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

And so I rarely saw him. And I said, when I am a father someday, I wanna be there for every ball game, every ballet recital, every field trip. I wanna be there with my kids. I wanna 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 that 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 gonna cut it. So combining those two things, that's why I pursued real estate and business and wealth in general.

- 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 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 you can learn a lot from. And after we finished up the real estate conversation, we covered everything from setting goals to hacking self-discipline, using performance coaches, finding the balance between audacious business goals and quality family time, and the mindset Brandon uses to build massive real estate empires while also living an ideal life.

Oh, and since he lives in Maui, I got all 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. (upbeat music) Brandon, welcome back. I wanna 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? 'Cause 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 wanna do in life. But I'll say that most people live life in the backseat. Like they're being driven around in this crazy taxi around the world, and they're just doing whatever comes at them, right? 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 even know that's a thing. They don't know that there's a thing they should be concerned about, right? 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? I mean, it's really just, 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 can do anything. You can 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 the feeling you wanna have.

Like start with a feeling of life you wanna have. Define your ideal day. Like I love that practice where you're just like, what does 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 gonna 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 from 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 just, they never take time to envision what's possible.

And they just do whatever's in front of them. - I'm gonna assume you're one of those people that wants an amazing marriage. Can you tell me about, you know, things that you've done intentionally to make that possible? - Yeah, man. 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.

We'd go on the vacation, you know, go to the mountains or whatever. And I got little kids at home. I got a two-year-old and a 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 wanna be as a couple.

And that starts with a reflection on your past. Like where were we last year? Where did we struggle? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? And then where do we wanna be? You know, 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 said, I wanted to, you know, I had all this stuff we wanted to do as a couple. And it wasn't five years later.

We did it like nine months later. 'Cause as soon as we defined what was possible and we had a goal, all of a sudden it was like, well, hey, you wanna go to Hawaii for a couple 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 woo woo stuff? Or is that we had a vision for where we wanted to go and we worked 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 like the habits that are gonna give us a better marriage, but we at least have it in the mirror every single day when I open up 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 non-relationship goals? - Yeah, yes, very similar. So this is my framework and I didn't invent this. I have a journal actually, is it back here somewhere, maybe? No, it's not, all right.

So I have a journal called "The Intention Journal" and I basically just got everybody 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 gonna give you a really simple system that I use. 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 decade goals, even though I might have them.

I don't like thinking in terms of even 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 this 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 wanna do? Typically, it's one relational goal. Usually it's a fitness goal and usually it's a business goal.

And so, like 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 wanted 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 gonna be to spend three days without the kids. That's a weird goal, right? But that's the relationship one. I want, I've never, 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. Like, so now the kids, like the youngest is no longer breastfeeding. Now he can, 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 that the weekly goal down.

Then I always write, 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. Okay, well, what's the most important next step on that? Well, I guess, yeah, I gotta put a job application out there.

Nope, not good enough. Well, 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, 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 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. So that's my entire goal-setting process, and I just bake it inside my journal. But yeah, that's it. - And are there systems you use throughout the day to keep on track? You know, if you're looking at it in the morning, but you wanna, 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. So actually, let's talk about hacking real quick, right? Like the idea of like, you know, 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, the massage. I mentioned earlier, 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 down, I'll put on my calendar, you know, go sit at the beach and go think for an hour and a half.

Or just process, journal, I won't do it. 'Cause 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 gonna do it, right? 'Cause 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 wanna 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 'cause I'm so darn lazy. Let me just throw out 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 like checking boxes. Maybe I can, there's a great, the Seinfeld strategy. Let's talk about this one. 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 check mark on like a spreadsheet "or something like that. "And after a while, "you start getting a lot of check marks in a row." And so his advice to this up-and-coming comedian he gave was don't break the chain of check marks.

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 can, I'm really bad at flossing, right? So like I'll be like, I'm gonna floss. Like 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've now, like I would look stupid if I showed up and was like, "Yeah, well, I said I was gonna eat healthy all week, "but I just ate, you know, Cheetos and Mai Tais all week." Like I would just look stupid 'cause I don't wanna disappoint my accountability buddies.

Like the other guys that are like, "Hey, we're gonna, you know, build our businesses too." So I don't wanna look bad in front of other people. So I will then get that, what do you wanna call it? Account, I guess accountability around them. In fact, in my own company, I operate a system called EOS.

