Jay Papasan:
Hey gang, I’m very excited about this week’s guest. He’s a good friend. Let me give you a little bit about him. He’s a super fan of The ONE Thing. When it came out, he made the decision to only read the book for the entire year, and I think he’s read it more than 27 times now. He left his previous career, and you’ll know about it when I tell you, but he set a huge vision. He was going to acquire $50 million worth of real estate in three years and a bunch of other stuff. Well, he did all the other stuff and he didn’t just acquire $50 million worth of real estate in three years, he bought $300 million worth of real estate in three years. Blows the mind.
So we’ll walk through how he’s using the book, not just to live his life, but also to grow his business; how he created a not to do list for himself by auditing his time, which led him to delegate more of the work and get him out of the jobs he shouldn’t be doing, how he hires, how he gamifies his habits. So many practical tips from my friend, the longtime host of BiggerPockets and the current host of the Better Life podcast, Brandon Turner. He also runs a huge investment firm.
We’ve got so much to share with you and we’re gonna do it fast. Brandon talks fast and I’m just keeping up. So, if you listen on 2X speed, you might wanna drop it down to 1X for this episode because we have a lot of great ideas coming at you. It’s coming in hot right now.
I’m Jay Papasan and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
How many years since you’ve shaved your beard?
Brandon Turner:
Is that a real question?
Jay Papasan:
Why not?
Brandon Turner:
Let’s start there.
Jay Papasan:
This is controversial.
Brandon Turner:
This is a big deal. I shaved it the first time I ever went to Maui. I was 23 when I went to Maui. I’m now… I’ll be 40 in a few months. So, I was 23 and I wanted to do snorkeling. So, I shaved it then. It is the weirdest thing and I have not gone back since.
Jay Papasan:
Wow.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
So, like Samson, like you’ve just got all your strength in the beard.
Brandon Turner:
Exactly. It’s like Samson in the Bible. If I shave it, my real estate portfolio falls apart. So, the longer it goes, the better my real estate does.
Jay Papasan:
And do you know how long it is? Is that something you track?
Brandon Turner:
I don’t. I don’t measure it.
Jay Papasan:
Because it looks like it’s at least nine inches long.
Brandon Turner:
I only measure it when I’m with another guy with a beard. And we have to stand close to each other and see who’s longer.
Jay Papasan:
Okay.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, it’s like a contest. Yeah, who’s a bigger man? That’s what I exactly go through.
Jay Papasan:
There we go. Like full on hillbilly.
Brandon Turner:
Exactly.
Jay Papasan:
If not for Maui.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
There we go.
Brandon Turner:
There’s a thing though, like guys with beards, like you see each other and there’s like, there’s a recognition there.
Jay Papasan:
Game sees game.
Brandon Turner:
Exactly. Yeah. You’ve ever seen that Family Guy episode where they’re in the elevator with the two bald guys? This is my favorite clip of all Family Guy. They’re in an elevator together, and there’s a bald guy, a normal guy with hair and another bald guy. And they’re just sitting there, awkward music going. And then, the guy with the hair leaves, and the one bald guy turns the other and goes, “Oh, thank goodness. He’s finally gone.” And you look over, it links his head. It’s so absurd. Like that’s what bald guys do. Anyway, bearded guys, we do the same thing. Just like avatar style, we touch beards.
Jay Papasan:
There we go. I’ve got you.
Brandon Turner:
We’re starting strong in this podcast.
Jay Papasan:
I know, just diving right in. So, when I was on the Better Life podcast a while back and we were chatting, you shared something that I, kind of, blew my mind that when The ONE Thing came out and you first started listening to it, you just kept listening to it again and again and again.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, again and again. It was the first book I’d ever read. I got to the last page ’cause I started by reading the book, the physical book, read it on an airplane, got to page whatever, 200, 300, whatever it is. And I started back over at page one and read the whole thing again. And then, I did it again, I think, maybe a few days later. And then, I got the audio book and I just listened over and over.
And my theory was, and this is totally true, it changed my life, I said, just like The ONE Thing, what’s the one thing you can do? I was like, “This book is the one thing I can do.” If I only master this book, no other book in the world, if I could just master this one right now at this point of my life, it would change my life. And so I just listened to it. It had to be at least 20 times that year.
Jay Papasan:
That’s so crazy.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, I’d go for a walk for like an hour every day and just listen to it. I get to the end, start over, and just lost a bunch of weight walking and yeah, totally radically changed my life.
Jay Papasan:
In my experience, there are books that I’ve gone back and read again. And I’ve gone to the same class sometimes again and again. And each time you show up, you’re different. So, it’s like a different book. Was that your experience, even though you were reading it back to back?
