Client Case Study - BetterLife Tribe with Brandon Turner | Ep 47

Speaker A

00:00:00.400 - 00:01:10.740

This is episode 47, and on it I talk with my good friend and past client, Brandon Turner about the work I did with his Better Life Tribe and how I helped him turn it around last year. This is the Bottleneck Breakthrough podcast.

I'm Josh Long and this is all about helping you find and fix the biggest challenges in your business to unlock growth and profits that last. Hey, everybody. So glad to have you here. I'm here with my good buddy, Brandon Turner. We go way back.

We'll get into all the details of that, but the goal today is to talk about what we did together. He brought me in last year in 2024 to better life Tribe and I really enjoyed this project.

It was a lot of fun and I really love being able to help a friend out. But, Brandon, happy to have you here. I think I would love to get the background intro of you were at Biggerpockets.

You left there and you've gone on to do quite a bit in real estate and then you've got a vision for Better Life Tribe. I think it'd be fun to hear some of that background and share all of that with everybody here.

Speaker B

00:01:11.140 - 00:02:45.560

Cool, man. Well, yeah, thanks for having me. It's always fun to catch up and talk to you.

Yeah, we go way back to Mastermind group days that we met every week for years. Yeah. Such an impactful time. Yeah. I was with a company called Biggerpockets. They're the largest real estate investing education company in the world.

Just millions and millions of people go there every month to learn about real estate. I was one of the very first employees there.

I was number one employee there and then first one, and then I stayed for almost a decade, built up their podcast, wrote a bunch of books. I had a pretty successful career there. At the end of the day, though, it wasn't mine. The company sold the private equity.

I had some equity in it, but not, not a ton. And so when this company sold the private equity. I'm not a private equity guy. I'm not an employee, really. I didn't even work my job like an employee.

I ran it like I was an entrepreneur and I built businesses inside of the company. And anyway, yeah, so when I left, I had a year to kind of sit around with a no compete contract and just think about what I want to do with my life.

And during that year, decided I would launch this thing called the Better Life Tribe.

So it's a charity driven business, which means it's not technically a nonprofit because I don't have the actual official documents but we donate 100% of profits to charity. I don't even take a salary. We got about a thousand members, give or take.

All real estate investors looking to scale and grow their business and get more freedom. And struggled, man, from day one with that thing. I mean we launched huge and we just struggled to gain traction.

I struggled in a lot of ways, but struggled to figure out our identity, struggled to figure out our sales processes, struggled to figure out all that like, you know, people like me and so they would sign up, but then how do you keep them around? And, and even in the signup process was messy.

Speaker A

00:02:45.560 - 00:04:01.820

I think that's the unique thing was you've built such a great following and talking about your books that you wrote when you started out at Bigger Pockets, that was a huge influence in me.

Everybody here, bottleneck breakthrough would not exist if it weren't for Brandon because he was the big brother that I needed who had written books and helped me get my book done.

And I was amazed when you, I don't know how many years ago it was, you posted, you've sold over a million copies of your real estate books, which is quite an accomplishment. So yeah, he's accomplished a lot and he's built a huge following.

And this is really unique, right, because in the world of influencers, we see building the personal brand, building the following and you've done a fantastic job at that. And then you go to launch Better Life Tribe and there's this wave of pent up demand, right.

And a lot of people want to get involved because Brandon's involved and it's the right thing for them to do because Brandon's an ethical player and he over delivers value. And we'll talk about some of that in a minute here when we talk about what you were doing at Better Life Tribe. When I started that transition, right.

Like it's kind of chaos on a stick out of the gate. You've got so much demand, you've got so much excitement. You feel like you've got the Midas touch almost.

And I know it didn't go to your head, but you're like, hey, this is working. There's some stuff that's going well, right?

Speaker B

00:04:02.700 - 00:04:03.260

Yep.

Speaker A

00:04:03.420 - 00:04:22.640

But then you get into the trough, right. And I see this so often and Clay Christiansen, great professor at Harvard and consultant, he talks about it.