Have you read Traction? Gino Wickman's Traction? So Gino Wickman has a book called Traction. It's right here. 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. And so it's kinda like what I said earlier with the goals.

You have your big 10-year goal maybe and 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.

Like 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 wanna let my team down. I don't wanna 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.

I'm gonna say that again 'cause this is like one of the most profound statements. I didn't invent it. I've heard it said many different times in many different ways. You, well, I'll say 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 gonna have a bad one, right? So 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 wanna go, know what things are going to get you there. And when I say things, I mean the habits, the traits, the systems, whatever. So know where you wanna go, know the things that are gonna get you there, track those things and get accountability on it.

If it's a group of guys getting accountability together, or guys meaning guys or girls, or is it hiring a performance coach? Whatever that is, get the accountability. So 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 or not getting there, and then get accountability so you can hack your self-discipline.

You can accomplish anything, anything by doing that. - So you've got your group of accountability partners, you've got your spouse, you've got your team, you've got all these systems, but you also have a performance coach. 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 asks me a bunch of hard questions and I have to answer them and think deeper.

So just like the massage time is forcing me to have that unstructured, just open 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 Derese, it's like trees with a D at the end, Derese.

He's like, he'll ask me just very simple questions, like, so where are you not playing fully out right now? Or is that really what you want or is that just what you're expected to say, right? There's like 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 just say like, what can I do better?

How can I improve this? Like 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.

You know, like it's not as powerful 'cause you're not paying somebody, so there's no really like 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 like one, like even if 10, 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 BiggerPockets podcast after 10 years from it all started with a question he asked me. He just said, "It sounds like "you're getting kind of burned out. "Do 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, month off sounds amazing.

I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna 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 was like, had decided that it was okay to take a month off, I was like, wait, why don't I just take the whole thing off?

Do I, 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. Again, Jason Dries, I think it's Jason Dries Coaching.

Like, 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, his name's actually, the reason I thought of it, his name's 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 had, right? If you just like, 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.

Yeah, I always think someday it'd 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. 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, 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, ah, is this employee bad? And you're like, yeah, they are, I gotta let them go.

A lot of times, and 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 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 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, and there's also different types of coaches, right? 'Cause like, you might not need the guy who's gonna be like, you need to get to 10X your 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.

Like, you're not, you're like, and like different coaches are gonna push you in different ways. Then there's also like the coaches that are like, they're gonna teach you how to do a certain task. And then there's the coaches that are just gonna add more like a therapy. They're gonna do it wherever direction you wanna go.

So yeah, and just trying out a bunch of them, trying to find what fits, I think is just, 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 gonna find somebody great.

And then you're going to transform your life. I really believe that. - So I wanna 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.

- Yeah, so, all right. So we're talking like, you've heard the analogy of the book writing. Have I mentioned that, the Starbucks? - Not in this podcast. - Not that one? - No, I have. - Oh, but you know what I'm talking about, right? Okay, I just wanna make sure that we're the same Starbucks strategy, all right.

So, all right, so Starbucks strategy looks like this. It's essentially, I call it that just because this is how I've written my books. I've got, I've written like five books, right? The first book I wrote, it 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 gonna 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. And I came back and I wrote a few more words and then I put it away for a few weeks.

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, 'cause it's a book for no money.

Then the second time I was like, I don't wanna do that again, but I need to write this other book on rental property investing. So that time I said, I'm gonna pursue this differently. First of all, I'm gonna 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, right? So I go to this, I go to Starbucks with my wife. Actually, she was gonna write a book at the same time. She was gonna write it on managing. I was gonna write it on just investing in rentals.

And we sat down at a Starbucks and we said, we made a commitment to ourselves and said, we will not leave this 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 ax.

So what this whole strategy was was like, I'm gonna spend a focused, dedicated, nonstop period of time to sharpen the ax. So for me, I sat down, I spec'd out the entire book on note cards, 10 chapters, it was like 12 chapters, 12 sub chapters, flip every card over and it had an outline of what that sub chapter was gonna be about.

So at the end of the day now, every day after that, I ended up with 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, four, five bullet points on what I had to write.

Well, that's easy. Now I just gotta write 500 words to 1,000 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 300,000 words between the two. And yeah, I've sold over a million copies of those books now.