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, very much so. And you know a book hits you, like it hits you when you need it. Like books appear to you, right? Like they show up in your life when you need them. I’m a big believer in that. And so The ONE Thing showed up in my life when I needed it. But then, individual sections of the book showed up when I needed it. So, yeah, for sure, every time through was like a different time through. And yeah, it’s a little weird to think I read it that many times, but I knew that if I could just focus, like I am the least focused person I think I’ve ever met. Like I wanna do everything all the time and everything’s a good idea and I’m like, do it all. And-
Jay Papasan:
And you do it all big. You do-
Brandon Turner:
Everything has to be done the best ever. I can possibly do it. And then, that results in everything just not working very well. So-
Jay Papasan:
So, is that the first message you needed to hear? It’s like, “Okay, I’ve just got to figure out what I’m saying yes to.” And were you able to start saying no to stuff or were you just saying a better yes to stuff?
Brandon Turner:
Yes, I got to say no to things, but what really impacted me, like, I mean a lot of stuff impacted me, but one thing was the idea of elevating the way I run a business to a higher level that becomes my one thing. So, for example, let’s say I am working the front lines of a company, I do a lot of real estate, let’s say I’m a landlord, and I fix my own toilets and I change my own everything, right? I can only do one thing and that is, be that landlord. So I should not, in reality, I should not try to be the working landlord and try to write a book, right? I’m not good at both those things.
However, if I elevate one level above there as, like, a leader of a company, and now, I hire people to do… Now, my one thing is still one thing. I’m now a leader of my real estate company, but now I can do multiple things within that because people are taking care of those things. So, anyway, I elevated my leadership abilities, which allowed me to stick with one thing. So, that’s what-
Jay Papasan:
It sounds like… I mean, I know a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with this. You gave yourself permission to start delegating somewhere.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, it’s like you delegate or you eliminate, right? It’s like one of the two. I needed to get out of doing everything. I remember around that time, I hired my mother-in-law just to answer phone calls because I had like 20-some rental units at the time. And I just… I hated it. I absolutely hated answering the phone because I’m a nice guy. So, the town would be like, “Hey-“
Jay Papasan:
So, it’s not going to be a quick conversation.
Brandon Turner:
No, yeah, it’s a long conversation. And they would be like, “Hey, I know I haven’t paid rent in two months, but I had those people that we just rescued. Do you mind if I move them in?” I’m like, “Sure, why not have two?” I’m like so bad at telling people no. So, as soon as I hired my mother-in-law, like, and I elevated a little bit, all of a sudden, she could tell them no, and I didn’t even hear about it. It cost me like a few hundred bucks a month, transformed my life, because I elevated to a different level and I could focus on a new one thing.
Jay Papasan:
So, I remember, I think you had me on the BiggerPockets podcast and we talked about this with Josh. I think it might’ve been that long ago.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, way back then.
Jay Papasan:
And one of the things you were trying to say no to is that you were doing a lot of your own repairs on these flips. And that was just something you actually kind of enjoy. Like you still like to get out the power tools.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. I had to sell my tools though. That’s how I got out. I don’t think I ever told you that. I literally had a garage sale. I sold all of my tools because I could not trust myself not to go and do the work ’cause it’s like, “I’m not gonna pay a plumber $200 to go change a toilet. I can do it in 30 minutes.” Of course, in that for 30 minutes, it’s two hours, three hours. And then, I’m not doing the stuff that actually makes me more money.
So, I fought it for a long time. And finally, I just said, “How do I ensure I never do the work again,” and I sold 100% of my tools. So, if I’m like a classic speaker thing, I’d be like, “So, what’s the tool in your life you need to sell?” You know, like, “How do you force yourself out of your old identity into a new one?” I think is an important question.
Jay Papasan:
My coach in The ONE Thing, he was working with someone, and they were trying to choose between two businesses. And he has your instincts. Like, he knows that if it’s not happening fast enough, he’s going to jump in and do it for people. If they need help, he’s going to jump in. Like, he has this problem of taking on jobs that he should be giving away. And he was looking at a sandwich shop, and he was looking at a hair salon. And this is how it shows up. It’s like, if it was illegal for you to do it, how would you get it done?
And this is the coaching question to him because he realized that the salon, you have to be licensed. You don’t have to be licensed to make sandwiches. So if he chose the salon business, he could never actually do it. It would actually be illegal for him to do. So, like, what tool do you need to sell? How can you make it feel like it’s… or actually be illegal for you to do the thing? And sometimes, it takes a pretty hard barrier to keep entrepreneurs from jumping ahead of themselves.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. And I think a big way that I’ve done it over and over now is I just hire someone else and I tell them, like, “This is your job.” And now, at least, if I hire the right people, which you don’t always hire the right people, but when you do, they take it. And then, I’ve even told them, “Don’t let me step in and take this over. This is your responsibility. And I have a tendency to step in, you can push back on that. Like, you can yell at me about, like, ‘Get out of your way.'” And they do, they’re pretty open with telling me to get out of their way.
Jay Papasan:
I love that. So, what advice would you… like if someone’s listening to this right now, they need to hear this, like, how do you take the first step? Like, I know that there’s stuff everyday that I am doing that I’m not. What advice would you give them?
