Show Summary
2018 Top 10 Award Winner: Brandon Barnes! This is episode #399, and my guest today is Brandon Barnes, CEO of Home Buyers Network. I got to know Brandon after he joined our real estate mastermind, www.InvestorFuel.com. His team had some impressive stats – doing 30-50 deals per month…and only their 2nd year in the business, by investing in many different markets. But, many of their deals were small profits…which they were trying to overcome with even more volume.
Brandon ultimately realized that ‘units’ don’t matter, and their business would be better by expanding deeper into each market than going wider into more markets. There are some extremely powerful lessons shared in today’s episode for both brand new investors, as well as those looking to expand.
Bigger isn’t always better, when it comes to real estate investing, and many investors lose focus on the freedoms that attracted them to this business in the first place.
Please help me welcome Brandon Barnes to the show.
Highlights of this show
- Meet Brandon Barnes, CEO of Home Buyer Network.
- Learn how after doing 30-50 deals per month, Brandon realized that ‘more’ isn’t ‘better’.
- Join our discussion of how to put systems and processes in place to build a business that fits into your lifestyle.
- Learn of some industry leaders and resources that have helped shape Brandon’s business.
Resources and Links from this show:
Books:
- Traction
- Start with Why
- Find Your Why
- Leaders Eat Last
- Lifeonaire
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- Millionaire Real Estate Investor
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
FlipNerd Show Transcript:
This is episode number 399, and my guest today is Brandon Barnes, CEO of Home Buyers Network. Now, I got to know Brandon and got to learn a little bit more about him after he joined my real estate investor mastermind, The Investor Fuel. His team had done some impressive things. They had some impressive stats doing 30 to 50 deals a month and only in their second year in business by investing in many different markets.
But as we kind of pulled back the covers a little bit, we found out that a lot of their deals had very small profits and they were really focused on volume. And as they had, for months, they had to try to overcome it with even more volume. And Brandon ultimately realized that doing units doesn’t matter. You can’t put units in the bank. And their business would be better by expanding much deeper into a smaller number of markets versus going wider into many more markets.
There’s some extremely powerful lessons shared in today’s episode for both brand new investors looking to get started as well as those looking to expand and take your business to the next level. So, I think you’re going to love it. Bigger isn’t always better when it comes to real estate investing, and many investors ultimately lose focus on the freedoms and a lot of the benefits from a lifestyle standpoint that attracted them to this business in the first place.
Let’s go ahead and get started. Please help me welcome Brandon Barnes to the show. Brandon, welcome to the show.
Brandon: Thanks for having me, Mike.
Mike: Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you. We’ve been friends for a little while now. You’re a member of our mastermind group, The Investor Fuel, and so glad to have you guys in there. And to give . . . I want you to introduce yourself to everybody here in just a second, but to give a little introduction to what we’re going to talk about is Brandon and Luke, they work together, and they came into our mastermind and were doing some serious volume some months and some years doing like huge volume. But as it kind of turned out, their margins were a little bit thin and they were doing some thinner stuff.
You know, we all have this discussion. If you’ve been in real estate investing for a while, you start to pick up on the fact that units ultimately are not everything. Like your profits are everything. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about a lot today, is a lot of real estate investors come in with a huge appetite for doing lots of volume in terms of units, but ultimately, at the end of the day, you can’t put units in the bank, you put profit in the bank. So, it’s going to be a good discussion, I think, for a lot of aspiring real estate investors that want to take over the world and maybe kind of reel you in and realize that you don’t have to go to all four corners of the world to have a really great business.
Hey, Brandon, maybe just take a couple minutes and tell us a little about you and your background.
Brandon: Yeah, absolutely. First off, I’m going to write that one down for you can’t put units in the bank, you can put profit. I’m going to remember that one, so I appreciate it. Like Mike said, I’m Brandon Barnes. I’m from Charleston, South Carolina. I have a beautiful wife and a two-year-old daughter, and those were the two people that kind of inspired me to get into real estate. My background is food and bev. I worked the slave life of restaurants for 15 years and got out of it. So, left my full-time job July of 2016. So, coming up on the two-year mark of being a full-time investor.
