day you can tell by looking at him he's a gym guy so you know how much easier it is for me right now to go to the gym because you're in a community people who go to the gym uh and so every day Alex I can't go to the gym I'm like yeah let's go right it's a whole lot easier to get to the gym because of Alex who is Alex in your life that will drag you with not even it's like that Alex said not to do it he just by him going by osmosis I am more of a gym person because of Alex who is that Alex in your life that you need to get around and you will naturally become a better real estate investor or a better husband or a better father or better mother kid wife whatever it is role you play if you get around somebody who has that identity right now you will start to steal their identity and it'll change your life that's great number three episode had to do with Cameron Harold and the Vivid Vision that was episode 447 and I don't know we need to cover this because I think you already covered it in previous ones where you're talking about Crystal Clear criteria uh deciding is more important than what you decide you mentioned that yeah uh let's just we've already gone into the importance of having Clarity but what else was in your vision when you got Clarity that made a big difference in where you are now yeah let me tell the quick story so I went to uh best ever conference it's a real estate conference put on my Joe Fairless in Denver this is like five years ago and I was on stage and I was like man I don't deserve to be here like I had like 30 rental units and these guys have hundreds sometimes thousands or some people that remember that had a thousand more or more units two thousand three thousand they're big syndicators and whatever and I was like the only reason I'm here is because I have a big mouth and I can sell tickets like I don't want to be that guy that's on stage and I don't deserve it I want to earn my spot here and so I left there and I read a book I read it then and I was like oh my gosh this is so good the Vivid vision is a description of what it looks like in the future the team then figures out the plan to make that come true and I had such a clear picture of where I wanted to go in life the idea is very simple don't just like write out a basic premise of like I want this many units and this much money but like craft that into a vision a story or a picture something that's a little bit maybe artistic so what I did it's actually on the wall right behind you I know it's all out of focus in the video but it's called the 50 million dollar Surfers it's a four foot post for my wall it's a newspaper article written three years in the future how a small team of Adventure Seekers built a real estate Empire helped Millions Achieve Financial Independence and kept their Humanity intact and it begins December 31st 2021 Maui Hawaii Open Door capital and maui-based investment firm is an investment firm on like anything you've seen instead of suits and ties you'll find a small team wearing board shorts and flip-flops and it goes on from there in fact I read the entire Village Vision at the end of that episode if you want to go back and listen to it I think I did it anyway I think the whole thing I read uh is you can hear what my vision was now have I hit every one of those perfectly not perfectly you but I said we bought 50 million dollars of real estate on December 31st 2021 we closed we had closed over 300 million dollars of Real Estate that is powerful in itself is having a vision for where you're headed it's equally powerful if not more for getting people on your side remember we talked about Clarity oh there's someone said this ties in when you have Clarity like I said earlier if I were to tell you I want a house in East Bay that's a duplex blah blah I now have clarity people want leadership people want Clarity people around you want somebody who knows where they're going and what they're doing so I as soon as I made that all of a sudden everyone's like yeah let's do it that sounds good and everyone followed me and I was like I don't really know what I'm doing here but this is great like I just made up a vision for my future uh a buddy of mine Chris Wood the other day uh sent me a message um uh that said hey I got a really cool idea you can use Chad gbt to create your Vivid vision and I was like oh no way that's a good idea so he just he was showing me and I checked test and usually write a couple of the points that you want like I want this I want this I want this and say write that in a newspaper article three years in the future and it'll write it and it's amazing like so if you're not an artistic writer you can still create a vivid Vision off of that where are you headed realistically but also make it a little bit of a challenge and then show that to everybody tell everybody in fact I took that vision and I showed Ryan Murdoch and I said this is what I want he said let's go and Ryan led the charge to get there until we brought in Walker who now runs the company and now we're like I said we're closing up not 50 million we're closing in a billion dollars of real estate in the next 10 years in order to make 10 billion dollars of real estate we're going to give away a billion dollars uh in fact let me tell you the mission of the better life tribe it's very clear we're gonna have 10 000 members paying an average of 500 a month in the next three years for that they're all going to change their lives but that's going to produce 50 million dollars a year we're going to give 100 of that profit away to fight human trafficking that's a mission people can get behind not only are you making your life better and getting Financial Freedom yourself and we're gonna we are going to make sure everybody in there gets Financial Freedom we're gonna