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. I’m a big fan of the idea of a time audit. I love time auditing. Here’s what I spend my time doing. And so, from this time, 15 minute blocks, maybe I’m doing it here, I’m checking my email, I’m doing this. And then, trying to categorize those. This is not a new thing. A lot of books talk about this. But like just really countering, like, “What do I actually have to do that’s vital for me?” I mean, just that act. It’s annoying to do it. Like, nobody does it. I’m gonna tell people to do this and everyone goes, “That’s a good idea,”and then no one is gonna do it, even though it doesn’t take that much time.
But if you actually do that, you will just find thing, after thing, after thing that you should not be doing. And so, then it’s like, “Well, how can I get that done?” Either, again, eliminate it or delegate it. Maybe you can automate it but you know.
Jay Papasan:
But you’re going for the awareness. Like, the awareness
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, you got to be aware. Yeah. It’s like there’s a great quote from, I think, Dan Sullivan, but also they talk about in AA. It’s, “All progress begins by telling the truth.” And so, if you’re not honest with yourself and you haven’t really got the self-awareness of what you’re spending your time on, like how do you build upon that? If you think you’re a great husband and you’re actually a terrible husband because you’re not telling yourself the truth, then you’re not gonna try to improve. So all progress begins by telling that truth.
Jay Papasan:
We call it the reality habit.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
You’ve got to have the reality habit because if you’re lying to yourself, you’re lying to everybody else at the same time.
Brandon Turner:
So true.
Jay Papasan:
When my wife teaches this, she’ll go out. We all suffer from this. I think if you’ve got a little bit of entrepreneur in you and you need to get up and go, your tendency to jump ahead of your people can be very high. But just like the time audit becomes a list of what’s your not to do list. And I heard that first from Tim Ferriss. That’s where I associate it, but I’ve heard it predates even him. Just write down, like, here’s the stuff that I did today that I wish I never had to do again.
And most people kind of know those things. And then, basically, after a week, you’ve made a job description. And that could be the first person you hire. There’s someone that’s gonna love doing all that stuff that you’re not supposed to be doing.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that’s why I’m a big believer, a huge believer, every entrepreneur should have an executive assistant. Even if you can’t afford a full local-based one, then somebody overseas. Whatever you’re gonna do, get somebody just to take things off your plate. And almost every entrepreneur I talked to, they tend to get scared. Like, “I don’t know if I can fill their time.” You will fill their time. I’ve never heard of actually anybody hiring an assistant and being like, “Oh, I didn’t know what to do.” And so they just sat around. You will find things just continually and because there’s always a vacuum there.
So, I hired an assistant and, all of a sudden, I started just pushing things her way and she just started taking them. And suddenly, she’s working 40 hours a week, and I’m working on higher level stuff. So, it just forced me into that. So, again, I started, actually, with a virtual assistant that was $300 a month. And today, I have a much more expensive assistant. But either way, the $300 a month one taught me how to handle an assistant.
And the first one I hired lasted three days, and it was terrible, and I did a bad job, and I didn’t manage them right, didn’t find them right. But the next one was better, and the next one was better.
Jay Papasan:
I think that you’re onto something. Like we look at a lot of… we support all these businesses, and we’ve modeled it again and again. And if your first great hire is an admin leader, the title doesn’t matter. That someone that you trust as a leader in your tiny organization, just you and this person, to take over the admin stuff and the operation stuff, you’re now at a higher dollar per hour immediately. And so, we used to call it, instead of looking for an executive assistant, look for an assistant executive. Just flip it.
Brandon Turner:
That’s good, man.
Jay Papasan:
You just want an admin leader, right? Someone who’s like, “Nope, I’m in charge. This is mine. Go do your job, I’ll do my job.” That can be a little assertive, but also can do all the little things.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. You know my favorite tip for that?
Jay Papasan:
It changes your life.
Brandon Turner:
I had a number of… you know, every assistant’s generally been better than the one before, but I’ve gone through probably eight in the last 10 years. And the one I have right now, I’ve had for a couple years, and she is just an absolute rockstar.
Jay Papasan:
So, just a tip for hiring or tip for getting-
Brandon Turner:
Yes, hiring. The difference was I thought, what’s the number one skill that drove me nuts about some of the previous ones? And it was lack of attention to detail. So, I said, “Well, how do I test for attention to detail?” So, I went to Google and typed in, “attention to detail test.” Shockingly, those exist. You can even have ChatGPT make you your own. So, I found an attention to detail test. And it was like you had to read a paragraph, and then answer something, and do some questions, whatever.
Som I had five applicants, I think, at the end that was looking for the assistant. And one of them scored like a 48%, one was like a 52, 53, 57. I think the next was like 60. And then Kat, who’s my assistant now, was a 94. So, out of the range of everyone else. And so, I hired her based on that. And it was the best decision I ever made. She-
Jay Papasan:
And that’s the one thing for you.
Brandon Turner:
That’s the one thing. Yes. Very much the one thing.
Jay Papasan:
So, like, what’s the thing that I want most from this hire?
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, for an assistant, for me, it was, “I need attention to detail.” I got a previous assistant who, like, she would book a flight, and then I would land at the airport in Sacramento, and the car rental would be in San Francisco. And that happened not once or twice, but like four times where the car rental was at a different airport and I’m like, that attention to detail matters so much. And so, anyway, the assistant I have now is the best attention-to-detail person I know. And it was that test, super simple.
