A quick word from our sponsor today. Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited to have you on my journey to optimize life, to maximize happiness and to do it all while spending less and saving more.

So today I'm sharing the second half of my conversation with Brandon Turner. If you didn't listen two weeks ago, Brandon has had an incredible career in real estate, and that episode covered so many different aspects of the topic. Well, not unsurprisingly, successful people often have more than one area in their life that others can learn a lot from.

And after we finished up talking real estate, we covered so much more like setting goals, hacking self-discipline, using performance coaches, finding the balance between audacious business goals and quality family time and the mindset Brandon used to build a massive real estate empire while also living his ideal life. Oh, and since he lives in Maui, I also got his recommendations for your next trip there, some of which I actually took on the trip.

We just got back from. So let's get into the rest of my conversation with Brandon Turner. Brandon, welcome back. I want to dive right into mindset and systems because you've talked about that in our last conversation. You've talked about it a lot in the past. What are most people getting wrong when it comes to their mindset and the systems they put around it?

This might not be true for this audience, right? Because if you're listening to this show, like you're probably already a pretty high achiever. You've got goals, you've got things you want to do in life. But I'll say that most people live life in the backseat. They're being driven around in this crazy taxi around the world and they're just doing whatever comes at them.

They're not taking any control. So I would say 90% of the world is that way. They have no mindset because they don't know that's a thing. They don't know that there's a thing they should be concerned about. Like they work the same job. They hate and they're miserable for 50 years.

And they just look forward to the weekends where they can drink with their buddies, because that's just what life is. So assuming that these people are not that type, what are they getting? And it's related, right? It's knowing that anything is possible. Anything is possible. It's like your mom said when you were a little kid, right?

You can do anything if you try. Like, it's totally true, right? You could do anything. You could make millions in real estate. You could build a tech company. You could be a digital nomad and live on points and 500 bucks a month or whatever. Like you could do whatever you want.

So I'm a big believer of like, start with a feeling of life you want to have. Define your ideal day. Like, I love that practice. We're just like, what is the ideal perfect day look like? And then jot that down. And now you know where you're headed. Now you can find the strategy that's going to get you there.

But the mindset of this, like I want an ideal life and an ideal life is possible for me. So I'm going to pursue it with every ounce of my being. And almost everybody I know who is incredibly happy in life and incredibly successful, not just for money, but from anything, right?

People I know who have an amazing marriage. It's because they know that having an amazing marriage is possible and they work for it and they fight for it because they know it's possible. And so that's the thing. I think a lot of people in general miss is they never take time to envision what's possible and they just do what's ever in front of them.

I'm going to assume you're one of those people that wants an amazing marriage. You know, tell me about things that you've done intentionally to make that possible. So I set goals every year. This is one of those life changing things I ever did. My wife and I, every year on the first or maybe the second, whenever we get a babysitter, we will go out and spend like half a day or maybe even a full day doing our couple's goal setting retreat.

Now, in a perfect world, I'd go for like two or three days, go to the mountains or whatever. And I got little kids at home. I got a two year old and six year old. So right now that's not happening, but we'll get out for a day and we will just work together on where we want to be as a couple.

And that starts with a reflection on your past. Like, where were we last year? Where do we struggle? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? And then where do we want to be? So five years ago, we said within five years, we wanted a house in Hawaii.

We wanted a house where we could have people come and visit. Family and friends to come and stay with us. I said I wanted to surf more. I had all this stuff we want to do as a couple. And it wasn't five years later. We did it like nine months later, because as soon as we defined what was possible and we had a goal, all of a sudden I was like, well, hey, you want to go to Hawaii for a couple of months this winter while it's miserable and rainy in the Pacific Northwest?

Sure. So we went there. And because we knew we wanted to end up there someday, we started looking at real estate and all of a sudden we found a house. Right. Is that law of attraction? I mean, is that stuff or is that we had a vision for where we wanted to go and we work towards it.

So we do that in our marriage. We set goals together every year. We visit them every quarter. I have a sheet hung up on my bathroom mirror that has our goals for the year, as well as spots for checking off. And I'm not very good at checking, honestly, with this.

I wish I checked it every single day. All the habits that are going to give us a better marriage. But we at least have it in the mirror every single day when I open up for like my toothbrush. And so just being intentional, again, doing the things that we do in business and applying them to our personal life, that has made such a difference on the relationship side.

Do you do the same thing for other goals in life, whether it's business goals or your own personal nonrelationship goals? Yes, very similar. So I have a journal called The Intention Journal, and I basically just got everybody like journal in the world, every goal journal there was. And I used all of them for a while over the course of like three years.

And then I just made my own. But I'm not saying you have to get that one. I'm going to give you a really simple system that I used. So I have a vision for what my life to head. Right. I have longer term goals. Like I'm trying to buy $10 billion of real estate in 10 years.

That's just so far out there, though. So I don't like thinking in terms of like decade goals, even though I might have them. I don't like thinking in terms of even like three year goals, even though I have them, even one year goals. I don't love that much. It's just too far away.