Mike: That’s awesome. So what drove you out of the restaurant? I understand probably why you wanted to leave the restaurant business because I know it’s a grind, not that real estate isn’t a grind sometimes too. But what drove you into real estate?
Brandon: So I had a property that I purchased when I was 21. I bought it to . . . it was directly behind my parent’s restaurant that we owned. And I was going to rehab it and live in it, and I was like, “Great, I can walk to work every day. I’m going to own this restaurant the rest of my life.” And so I bought this house when I was 21. My wife and I fixed it up. And during the crash of ’07, ’08, my parents lost everything. They lost our restaurant. And so I ended up selling my house on owner finance. I had no idea what I was doing. I found a really nice family that didn’t have credit but could make new payments every month, and the house was paid off.
And so after having my daughter, I was like, “How do I get more of these $400 checks?” You know, it wasn’t a big check, but I was like, “How do I get more of these? I don’t do anything for it. I just look in the mailbox from the first of every month and it’s there.” And so that kind of inspired me to start trying to figure out how to get this thing started. So I met my mentor, Matthew Bell, at the restaurant that I actually managed. And so he kind of started feeding me some books, “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” “Millionaire Real Estate Investor” by Gary Keller, and some stuff that way.
And then I went and got my real estate license because I thought that’s what you had to do. I thought it was the first step. Hey, go to real estate school, get your license, and then you can start being an investor. And that’s kind of what got me started down this path.
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. And we should tell anybody that’s watching, and a lot of people are just going to be listening to the audio on iTunes, but I said to Brandon, I was like, “Where the heck are you at?” He’s in kind of a funky house. So it turns out he’s in an Airbnb at an event, and so that is not your wife’s style back there, I don’t imagine.
Brandon: No, she enjoys it though. It’s so funky. We’re here in Nashville for a Shaun McCloskey event and it’s in a new upcoming area in Nashville and it’s actually a pretty unique Airbnb for sure.
Mike: Yeah, cool. You know, let’s talk a little bit about kind of what you’ve gone through probably over the past few months. I know that you came into Investor Fuel, and I don’t know how much it had to do with it, but we talked a lot about you guys were doing a lot of volume but not necessarily the most profitable deals. And I think you were going out to lots of markets. And we talked a little bit about, would you rather do more deals or make more money per deal type of discussion? So maybe just kind of share what you’ve kind of gone through over the past like several months that’s maybe made you had a little bit of an epiphany of how to move forward.
Brandon: No. Investor Fuel back in November was kind of the icing on the cake for us to realize that units weren’t necessarily the key goal and being profitable. And so like you said, we were in . . . I think we were active in eight markets, seven or eight markets or something like that. And we found ourselves spending a little bit of money and a lot of time and spread our capacity and bandwidth very thin. And in order to become profitable, we had to do volume which is great, don’t get me wrong.
We’ve done plenty of deals, but at the end of the day, when we rounded out 2017, the profit wasn’t there like we wanted it to be because you live and die on volume. There was no breathing room there at all. If you don’t do 50 transactions a month, you won’t make money. And I found that Luke, myself, our acquisition team, we were all working in our business and kind of strapped and stuck to it because you couldn’t ever stop because the volume had to stay there.
Mike: Right. And clarify that. So what kind of volume were you guys doing per month, let’s say?
Brandon: We would do anywhere from 30 to 50 deals a month. Mainly in the last six months is kind of when it started the first year. We struggled, did this and that but we didn’t have a ton of overhead so there wasn’t a lot going on. And really, I guess, from September to November is when we kind of ramped it up and that’s when we were doing a bunch of deals a month and trying to be profitable that direction.