Jay Papasan:
The lesson I learned, I remember when I was hiring my first CEO for one of our companies and asked Gary, like, “How the heck do I write a job description?” And he flipped it. It’s like, “What’s the thing if they don’t do well,” he gave me three, “What are the three things, if he doesn’t do well, you’ll have to fire him?” And like, you are non-negotiable. Like, in my next hire, if they can’t have attention to detail, they’re not gonna work. So, you took it like three times as far as Gary did.
Brandon Turner:
They have to be good at that one thing.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. And then, I’m a big believer in like… I mean, that’s one test, the attention to detail test. But yeah, if you have a couple other things they need to do, like, “Oh, they need to be able to do this,” I think most people when they do job interviews, they tend to ask the questions that either they saw in a movie that people ask, like, “You’re in a jar-“
Jay Papasan:
Show me this pencil.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, some stuff like that, just like weird stuff. Or they just don’t ask hardly any questions other than tell me about yourself, what’s your strength, the weaknesses, which is, I mean, fine. But I wanna know what are those skill sets, the three things, four things that they have to know? Then, how do I test them in the moment for that exact skill? And almost nobody does this. So, then, later on…
Actually, true story, my very first assistant I ever hired, this is before even the virtual one, and I hope she’s not watching this, but it was a funny story. I hired this woman, and I loved her. She was awesome. She was a local in my town. So, I needed an assistant. So, a digital assistant to work online, answer emails and all that. And I hire her, and I get an office for her. I set her up with a big Mac computer. I bought a brand new big desktop Mac computer. And I meet her there on day one for training. And I said, “Okay, do me a favor. Go to your desktop and click on whatever.” And she says, “What’s a desktop?” And I was like, “It’s where all the icons are.” And she said, “What are icons?” And I was like, “Have you ever used a computer before?” And she said, “No.” She’d never.
And I was like, “I just hired an assistant to run my digital life.” Like this is when I started the BiggerPockets podcast and my entire life is digital. And she had never used a computer.
Jay Papasan:
This might be why you need someone with a high attention to detail, by the way.
Brandon Turner:
Because I do not have that. I was just like, I like her, so I’m gonna hire somebody I like. I think she’s a cool person. Terrible idea.
Jay Papasan:
Well, most people, like in our experience, they hire from pain.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
By the time you say, “Okay, I’m willing to do this,” you’re already so deep in it, it looks like anybody feels like they can rescue you. And so, you hire from pain and because you’re desperate, the first apparently good candidate that shows up, you go all in on. And then, you look up six months later and you say, “Well, maybe I’m not meant to hire people.” And it’s just like, you’ve kind of created the cycle that’s gonna fulfill that.
So, I wanna jump into some of the other skills because I think we’ve beaten up the delegation thing to death. Because if someone’s not convinced now, they’re not gonna be convinced. Let’s take a quick break. And on the other side, I wanna dive into Goal Setting to the Now.
Brandon Turner:
Perfect.
Jay Papasan:
Okay.
So you were sharing with me, like I know I had dinner with you and a friend about the time that you were considering making the leap, right? You’ve built this amazing, almost a decade career at BiggerPockets. You were an investor, you became an author, a best-selling author, you became one of the top podcast hosts in the world. I mean, not just the beard man. Like people knew that you’re really good in front of a mic and you’re really good at that. And you were considering making a massive career change.
And you shared with me that the Goal Setting to the Now process, which we talk about in the book, that that was really an essential thing for you.
Brandon Turner:
Huge. Yeah. In fact, if you go back to when I first heard the Goal Setting to the Now concept, I remember… or maybe it was the first time it sunk in, I think it was probably, because I had read the book on the airplane, but I remember driving in my car and that part hit me. And I was with my wife, and I pulled over to the side of the road.
Jay Papasan:
Oh wow.
Brandon Turner:
And I literally recorded a… I’m sure I could find it if I went on my Instagram from years ago. I recorded a video and I said, “Guys, you’ve got to understand this concept.” And I just taught it right there on this video and I posted it on my Instagram, because it was so impactful. So, the idea of like, “What’s my vision long term and I’m gonna reduce quickly. What I got to do this year to be on track for it? What I got to do this quarter, this week, like today, right now?” It just hit me like a ton of bricks.
And so, yeah, I started looking at, again, vision. Where do I want to head in my future? Like, what do I want to have? And BiggerPockets had sold to private equity, which there’s pros and cons of private equity, but like, I’m not a private equity employee kind of a guy. Like, I’m a startup guy. I’m an entrepreneur. And all of a sudden now, it was like we have a lot of board meetings, and there was a lot of board meetings. And like, I don’t handle that well.
Jay Papasan:
I’m just imagining you with your leg bouncing under the table.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, yeah. I’m just like, “I gotta get out of this.” And so, I looked at the future, I said, “Okay, if the vision for I want in my head, let’s say three years down the road, is I wanna be this and this. And I wanna have some kids.” I had one at the time and I’m like, “I want more kids.” And this is not conducive to that future self to define who I wanna be.