So what I like to do is I like to do quarterly or 90 day goals. There's a great book out there called The 12 Week Year, where I get a lot of this from The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran, I think is the guy's name. So the idea is like every quarter I set three goals for myself.

I say, what are the three things this quarter I want to do? Typically, it's one relational goal. Usually it's a fitness goal and usually it's a business goal. For example, this quarter, one of my goals was simply to close the six apartment complexes we had under contract. By the end of the quarter, I want to be able to close those and raise the money.

And there's a lot of things that go into that. But that's the idea. So now I've got my three goals written out. In fact, one of my goals for the last quarter of the year is going to be to spend three days without the kids. That's a weird goal, right?

But that's the relationship one. My wife and I have not had a night alone without the kids in six years. Like since Rosie was born, we have not actually had a vacation where somebody watched Rosie. Yeah. And I'm like, this is a long time. So now the kids like the youngest is no longer breastfeeding.

He's eating on his own. He's a big kid now, two years old. Now we can do it. So I have the goal for the quarter every Sunday night, every single Sunday night. And again, if I miss it, I'll do Monday morning. I sit down and I rewrite what those three goals are.

I write, what is the purpose for the goal? I write that every week. Why do I want that goal? It just reminds me, it gets me back into the right mentality of like, what am I doing all this for? Then I write down what is my weekly goal? Like to be on track for my quarterly goal, what's the weekly goal?

So I write the weekly goal down. Then I was right. What's my most important next step? Like the smallest tangible thing I can do to accomplish my weekly goal. So let's say my weekly goal is to hire a new assistant. OK, well, what's the most important next step on that?

Well, I guess I got to put a job application out there. Nope, not good enough. Go deeper. I need to open up my computer and write a job description. Can I go even more specific? I need to go to Google and Google assistant job descriptions. So now what I've actually done here and just in the past three minutes of rambling here, I took a 10 year vision.

I went from 10 years to three to one to 90 days or, you know, a quarter down to a week, down to a day, down to an action. And every single morning I wake up and do the same thing. So every morning of the week, I just wake up and I say, what is my most important step to accomplish the weekly goal every day?

So I've taken a 10 year goal of buying $10 billion of real estate, and I've boiled the entire thing down to a 30 second task. Go to Google and type in personal assistant job description and hit enter. My entire future, my family's future, my generational wealth is all dependent on a 30 second Google search.

And then I do it and then I can do it again five minutes after that. And so that's my entire goal setting process. And I just bake it inside my journal. But yeah, that's it. Is there a way you structure your day or your workflow to be more productive?

I have a personal assistant, so she makes me do a lot of things that are important. Let's talk about hacking real quick. The idea of like credit card hacking or travel hacking or, you know, house hacking. Let's talk about self-discipline hacking. I have zero self-discipline, almost none. Like if there's a cookie on the counter, I will eat it.

If there is a meeting I can skip, I will skip it. If there is anything I need to do, I will let myself down. I will lie to myself. I will disappoint myself all day long. As a result, I'm really bad at getting things done. So I've had to hack my way into being productive and being efficient.

I'll give you a couple examples. One, I hire a personal assistant. So Jane, who's my assistant right now, Jane's awesome. Jane makes sure that I do the most important things and will yell at me. And I tell her that she has permission to like force me to do things.

And there's ways to do it right. For example, I get a massage once a week. I don't get a massage because it feels good. I mean, yes, it feels good, right? Like massages are fun. I get a massage because I know the most important thing as an entrepreneur that I can do is have uninterrupted thinking time every week, but I don't do it like I won't do it.

I will write that. I'll put on my calendar. Go sit at the beach and go think for an hour and a half or just process journal. I won't do it because I lie to myself and I disappoint myself all the time. But when Adriana, my Brazilian masseuse, shows up in my driveway and she's pulling behind this giant massage chair.

Well, now I'm going to do it, right? Because I've now obligated myself to somebody else. So then I go and get an hour and a half long massage. And most of the best ideas and problem solving I've had are during that massage. So a massage is simply a way that I have hacked my lack of self-discipline to do the things that I want to do.

I hire a personal trainer to come to my house to work out. I do the food thing. Like you said, I have somebody now helping with the kids so that I can do other things. I align my life so that way I am obligated to do the things that I know I need to do, but lack the self-discipline to get it done.

I even have accountability groups like mastermind groups that we meet every week and go through our goals. All this is designed to get me to just do something because I'm so darn lazy. Let me just throw a couple more ideas in case people are interested in more ways they can kind of hack their laziness or their self-discipline.

One of them, I am a big believer in checking boxes. Seinfeld has this quote from years ago. It's probably made up. It's probably one of those like Abe Lincoln said it kind of things, but where he said every day he writes one joke. And when he's done with the joke, he puts a big checkmark on like a spreadsheet or something like that.

And after a while, you start getting a lot of checkmarks in a row. And so his advice to this up and coming comedian he gave was don't break the chain of checkmarks. Just don't break the chain. So I'm a bigger believer of doing little tiny actions over and over and over and over and then putting them on a checklist.