Mike: Yeah. And I’ll just tell people that are listening like that kind of volume, I don’t want to take anything away from you guys, that’s impressive no matter how you slice or dice it. The challenge that a lot of real estate investors ultimately face is that a lot of us get into this for lifestyle reasons. We get into this because we want control over our life or . . . and when you do that type of volume especially across multiple markets, you lose a lot of that control and it gives you some sleepless nights probably and you’ve got people in all different markets that you’re counting on that may let you down. It comes with a lot of potential headaches for sure.
What we say, with everything that I do, whether it’s my coaching programs, masterminds, we’re trying to help people achieve financial freedom through real estate investing and everybody defines that differently. But just I kind of told somebody else this . . . I’m quoting myself here, but I can’t remember my exact quote, was like, “On the way to building your dreams, don’t like create a nightmare for yourself effectively.”
Not that you guys did that, but when people are getting started in real estate investing or they’re trying to take their business to another level, you really have to kind of look inside and say, “Well, this sounds cool, but what will it do for the rest of my life, my family?” All those things.
Brandon: Exactly. It sounded fun. It was neat to look at the end of the month and say, “Hey, we just closed 40 deals. We did something pretty awesome.” But when you think about the time, energy, and effort that it took to put into it to spread yourself that thin, it grew to a point where it wasn’t really worth it. My goal in the real estate, I’ve spoken at the beginning, was to spend time with my wife and daughter and be active in my community. I found myself in an airport, in a hotel not seeing my daughter, not seeing my wife, and haven’t seen Charleston in two weeks. This isn’t what I signed up to do and what ultimately, we want our company to help everybody else do as well.
Mike: Yeah. If you’re an active real estate investor already doing deals and looking to double or triple your business, you should consider joining The Investor Fuel, real estate investor mastermind. We’re a small group of investors that share our best practices, tips, and tricks with one another in an effort to all win. We limit our membership to only one to two members per market, so everyone shares their knowledge, tips, and tricks, openly and honestly.
Our members include some buying one to two houses a month up to some of the most respected investors and leaders in the real estate investing industry some of which have personally done over a thousand deals. If you’d like to be considered for our invitation only, world-class mastermind, please visit investorfuel.com to request your personal invitation. Our next meeting is coming up quickly. Go to investorfuel.com now to learn more.
Brandon: In an airport, in a hotel, not seeing my daughter, not seeing my wife, and haven’t seen Charleston in two weeks. This isn’t it this isn’t what I signed up to do and what ultimately, we want our company to help everybody else do as well.
Mike: So talk a little bit about your kind of transition, how you’re shifting now. So you guys are probably not going to be in as many markets as you were in, and you’re going to try to go what we like to say a little bit kind of deeper in each market versus wider into more markets, right?
Brandon: Yeah, and that’s what we . . . so we currently still have four acquisition managers that are still doing deals and so we didn’t want to say, “Hey, we’re not going to work with you, guys.” We want to still give them the opportunity to go, but we want to just focus on these four and that’s it. And I think it’s something that we have the capacity to do. And so what we’ve done is we’ve invested in our team. We did the John Martinez training, the REI boot camp, three weeks ago now, I think. And we had our acquisition team there.
And our focus with them was like, “Hey, guys, we’re going to spend the time resources on you all to help grow your business which will in turn help the whole business grow,” and not spread ourselves amongst the other six, seven, eight markets that we were trying to do. Because what we also found as I would . . . if we didn’t have somebody in a market and we had deals there, I would find myself doing the deal which then wasn’t fair for my team because I should be helping them do their deals. And so it kind of worked negatively against each other.
We’ve kind of switched. We’ve brought our focus on building a really good buyers list, and that’s been our . . . since leaving Investor Fuel, that’s been it. Singular focus, get as many buyers as we can, and then let’s spend a little bit more money directly in each market and get our acquisition team to where they can focus on getting more profitable deals and not having to do 10 deals a month to survive.
Mike: Right. Talk a little bit . . . I’m going to let you give John Martinez, a good friend of mine, he’s in The Investor Fuel as well. I mean, this guy has had such a massive impact on the industry in terms of helping people take their business to another level through like sales techniques and just how to become a better salesperson, how to negotiate better, and really just how to help people solve problems better.