free millions of people from the horrors of slavery that's a mission people can get behind and that's why people are like that's why people are following me and volunteering and helping and we're getting celebrities on board we're getting all this cool stuff because I have a vision and people crave Vision so that's the lesson there is get a compelling vision for your life Clarity and it's okay if what you pick adjusts and Justice yeah sure I think a lot of people are afraid to put that down because I don't know for sure well is it more clear than where you were before yeah moving in the right direction yeah positive direction just every step forward gives you a better life yes that's good number four episode was uh number 365 where we interviewed Jocko willink we also touched on this one a little bit already because we can't help ourselves but just share information and dump value every single chance that we get uh so we've already described how that led to jiu jitsu and extreme ownerships but for people who haven't heard of the concept of extreme ownership can you just share briefly what that is it's really straightforward right your mistakes are going to happen your life is going to happen your life is going to unfold and it the longer you sit around and blame other people other things other circumstances for this for the situation that you're in the longer you're going to be in that bad situation the minute that you say okay this is what's going on this is on me and I'm gonna do what it takes to get it fixed if you take that attitude I'm telling you right now that is that will turn your life around yeah it means that everything in my um in my uh life is is my wife's fault moving on just kidding but that's how people react right it's like oh I I didn't get laid so it must be my wife's fault I didn't get that real estate deal I must buy my agent's fault I didn't get in shape must be the Gym's fault extreme ownership says no it's yours everything is your fault everything's your fault everything's your responsibility everything is your um ability to change like you get to control your life now it's true there are bad things that happen to people and it's not saying hey that person that was mean to you it's not your fault that they're mean to you but you chose to be in that setting oftentimes that's right no again not always I don't want to make it sound like especially people in who had traumatic you chose to be the kind of person they'd be comfortable being mean to maybe in some way maybe yep and so and even in the random case where it is completely like an asteroid from space comes down and annihilates your house you still bought your house but okay it's now you're it's still your responsibility did you have a plan in place for what you're gonna do what are you gonna do if you're an asteroid hits your house what are you gonna do like did you have enough insurance to cover you right it's a mindset shift that says I take 100 ownership of all things in my life and because of that mindset I I will never play the victim I will never play this idea of I'm just waiting on another person no I will direct everything uh and I will control where my life goes and as the world hits it and it moves I'm just gonna move it right back because I know where I'm going because I take ownership of it can I share what I love about this approach to life with you when there is a problem whoever takes ownership of the problem has the bigger burden is that fair yeah that's why most of us don't like ownership we don't really naturally like responsibility people want leadership because they see the perks of it they don't understand the responsibility that comes with it this is why there's not as many leaders people don't even want to take responsibility for getting Clarity of what they want in their own life it is not natural to be responsible because we don't want the burden when your mindset in life is how do I avoid burden how do I make it as easy on myself as possible it's not natural let's equate a burden to lifting the weight picking up the rock the 20 pound Rock and moving it if you are consistently the person in every scenario that takes responsibility for the outcome and you are the one consistently moving the rock do you get stronger or do the people get stronger who shirk the responsibility that's good so if you take a lifestyle of every time you walk by that rock pile every time there's any problem you lift the weight you lift the weight you lift the weight stronger and better and when you get stronger and better things just happen to work for you better in life opportunities come along that you can take down that somebody else can't take down and the people who are not stronger don't understand is because you've been taking responsibility your whole life that's where you get the must be nice to be strong must be nice to be big enough to move that rock you know here in Hawaii we love to do what we call whale hunting it's actually just get on paddle boards and paddle out in the middle of the ocean try to find whales right so what we'll do is we'll wake up early we'll be like 6 a.m I'll walk outside I'll look on my porch and I'm looking out or my Lanai and we'll look out on the ocean and we'll look for the spouts whatever say there she blows yes we do every time and you look for like the Mist right because the whales out there okay there's whales out there let's go so we drive down that we load up our boards we drive down the beach uh we run down the beach we put our boards in the water and then we paddle out and we look the whole time we're looking where are the where are the spouse where are they at where are they at and we see them on the very distance right but we don't paddle to them because you'll miss them they're moving so we paddle in