The biggest challenge in business is alignment. So I want to be totally aligned that I want to make more money for the company. They want to make more money, so if it’s profit, we’re aligned. I think most people have a loose understanding of accounting and you got to know the numbers, right? Businesses want or lost in math and you’ve got to understand that math really, really well. When you’re going into a business, who are you going to keep? Who are you not going to keep it? How good’s that staff? When I went into this business, I bought this resort. As I’m doing my due diligence, you end up meeting a lot of the employees. Nearly all business problems are math equations. All life problems are actually math equations, and you just got to understand the math that solves the problem. You should have done hundreds of reps valuing that business, valuing that piece of real estate, valuing that flip before you transact. Go get the education and know what a great deal is, know what a great business is, because if you find a great deal, the money is easy. Raising money for a theory is impossible. And so-

What’s going on, guys? We got a good one for you today. Brett, thank you so much for coming on. Been in the space for about 20 years plus, has done over 3000 transactions from the retail side and the investment side. So Brett, thank you so much for coming and taking the time, but I kind of want to take a step back and kind of see how you got into real estate in the first place.

Yeah. So I grew up in middle of nowhere, Colorado, moved to Arizona in 1999 and got about, I think it was the year 2000, I got the book Rich Dad Poor Dad. And that was really probably the spark that lit so many of our fires. And really that was the moment I was in college, I was going to be an attorney and read that book and realized I didn’t want to be an attorney. I wanted to be in real estate. I wanted to go have cashflowing assets that paid for my lifestyle. And so I didn’t think about becoming a real estate agent. I started out as an investor in the fix and flip space. And so I worked hard to save up the capital that I had and started just one flip at a time. And that turned into helping a buddy buy a home and help buddy sell a home. And then I really just kind of realized I had two different businesses. I had a day job that ended up becoming selling real estate. And then I had this investment business that was flipping homes. And then I was looking, had the dream of the Rich Dad Porthead of owning rentals and going down that path. And I always realized that I was in two different businesses. I had a sales business and an investment company. And so that’s how I got started. Just literally it started with that making the jump and that first flip and figuring it out, which it’s crazy to think back doing all the things I would never do today, like how much risk I took on, putting a lot of that construction was on a credit card for that first house, things that I definitely teach a lot differently today, but we all got to get our start somewhere. I had no capital and lots of enthusiasm. So that was really the start in the early 2000s, Phoenix, Arizona flipping houses.

That’s awesome. And what was your life like before getting into real estate? What would be the main differences?

So before real, I was going to college and I always wanted … I had the ideas of being an entrepreneur. My parents were entrepreneurs. So prior to that, I’m sitting at ASU. I’ve got about $20 in my pocket like most college kids do. It’s about all you have. And I went in this college bookstore. They were putting books outside. And so they would sell off, ASU will only use a brand new textbook and then they would sell those books off. It sells like a dollar each. And so I took my 20 bucks and this is, you got to go back in, this is the year 2000, right? The Amazon exists, but it’s not what it is. The internet’s out there. I’m old. I’m a lot older than you. You could submit your college paper via email, but the professor would not accept your homework via email back then to give you an idea for the timeframe we’re in. And so I bought those books for 20 bucks and I sold them online for $200. And it was my girlfriend at the time, my wife of 20 years today is like, “What are you going to do? Is this book thing?” I was like, “No, I don’t know. I’m going to take the $200 and I’m going to buy 200 books.” I turned it into a thousand. And then I bought a thousand books. And so that I ultimately bought all the books for ASU and I was taking a book for a dollar and selling it to a community college in Ohio or North Dakota or whatever for like 50 bucks. And so I had this crazy business as a 20-year-old making 300 plus thousand dollars a year on the quote internet, selling books on Amazon, Abooks and a Libras. And so really when you have that kind of success as a 20-year-old, you kind of run really fast and do crazy things. I bought a restaurant, a jet ski, boat, you name it, I got it. And it was the first real lesson in business that I got, which was bought this restaurant, had the owner on earn out, so they had to come in and train me and bought a business that was total garbage. It was a lie. The sales they said they were doing, they weren’t doing. The financial said they’re doing $1,000 in sales and the first day I’m there, we’re doing $200. And I look at the owner, I’m like, ” Well, wait a minute. He’s like, Oh, it’s bad day. “Well, no, they were all bad days because the books were totally cooked. And so that was my first lesson in business that people aren’t necessarily totally honest all the time. And it actually was, at the time, was the most painful experience in my life. Looking back, I learned more from that failure than anything else I’d ever done. So then I had a landscaping business and a pool business. And I was just a marketer and entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur until I found real estate.