So maybe give a little plug to John because I know he has . . . he puts on these events maybe three or four a year and he has another one coming up here soon. So I’ll add a link down below. I’ll find a link and add it below the notes here, but just share your experience with John’s training.
Brandon: Yeah. We met John in November in Investor Fuel the first time. I’d heard a little bit about his training and read about it, but I didn’t really understand the premise of what it was. So then we saw his . . . I can’t remember what you called it. A super presentation or the one that was kind of highlighted. And I sat at the back and I was like, “Man, this is some powerful, powerful stuff. You can tell that he is passionate about it and has spent hours and hours and hours learning and growing his ability to teach sales,” because he’s definitely not as he always talks about, he’s not that of a natural outward salesman that’s going to go and car-hustle the emotions and knowledge.
And so we went down there to Tampa, him and Greg, fantastic job. They’re very passionate about it. They provided a ton of resources more than you can imagine for the price tag of going down there. And when you leave, you get his 12-week course to go through everything you went through at boot camp, but just to kind of take it and implement little things at a time. And also, they will listen to your sales calls for you and break down your sales call on how you can improve.
And so we’ve got our team doing that. I’ve done it personally. I’ve done some sales calls, and I’ll send it to Greg or John and they take the time out of their day to dissect it and say, “This was great, this was bad. Here’s where you can do a little bit better. Here’s my advice.” And I recommend tenfold for anybody to go check it out.
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome. A lot of people don’t realize before they get into this business that the importance of being a good salesperson, having salesmanship, but I think the salesmanship part, because I train a lot of people on this and they’re like, “I’ve never done sales before.” I’m like, “More than anything, you need to be a good listener and you know which questions to ask.” You don’t have to be a hardcore salesperson.
You have to be a problem solver, and there’s a lot of . . . and truthfully, the other thing is that, over time, we all tend to pick up bad habits of how we do things. And so I think getting some of that training helps kind of really back in as to like, “Get back to the fundamentals of what you were taught initially.”
Brandon: Yeah, and that’s the focus. I mean, that’s real estate, is I would get lost in talking about the ARB and the comps and the repairs and it wouldn’t work. You’d hit brick walls. They’d shut down, and you’d never hear from somebody. And I was like, “I need to go back to what we’re supposed to be doing.” That’s solving the seller’s problems. And if I do that, whether it’s us buying it, us wholesaling it, a realtor listing it, them keeping a tenant in it and they’re happy with the outcome of what happened, I’ve done my job.
And when you go back to that fundamental, I think you can provide a ton more value, and by doing that, you’ll receive more than you can expect. And that’s what he coaches on. He’s like, “Don’t focus on comps or numbers, just emotions and help them.”
Mike: Yeah. And for somebody that’s been a real estate investor, you guys have a really impressive track record in terms of units and in terms of just maturity. You learn a lot through . . . it’s like baptism by fire. When you’re doing that kind of volume and you do a lot of deals, you’ve learned at a lot faster rate than the average investor. But maybe share some of your experiences.
We just talked about sales training with John Martinez but talk a little bit about just kind of systems, processes, people in your organization, surrounding yourself with people that help you go to another level. Maybe talk about how that’s impacted you from the standpoint of people that are listening right now that might benefit from what you can share, that wisdom.
Brandon: Yeah, systems and processes, it’s something that we kind of learned about and started thinking about red traction and kind of went through it but didn’t really know what to do with it. And then we went back to realizing we’re stuck in this every day. If this doesn’t happen, if I don’t answer my phone or if I don’t answer an email or Luke doesn’t do something, then the deal doesn’t happen. I’m like, “How do we come out of this and help?” And so we really did a good job or Luke did a really good job building our CRM out for us. It’s Podio-based but he’s really gone in and made it to where everybody can be active in it without being active in it.