front of them and we paddle paddle paddle paddle paddle and then the whale Dives down when we're halfway there and we're paddles for an hour and we're tired and we're miserable because it's just paddle paddle against the waves and the wind get out there and the dive Dives down and he's gone and like we don't see it anymore we're sitting there looking for 20 minutes whale's just gone but then on the horizon we see another one smoke goes up with the mess goes up so we paddle over that way and the whale goes down we lose it and then all of a sudden we see one that's 100 feet away right next to us I mean just out of the water and it's like whoa It's like there's a whale right there in fact that was the last time I went out with Alex me and Alex went out together and we were out there for an hour hour and a half saw nothing I turned to Alex I go I go yeah dude it's just a dud today and we're not gonna see and as I said we're not gonna see one not 10 feet away a gigantic whales went right next to us I mean what are the odds of that right now nine times out of ten when I go whale hunting I go out there on the water we get within 100 like we get 100 yards from a whale if not sometimes they pop up right next to us it's nine times out of ten is that luck right is that luck no I mean yes right completely lucky but I I got up at six I watched the water I went down to the water I paddle for an hour I paddle for another hour I went around and then I got lucky but what do the people on the beach say lucky must be nice Dev the whale pop up right next to you right they don't see that extreme ownership is saying I'm gonna paddle until I get until I get what I want it's saying I'm gonna get the best board I can say I'm gonna wake up early I'm gonna watch The Horizon and when you do those things right and you take ownership of the little things you get the results of the big things there's a belief of people that are usually not successful at something that the thing just happens or it doesn't happen yeah right like the whale just showed up or it didn't show up the people that become successful start to recognize that it was actually incredibly predictable that it would happen for that person right so you could either look at life looking forward saying I'm gonna take that journey and I hope that on that Journey success finds me yeah or you can look from the end looking backwards and say life wants to give me opportunity responsibility needs to find a home there is a lack of leadership there is a huge void where like you said people want to follow leaders they can't find anyone to find if I become that there will be an abundance of opportunity and I'll get to pick whichever one I want if I be if I become able and capable of bearing the the uh the weight of that responsibility if I am strong enough to carry that weight there's probably a hundred people out there like oh my God we have a strong person give them opportunity give them a raise give them a job give them a position when you have the skills you the stuff finds you at this point in your life you don't have to go out there hunting for opportunity there is opportunity everywhere because you have skills that can capitalize on it the people without the skills don't focus on becoming who they need to be to get what they want they wait until the thing happens and say can I do it or not am I ready or not can I do that job or not not who do I have to become to have that job and I'm only saying this because once you get there and you look back you realize it was very predictable that I would be in this position there's a lack of good real estate agents a lack of good Brokers a lack of good pod has a podcast hosts a lack of people that can articulate themselves a lack of trustworthy people that give Financial advice that aren't just trying to steal your money and get rich off of you your Nativity like do you agree in general that once that if you focus on getting stronger the opportunities will find you 100 I mean look at my if you look at my business my real estate business who runs the whole thing CEO Walker Meadows yeah Walker was a freaking intern you were raving about that guy from the minute you met him because he took ownership he went he came in as an intern he was like hey you guys a spreadsheet sucks let me rewrite redo this our underwriting model oh he didn't just sit there and criticize I know right yeah spreadsheet sucks that's why I don't have that's why I don't have this you gave me a bad spread yeah he was like I'm gonna redo this whole thing he took ownership of everything and over time he went from intern to Acquisitions to director of VP of Acquisitions to uh coo over like a two-year period you know what my uh the better life tribe uh which is arguably like a 50 million dollar company in the last six months like in terms of valuation it's I mean it's a non-profit so we're not gonna sell it but it could be like it's a massively successful operation run by Matt Buck who's Matt Buck my intern my two companies that are insanely profitable and and successful are both run by interns why did I put map Buck involved in charge because he took ownership you know what uh I mentioned Alex Felice who runs the the whole creative side of everything we do the better life tribe he came in the first day and was like you're an idiot brand in that video let me just take over this for you I mean he's fairly nice about it but if you know Alex you know that's his personality he's like no no and he just takes ownership of it so guess what he's in charge of a whole lot of stuff today and so there is such a PL there is a disease of mediocrity in America today of people saying I'm gonna do just enough to not get fired versus I'm gonna be the best and take ownership of it so I don't care if you're in trying to