That’s awesome. And what does the business look like today? I know you have a couple arms of it. So kind of walk us through what the arms look like and what each of them do.

Yeah. So I started with just a basic flipping company and a real estate company. By 2011, we were the number nine agent in the country, number three with our firm at Keller Williams. And so I ended up buying the brokerage. We sold that off, but today we’ve got a flipping investment company that does wholesale, fix and flip, wholetale. We’ve just bought some acreage. We’re doing a little bit of development. We’ll split off lots. We take mobile homes and put them on land. We flip a lot of mobile homes, ironically. So you have the investment business. We have a hard money lending business. So I’ve got my banking license here in Arizona. So we do a lot of lending. Awesome.

We’ve

Got the asset company, so we own single family, triple net commercial, and then we invest in companies. And so today we’ve kind of formalized what I do. We own a title company, property and casualty insurance business. So we’ve got these collection of businesses that surround the real estate transaction, and we just try to monetize the transaction where we can and add as much value to our customers as we can. That’s what we’re focused on today.

So that’s kind of where I was going to go with my first question off the businesses, buying businesses. So you solely buy businesses that have to do with real estate, correct?

We started there. Yep. In the beginning, it was easiest for us to buy when we bought it. We were in the title business. So we started title company, joint venture with a partner. It made a lot of sense, right? We have a lot of transactions on the investment side, on the retail side. Why not be in the title business? We know the insurance business because we’ve got customers and everyone has insurance for closing. And so why don’t we provide that value to the customer? So it started that way. And then as we got going, it expanded into other things. So we own a life insurance company today. So we look at things outside of our industry now, but it started just kind of you think lanes of revenue. I was just thinking, what is the most logical business to start where I already have the customers for that business?

Right. So would it be safe to assume if you were going to tell someone that is a real estate investor that maybe has a couple businesses, but is looking to buy more businesses to have it centered around real estate, around what they’re already doing? Would that be safe to assume?

Yeah. I would say your first goal in business, in my opinion, is how do you work yourself out of your day-to-day? So I started out with no people. It was me a headset and no money and lots of time and enthusiasm. Over time, that grew to where I learned you had an assistant and then you had multiple salespeople. And at one point we had over a hundred salespeople in Arizona. But you get to a point where you’ve got management process and systems, you get your time back and you’re like, all right, what’s the most logical step? For most folks, it’s going to be to buy a business that they actually already have the customers for. You don’t have to. It just makes it a lot easier if that business is adjacent to your current revenue stream, just a lot easier to get it off the ground quicker. It doesn’t have to be. But I think for real estate agents and investors, they drive the transaction. I say residential retail, whether you’re an agent or investor, you go out and get the transaction and all these other people get paid, right? Title, insurance, lender, hard money lender, whatever.

So the more you can participate as a principle in the transaction, the greater your opportunity to grow your income and grow your wealth. And so that’s just kind of how we think about the transaction. But yes, for most folks, they should invest in their business, scale it out. Now, if they’re not at the place where they’re out of their business, I think that’s the mistake young investors make. They want to do too much too soon. They get three things going and they don’t really have systems and now they’ve got a fractured effort and so they get less results in those companies instead of that they focused on one and work themselves out of it.

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So for someone that’s already out of the day-to-day, who’s already have the people in place, have someone else running the show, you would recommend it’s the easiest way to start buying businesses to get adjacent. Yeah.