Jay Papasan:
And at that time, you’re based in Denver.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t living there, but the company was based there. I was still in Washington.
Jay Papasan:
You were in Washington.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, so I decided, “Well, okay. To be on track for, yeah, a year from now…” Let’s say, to be on track for getting out of my job and to be financially free, completely out of this and all that, this year, I probably need to quit the job. And so, I set myself a goal. Like, in the next year, I’m gonna leave the job. And I was like, “Oh, this quarter, what do I gotta do?” And I don’t wanna leave Biggerpockets and lurch. I was very much the face of it. So, I worked with the team to say, “We’ve gotta get me out without hurting you.” And then, this quarter, like we had plans for our quarterly goals. And we had, then, weekly stuff that I did. And we had daily stuff that I did. So, I very much used that and continue to use it today.
I mean, literally, every single day I wake up, and I have like a habit tracker, and I write down my three goals that I’m working towards. All the habits, I have 12 habits I track. And then I have a thing, I literally call it the weekly one. Basically one thing. And the weekly one is simply, what’s the one thing? LIke next to each goal. So, I have my three goals. What is the one thing today that I have to do to get closer to this goal? So, I write the goal, write the weekly one, and then I get that thing knocked out. So I still use it today and it’s changed my life.
Jay Papasan:
You just developed your system for how to use it because that little question is like, you’re getting almost all the way to the now.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Like you’re this week, I’ve got my three big goals, I know what I’m gonna do and I know exactly what I have to do to feel like I was successful this week.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. What’s shocking is how, like, when you don’t identify what that next thing is, often people call it MINS, like most important next step, when you don’t identify what that step is, we just don’t do the step. It’s not a hard step. It’s usually like a two-minute step.
In fact, I was on Ice Coffee Hour, which is a big podcast with Graham Stephan and his co-host Jack. And I was telling this concept around like the most important next step. Like what’s the next thing I gotta do to move it down? So, I asked Jack, “What’s something you want in life?” He’s like, “Oh, I would love to have a family.” This is very much Goal Setting to the Now.
He says, he was like, “I wanna have a family someday and kids, and that Thanksgiving dinner with grandkids running around.” I was like, “That’s beautiful, man. Well, what do you gotta do this year to be on track for that?” He’s like, “Well, I got to get a girlfriend.” I’m like, “Okay. So, what do you got to do to get a girlfriend?” He’s like, well, “I gotta update my Tinder profile.” I’m like, “Okay, okay. That’s cool. What do you gotta do to update your Tinder profile?” “I gotta get a haircut.” “What do you gotta do to get a haircut?” “Well, I need to schedule it.” “What do you gotta do to schedule a haircut?” “Well, I need to go on my app and book it.” I’m like, “How long does that take?” “A minute?” So, I’m like, “In other words, that future life you want of kids, and Thanksgiving, and the beauty and the love of that future all comes down to a one-minute action. Why aren’t you doing it right now?” He’s like, “Oh shoot, I should be doing it right now.”
Like when you identify, when you work backwards and identify the next thing to move forward, it’s always like a five-minute task and it’s always easy. And you do that, and then you do it again, and you do it again, and you do enough of those and you achieve anything.
Jay Papasan:
And it’s a muscle. A lot of people are like, “Well, I’m not sure. Like, I know it’s all of these things.” And I’m like, “Well, then just start knocking them out.”
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Right? So, like, you have 10 potential five-minute tasks. Okay, that’s an hour. Let’s knock them out.
Brandon Turner:
Exactly. Almost everything. Like building a rocket is a series of five-minute tasks. Anything complex can be broken down, and you identify that task, and either do it or schedule it. And then, shockingly, you get done and you do it again. And the more you speed that process up of identifying the action and doing the action, the sooner you get to whatever you’re trying to reach.
Jay Papasan:
So, you left BiggerPockets, you had a someday vision, like for the Goal Setting to the Now, like, “In three years beyond, I want to be in this place.” Did all of those things mostly come true? Because I look up and you’re living in Hawaii, you’ve got a growing family, you’ve got two businesses that you’re running, you’ve got ODC and thousands of doors now, but I don’t know how many was in the first three years.
Brandon Turner:
I had a goal. When I left BiggerPockets, and around that time, there was a little bit of fuzziness because there was a year of transition. But in there, I said, “I wanted, within three years, to have a thousand units.” So we literally reverse engineered that, “Okay, to be-“
Jay Papasan:
I remember that goal, yes.
Brandon Turner:
It was a thousand units. So, I read that book, Vivid Vision from Cameron Herold.
Jay Papasan:
Okay.
Brandon Turner:
I love that concept of creating a very creatively designed vision for your life in a certain three to five-year time period. So, I wrote a newspaper article from the future. And it started, literally, it was December 31st, 2023, I think it was but I did it in 2020, I think. It was like 2023, opened our capitals and investment firm, unlike anything you’ve ever seen, blah, blah, blah. And it said in there, “We’ve got $50 million of real estate. We’ve got a thousand units. We’ve got five team members. We do masterminds in Maui. We give back to charity.” So, I had all these things outlined in a creative way. I blew that up to be a four-foot poster, put it on my wall, and I saw it every single day.