Like, all I'm getting at here is like define, like sharpen your axe, define what success is gonna look like, do the work up front and it makes everything else easier on the backend. - 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? - I mean, so first of all, yeah, I got into real estate. I got into financial freedom, the pursuit of financial independence. And I know it's kind of a buzzword, right? 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 whoever you want, whomever you want, I don't know.

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 one, two reasons, 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 'cause he worked all the time.

And 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, every field trip. I want to be there with my kids. I want to like 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 that 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 gonna 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, and I find myself sometimes just like, 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 G.I. 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, a flow that you sometimes have to go farther one way, and sometimes you have to go farther the other.

And therefore, I am constantly re-evaluating where I am on that spectrum of too much work and maybe too much family, right? 'Cause 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 gotta 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? Like, why didn't I do the things that are most important in life?

And the only way to know that is to continually 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? - So it's interesting. I used to be someone, well, 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, you know, the deal. - You're in it, you're in it.

- I always wanted to like 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 at 5.30, like there's no real option.

Like you gotta be there at 5.30. I just kinda 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, it didn't really matter that I got everything done before I went to bed.

Now, there are times, you know, Tuesday night, this show comes out on Wednesday mornings, or maybe this bonus episode on a Friday, like there are times where it's like, no, I do have to stay up 'cause 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 I remember I got this email from a guy named James Bashar, who has a podcast called "Below the Line." And I said, 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 wanna do meetings 'cause 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 wanna 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. I'm not gonna go record a video to talk to him to just shoot the breeze.

So he's basically filtering for, if you just wanna have a BS conversation and talk, that's gone. And at the time, I wanted to catch up with him 'cause 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 if 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 wanna go to Loom, and you wanna record some specific questions or write 'em 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, 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 childcare and two kids is a lot. And so other than this interview, I basically have no meetings all week. And I'm okay 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 gotta get it done. Letting it go is very cathartic. - You know, that reminds me, and I love how you say like, you know, as soon as you gotta 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 they tell the story or 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 there's this constant, yeah, I'm always thinking a lot of my life is going to get dropped. A lot of things are gonna get dropped. Let's make sure we drop the right things. And that, at the end of my life, that would be a great reputation to have and a great dying thought is I drop the right balls throughout my life.

- And it's funny 'cause I respected the email I got from James so much. You know, you think you have this email that's like, you know, 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, damn, that person's like, they've got it figured out. I didn't write back and be like, that person's an asshole. You know, like that, 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, you know, frustration.

- And I would even, to push it to another level, if I could real quick, like another reason to do that by adding these bounds in your life, like things like, for example, like people might be surprised to hear this, but like I, I mean, 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. Like that's, 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 I'm 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, that's the rules of this, of this business, of this game. I'm going to play within the rules. And, and so many people don't realize that you get to, 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, you will find a way to be successful.

Cause if you're listening to this podcast an hour in or whatever we're in, like you're, you're a legit person. You're going to find a way to be massively successful within the bounds of, 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. - 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, that isn't as compatible in the second half of life.

And second half is not like seventies. It's like, you know, late thirties, forties kind of age. We were like, I'm finding a new way to work that is more compatible with long-term happiness. So that's one book I shared. You shared a lot of books. I want to jump to, to just get, are there other books?

Where do you find them? You seem to have them and collected them. And you know, they've had a huge impact on you. Where are you finding them all? And do you publish a list of them? So people who want more of your recommendations can find them? - I do read a lot.

I read, I read about a book a week on average, sometimes two, sometimes half, depends on how busy I am. But I probably average 50 to a hundred books a year, pretty much every year. So I read and I buy, 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 an email, like I 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 as I put that out there. 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. And here's a cool point from the book that they made. So yeah, I read a lot. I mean, I give you 5 million recommendations. And I remember a lot of what I read as well because I always assume I'm gonna 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 read or I should say 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 somebody later, even it's my own spouse. So when you read from that perspective, your mind categorizes it in like, that's a weird way of saying that, categorizes it, I don't know, whatever, files it away in a different part of the brain that's easier to recall later on.

And so I heard this hack, I don't know, 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 gonna 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.

So I don't know if that answers your question. Do you want me to just give you a, I'll give you an hour long list of good books to read. - No, no, no, this is great. Do you use that pen to take notes, use physical books, not eBooks? What's the process?