I mean, it makes it a lot. I mean, the easy ones write your title, right? For most folks, you’re in Texas participating in title. Texas is one of the easiest states, right? High fees. We’ve looked at title a lot in tech. We don’t have a business in Texas, but I just know a lot about the title business there.That would be a really logical business if you had the transaction account or had the influence for other folks. So love buying businesses that are related to real estate, especially if you have the jockey and the way to do that. And we’ve got a model we kind of work off of as we think about buying businesses.

What’s the problem that you try and solve when buying each business? Is there a certain problem per business that you’re looking at like, “Hey, let’s solve this problem by buying X business,” or how does that look? So it can be a couple of

Different ways. It could be that I like the business and someone wants to sell, there’s an opportunity. Usually it’s driven by the talent. I know the person or the individual. So I’m a big jockey investor. If the right jockey, even in a mediocre business, they’ll make it happen. Great business, crappy jockey, the jockey being whoever’s going to run it, the current founder, CEO or leader. If they’re not great, the business is going to struggle. So for me, It’s people. Everything you do is going to be a people business. No matter how much it doesn’t need people, it’s going to need a lot of folks. And so I drive a lot of my decision. The person’s a lot of it, the opportunity, right? We think about three years out, what could that business really look like? And we’ve got our own internal criteria. I can kind of roll you through it. So the first thing is we define the opportunity. Three years out, how much money could this business make? When I first started doing this, if that could add another $100,000 to our bottom line annually, we would look at that business. Well, as we’ve grown and matured a little as a company, today it doesn’t make sense for us to start a business for a hundred grand. Now it’s a million dollars. That business, anything we’re going to buy or start has to be able to get to a million dollars a year net income inside of three years. So that’s the first thing we look at. Second thing we look at, what’s the challenge? What’s the danger? What are we missing? What could go wrong? What are the dangers of this business? Are there obvious threats? We don’t want to be the travel agent in the early 2000s. It’s just a business that’s dying and we’re just running into it headlong. We don’t want to do that, especially in the age of AI. And there’s so many industries that I think are going to look different in five years. We look at, is there some sort of a moat or competitive advantage, whether it’s a patent, it’s difficult, it’s challenging, things like that. I look at travel. Do I have to travel for it? Love, love, love to travel for personal. Work travel, the Marriott and Duluth and the Marriott in Miami and the Marriott and San Jose, they’re all kind of the same. And so I spend some time speaking and traveling on the road, so I don’t love that as much anymore. Love to give a presentation. I don’t love the experience of getting there. We think about people. How many people will the business have? How complex will it be? That’s another criteria. I think about noise. So you’re much younger than you have all this white hair. I know it’s shocking. I’m 25 years old, but I have all this white hair. No, I’m 45 and it’s all this white hair is from noise in business. And so I just think about how noisy will the business be. So in a business that you might start alongside the real estate transaction might be a construction business. But for me, that’s a really noisy business. And there’s just lots of moving parts. And I measure noise by, as we’re filming this on a Friday, or I’m driving home, my phone rings and I’m like, oh, right? That’s noise. So I think about noise. And then on the last question I ask myself, literally I go through this criteria and answer all these questions. And then on a scale of one to five where I can’t pick four, how passionate am I about the business? And I can have a five passion for the business or a five passion for the jockey. I’ve got businesses that … My property and casualty business, I’m probably a two passion on the business, but I’m a five passion on the individual running it, my partner in that business. And so we take that criteria and see, does it line up for our goals? Does it make sense from a capital perspective? Then that’s when we go investor or start a business.

When you’re buying a business, do you typically, I know you keep mentioning the jockey or the partner that you’re having to do it. Are you always partnering with someone on it and having them run it? Obviously you’re not in the day-to-day running it, but is the person in there running it always a partner or how do you typically run that part of it?

So good question. So they likely will, unless if I’m buying part of it, they become a partner in that I’m buying part of their company. If it’s not, or I’m going to buy all of it, there’s someone that’s going to run the day-to-day that’s not me. I have to buy the jockey. So they may not … They would either paid one of two ways. Either they’re going to have a profits interest. So in all of our companies, the people running them are paid based on profit. So we’re all aligned. The biggest challenge in business is alignment. So I

(14:02)

Be totally aligned that I want to make more money for the company. They want to make more money, so if it’s profit, we’re aligned. Itime.