Like that's why I said I have a checklist inside my bathroom mirror for some of our relationship habits. But I do it in my journal every single morning. So, for example, like read one page. I can read one page or I'm really bad at flossing, right? So I'll be like, I'm going to floss.

These are things now I'm not good at it, but because I'm tracking it now and because I have an accountability group that looks at my tracking, I would look stupid if I showed up and was like, yeah, well, I said I was going to eat healthy all week, but I just ate, you know, Cheetos and Mai Tais all week.

Like I would just look stupid because I don't want to disappoint my accountability buddies like the other guys that are like, hey, we're going to build our businesses, too. So I don't want to look bad in front of other people. So I will then get that accountability around them.

In fact, in my own company, I operate a system called EOS. Have you read Traction? Gina Wickman's Traction. So Gina Wickman has a book called Traction. Get a grip on your business. It's basically a system for pulling all the different pieces of your business together into one cohesive system.

It's kind of like what I said earlier with the goals. You have your big 10 year goal, maybe in a three year goal, and you track it down to a meeting that you have once a week with your team. But in that meeting, I say out loud in that meeting, like last week, I said I would do blank and I blank.

Last week, I said I would call three investors. I called two. In other words, I have to fail. I have to publicly fail in front of my team if I don't deliver on the thing I said I was going to do. So by adding in that piece of the meeting through the book Traction, again, we operate on this kind of system.

But that piece of the meeting is I said I would do this. I did this. That holds me accountable because although I will let myself down, I don't want to let my team down. I don't want to let them down. So the more I can obligate myself to things, the more likely the things get done.

I mean, at the end of the day, you are the results of what you repeatedly do. Let me say that again, because this is like one of the most profound statements. I didn't invent it. I've heard it said in many different times in many different ways. You get the results of what you repeatedly do.

You eat chips and nachos and Mai Tais every day. You're going to get overweight. You jog every single day. You're going to lose weight. You spend 15 minutes every day looking into your significant other's eyes, having a real conversation. You're going to have a better relationship. You avoid them.

You're going to have a bad one, right? There are certain things in life that give us the result of life that we want. So all we need to do to be successful in anything, I really believe this is like know where you want to go, know what things are going to get you there.

And when I say things, I mean the habits, the traits, the systems, whatever. Track those things and get accountability on it. If it's a group of guys getting accountability together, you know, guys meaning guys or girls, is it hiring a performance coach? Whatever that is, get the accountability. You should know where you're going.

Figure out what the steps are needed to get there. Track it so you can be aware of you getting there and not getting there and then get accountability so you can hack your self-discipline. You can accomplish anything, anything by doing that. I wish I could say that I'm eating a fully balanced diet every day, but the reality is that I am definitely not.

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Tell me about what that brings to the table. It's like therapy. It's literally just like it's like once a week, somebody asked me a bunch of hard questions that I have to answer them and think deeper. So just like the massage time is forcing me to have that unstructured, just open, like thinking time, the performance time is forced time to work on my business, not in my business, to work on my life and not in my life.

So my coach, his name is Jason Dries. It's like trees with a D at the end, Dries. He's like he'll ask me just very simple questions like, where are you not playing fully out right now? Or is that really what you want or is that what you're expected to say?

Right. Very like therapy type questions, usually around my business. So we get into a lot more than just business. But it's just a time every week that I'm forced to look at my business like an outsider, to look at my life like an outsider and to say, like, what can I do better?

How can I improve this? A performance coach is something I believe every single human should have if you can afford it. And if you can't afford it, then get a group of people together and do the same thing, just do it for free with a group of people. It's not as powerful because you're not paying somebody.

So there's no bias for action on their part to actually hold you accountable. But if you can pay someone to ask those tough questions, how does that not pay off a hundredfold? Even if only 10% of the calls I do with Jason are effective, the one out of 10 will completely transform my life.

Right. In fact, I left the Bigger Pockets podcast after 10 years. It all started with a question he asked me. He just said, it sounds like you're getting kind of burned out. You need to take a month off. How's that sit with you? Does that feel light or does that feel heavy?

And I'm like, a month off sounds amazing. I'm going to do it. I'm going to take a month off. I had never taken time off the podcast. And that one question led to taking a month off, which then once I had decided that was OK to take a month off, I was like, wait, why don't I just take the whole thing off?

Why don't I just stop? Why don't I just focus on the other part of my business? So having that person who just dives into your psyche and asks you good questions always pays off. I believe it always. Where would you tell someone who believes you? They're like, great, I need one.

Where do they go to find a performance coach? It's tough, man. I mean, you can go to the big organizations like the Tony Robbins or whatever, and there's nothing wrong with that. I like my guy. I got it from a referral in Jason Dries. I think it's the Jason Dries coaching.

He's got a bunch of people under him. Like those are like the big ones. There's a company called Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. In fact, the reason I thought of it, his name is on the front of the traction book. He's a coach that helps people. I think just knowing that you need that and then just talking to people and putting it out there and just like hiring an employee.