Jay Papasan:
I love that.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. And then, we just reverse engineered it. What are we gonna do this year to be on track for that vision? And we did not buy $50 million of real estate in those three years. We bought $300 million of real estate, right? So, sometimes-
Jay Papasan:
You loser.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, I know. It’s such a… horrible. When you get the right team and you have the right vision and then you work the right process, which is what Goal Setting to the Now is, shockingly, not only do you get your goal, but you can far surpass it.
Jay Papasan:
It just keeps you from veering all over the place.
Brandon Turner:
Correct, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
You’re working backwards or something. And that “something” might evolve, but that’s one of the reasons we always tell people, “Dream big.” Like if you’re going out 20 years, 10 years, whatever it is, if you are doing the right things, you’ll be surprised about how much can be there when you get there. And that direction, and growing a business, entrepreneur, you cast a big vision. So, casting a big vision is not just great in terms of you’re asking a bigger question, which we talk about, it attracts higher quality people.
Brandon Turner:
It does, 100%. People wanna be led. I wanna be led. If I go to a shoe store, I don’t want a shoe salesman who’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know, there’s a lot of shoes here. Yeah, you can take your pick.” I want him to be like, “This is a shoe for you because I know you,” right? Like, I want people with a vision and like that’s what everybody wants. So, like, if I’m like, “Yeah, I think we’re gonna buy some real estate this year,” “Okay, cool.” “I wanna buy $50 million of real estate. Are you coming with me?” And I was like, “Yeah.”
Jay Papasan:
There’s room in that vision for my goals to be met.
Brandon Turner:
Yes, yeah, exactly.
Jay Papasan:
Right. So that’s the important thing. Like, if you want to attract people, they’re going to do amazing things, they’ve got to see that there’s room in your vision for all of their dreams to come true.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah. And if you don’t have a vision, then how do they know that their vision fits in it? They don’t.
Jay Papasan:
Well, why are they working for you?
Brandon Turner:
Exactly, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Right.
Brandon Turner:
It just doesn’t work though. So, yeah, having that clear vision, one of the most important things I did, and then reverse engineering it, all the way down to, what are we doing today? And now, I would not have bought, whatever, 14,000 units without The ONE Thing. Guaranteed, there’s no chance I’d be anywhere close to where I am at today. I’d probably have like 30. So I appreciate you on that.
Jay Papasan:
You can just cut us in.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Oh, that was too much of a laugh. Anyway, no I love that, and I love the vision, and I love the story. So, you brought in your wife and I know you’ve just… congratulations again on your third child.
Brandon Turner:
Thank you.
Jay Papasan:
A lot of entrepreneurs, we’re just hitting couplings, like the difficulty of that first critical hire, how to cast a big vision and actually hit it. And the other one is, like, how do I stay… like you’re very committed to being a great husband and a great father. Like how do I do those roles and also be doing this giant vision? And so, you’ve been very purposeful in how you pursue big goals in your personal life and in your professional life. And we talked about the Goal Setting Retreat. That was where I would start, but where would you go with that question because I know that you’re trying your hardest to do those things. And I think from the outside, you look pretty successful. I know everybody fights and all that.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, yeah, everyone’s got their things. But yeah, a couple of thoughts on that. I’ll go two different places with it. First, my wife and I started setting goals back, honestly, probably around the time we read The ONE Thing. But we started setting goals. Every year we’d go to the ocean, we’d sit down and just, “Where do we want to be in the future?” And it was very illuist. We didn’t have a great framework around it but it was just like, “What do we want?” We started doing it together as a date.
And it changed our life. And we said things like, “We want to live in Hawaii someday.” And I think that was a 10-year goal we wrote down. And it was like a year later to move there. Again, once you identify it, it’s like, “Oh, maybe it’s actually not a 10-year thing. Maybe I could do it sooner.” So, the goal setting stuff, we’ve gotten better every single year.
Then, I started teaching it. I brought my investors to an event. We did it with just my investors and my company. That was great. And then, I took a bunch of friends to Vegas. We did it one year. And then, I built the whole Better Life Tribe all around that concept of, like, “Let’s set goals as a family or as a couple.” And we started doing that pretty heavily.
So anyway, goal setting with your spouse, super important. And one thing I always teach is… and I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a big thinker. I’ve got these big lofty goals, like even moving to Hawaii or whatever. So, I’m sitting with my wife, and I’m kind of coaching her through it because I’m the goal guy. So, I’m like, “All right. So, what do you want this year? I’m going to try to lose 20 pounds and I’m going to, you know, whatever, make an extra million dollars.” And she’s like, “I want to drink more water.” And I was like, “No, no, no.”