We’ve provided our team . . . we’re real big on recording everything that we do. And so if you can do it once and record your screen, then somebody else can do it. And so empowering our team and allowing them to grow with us and take on new things by screen-casting stuff and sending it to them and providing training. One of the biggest pieces we’ve hired is a closing coordinator. I didn’t realize that was kind of one of my duties. I didn’t realize how much that took off of our plate to help with how much time I spent getting contracts and faxing and emailing and doing all these things. That was probably one of the biggest people we’ve added as far as not as a system or process.
So now, that’s kind of what . . . we’ve defined our six major core processes and we’re trying to really dial them in currently right now.
Mike: Yeah, and I think you probably . . . what probably accelerated your learning curve too was doing it . . . was operating in other markets. So I think a lot of newer real estate investors find some way to kick the can down the road with systems and stuff because it’s all kind of local, so they just piece it together.
But when you have other people in other markets that you have to communicate with and you can’t be on the phone all day with them, like just having access to systems and tools that are universal across your whole team obviously is a lot more . . . I mean, I don’t want to say it’s not necessary if you’re in an individual market, but I think you learned that lesson kind of faster than you would have otherwise by being in multiple markets.
Brandon: We did. That was one of the benefits is by kind of going at it in a direction of trying to scale and be in . . . because our goal when we started was like, “We’re going to be in 20 markets in a year.” And we had this all mapped out and lined out and realized, no, that was it. But we quickly realized we can’t be on our phone every time.
We can’t be on our email. And so we had to start implementing things that were automatic, that were systemic, that we didn’t have to . . . you know, if a contract comes in, you hit a button then it goes out. If somebody accepts an offer and it comes in, we can send text messages out and you don’t have to have somebody do it all the time for you, and it’s made life a lot easier for our team, I think, as well.
Mike: Yeah, for sure. Talk a little bit about your . . . so I know you’re early 30s guy, a lot of wisdom there. I want to help . . . you know, I do this to help other real estate investors ultimately learn from my experiences and experiences of guests that I can have on. Let’s talk a little bit about the badge of honor that a lot of real estate investors wear as related to the hustle.
There’s guys like, Gary V., Gary Vaynerchuk, that I liked for a while and then I’m like, I just kind of got annoyed with the message of . . . and you see real estate investors talking about it now like how hard they worked or how many hours they worked. And on one hand, you’ve got people that are like, “You guys are crazy. Why are you working that many hours?” But most people use that as a badge of honor. Like I hustle harder than anybody else. And it’s like, “Wait a minute. Didn’t you get in this business so you don’t have to ultimately work that hard and you can build more passive income and stuff?”
But just maybe share your experience because I feel like you’ve learned a lot probably in the last couple years in this business about being willing to go out to 20 markets and then realizing that, “Hey, that doesn’t fit my life or doesn’t fit our life as well.” So maybe just kind of share that, maybe the myth of that kind of badge of honor of being a hustler.
Brandon: Yeah. I mean, that was the name of my game growing up. I wasn’t the smartest kid in the room. I wasn’t the most talented. I wasn’t the best at anything, but I would work people. I would do stuff at times they wouldn’t. And so I implemented that into a real estate company when we started, and it’s good for a while. Like it’s fun at 11:00 while your wife’s asleep and you’re doing contracts or doing stuff. In the beginning, it was fun. I’m not going to lie. I had a blast, but I realized it’s more about intentional time than it is how many hours you put in in a day.
Some of the most successful days, I haven’t worked more than a handful of hours in the business or even kind of at it. I’ve helped and done other stuff, but I’ve realized that if you empower other people to help you and grow a team and put systems, it’s not about how many hours you work, it’s how many intentional hours you’ve put into doing a goal. That’s kind of why my wife and I are here in Nashville. We’re trying to learn how to get better at this because one of my biggest things is, yeah, I’ll spend time with my family, but I’m kind of not there present. I’m not mentally present. I’m physically present but I’m not mentally present.