(14:15)

Really want that person to have ownership. I want them to win and I want them to accomplish their goals and really our whole models be wealthy in our coaching and training business. I want them to be wealthy and they do that through ownership and becoming a partner. And I want this to be … I want them to wake up in the morning and the way they feed their family to be from that business. And so they’re motivated to achieve and I’m super motivated to achieve for them.

Yeah. And that helps you too, because if they’re more invested in it, obviously whether it’s sweat equity or whatever the case may be, they’re trying harder for that. So for sure, that makes sense. When buying businesses, what do you think’s one thing that maybe a newer investor, whatever you would call them, into a business is someone that’s never bought a business before that’s just built them. What would you say the number one mistake is that they make that you think could be really easily avoided? I’m

Going to give you a few, but the first thing is assuming that every business runs great. You might run your business, buy the numbers. I’ve got a tight P&L, we’ve got all these KPIs, we’re looking at all the things only to buy a business and realize, maybe what were these guys thinking? I just bought a former timeshare resort property and I went in there and so I acquired the business and then for the first 60 days I said, send me every bill that comes in. I want to review them all personally. And I cut out like $150,000 a year from the operating budget of that business that was just waste. Didn’t change anything.

Were wasting $150,000 a year. And so you look at that and you’re like, I would have never dreamed early on. I mean, now we build processes and we understand all that. So number one, I think people don’t believe that people run it like a business. They don’t, largely. And that’s where the opportunity is. I think the other mistake, people don’t understand the true economics around business. Taking a P&L and it’s actually a map that tells you where things are and how the business is performing and where it’s going. I think most people have a loose understanding of accounting and you got to know the numbers, right? Businesses won or lost in math and you’ve got to understand that math really, really well. And so for your listeners out there, I think and viewers, starting in your own business, do you know every single number inside of your P&L down to the percentages? Do you know to that level? Because if you know your business that level where you’re really making decisions based on the economics, that’s where the opportunity is. I think that’s the biggest mistake people make. And the last would be just people. When you’re going into a business or you, who are you going to keep, who are you not going to keep and how good’s that staff? When I went into this business I bought this resort, as I’m doing my due diligence, you end up meeting a lot of the employees. And so it’s pretty casual conversation like, “Hey, how long have you been here? Where are you going? If you would own this place, what would you do? And what are your … ” And great ideas. The best ideas come from the people doing the work. And

The minute I took it over, I brought I went in there and the current general manager, I was like, “Dude, we don’t need you. Thanks for all your contributions in the past, but we’re not going to … ” And the assistant manager who I knew was doing all the work, “Congratulations, you have this job.” And she was like, “Brad, you haven’t interviewed me. ” I was like, “No, I’ve spent three weeks here. I know exactly who you are. You’re running this entire business.” I watched it. And so it was right, she was doing all the work just undervalued. It’s just funny here, this firm was paying this person to do nothing and has this incredible person that was undervalued, unhappy because they were devalued and now she’s thriving and crushing it and just doing an incredible job for us running the same business. So it’s fun to see how that stuff works out.

Why do you think so many investors or business owners overlook some of this stuff? You say it and it sounds simple, which I know it’s not, but it sounds simple when you say it out loud, but when you think about it, even as simple as asking your employees what they would do if they own the business, it sounds so simple, but nobody really does it. So why do you think so many investors overlooked that part?