Let's go back to that previous conversation we have. It's really easy to find a performance coach. It's really hard to find a good performance coach that's going to hold you accountable and such. I always think someday it would be fun to own a performance coaching company. I don't own one now, but it'd be kind of fun to do so because I believe so strongly in it.

So I don't know. Do you have a recommendation? Let's fire it back at you. I don't know if I have a recommendation of where to find someone, but I think something different between an employee and a coach is that there are a lot of very good coaches we talked about.

It's hard to find a good employee. There are a lot of very good coaches that might be very not good for you. And so I think when you hire employees, you're like, is this employee bad? And you're like, yeah, they are. I got to let them go. A lot of times this has happened to me.

I had the highest recommended executive CEO coach when I was a founder. Every single person I knew loved this person. And as a friend, I love this person. But for me, they weren't actually the best coach. And it took me a long time to figure that out because I was so caught up in the fact that everyone said they were a great coach.

Everyone said they're amazing. So like something must be wrong with me if I'm not getting the most out of this. I think when it comes to coaching, when it comes to therapy, I think it's important to realize that there are people that are really good at their job that might not be really good working with you.

And so you might have to experiment. You might have to try a handful of coaches till you find the one that pushes you in the right way. And all of them might be good. So don't assume that because someone's good, they're good for you. That would be my advice.

That is phenomenal advice, right? Because there's also different types of coaches, right? You might not need the guy who's going to be like, you need to get to 10 extra business, you know, grow, grow, grow. Like you might need like, hey, you need to slow down and go be a father for a little bit.

Different coaches are going to push you in different ways. Then there's also like the coaches that are like, they're going to teach you how to do a certain task. And then the coaches that are more like a therapy, they're going to go wherever direction you want to go. Just trying out a bunch of them, trying to find what fits.

They're out there. And if you know that's what you need, just pursue it. Put it out there in the universe again. Law of attraction, quote unquote, or just knowing what you want and then relentlessly pursuing it. You're going to find somebody great and then you're going to transform your life.

I really believe that. So I want to get to family. But first, can you talk about the Starbucks strategy? We talked about a bunch of strategies. This is one that I've seen you talk about when it comes to big tasks. Let's hear about it. So Starbucks strategy looks like this.

I call it that just because this is how I've written my books. I've written like five books, right? The first book I wrote was called The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No and Low Money Down. Longest title ever. And I wrote that like, I'm going to write a book.

So I sat down one day and I started writing some words and then I put it away for a few weeks. I came back and I wrote a few more words and I put it away for a few weeks. And when I was inspired, I wrote some words. That book was hell to write.

It took me over a year to write it. I hated every second of it. I did not enjoy writing it. It turned out fine. The book's fine. You should read it if you have no money because it's a book for no money. Then the second time I was like, I don't want to do that again, but I need to write this other book on rental property investing.

So that time I said, I'm going to pursue this differently. First of all, I'm going to learn how other people write nonfiction books. And I studied a lot. And so this whole strategy comes from a bunch of other people. I didn't make this up. I don't make up anything.

I just regurgitate stuff. So I go to Starbucks with my wife. Actually, she was going to write a book at the same time. She was going to write it on managing. I was going to write it on just investing in rentals. And we sat down at a Starbucks and we made a commitment to ourselves and said, we will not leave the Starbucks until our book is 100% perfectly outlined.

It's really that quote, like the Abe Lincoln quote. Again, who knows if he said it? But he said, if I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four sharpening my axe. So what this whole strategy was, was like, I'm going to spend a focused, dedicated, nonstop period of time to sharpen the axe.

So for me, I sat down, I spec'd out the entire book on note cards. It was like 12 chapters, 12 sub chapters. Flip every card over and had an outline of what that sub chapter is going to be about. So at the end of the day now, every day after that, I ended up like 100 note cards.

I think actually when I was done every day, I had a note card for 100 days straight with what chapter it's in, what the sub chapter is, and then three or four or five bullet points and what I had to write. Well, that's easy. Now I just got to write 500 words to 1000 words a day.

And within exactly 100 days later, my wife and I both finished a book and we had two full books. Total length was almost 300000 words between the two. And yeah, sold over a million copies of those books. Now, all I'm getting at here is like sharpen your axe to find what success is going to look like.

Do the work up front and it makes everything else easier on the back end. So you talked about family. I think that there are very few people in the world who would say one of my big goals is to do anything measured in billions, right? You mentioned $10 billion of real estate.

Most of the people I know that really, really prioritize crazy, audacious business goals don't often talk also about prioritizing being a good partner and being a good parent and having listened to you talk a lot. It's something you do more than most. How do you find that balance? So first of all, I got into real estate.

I got into financial freedom. The pursuit of financial independence. And I know it's kind of a buzzword, but all I'm talking about is when I say financial independence, the ability to do what you want, where you want, when you want, how you want with whomever you want. It's just that freedom, right?