And so I think the hustle . . . I saw it on Facebook the other day where somebody talked about how late I’ve worked and how early I get up, and all these things. And it’s like it’s not about that. It’s really, what’s my time worth? How can I best leverage it and how can I best grow with what I’m working on? Trevor Mogg [SP], his podcast is . . . I love listening to that because that’s a lot of what it, is 10x-ing your time and taking stuff that was your draining energy, getting it off your plate and focus on stuff that give you energy.
And that’s kind of where we’re at now. I find myself . . . I’d much rather go to bed at 8:30 at night now instead of work till midnight and get up early. And I’m much more productive and get more things done than trying to grind to midnight and get up at 5:00 and do that whole thing.
Mike: Yeah, that definitely wears on you for sure. And I think I was guilty there for a long time of just trying to outwork myself. It’s like, where do you go from there once you capped out unless you can start working smarter and building a team around you? And then of course the challenge is a lot of us don’t know what to do with all that extra time initially. You almost feel guilty saying, “I don’t really have anything to work on right now,” but your business is still running once you get there and not that I’m there but there are times when I’m there. I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t really have anything to do this week.”
I mean, outside of stuff that I want to do, but there’s like nothing that is like calling me right now that I got to go. Nothing’s on fire right now.
Brandon: Yeah. It is difficult. It is hard to . . . I’ve not necessarily had it for a week or anything of that, but there have been times in a day or week where I’m like, “I don’t really have anything that I have to do pressing at this moment,” and I feel guilty. I’m like, “I should be doing something or helping or . . .” But you know what? I’m going to go take my wife out to lunch and spend an hour with her or go pick my daughter up early from daycare and spend an extra hour with her that I don’t get and that drives to kind of push in a different direction.
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome. So I know you’re down there with Shaun McCloskey and is Steve Cook there or he’s not there?
Brandon: He’s there. Yeah, here’s there.
Mike: So talking about . . . and both Steve and Shaun have been on my show. It’s been a little while, but they talk a lot about building your life. So how do you kind of become rich in life, not just work, kind of what we’re talking about here? So it’s kind of fitting that we’re promoting those guys out. I’ll have to tell Shaun he owes me some promotional funds or something, but anyway, but yeah. What they talk about is basically designing your life. Like, what do you want to do every day? And then see how much time you have left for work.
And in our business, if you can get your systems and processes down to where the business can run without you sometimes, you can actually really do that in this business, right?
Brandon: I absolutely agree. I met Shaun in December and he kind of gave us a three or four-hour presentation on life, in an event that we’re at. And I was like, “I think this can really work.” And it goes back to the analogy he uses. If you’re going on vacation and you’re gone for seven days, how hard do you work up until that moment that you leave? Because if you’re going to be detached for seven days, you want to make sure everything’s in place, everything’s done.
He’s like, “Why don’t you just work like that all the time?” If you’re going to work for three or four hours a day or eight hours a day or whatever it is, work like you’re going on vacation every time and be productive. If you only have 25 hours a week to work, I guarantee you’ll get more done at 25 hours than in the 70-hour work week if you don’t have purpose and things surrounded by it.
Mike: For sure.
Brandon: So that’s what I’m most excited about, is learning how to build a schedule that I want to live with my family, my wife, my daughter. And then putting business in it and it’s still thriving and growing.
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, Brandon, is there anything . . . I guess while we’re here, anybody else that’s influenced you that you think others could benefit from? Any other people or books or anything you want to share with folks who might be listening in?
Brandon: Yeah. So one book I just finished it, and I’m going to keep going back to The Investor Fuel thing. Mike, first off, thanks for inviting us. It’s probably been one of the most powerful things that we’ve done since being in real estate.
Mike: Oh, I appreciate that. By the way, I wasn’t asking for, “Can you pat me on the back?” I appreciate that.
Brandon: It really has because it started getting myself and Luke to think differently. And so Gary Harper talked about the book “Start with Why.” “Start with Why,” “Find Your Why,” and then I think the last one is “Leaders Eat Last,” I think, is the order of the books. And so I left there. I bought the book. And I read “Start with Why” which is more about businesses that don’t focus on what they’re doing, but they focus on why they do it and how they can drive sales and grow through that.