Jay Papasan:
Think bigger.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, you need to think bigger. What’s a real goal? She’s like, “I just don’t think I drink enough water. I want to.” I was like, “No, no, no, no, honey. I know how to do goals. Let me tell you how to do goals.” And at the end of the day, she’s like, “I just want to drink more water.” And what I finally realized is that my level of goal does not have to match with her level of goal. It’s not a competition. What matters to her is the water. And so, I said, “Okay.”
Now, I started thinking, if that’s her goal, that’s what she cares about, how do I help her with that? So, I buy her a special water bottle that tracks her water and stuff. And like that may be the best thing tangibly I ever did for my marriage to fix it because I stopped trying to fit her into my goals and I just said, “How can I support you and yours and not judge them?” That was super big. The two sides, there’s a goal setting, super important. We talked about habit tracking, I mentioned that, like I track my habits.
Jay Papasan:
Can I pause there?
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, please.
Jay Papasan:
Just habit tracking, I will take ownership in getting us back there because I want to get to your 12 habits. I’m like, I have my fingers crossed this whole time. So, what we see, there’s almost always… in these couples that show up for our events too, there’s one that’s the committed goal setter. And I refer to the other as kind of like a drag-along partner. Like in a contract, like you’re the drag-along. You don’t really have a say. They’re kind of held hostage in the room. And it’s because they may have past baggage around it.
And so, whatever the situation, I think, a lot of times, the entrepreneur gets excited and energized by thinking big. And some people, like, it shuts them down. So, I just want to emphasize, like, listen, don’t judge, and be supportive.
Brandon Turner:
And I think, sometimes, the words we use matter in that. Like, if you use words like goals, and we’re gonna reverse engineer them, and stuff like that, that just feels businessy and corporate. And like my wife rebelled against that. So, I just shifted to like, “Hey, what sounds cool in the future? What sounds like a really fun thing in the future?” “Oh, man, it’d be really great to go live in Hawaii someday.” Guess what? That’s a goal. But we don’t even use that word. We just talk about what we want.
Jay Papasan:
Some people can’t use habits.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
But they’re like, “Are there any family rituals that we want to build?” just because that feels hard or it feels limiting.
Brandon Turner:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
And so, just acknowledging the differences. And our job is to support each other.
Brandon Turner:
Yep.
Jay Papasan:
So, kudos for figuring it out. So, you went from there and you were about to say habits.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, the habit thing is in terms of working with my spouse on this is most people track KPIs for their business. And I’m just such a bigger believer. And yes, you should track KPIs, key performance indicators. How many phone calls are you making? How many offers are you doing? You know, the stuff that matters in business. But almost nobody tracks that for their personal life, which is silly, right? Because what matters more, our personal life or business life?
Jay Papasan:
What’s the foundation? Our personal life is the foundation, often, of our business.
Brandon Turner:
Correct. And if the personal life is a mess, your business is gonna be a mess. So, I track most of my… I have 12 habits that I track. I would say 10 of them are personal, like actions. A couple of them are like, make an offer on a real estate deal, meet with my CEO. But it’s like, did I date my wife three times this week?
Jay Papasan:
Three days a week?
Brandon Turner:
In this phase of our life with little kids, right? Like I’d find a date as we have, at least, I think it’s like 15 minutes, no kids, me and her connecting on something. It could be us sitting on the back porch together.
Jay Papasan:
It’s couple time.
Brandon Turner:
It’s couple time, no kids involved. Like it has to be pure couple, intentional, no phones talking. So, that could be a date. It could be, yeah, sitting on my back lanai, which is like a porch and talking to her. It’s shocking though, if I don’t track it, how little we do it. Just the act of tracking something makes you more likely to do it. And then, when I can see a pattern, like, “Oh, I can’t. That’s the third week in a row that I haven’t gotten on three dates with my wife.” Like three 15-minute blocks an entire week and I couldn’t do it? And so, I’ve got tracking my dates with my wife, I got one-on-one time with my kids.
Jay Papasan:
People would say, because we do date nights too, you know this, it was like, does that take the romance out of it?
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, not at all. I think, yeah, you do-
Jay Papasan:
Track it because it’s important.
Brandon Turner:
Correct.
Jay Papasan:
Not because you wanna take the romance out of it.
Brandon Turner:
Exactly.
Jay Papasan:
But those 15 minutes can still feel spontaneous but you’re gonna note, “Done.” That was great, real connection.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, I don’t like going to the gym. That’s not like a, “Yay, I get to go to the gym today.” I still go to the gym to check a box because it’s on my habit tracker. I gotta check the box. But guess what? Whether or not I’m doing it out of motivation or out of discipline or out of like a habit, I have to check a box, either way, my muscles are getting bigger. So, you still get the results, whether or not the reason you’re doing it necessarily in the moment is there. And so, I still get a better relationship.
Jay Papasan:
You just gotta do the work.
Brandon Turner:
You gotta do the work. I always say this, you get the results of what you repeatedly do.
Jay Papasan:
I think there’s an old quote that says like, you are what you repeatedly do.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, I kinda shifted that to, you get the results of what you repeatedly do. If you routinely go to the gym and eat a certain amount of calories, you will get the body that you deserve based on that. So, defining those actions, what are the actions that I can do that would inevitably get me to a better marriage?