build a real estate business trying to build your own business or you work a W-2 job take ownership and opportunities it will explode that's it's because extreme ownership is so rare that's where mediocrity comes from when you when you show up at a job and you don't give your best what you're really saying is it's someone else's responsibility to fix that problem and I wonder if you looked at Matt and Alex and Walker I I'm almost positive you would find a pattern or a common theme of areas where the showed up for you they took responsibility they fixed other problems and they did that enough times that you felt comfortable putting that yes 100 but what everyone does is they say I want to be the CEO of a better life just put me in there and if you're not gonna put me in there why am I going to try yep you're actually putting the responsibility on somebody else to give you the opportunity that you say that you want yeah this also goes back to when people always ask hey I want to provide value how can I provide value for you like Matt Buck never asked me how can I provide value for you Alex never asked how can I provide value they got in there and provided value right like they just did it uh they solved problems they took ownership of little things and so I gave them more it's like the biblical thing right like he was uh what is that who does whose faithful was that little given more we'll be given more yeah right Alex in the beginning did was faithful well actually literally what I did is Alex was a photographer and he worked very hard for three four years and every Bigger Pockets conference he'd be there filming taking video making good content he made a bunch of video series for Bigger Pockets he did an amazing job he worked worked worked work worked and he had to push his way in to get those videos on Bigger Pockets like he wasn't an employee he just was like I'm going to make you videos you're going to use them and be like okay I guess we'll use them it makes me think of the woman who complains about the guy who says do you want to go out yeah and he says where do you want to go and it drives him nuts like everyone I plan a date take me there I want to see what you're like I want to see what kind of a leader you are when you show up to the mentor and you're like I want to be in your world tell me what I can do to get there it's that same feeling yeah yeah Ryan murloc did the same thing right when I was like you know showed up my vision for where we're going in the in the company he's like all right let's go and then he went and worked on it he went like he just built built the thing until he gets to the point where you can hand it off to uh you know to the rest of the team really had a whole bunch of VPS like Walker and the others and now like Ryan's still around he's on the board of directors we have me Brian Murray Ryan and uh Walker sitting on the board and so things move because that's oh that's ownership take ownership of everything in your life and be grateful for the fact that no one else is yeah because that's when he tells the opportunities out there yeah it's shocking no one wants to touch the weights bro yep that's true man but when you're the strong person there's a huge need for you like look for those barriers to entry all right well dude yeah number five episode 457 where you and I interviewed Patrick David here in this very sea shed I remember that episode everything in life to me is about your next five moves so I came up with the title originally 15 moves because I was watching a documentary by Magnus Carlson and they were talking about how the Grand Master knows you know 10 or 15 moves Masters know five to ten moves Pros no three to five moves and the amateur only knows his next move when he plays chess what are your thoughts when it comes to strategically planning the direction that you want your life to take it's a great question uh let me let me start in a story uh I think it's called a cook treat c-o-ook have you heard of that a cook cook tree so thinking here in Hawaii there's these really really tall pine trees very straight tall like pine trees the reason they're called cooked trees is because when uh was a Captain Cook you know like the guy who came and discovered the or that discovered but you know came to the Hawaiian Islands they used to plant these trees back then uh and they would plant them as soon as they land on any Island around the world really but I hear it here in Hawaii they plant these trees and we have them all over the island now these really tall big wooden you know pine trees because they planted them knowing that it would take 50 to 70 years to grow to the size that they could use for a mast so what the empires did back in the day as they'd go around they'd plant these trees all over the world wow so on all the islands they went to they'd keep the little seedlings in their boat so they plant them so that 50 to 75 years in the future think about delayed gratification yep they would have a mast that they could use if one broke because if you have a mass that broke and there's no trees around you are stranded there for life and so the Forward Thinking there so the question is in your business where are you planting some cooked trees that your family is going to take advantage of that's that that's the delayed gratification that gets you Financial Freedom now yes you can get it earlier than that but what Patrick was talking about there was this idea of like thinking way ahead thinking five moves ahead 10 moves ahead like the whole like this is I'm not just trying to get in survival mode like Masters think way way way ahead and so they plan for Generations that was the idea with Rosie's uh fourplex let me explain that story for those who haven't heard it uh very simple process or a