I think we’re entrepreneurs. You just get excited as an entrepreneur and you’re like, “Let’s just go do a deal. Let’s run in here and we’re going to flip it. ” You get excited, but then you got to take a step back and be just a little more purposeful like, “All right, hold on. I’m really excited about this person, but let’s actually look at the math. Does this math make sense? Does our model make sense? How do the economics actually work?” And I think that’s the stuff that entrepreneurs we don’t love, the details, you think about the visionary, the integrator, however you want to look at that. I think that as an entrepreneur, we’re just vision people and we want to come up with new ideas and do that. And you’ve got to be able to do both, right? Do the vision. You’re at the top and leading from the front and coming up with the ideas and then you immediately got to go all the way to the bot and touch the customer and actually understand the customer’s needs and the mechanics and get into the dollars and cents. I think that’s the biggest mistake in business today is I see people not in the weeds of their business. They’re losing money, their P&L’s not making money, yet they’re like, “Well, I’m not going to look at the P&L.” I’m like, “Well, if you don’t know what you’re making today and you don’t know where you’re going, well then I guess any road you travel works.” I think that would be my answer would just be we’ve got to go into the details and people listening to this or watching them may go, “Well, I’m not a detailed person.” I could tell you I was not. I had zero organizational skills. I had to learn them and I didn’t know how to use Excel. I wasn’t educated in a great place. So I had to actually learn it. And I tell people all the time, if you’re young and you’re listening to this, if you don’t know how to use Excel, you’re going to be spending a lot of time if you’re successful in Excel.

And I know AI can do a lot of the math today, but AI’s not perfect. Yeah, I was doing a calculation that’d be on a debt service coverage ratio. So usually banks want 25% more than the actual debt in terms of income from the property. And so I was just talking into Grok on the calculation and I said, “Spit it back to me. ” And so we’re just having my conversation with my best friend Grok and I’m like, “I don’t know if that number’s right.” It just seemed off. So I went old school on my 10 BI calculator, I’m like, “It’s wrong.” And it was off by A lot. And so like 10 or 12%. So I took the same prompt and I threw it in ChatGPT, got it right. And I text Groc and I was like, “Hey, this is wrong.” And it was like, “I’m sorry.” Now this was the free version of Grock, I guess in fairness.

I didn

(20:41)
‘t have the paid version at that time, but I was like, wow, how many people would know that though? And

So

People are like, I see them, they’ve got AI writing their emails and doing their math and it’s like, well, you still need to understand the math behind it. And nearly all business problems are math equations, all life problems are actually math equations, and you just got to understand the math that solves the problem.

Yeah. I couldn’t imagine being in high school or college with AI now. I mean, I know they have all sorts of tools to check it, but man, I would’ve been caught a lot. You know what I mean? It’s hard not to at this point. It’s so accessible and so easy. It makes … I mean, even tasks like as simple as writing emails, it goes from a 15 minute task to a two minute task. It’s ridiculous. What do you think the most common misconception is about buying businesses that you thought before starting to buy businesses that you know now?

I would say a couple things. My answer would be the same whether it was investing in a bigger deal or investing in real estate if I have money or a business. I would say the biggest myth is it takes money to make money that I would break that down. The way I teach it is if someone found, like one of the listeners on this show right now found a … Somehow there was a $350,000 house that’s worth 350 today and somehow we could buy it for $200,000. If you had that deal, everyone you know would partner with you. If you had organized the information in a way you could present it to other humans like, “Hey man, I got a deal. I could buy it for 200, it’s worth 350, we could flip it, we could cash flow it. Would you want to partner with me?

(22:29)
” You wouldn’t have to go very far if you had a good package and could present well, you’d

Have an investor,

Right? You’d do it, I would do it, but what do they do? They don’t go focus on the deal. They focus, “Well, I’m going to go get the money first.” Well, no, go get the education and know what a great deal is, know what a great business is because if you find a great deal, the money is easy. Raising money for a theory is impossible. And so I think that’s a mistake. The other mistake people make is they want to move into action before they have the education.

(23:01)
So I’ll teach to a large crowd or whatever and I’ll ask them, say, “I have $10,000. What would you recommend I do with it? ” I’m like, “The first thing I recommend is you go get educated. I would invest all 10,000 in you. You’re the ultimate product.” I always joke, I’m not in the fantasy football game, all my buddies are group texting and talking about their fantasy. I’m like, “I have my own fantasy team. It’s called Brett Tanner. I draft the same team every season. I don’t play a fake game rooting on others. I play a real game called business. It’s twenty four seven, 365, and I draft my team me every single season in every season we’re trying to win, but invest in you. ” So whether that’s the books, the courses, making sure that you understand the business or the investment before you invest.