That comes with having money. It was never about getting rich, never about being a billionaire or anything like that, right? I wanted to pursue financial independence for two reasons. And I think both of these will resonate with you, right? Number one, when I was growing up, like my dad worked really hard, but he wasn't there much because he worked all the time.

So I rarely saw him. And I said, when I am a father someday, I want to be there for every ball game, every ballet recital, you know, every field trip. I want to be there with my kids. I want to be the best father I can possibly be. And I can't work 40, 50, 60 hours a week and have commuting to be able to do that.

So I started with that. And that was the one thing. The second thing I said, I heard a quote once said the world is a book. And those who don't travel read just a page. Like the world is so amazing, right? So big and there's so many things to see out there.

And I wanted to see as much of it as I can while we're here on this earth. And I knew that, again, being broke and working 40, 50 hours a week and getting my two weeks paid vacation every year, that wasn't going to cut it. So combining those two things, that's why I pursued real estate and business and wealth in general.

Now, fast forward a few years. I mean, I've achieved it. I could retire right now and just sit on a beach and do nothing, but I'd be bored out of my mind, right? I can only play Barbies and GI Joes for so many hours a day. So there's this balance that you have to have.

And there is no to quote Gary Keller in the one thing. There is no such thing as work life balance. It's work life balancing. It's a constant influx of flow that you sometimes have to go farther one way and sometimes you have to go farther the other. And therefore, I am constantly reevaluating where I am on that spectrum of too much work and maybe too much family.

Right. Because as an entrepreneur, too, we get paid in the future for the work we do today. We don't get paid today for the work we do today. Right. So we have to do the work now to get paid five years from now. We got to plant the seeds today in order to harvest then.

But I also need to make sure that my kids are being brought up right and that they're connected with me and that we have that solid relationship. So I guess that's why I talk about it a lot, because I'm very scared. Is that the wrong word? Maybe I'm very concerned that at the end of my life, I will look back and say, why did I work so much?

Why didn't I do the things that are most important in life? And the only way to know that is to continue to evaluate it and to have the conversation with people. So I love when this topic comes up because it forces me to introspectively look at my life and say, how am I doing right now?

Like, can I do better? Can I get more balance? What about you? What's your thoughts on it? I used to be someone I still am someone who really loves productivity, like inbox zero kind of everything. But one thing that I recently picked up. So we have two daughters, two and three months.

So still. Oh, yeah, you're in it. You're in it. I always wanted to get to inbox zero, but I've lately still prioritized. Right. When I'm working, I'm working in the most efficient manner. But when I get to the end of the day and it's actually nice that sometimes kids just force this, right?

Like we have an au pair. She's done a 530 like there's no real option. Like you got to be there at 530. I just kind of like let it drop. And I think I've spent so much time in my life feeling like, gosh, everything I do today is for the future.

I need to get it all done. I need to get all done. And then the next morning, I'm like, well, it didn't really matter that I got everything done before I went to bed. Now, there are times Tuesday night, this show comes out on Wednesday mornings. Like there are times where it's like, no, I do have to stay up because this thing comes out this time.

But for the most part, there are a lot of things that you feel a lot of pressure to do. And I found that the more I've built the muscle of getting comfortable with not doing some things, whether it's a task at hand or it's just saying no to a meeting, the more you get comfortable with it, the more one it's easier and two, you realize it doesn't matter.

So, yeah, I remember I got this email from a guy named James Bechara who has a podcast called Below the Line. We'd connected in the past and it'd been a few years. I reached back out to him and he said, you know what? I don't really want to do meetings because I'm trying to prioritize other things in my life, but I'm really down with asynchronous communication.

So if you want, you could go and use a tool like Loom and you could record a conversation you want to have part of it. And then I'd be glad to get back to you. And I was like, oh, wow. So one, it really raised the bar. Like, I'm not going to go record a video to talk to him to just shoot the breeze.

So like he's basically filtering for if you just want to have a BS conversation and talk, that's gone. And at the time, I wanted to catch up with him because I was trying to start a podcast, but I didn't really have my questions formulated. And it actually forced me to wait and ask when the time was right.

And then I started using that. And boy, it makes everything so much more efficient. And it's just helped me prioritize. So someone says, hey, you've started companies. Can you help me figure out how to start a company in the space that you did? I say, great. If you want to go to Loom and you want to record some specific questions or write them out in an email, I'm happy to answer those questions.

And if it eventually makes sense for us to chat, I'm happy to. But there's a lot going on right now, and I just have to let some things drop. And it's nothing personal. And learning to do that and getting comfortable doing that has made it so much more comfortable to go and say, you know what, like this week, our au pair is out of town.

She's in Boston, New York, Chicago, having a blast. And that means there's no child care and two kids is a lot. So other than this interview, I basically have no meetings all week. And I'm OK with that. And I'm letting things drop because I've gotten comfortable with that skill.

That's been the biggest thing for me, is that comfort with doing something that in your grindy kind of 20s, early 30s time of life just felt unfathomable. It's like, I got to get it done. Letting it go is very cathartic. That reminds me. And I love you say like, you know, you got to as soon as you got to drop some stuff right in the book, the one thing I'll bring it up again, Gary Keller, Jay Papasan.