I love that question. It’s like, what would virtually guarantee it? So, you can do this for any area of your life, your marriage, your health, your parenting, your business, like virtually guarantee it. And if you don’t know the answer, find somebody who’s got a 10 out of 10 marriage and you ask them, “What are you doing?” And they’re gonna be like, “Oh yeah, I go on dates every week. Make sure we have no-kid-connection time every day. And we go on vacation twice a year.” Perfect.
Jay Papasan:
What would be one of the habits that, on the surface, you’d think that’s not gonna do a lot but it’s actually been really important. Like, obviously, the connection time. Is there anything else that jumps out?
Brandon Turner:
And I’m not naturally good at this. It’s waking up early. It’s like an anchor habit, you call it, or like one habit to rule them all. If I wake up early, I, then, am more likely to read in the morning, which is one of my habits. I’m more likely to eat healthy that day. I’m more likely to have time to go with my wife. Sometimes, we do our morning date in the morning. We just get to talk. I’m more likely to go to bed at night, less likely to be on my phone. I mean, I’d say half my habits I’ll hit naturally as long as I do that one habit of getting up early.
Jay Papasan:
Keystone habit.
Brandon Turner:
Keystone habit, that’s the word.
Jay Papasan:
I was going through it. It’s like, I know there’s a word for this from the Power of Habit. Keystone habit, it unlocks. And like I just wanna point out, like I think a lot of people, when they think of habits, they think, “Well, I’ve got to go to the gym five times a week,” and it has to be hard. And when you experiment and you play around, like, there are these little unlocks, and the research calls it like the halo effect. Like, the halo effect of you getting up early is enormous.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, huge.
Jay Papasan:
It opens up all of these other times for you and all these other things that you have to do. So, we call it the first domino.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, 100%.
Jay Papasan:
People want to race down.
Brandon Turner:
Waking up early is the first domino, for sure.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. You’ve got your first domino that unlocks so much more. I mean, given the fact that you’ve read the book probably 10 times more than I have, we can go on and on and on, but we’re out of time. At the end of our episodes, we like to give our listeners a challenge. And I didn’t set you up for this.
Brandon Turner:
I knew it was coming.
Jay Papasan:
Okay, good, good.
Brandon Turner:
I pay attention.
Jay Papasan:
God, I love that. What’s one small step that they could take this week to maybe act on some of the stuff that we’ve talked about today?
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, 100% easily. It’s that habit tracking idea. So, what I would encourage you, you don’t have to do all 12, I do a lot.
Jay Papasan:
Start with one.
Brandon Turner:
Start with one, yeah. Pick one habit. And here’s what I want you to do. On a piece of paper, just write the goal or the habit, I should say. Like, what are you gonna do this week? Write your target, like how many times you’re gonna do it this week. And then, just make seven little boxes next to it. And then, every morning when you wake up, literally just check, did you do it yesterday or not? Just check. I’m not even saying you have to do it, I just want you to track it. Like don’t even worry about doing the thing, just pick one habit, make a little tracker.
And what’s fun is at the end of your week now, with one of them, you’re gonna have like, “Hey, my goal is six times to the gym and I went four. Okay, I got four out of six.” What’s cool, when you track a bunch of your habits, now you can gamify your entire life. So, every week, I have a score at the end of my week. I say, “Hey, a perfect week would have been 44. I got a 37. I bet I’d get better next week.” And so, now, I’m competing against my last week and the week before that, and I am trying to get my score better. When my score is better, I’m doing more of the habits I wanna do. My habits are aligned to my goals. My goals are aligned to my vision for my life.
Jay Papasan:
And at 44 as high as you can get. You can’t force-
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, 44 is–
Jay Papasan:
You can’t blow it out.
Brandon Turner:
You technically could. LIke let’s say I said I’m gonna go on three dates with my wife and I went on four. So, I could go above. I think I’ve done that once ever. I got over 100%. But yeah. So, when my score is improving, my life is improving. And if you wanna improve your life, you wanna live a better life, the idea is improve your score.
Jay Papasan:
You’ve got your KPIs down.
Brandon Turner:
Yeah, exactly. Just do the work, do the actions that give you the better life.
Jay Papasan:
Love it, man. Thanks so much for being on the show.
Brandon Turner:
Thank you for having me.
Jay Papasan:
Well, I hope you loved that episode. Next week, we’ve got more in store for you, got my friend Rory Vaden coming in. Now, Rory’s got his first new book in I don’t even know how many years, maybe 10 years coming out. It’s called Wealthy and Well-Known. He wrote it with his wife, AJ. If you don’t know Rory and AJ Vaden, they run Brand Builders, probably the premier agency for building a business around a personal brand. You would know half of their client list. They’re big names.
I will share them next week instead of going through them here. But if you’re at all interested in how to grow an audience, how to grow your business using a personal brand, next week is a must listen when we talk to Rory Vaden around his brand new book, Wealthy and Well-Known.
Disclaimer:
This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guest represent those of the guest and not ProduKtive or Keller Williams Realty LLC and their affiliates and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.