very simple um piece of real estate I bought a four unit property the price doesn't really matter but I bought it really cheap it was a nasty nasty property I spent one year fixing it up but I bought it the week she was born it was actually the first outing Rose he had the week she was born uh and by the time we were all done with it we had about it's about call it 150 000 into it meaning the loan and everything about 150 Grand we put it on an 18-year mortgage so it's actually a 30-year mortgage to set up the payment plan to be half in 18 years because 18 years after Rosie was born she's going to be going off to college at the time you can even go back and listen because I mean I was doing the podcast around the time that this happened that I bought it but at the time I said that in 15 years from now or 18 years from now the property should be worth between two and three hundred thousand dollars I thought it might double over the next 18 years the property today is worth closer to a quarter I mean a half a million dollars we still owe about 100 Grand on it maybe a little bit more than 100 Grand on it but already Rose's entire college is paid for and now I've been making cash flow and probably more than her College probably her car down payment on her first time right all from one deal that I bird I did the burst strategy so I don't have to use a lot of cash uh we get I get cash flow but imagine this imagine let me even more simple imagine you buy any house in America that breaks let's call it a break even if you don't want to lose money let's say you make no cash flow on that property whatsoever you just break even let's say you get no tax benefits even though you would but you're not going to need tax benefits at all all you did was bought a property anywhere in the US and put it on a 15-year mortgage and you broke even on that on that strategy at the end of 15 years even if the property never went up in value ever didn't go up a dime you've still paid off the mortgage from let's say 300 000 house you bought it's now paid off to zero so worst case you have a 300 000 house that's you owe nothing on it boom kids college education paid for that's it with Rosie now with wilder I did something different Wilder I took fifty thousand dollars and I said this is your college education and I put it into Open Door capital and I just put it in my own fund because what I wanted how mad's Rosie going to be if that ends up being worthless 300 million it probably already is uh but the deal I I ran the numbers and it was pretty similar um when I when I extrapolated out of like a 15 per year uh average annual return of fifty thousand dollars ends up being like I don't know like 250 Grand 300 Grand something like that but I did that again I don't care about the money I care about the lesson I want Rosie and Wilder that I planted treats for them 20 years ago that changed their life when they're 18. that lesson will stick with them forever and I wanted to show them in two ways I wanted to show them how to do it on a passive way I wanted to know how to do it in an active way the burst strategy it was a hell of a year like it was hard work it was it had like squatters and we had City problems we had just it was a mess to renovate that property so Rosie can see the hard work and hear that story and they can also hear what it's like when you just passively invest and you kind of get the same result at the end of the day either way college is paid for so that's the uh thinking a little bit so where do I go to find a house for two hundred thousand dollars that's now worth five hundred thousand dollars we'll go back to the conversation earlier everywhere uh in terms of like every property today is likely to be worth double or triple 20 years from now before what you paid before yeah but when people hear the strategy they don't like the thought of well in the future it's going to be worth more but it's not guaranteed I don't know that it's gonna be worth more yeah right but that's what okay fine take out the not worth more take out the taxes take out the cash flow all you get is a loan pay down at two point all right all you if that's all you got you can guarantee you don't yeah you can guarantee doesn't pay down yeah right yeah you can mathematically see that if you buy a property and put on a mortgage and you pay it off over time it you that is real wealth that you are building it's shocking how simple real estate is I had this thought I've never shared this in my 2008 or so I've been saving to buy a house on the market was just exploding it was getting away right yeah and I was talking to some real estate agent on the phone this is before I ever bought a home and said I want to buy a property that's going to make a little bit of money I didn't know what cash flow was called I didn't understand a formula for Roi at the time I just thought I want to buy something that makes a little bit of more than the mortgage in my head that was like a safety net and I almost put a lot of money down and she's like well you better put a lot of money down if you're going to buy something and I and I was thinking well she's kind of discouraging me from doing this but I thought about it and I thought well it's going to get paid off over 30 years so if I wait long enough it's a no-brainer this is a great deal and then I probably don't have to wait the Whole 30 years before it would cash flow I bet you five or six years into it it would probably start to cash flow from the rents going up and then I thought well if I had to wait five years but I owned it for 30 25 of those years is Cash flowing and it exponentially increases every year so that the cash flow in year 2025-27 is so much that any money that I lost in years one through five is probably not significant you just when