(23:46)
You should have done hundreds of reps valuing that business, valuing that piece of real estate, valuing that flip before you transact. And I think that’s the mistake people make. They don’t do the reps first.

Yeah. I mean, first off, fantasy, way too much time. I mean, I like watching football. It’s great. When it comes to fantasy, I care enough to watch all the games and talk shit on the people that I don’t want to do well and really scream at the people I do want to do well, but I don’t care enough to actually go in and take people that are hurt out of my lineup and all that fun stuff. So I’m the worst at it, but 100% understand what you’re saying, for sure.

Well, people spend so much time, right? They’re unwilling to read a book that could change their life, but they’ll blow 15 hours a week on a group text and fantasy. They could see that on screen time. You’re like, “Oh, look what I’m wasting in my life away on this. ” And yet the thing that could change their life and get them where they wanted is not buried in the Conga in a treasury map. You got to go find this book. It’s literally in the public library for free or it’s on your podcast or it’s on YouTube and another video. And so I just think people got to realize, man, these devices while they’re helpful, it’s the most distracting thing out there and people are addicted to them. And that’s the other problem, right? They’re spending the time doing things that don’t matter instead of productive things that would get them actually where they wanted to be.

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(26:10)
Brett, when it comes to strategies, this year has been very interesting in real estate. What are some of the key strategies that you’ve seen or that you’ve done this year that might have been a little different than previous years?

That’s a really good question. I think every market serves you up some opportunity and you got to spend the time figuring out what’s the opportunity right now in my market. Another way to think about it is what’s the underserved? What’s everyone else not looking at? So I’ll give you different examples. Affordability is a huge issue. We flip mobile homes. We do it across the state of Arizona. We actually do it a couple other states. And so mobile homes on land, not in parks, just as a weird example. Why does it work? It’s an affordability thing. They’re less expensive than other houses. They’re actually easy to flip, easy to find. People avoid it. They’re all avoiding them because they don’t understand or they think it’s gross or whatever story. So

I think that’s

Opportunity. They think it’s not profitable. “I’m not going to make money on mobile.” I mean, we absolutely crush that business. Another one, so I’ll give you a weird example. Timeshares as they existed before, all these timeshare properties are largely going out of business. Why? Because that was your parents or your grandparents thing, right? Well, then Airbnb comes along and just kind of wipes out that industry. So they’re selling those and you could buy them. The one I bought was a failed timeshare and I bought it and I’m converting it to affordable housing and I got it at about 30% of replacement costs. And I did that just like, I think I bought it 60 days ago. My point, everyone’s looking at that, but they’re looking at it through a different lens. Is this a resort as a hotel? I’m like, that cost,

(27:46)
It’s just an apartment building. So I think that looking a little differently, buying land, breaking it up, the right piece of dirt. I just think you got to figure out each market’s a little different, but in every market, there’s an opportunity, but where are you going and then what’s your criteria to maximize opportunity? So when we bring a deal into our investment company, we have in- house underwriting. So deal comes in from our salespeople, we immediately bring it in. And the first thought process we have is we’re going to look to wholesale it. I mean, we want to know that number. We may not wholesale it, but we want to look at that. So as an example, if I can make $15,000 to wholesale that deal, if I was going to take it down and wholetale it, so just sell it to an end user, I want to make double.

(28:27)
I want to go to 30,000. And then if I’m actually going to flip it and sell it, I want to make 45,000. So then I go look at the math and say, “What’s the highest and best use of my capital, our resources and our time?” And so we’re going to decide which strategy we execute based on the math. And some of that math is dictated by the market. But when I talk to real estate agents or investors, most of them have just like their one way of doing it. I’m a hotel, I’m a flip, I’m this. Well, yeah, but you may not be maximizing the opportunity. And so I think that part of it’s driven by what’s your buy box, what’s your math, and then where’s your unfair advantage right now in your market?