And I’m an Apple guy. And so it really kind of led to me because that’s Apple’s big thing in the book, talked about a lot. And so then I bought “Find your Why” and read it, and actually went through and completed the process and sat down, did the why statement process. And actually, I’m working on it while I’m here in Nashville. It’s kind of my goals to finish the McCloskey thing and get my why statement finalized.
And it really . . . sharing those stories and going through it because the way you do it is you sit down with somebody that you know but don’t really know, and they ask you tough questions about stories that you want to talk about. And when we all got done with it, she started telling me the theme and it was positive stories, negative stories. There was death. There was all kind of different things that I want to talk about, and she’s like, “You had the same theme in all stories.” And she’s like, “This is your life. This is the theme of your life.” And it was really eye-opening and powerful.
So I recommend that book series to anybody right now. I think if they read the books, implement the system that they talk about in it and really try and open up, I think it’s really kind of . . . it can change your life.
Mike: Yeah, that’s awesome. We talked about a lot of books here today. We’ll get links down below in the show notes and links to John Martinez’s Midwest Revenue Group, his sales training, I’ll find a link for that. You talked about Gary Harper. Gary is actually . . . we’ve had a pretty systematic approach.
We’re pretty buttoned up here in most things, but he’s actually coming next week before on The Investor Fuel mastermind to spend a couple days with my team. We’re going to do an EOS implementation. So that’s coming up. So I’ll add a link down below for Gary’s consulting business too. He’s just a fantastic guy. We’ve become really good friends. I’ve known him for a few years but we’ve really become really good friends over the past six months, I’d say. And we’ll add a link for Investor Fuel as well for me.
Investor Fuel’s our mastermind. We’re typically looking for people that are doing at least 25 deals a year and continue to raise the bar so that we can have just some really talented folks that have a lot of information to share with each other, and our meeting’s coming up here. By the time the show airs, the meeting will be about to start, but we have a quarterly meeting. So if you want to learn more about that, I’ll add a link down below.
Hey, Brandon, thanks for spending time with us today. Thanks for sharing some wisdom.
Brandon: Yeah, thanks for having me, Mike. I hope I can help some people out there that think you have to go big and wide. You really can focus on a market and go deeper into it and be successful. You don’t have to strain your life to do it.
Mike: For sure. For sure. Hey, Brandon, I forgot to ask you. If folks want to learn more about you or connect, where should they go to learn more?
Brandon: So I’m pretty public on my personal Facebook page, Brandon Barnes. I’m not a very social media savvy person, so the one thing that I really kind of post on is my own social media site. They can email me. That’s probably the best way to get in touch with me. My email is [email protected]. I’m more than happy to help anybody answer any questions, do anything I can to help them.
And then I’m trying . . . one of my goals in quarter two is I want to start a little blog for myself because it makes me uncomfortable to write. I’m not a good writer, terrible at spelling. My wife and business partners have to proofread everything that I do. And so one of the things to help me get better at it is I want to start writing every day and kind of posting it out there for people to see. And so it’ll drive me to get better with it. So when I get that, I’ll let you know about that.
Mike: Yeah, for sure. I’m sure you’ll post it on your Facebook group that you’ve got a blog website.
Brandon: I absolutely will put on my Facebook, yeah.
Mike: Cool, man. Well, hey, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us and your experiences. And hopefully, a lot of newer real estate investors or even some veteran folks can kind of learn from the fact that the grass isn’t always greener by expanding outward and trying to take on the world. Sometimes, it sounds sexy but sometimes it’s not, right?
Brandon: Absolutely.
Mike: Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing time with us today, my friend.
Brandon: Thanks, Mike.
Mike: Good to see you, and we’ll see you, I guess, here in about a week and a half.
Brandon: Yes, sir. I’ll be out there.
Mike: All right. Hey, I’ll talk to you soon, buddy.
Brandon: All right, thank you.
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