They have the book, The One Thing and the metaphor in there that says that life is like juggling a bunch of balls, right? You're juggling family, health, your work, your career, your financial life. You're balancing all those things. And he says some of those balls are rubber and some of them are glass.

Right. When you drop something at work, it'll bounce right back. Like typically nothing's really that bad, but there are glass balls in our life. Right. Our relationship with our spouse or significant other is a glass ball. And you can only drop that so many times before it shatters. And so I'm always thinking a lot of my life is going to get dropped.

A lot of things are going to get dropped. Let's make sure we drop the right things. And that at the end of my life, like that would be a great reputation to have and a great like dying thought is I drop the right balls throughout my life. So that's what I'm aiming for.

And it's funny because I respected the email I got from James so much. I've had a handful of people that I would put in the category of like important people. Their emails are like, hey, I'm not checking email this summer. And I'm like, yeah, damn, that person's like they've got it figured out.

I didn't write back and be like, that person's an asshole. My reaction was like this person is prioritizing their life, in many cases, better than me. And so I would just encourage people to realize that most of people's reaction to your dropping the ball in a polite way might actually be kind of jealousy and envy more than frustration.

Another reason to do that by adding these bounds in your life, for example, I'm building a billion dollar brand. I have a billion dollars of real estate. We'll buy 10 billion. That should make my company about a billion in profit over the next five to 10 years. It's a legit like billion dollar profit business.

And I work at most five hours a week. Like, that's it. Like, I don't work a lot of hours at this. I'm going to launch a new business next year that I think is going to be awesome. And from day one, I have the requirement. I do not work more than five hours a week at this.

And the cool thing is, is by having those boundaries, I am forced to build a business that I am not within. Like, I am building it from the outside looking in. I'm not building it from the inside up. I'm not doing every single role. I'm saying, no, that's the rules of this business or this game.

I'm going to play within the rules. And so many people don't realize that you get to make whatever rules you want. This is your game, like your business is your game. Make it however you want. So establish rules like I only work this much. I don't work Fridays. I take Wednesday and Thursday and Friday off.

Like, who cares? Right. And then you will find a way to be successful because if you listen to this podcast an hour in or whatever we're in, like you're a legit person. You're going to find a way to be massively successful within the rules that you establish. So establish them.

Don't just play what's given to you. Define what you want to do, what sounds amazing, and then just go after that. Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be. I get it. Life comes at you fast. But trust me, your friends are probably desperate for a good hang.

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If you haven't read the book from Strength to Strength from Arthur Brooks, I think you should. I think you'd enjoy it. I had him on the podcast, and it's about finding a new form of happiness as you transition from a style of intelligence and work in your early life that isn't as compatible in the second half of life.

And second half is not like 70s. It's like, you know, late 30s, 40s kind of age. We were like, I'm finding a new way to work that is more compatible with long term happiness. That's one book I shared. You shared a lot of books. Are there other books? Where do you find them?

You seem to have them and collected them, and they've had a huge impact on you. Do you publish a list of them so people who want more of your recommendations can find them? Yeah, it's a good question. So I do read a lot. I read about a book a week on average, sometimes two, sometimes half.

I depends on how busy I am. But I probably average 50 to 100 books a year, pretty much every year. I have a rule with books. If I think about buying a book, if even the hint of an idea of like, oh, that might be a good book, I always buy it.

I think books are the best investment in the entire universe. I don't think anything comes close to the monetary investment of a book. But I don't have a list anywhere, per se. I do have a text message newsletter. Everyone does like newsletters. And I was like, how can I be different?

So I have a text message newsletter. Every Wednesday, I send out a text that has like a book that I'm reading and some little piece of advice that I got, et cetera. So that's just beardybrandon.com. There's no like sales. I'm not selling anything there. It's just like I read a lot.

So I'm always like, hey, here's what I'm reading right now. Here's a cool point from the book that they made. I read a lot. I mean, I give you five million recommendations and I remember a lot of what I read as well, because I always assume I'm going to have to teach it.

You ever seen those studies? Like you remember whatever, 10% of what you hear and 20% of what you read, blah, blah, blah. The studies have shown that the number one best way to remember something is not to teach it, per se. I've heard that said before, but it's actually a little more nuanced than that.

It's to learn as if you had to teach it. So every time I read a book, I assume I'm going to have to teach this to somebody later, even my own spouse. So when you read from that perspective, your mind like files it away in a different part of the brain that's easier to recall later on.

And so I heard this hack 20 years ago, but it's made such an impact on my life as I read everything now with a pen and I assume I'm going to have to teach it later, even though I might not. And then I remember it's all up here. Not all of it, but a lot of it's up there.

Do you use that pen to take notes, use physical books, not e-books? What's the process? I do. Audible is great. If I'm working out, I'm usually listening to an audio book. But usually audio is more for podcasts because you can't read a podcast very easily. And I try to only do physical books.