And a lot of times, we don’t do everything that you mentioned. I mean, we fix and flip wholetale and we’ll hold stuff, buy and hold. So we do a number of them, but a lot of people, you’re right, just do one of them or maybe two of them and it kind of limits what they can buy. But going back to the mobile homes, I mean, people overlook mobile homes a lot. Arizona, Texas, even Wichita, I mean, there’s mobile homes everywhere and a lot of people don’t know how much the land underneath the mobile home’s worth, and they just think about the mobile home itself. And we get so many deals and we have clients that get so many deals on mobile homes that they don’t know what the land’s worth, they don’t know what the mobile home’s worth itself, very easy to maintain, very easy to flip.

(29:57)
People sleep on mobile homes a lot Not, but they are very profitable.

I’ll tell you a quick crazy story. So I have a private client that I’ve been coaching and he’s in North Carolina. Small market, I won’t say the market to steal his thunder. I taught him the mobile home flipping business out there. He has a VA. He has outsourced transaction coordinator, so no full-time employees in this business. He made a million dollars. I take that back, 975,000 this year. I rounded up 975, full disclosure. And 2025, net, flipping mobile homes. A business that did not exist three years ago. So to your point, here’s everybody saying this market’s tough. Market’s hard. Doesn’t work in my market. You don’t understand my situation. And then here’s a guy running circles around people. And so I think that part of that, that’s the language. That narrative’s got to stop. It can work in your market. What is the opportunity in your market?

(30:54)
But so many people just, ah, it’s disgusting. Don’t do it. It’s not reality.

What do you think separates the top operators from everyone else in your experience?

First thing would be the top operators at the highest level leadership.

(31:12)
Leadership or leadership, not the airy fairy, like charismatic leader from TV, but an actual leader managing to the numbers, managing the expectations, having one-on-ones, having your project management tool, reviewing priorities, assigning deadlines and really having high impact meetings. So I think understanding leadership and management. The best book, I was going to actually write a leadership book, but the book, I read this book and I was like, “Well, that was the one I would’ve wrote.” So I can scratch that. Leading at a higher level. I think it’s Michael Hyatt. No, it’s not Hyatt. Leading at a higher level, that book, incredible. Incredible book on how to manage and grow people and think through it. So I think that’s one of the biggest issues to folks. And the second is just math. They don’t actually understand. Even we talked about P&Ls, but even the KPIs, right? If you’re a real estate investor, the most important math you understand is what’s your cost per deal?

(32:08)
What do you got to spend in marketing to buy a home? What does it actually cost per deal? Yes, there’s a million other things that I want to track, but if your average flip profit’s 30 grand and it costs you $15,000 in marketing to do a deal, you’re never going to make money.

And

So I see so many people that just have economic models that would never work. And yet, if you don’t know how to do the math, it doesn’t really matter. And then they wonder why they’re not where they want to be or they go into debt and all those are the problems. So I think those two things, not understanding the true economics of the business and then not having a leadership acumen to actually effectively manage and lead other people. Well,

I think that’s why a lot of people are getting out of real estate now is because a couple years ago it wasn’t as tough as it is now. And those small things that they’re not looking at didn’t really matter as much. And they could kind of throw money at the wall and it stuck and now it’s not sticking as much. So definitely see where you’re going with that. When it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition for it. Everyone strives for it differently. How do you define success? How do you strive for it in your day-to-day life? And yeah, how do you define success for yourself?

So the mission statement for my life was all about getting free. I wanted freedom of the work I did, how I did it, where I did it, and who I got to do it with. I wanted freedom of choice. And so for most folks, they may define that freedom differently, but I think everybody wants more freedom in their life. And so for me, wealth is so many things and money’s one of them, but it’s so much more than money. And so at the end of the day, creating wealth is all about how do I get … My definition is that I’m able to do the epic experiences that I want with the people I love and the way I want to do it. And that was what drove me. And so that’s still my motivation. I’ve got a beautiful family. I have three kids, a beautiful wife, and I’m getting ready to head out to Kawai here for a couple weeks.

(34:10)
So for me, it was all about getting to build that lifestyle to get to do those things with them. That’s awesome. And that’s my definition, just freedom.