you look at the big picture there is nothing better to do with your money than buy real estate it's incredibly simple it's that we always front load the process we look at right now what is the cash flow in year one when I first buy it what's it gonna be like and we just get zoomed in on that versus with Rosie and Wilder you're saying they're going to get this in 18 years what's the best place to stick money for the next 18 years and it and now what do you know the properties I've appreciated a ton they have a ton of equity yeah I got lucky right yeah but the whale popped up right next to me the well popped up right next to you we got lucky that's it and everyone's like oh yeah it must be nice to be Brandon and David they got it at the right time that's a great point now are we gonna get lucky again in the next 20 30 years right does anyone really believe that the net that we're gonna default on our debt payments that we're just not gonna print more money to get us out of this that we're not going to have even more inflation right like it I I can't tell you for sure so people that want that certainty I can't guarantee it but I would say odds are the whales are going to be over there and if you're out there paddling when they come by you're going to become a millionaire putting your money in real estate now you and I have talked a little bit we won't get into it too much my concern is much more that like being a millionaire isn't going to mean anything yes that's a that's right so it's not you're investing in real estate to build huge wealth you are investing in real estate to prevent yourself from losing the wealth that you've already created that's a really sad thing for people that are that are working hard and saving money and investing so much of their time into something that they don't want to do and then they're losing the value of it as their money becomes worth nothing you almost have to put in real estate just to break even then you have to put it in good deals if you want to get ahead but even if that's all you did was just put it in real estate to break even you're still better off than the people that did nothing yeah that's very true man all right last question what was the biggest mistake that you have made on a podcast oh gee and what was the most fun show you've done we made a pretty big one here in the sea shed at one point did we what's that one Jim quick oh geez yeah that was oh geez oh geez uh Jim quick I'll tell the story real quick but um real quick uh Jim quick is a phenomenal author speaker writer very cool guy one of the more high level biggest most famous guests we've ever had yeah he does the biggest podcast yeah he could have been on Oprah yeah if you wanted to yeah so yeah he's very smart like brain guy brain guy on memory and using your brain and intelligence that's what he teaches on so he gets on the podcast and he's like and he says some compliment like yeah you guys the systems are really good it was really nice getting on the show at the beginning and I go yeah man we got so many good systems here we have this podcast dialed and I was like and I said the words I'm so terrified of losing a recording that we have backups of backups of backups I said the words backups of backups of backups because we do unless somebody forgets to hit the record button in which case we have no backups of backups of backup so about 45 minutes of that show I'm sitting there chatting you know having a great conversation I look down and I see that we never hit record and I just turned the looks you gave me like oh no and we start texting like it was so dramatic Brandon I thought you were messing with me yeah like I thought you were trying to trick me oh geez that was so bad well this is after we had you specifically said yeah it would have been different if I wouldn't have been so arrogant about it right like we're so good at this we're amazing and so 45 minutes in I I'm like do we just pretend that never happened and we just never air this episode and part of me wanted to avoid humiliation was to torpedo a great show and just not have to not extremely accept not take ownership of my mistake oh there's a lesson in there uh instead I said Jim I am so sorry man and we screwed this up and I and he was so gracious and was like hey no problem and let's just start back over and we started back over and we did a great show it was humiliating uh he said no problem with his words his eyes said a little I remember there was some frustration that he was gracious enough he was gracious yeah and I don't know that we ever spoke to him after that so uh the lessons there don't be arrogant don't uh forget to hit record but it led to a lot of improvements we use a different platform now when we're recording that we never used before because it's we don't the platform itself records we don't have to worry about remembering to hit the buttons on all of the hardware that you had set up and you know what there's one other lesson here to pull out that episode with Jim quick right that was such a big deal at the time it was a monster big deal like that because Jim quick was coming on the show and it's gonna change our podcast forever today Jim quick is one episode out of 600 yeah right it's a most people listen to this right now listen to you and me never heard that episode it made no difference we could have scrapped the episode we could have played the episode it was one rock but the emotions in the moment made it seem like it was in the emotions that fellow within the world so it's one rock in the wall it was you know we've been moving rocks for 10 years straight on this podcast so one rock got dropped in the middle of a thing yeah it wouldn't have mattered we could have screwed it up anyway it would have been fine so just a good remember