Kindle, I'll do fiction books because I'm not underlining and whatever. So Kindle's for fiction, physical for nonfiction. And then I actually get asked all the time, how do you read so many books? And I'm like, I literally just read for like 10 minutes a day. It's not much, but I also read whenever I have a quick break.

I try to read instead of pull up my phone and scroll. Like as soon as that pull to grab my phone. And I'm not great at this at all, I'll say I'm terrible at this. But I try whenever that pull to my phone like that. I need that dopamine hit.

I'll look around. And if there's a book near me, I'll grab that instead. I'll try to grab that instead. And I'll just read a couple of pages. My two, three, four pages. I'll put it down. I'm typically in the middle of 20 to 30 books at any given time, which is completely nuts.

But a topic for another day that is. Yeah, yeah, that is doable, though. You talked about the purpose of all this isn't just to have a boatload of money. It's not just to be a billionaire and all that. And you've talked a lot about philanthropy and how that's become a bigger focus in your life.

And I think beyond just saying why it's important, you've thought about ways to infuse it into your future business, your future endeavors. Talk a bit about why it's important, but also how you're trying to bring it into your business that maybe is different than the way most people think about philanthropy.

Few ways that I'm looking at it right now. First of all, everyone believes this, but I really internalize it. Is that like nobody gets out alive? Like we all die and it doesn't make sense to be the richest guy in the graveyard. I don't care about legacy. I don't care about my kids being rich.

Like I don't plan to actually give my kids anything. Maybe they'll get a little bit. Maybe get a property or two, whatever. So they get the college savings. Yes, they get the college thing. Yeah. And what's great about that, too, by the way, just go way back to the last episode that we did together.

But that property, like I don't care if Rosie takes that one property and goes to college with it or she starts a business. I actually hope she'll just start a business with it or invest it in something. But anyway, I don't need my kid to be rich because a like you can't grow up in the Brennan Turner household and not have all the skills you need to be successful, first of all, because like I'm going to train here, I train them every day.

I'm always talking about money and finances and entrepreneurship. And Rosie has bake sales. And while there will, you know, when he's a little older. So either a if they're not wealthy by the time they're in their mid 20s, then there is some problem that they don't deserve the money anyway.

My kids will either not need the money because they'll be so successful anyway, or they don't deserve the money because they can't handle it. So anyway, that's why I'm not planning to get my kids money. So in other words, what do I do with it then? I mean, wealth is kind of a game in some ways.

I don't have to earn more money and get wealthier, but it's a fun challenge. Like, can I give away a billion dollars? I would have laughed at that 10 years ago. And now I'm like, well, shoot. Yeah, I could definitely give away a billion dollars. Plus, happiness is largely derived from most people by giving away money and not just like throwing some random charity, but by doing something with it, like it's one thing to make money.

It's another thing to make money matter. So I want to spend a lot of my time making money because I'm good at it. I'm not just going to give away all my money right now and go live under a bridge like I have been gifted with this ability to generate massive amounts of money.

I'm going to use that to its fullest ability. And I'm going to make that money count. I'm going to make it matter through business. So a couple of ways we do that. Number one, there's like the obvious, like we try to take good care of our tenants and be good people and all that.

That's not what I'm talking about. We're going to raise capital for big apartment complexes, and then we're going to take all the profit from that and just donate it. So, for example, let me give you a real simple. We buy a hundred million dollar building right now. It's pretty normal by, let's say, a hundred million dollar building.

We have to raise 20 or 30 million dollars from investors like you. You give the money, we will buy the property. At the end of the deal, we sell it for one hundred and fifty million dollars. Very normal, very just three percent, four percent per year over the course of 10 years, it gets there.

And then at the end of the deal, everyone gets their piece of the pie and everyone is happy. But what I want to do is I want to raise all that money. And then at the end of the deal, when we sell the property to three, four or five years later, you get your investment back.

But all the profit, that 50 million dollars goes to charity. And I'm like, I could do like one of those a year and be like the biggest charity in the country. Like, it's stupid how good real estate and especially my division of real estate syndication and multifamily. It's stupid how much profit we can create out of thin air with that level of assuredness of that little surety.

And so if I can just take like one out of every 10 deals I do and just donate it to good, that makes everyone feel good. And then the LP is even like you, if you were investing in that. Not only do you get to feel good, not only do you get your money back, you're not even donating it.

You're just lending the money for a little while. Basically, you also get a big tax write off at the end. And so it's like a win, win, win across the board. Everyone feels good. Everybody wins. We're saving lives. We're stopping human trafficking. We're feeding kids. It's going to be a good life.

So I'm fired up about that right now. I love it. I think that's a great way to wrap this conversation. But there is one thing that I like to ask everyone before we go, and it's to pick a place. And because I'm heading to Maui, I'm going to just default you to pick Maui.

People that are coming to Maui, what should they be doing, eating, drinking to have a good trip? Oh, dude. OK, so first of all, if you drink alcohol, Monkey Pod is my favorite restaurant on the island. Monkey Pod has a drink. It's called the Mai Tai. It's not like a normal Mai Tai if you've had one.