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So I want to give you a little bit of a challenging question and it might not be, but let’s say we take all the businesses away, you have enough money to live for six months, and after that you’re out. And you wanted to restart, rebuild. What would you focus on first to rebuild to where you’re at now?

If you drop me off, I’ll make it easier. If I had to zoom in enough money to live 30 days or whatever, you can use your six month timeline. I’d put a headset on. I would literally go into the market. I would analyze where all the cash transactions were occurring. There’s great software out there this will do for people today. So I’d subscribe to like a … I got to have $99 I guess a month to get this software. I would see where the cash transactions were occurring. I would pull the list and scrub it and make sure I wasn’t violating any TCPA rules or anything. And I would just put a headset on and say, “I’m looking to buy your home for cash.” And I would go wholesale deals until I had enough capital to start flipping into other things. But I would just go lock myself in a room.

(35:25)
I wouldn’t call one hour a day. I wouldn’t call two hours. I would be calling literally all day. And the reason I have this answer is because this is literally what I did. When you went back to 2003, four, five, you would have saw this guy with a headset on a minimum of three hours a day just blasting the phone. And it’s not a coiled up Cobra. I’ve made millions of dollars with this thing, not the way that people use it today, but I would just start getting on the phone.

(35:52)
And as soon as I could, I would hire administrative support to take all the other things as I could afford it. And then I’d hire salespeople who were doing what I was doing and then I would step back and manage them and I would go do exactly what I did again. I wouldn’t change a lot of it. I think that’s the fastest way. If I didn’t have the capital, the only pivot, I would have invested heavier and deeper in assets sooner. I started buying and I was really strategic, but I could have gone harder. So I would have just played as a principle even more in every transaction. I would have focused more … I mean, I’ve been a big education person. I would have focused more on my leadership earlier. It was kind of something I grew into as a leader, learning how to lead others and maximize their potential.

(36:32)
But from minute zero, you could drop me off anywhere in the country and give me a headset and I’d have money really, really quick.

That’s awesome. I love it.

The difference is when I get in an office, I’d get around the people and I do the work. Where people today, somehow there’s this glory in working from home and I don’t go to my office. And my kind of running joke is working from home is the spoils of war. I work from home a lot these days, but that’s 25 years in. That’s not what I did in the beginning. And that’s only about six months in, right? I’ve got people running the sales team of the different businesses and I’m still deeply involved and I’m still in there a lot. But I see people that want to have all these virtual, whether it’s a virtual business, they never go to an office. And it’s possible. I’m not saying you can’t have massive success. I just think it’s harder. And so I would just get into an office, I would do the activity, I would do the work.

It’s also harder to keep people accountable too.

Dude, it’s so hard. And the last thing is I would say, I mean, and every day I would come up with the criteria to know if I won or lost the day based on my effort, not my results. So if I got to go into that office and I got to hit 30 contacts and I’m not leaving, well, I’m not going to leave until I get my 30 contacts and I would hold myself to that.

If I had to door knock or whatever the activity I had to do, I might even go the other way and pick the hardest thing that no one wants to do and go do that because there’s no competition.

That’s awesome.

Everyone wants to get their leads from Facebook or Instagram or doing whatever. Nobody wants to go get their leads from door knocking on cold calling. So I would just focus on the things that no

One wants to do. That’s awesome. I know you have a mastermind and a couple other things. If someone is looking to grow and looking to connect with you, where can people find you? Where can people reach out to you if someone is interested in learning more about what you do? Where can people find you?

Yeah. Best place go to our podcast, Be Wealthy with Brett Tanner on anywhere you watch your podcast or go to our website, Be Wealthy. I’m on all the platforms, Be Wealthy Brett, anywhere you go. But yeah, check out the podcast and you check out our content. Our primary focus is helping entrepreneurs build wealth in all kinds of different ways, but primarily through real estate or real estate adjacent avenues. So yeah, check out our podcast or go on our website.

Awesome. Awesome. Brett, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. I know it’s your last one until you head out for vacation. So I appreciate you for taking the time. Everyone, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.