- I do. Yeah, I like, I mean, Audible's great. If I'm working out, I'm usually listening to an audio book, but usually the work, like usually audio is more for podcasts 'cause you can't read a podcast very easily. And I try to only do physical books. Kindle, I'll do fiction books 'cause I'm not underlining in whatever.

So Kindle's for fiction, physical for nonfiction. And then it's really just about like people, 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 I need that dopamine hit, I'll look around and if there's a book near me, I'll grab that instead or I'll try to grab that instead.

And I'll just read a couple 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. - That sounds like a topic for another day. - That is, yeah, yeah. - The last big thing I want to ask about that I think few people talk about as much as I've heard you talk about it is, 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. So, and how that's become a more, 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, like I, all right, everyone believes this, but I really like 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. Like 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 they'll get a property or two, whatever.

- Oh, they get that college savings property. - Yeah, 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 Turner, the Brandon Turner household and not have all the skills you need to be successful, first of all, 'cause like I'm going to train her.

I train him every day. I'm always talking about money and finances and entrepreneurship and Rosie has bake sales and Wilder 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 they don't, then they, there is some problem that they don't deserve the money anyway, right?

Like my kids will either not need the money 'cause 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 give 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.

Like I don't have to earn more money and get wealthier, but it's kind of a fun, it's a fun challenge. Like, can I give away a billion dollars? Like 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 for most people by giving away money. And not just like throwing it to 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 wanna spend a lot of my time making money 'cause I'm good at it.

I'm not just gonna like give away all my money right now and go live under a bridge. Like I have been gifted with this ability to generate mass amounts of money. So I'm gonna use that to its fullest ability. And then I'm gonna make that money count. I'm gonna 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. I wanna start, we're gonna start, actually we're gonna launch it hopefully in the next couple of months.

We're gonna 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 $100 million building right now. It's pretty normal by let's say $100 million building. We have to raise 20 or $30 million from investors like you.

You give the money, we will buy the property. At the end of the deal, we sell it for $150 million. Very normal, very just 3%, 4% per year over the course of 10 years it gets there. And then at the end of the deal, everyone gets their money. We divide up all, everyone gets their piece of the pie and everyone is happy.

But what I wanna do is I wanna raise all that money. And then at the end of the deal, when we sell the property two, three, four, five years later you get your investment back, but all the profit, that $50 million 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 and 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 LPs, 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, so 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 gonna 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 gonna 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, okay. So first of all, if you're an alcoholic, no, if you drink alcohol, there is a drink at the, 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 side men, the pizza, pork and pineapple, the burger, one of the best ever. All right, so Monkey Pod, amazing. Maui Brewing Company, it's the one over where you're gonna be staying.

There's also one by my house down here. Monkey, Maui Brew is amazing. Moku Roots, if you're vegan, awesome vegan restaurant. I'm not vegan, but it's phenomenal, just for 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.

Mm, the Mochiko Chicken Sandwich, ah! You just can't imagine better food than that. It's so good. And then, I mean, there's beaches everywhere. Make sure you hit Black Rock. Go jump off Cliff Dive off Black Rock, which is right over by the Ritz and the Sheraton and that whole kind of area there.

Mm, 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 wanna see a bunch of naked men, go to Little Beach.

It's a great spot. And then, oh man, it's so good. Anyway, man, I can give you a thousand recommendations. - Any of the activities that are worth doing are-- - Road to Hana, 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. 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 and we look at like 50 turtles that are on the beach, just sunbathing these turtles, watching these world-class surfers 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, like, you know, 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, "Okay, we're in Hana, now what?" And I was like, "Oh no, there's nothing in Hana. "You missed the point." Like, it's not about the destination. It's about the journey. So the Road to Hana is an amazing just picture of life in that there's nothing.

Now, maybe there's something at the end of life. I had to 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 wanna take a baby on it. It's probably not a bad call. - All right, well, I'm even more excited about Maui, especially for the eats.

- Oh, I forgot about the best thing. I forgot about the best thing in all of Maui. You take your family, you put 'em 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 weeks. - It's a good time. - 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 wanna 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 the text message thing. And if anybody's interested in the real estate side of stuff, like investing with me and all that, odcfund, odcfund.com. And if you go to odcfund.com/tax, I've got a e-book on taxes there, just so 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. - Brandon, thank you so much for this extended conversation. - Phenomenal, thanks for having me.