Just get the Monkey Pod Mai Tai. It's phenomenal. Anything at Monkey Pod is phenomenal. Anything there is amazing. The sidemen, the pizza, pork and pineapple, the burger, one of the best ever. All right. So Monkey Pod, amazing Maui Brewing Company. It's one over where you're going to be staying.

There's also one by my house down here. Maui brew is amazing. Moku Roots, if you're vegan, awesome vegan restaurant. I'm not vegan, but it's phenomenal. Just those vegan people. So that's the food. I mean, there's a lot of good food on Maui. But Tin Roof up in Kahului, the Mochiko chicken sandwich.

Oh, you just can't imagine better food than that. It's so good. And then there's beaches everywhere. Make sure you cliff dive off Black Rock, which is right over by the Ritz and the Sheraton and that whole kind of area there. And then come down to Wailea, which is like a 40 minute drive from the other side of the island, where like Kanapali.

But there's some lava fields down here. You can drive through the lava fields, go to Big Beach. If you want to see a bunch of naked men, go to Little Beach. It's a great spot. And then, oh, man, it's so good, man. I can give you a thousand recommendations.

Any of the activities that are worth doing. For sure, Road to Hana, everyone does the Road to Hana. Have you ever done the Road to Hana? Have you been to Maui? I've never been to Maui. The Road to Hana seems like a great thing to do on a trip when you're not in tow with a three month old and a two year old.

Yes, probably. You do get out a lot. So here's the Road to Hana. It's the best analogy for life, too. Road to Hana, I did it once with some friends. We all left at the same time. There's no cell phone coverage on the Road to Hana. So we leave and we stop at the first beach and we get out there.

We look at like 50 turtles that are on the beach, just sunbathing these turtles, watching these world class surfers, like just ripping on these surf waves. Having a great time. Sat down, watched this for a little bit, got back in the car, started driving. To get to Hana, it takes us typically four to six hours.

An hour in, we leave the beach. We're just starting. We're not even a mile on this road. And I get a call from my friends and they've got cell phone reception. I hadn't even lost it yet. And they said, OK, we're in Hana. Now what? And I was like, oh, no, there's nothing in Hana.

You missed the point. It's not about the destination. It's about the journey. So the Road to Hana is an amazing just picture of life and that there's nothing. Now, maybe there is something at the end of life. I believe there is. Like, I'm a Christian guy, so I think there is.

But the point is, like, the point of life is not just to get to the end. It's to enjoy it along the way. So you could do Road to Hana with some little ones. You stop every like 20 minutes to pull over and like see amazing waterfalls and turtles and stuff.

So Road to Hana is beautiful and awesome. But I would understand if you don't want to take a baby on it. It's probably not a bad call. Awesome. All right. Well, I'm even more excited about Maui, especially for the Eats. Where can everyone? Oh, I found out the best thing in all of Maui.

You take your family, you put them in the car, you drive over to Kihei, which is the area I live in. You come up here to my road and you pull in my driveway. And then we hang out on my front lanai, it's called the lanai. It's like a front porch.

The kids swim in my pool. And you and I sit there and chat business for a couple hours. That is the best thing you can do in Maui. So I'm officially inviting you here publicly to come hang out if you can. I will see you in a couple of weeks.

This has been fantastic. Where can everyone listening stay on top of everything you're doing, working, building this $10 billion of real estate you want to buy one day? How do they stay on top? Yeah. So the text message list is a good one. Just Beardy, B-E-A-R-D-Y, beard with a Y.

BeardyBrandon.com is a text message thing. And if anybody's interested in the real estate side of stuff, like, you know, investing with me and all that. odcfund, odcfund.com. And if you go to odcfund.com/tax, I've got an e-book on taxes there, just it's a short read on how do people save money on taxes, especially if you're wealthy?

How does Donald Trump pay no taxes? Anyway, it's just a random thing I just put together a few weeks ago. That's where it's at. And for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, BeardyBrandon is because Brandon is rocking an incredible beard. We've been doing a lot to take the video from this and put on YouTube.

So I'm going to encourage everyone, if you haven't checked out the YouTube channel, definitely check it out. Subscribe. Thank you for doing that. And you get to check out this great beard. Not the one I don't have, but the one Brandon has. Brandon, thank you so much for this extended conversation.

This was fun, man. You're not bad at this. You've done this a time or two, I can tell. Good. Thanks for having me. I hope you all enjoyed the rest of my conversation with Brandon. I know I did. If you're heading to Maui, definitely take him up on his recommendation to go to Monkey Pod.

We went and it was one of the highlights of the trip, though that might have been because it was the only night we snuck out to dinner without the kids. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love them. But there is something wonderful about having a date with just your spouse.

Finally, lots of good stuff coming for the rest of the year. Make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter at allthehacks.com/email. And if you ever want to get in touch, it's just Chris at allthehacks.com. All right. See you next week. (birds chirping)