that in life when it comes to real estate too is like it's just a deal it's just one deal it's just one rock if something goes wrong okay you lose some money okay it's just a rock what matters is the wall at the end of the day like what matters of the journey first of all that you enjoy the journey that's number one enjoy the walk across the field moving rocks from one side to another and then build a good wall and if you stick with that and just just keep walking keep caring you're getting stronger maybe you're moving some bigger rocks you're building a Great Wall on the other side of that thing at the end of your life you look back and be like dang like who cares about the couple rocks that I dropped here and there because I built something that's gonna last what was the most fun show that you ever did this one's been pretty fun it's been a lot of fun um maybe the one I first interviewed you and you made fun of me incessantly for an hour that was a lot of fun for me yeah okay that was a lot a lot of fun I mean there is an argument to be made that humor plays a role in being successful it releases tension it keeps it keeps attention sorry it re it releases tension it keeps attention yeah in a lot of ways yeah I mean people can just come up and they can just give you the pure vitamins but no one wants to listen to it I mean don't you have speakers that are very smart but your mind wonders when they're talking for sure yeah uh Yeah the more fun shows are usually the funnier shows and uh yeah it just it's entertainment I think that's actually one of the reasons Bigger Pockets did so well is it's been an entertaining show for 10 years um and people like to be entertained I like to be entertained by Joe Rogan Joe Rogan's an entertaining guy even though he's not always funny he's entered that's a good point and they're different so maybe you could Define entertainment as the ability to hold attention yeah that's it it's hard to do for people that think that uh you're just sharing information I I look at information like nutrients and I look at entertainment like taste like no one wants to eat food that doesn't taste good even if you know you're supposed to yep and you are a very entertaining man you are very easy to talk to you made this whole interview which was pretty long feel like it was very short you've kept my attention the whole time you've captivated our audience charismatic honorable man yeah I'm glad that we're further apart from each other than we normally are because it's easier for me to focus when you're not like right we turn the desk sideways and with that tractor beam with blue eyes I just suck me right in some of the solo shows we did I thought were a lot of fun yeah I always enjoyed doing solo shows with you mostly because we could play off of each other more we didn't have as much of having to worry about the guests I agree I agreed man well thanks for thanks for doing this thanks for being here thanks for coming back again giving the little guests some Nostalgia at your better life conference we actually recorded a podcast for you so people should go check that out they want to hear what it's like to see Brandon and I that got the band back together thanks man tell us where people can find out more about you I am an Instagram nerd so be security brand and beard of the Y beardy what but anyways I say beardy Brandon beer with a white people like okay that's b-y-r-d I'm like beard why think Spanish like beard ebrenden it's like beard and Brandon beardy Brandon on Instagram Tick Tock uh all that stuff uh the podcast is a better life with Brandon Turner we hit number 40 of all podcasts in the world that was awesome uh it's not there now but it was um we have a traveling podcast so I travel around the country and I record people and that's been a wild adventure uh to do that we'll like fly into a city and record seven podcasts at one time over a three day period with no sleep and we go out with the guests afterwards and it's been an adventure but man it's been fun so that's uh that's it a better life for Ben 10 to go to listen to the podcast and you were on it so go listen to that episode everyone it was actually I heard multiple people say that when you and I were chatting on we did a live podcast recording then we followed it up with a little interview after but when we did the live one almost everybody I talked to said that was the best part of the entire conference that I held uh and that it was the best thing that you and I have done together like people thought it was one of the best things tonight now I think this interview might uh was pretty darn awesome but go listen all right you got a lot going on man you've not been resting on your laurels that's for sure very cool to see this and cool to see that the vision is still firing even faster than it was pew pew we're doing our stuff together that's right thanks for joining us everybody please go check out Brandon all over the place and uh send him a message let me know what you thought about this show let you get out of here because you've been sitting down for a long time this is David Green for beardy pew pew Brandon signing up [Music]

Channel: BiggerPockets

Views: 74,220

Keywords: financial independence, financial freedom, brandon turner, fire movement, financial independence retire early, retire early, early retirement, how to retire early, passive income, real estate, how to get rich, how to become a millionaire, become a millionaire, entrepreneur, starting a business, personal finance, real estate investing, invest in real estate, how to invest in real estate, real estate investing for beginners, invest, biggerpockets, biggerpockets podcast, podcast

Id: 3C4j6dSn5u0

Length: 71min 45sec (4305 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023