I think it's the innovator's dilemma that it's crossing that chasm from initial demand to longevity and sustainability. Right. And that's kind of where I stepped in for you guys, right?

Speaker B

00:04:22.960 - 00:04:51.800

Yeah, it was, it was hard. Yeah. From a number of standpoints. But like, I mean one, like our financials.

I was not tracking finances like I should have, was not tracking sales and marketing like I should have. It was just a lot of lessons. And again, just identity, like product, like what is actually going to help people stick around for long parts of time.

All those things kind of came to a head all around the same time. And that's when the team was just like, we're gonna lose this company. And like, I felt like God told me to start the company.

I know it sounds like big.

Speaker A

00:04:52.120 - 00:04:52.920

No, it's great.

Speaker B

00:04:53.160 - 00:05:02.880

But like, yeah, I felt, I felt, yeah, called to start it and here it is, like, we're gonna shut down. We're losing. I think we were losing 150,000amonth or something like that in, in income, like in pro.

Speaker A

00:05:02.880 - 00:05:04.360

We were right about a year in. Right.

Speaker B

00:05:04.360 - 00:05:47.170

Yeah, about a year. And we were losing that. And I'm like, how did this happen? And it happened for a number of reasons. But just when you.

When I operated on kind of bank account balancing, like, oh, we got a thousand members at 300 bucks a month. We must be making all this money. You start spending and it's like the example I often use is like, it's like a contractor.

It's like I used to flip houses. So I'd go into a house, fix it up and sell it. I go in the.

Imagine me going with a contractor and then telling them this big, vast vision of how beautiful the house could look and going around and just amping each other up on how excited we are, how beautiful it's going to look, and then leaving, but never giving a budget and never talking price. That's kind of what happened is I'm a really good visionary. I can spec out a good vision. And then I never lined up budget.

So we had like nine web developers at one time, like full time. Nine develop.

Speaker A

00:05:47.250 - 00:05:48.210

Little overkill.

Speaker B

00:05:48.290 - 00:06:01.330

Yeah, a little overkill. But we were building some really cool stuff. Why were we building cool stuff?

Because I thought we were going to have 10,000 members because that was the vision. So. Yeah, anyway, that's, that's around the time we brought you in.

Because I was like, this is going to collapse and fail if we don't solve this problem.

Speaker A

00:06:02.100 - 00:09:38.240

Yeah. And so you reached out to me, it was about February or March of 24 and you were like, hey, I got a mess. Can you help?

And I'll be really honest, I care about you a lot and I did not want to take this on and mess up. But it was a mess, like a big mess. And I'm not rubbing it in. I'm not kicking you while you're down anything.

It's all stuff we've already talked about. We already know what we came through.

But it was one of those things that, like, the only reason, for those of you listening, the only reason I took on this project was because Brandon was there. Because I knew he built a good culture and I knew he had good people on the team that I didn't have to fight with.

Because as a consultant, that's half of the battle, is getting people to follow through, getting people to agree, getting people to not say, oh, we already did that, that won't work. Because nine times out of ten it's like, well, you did it, but I wasn't here and you may have made a thousand missteps.

And again, it's not because I'm God's gift to the earth or anything like that. I've just got a lot of mileage. I've got a lot of gray hair. If you're watching this video, you can see it and I'm bald.

I lost all my hair for a reason, so it's not genetic. So when I stepped in, I was blessed that Brandon has a great COO in Matt. And Matt and I hit it off instantly.

And I was able to dig in quickly, spec out a proposal, meet with the team, look at everything really, really quickly, like in a matter of a week, and negotiate something that said, hey, I know this is going to be a mountain of effort. I don't want to pull like a McKinsey and get paid large fees up front.

I'm happy to defer my comp because I trust you guys and I know that if we can turn something out of this, it'll be worthwhile. And we hit the ground running. And the funniest thing was, I don't know if you know this, Brandon, but Matt was like, we need this done in 60 days.

This is the biggest high wire act you could put me on. And I renegotiated. I said, Look, I need 90, like 90 days.

And it seems ridiculous, but that extra 30 days really does give some breathing room and allow me to really work through things. And so we hit the ground running. And the funniest thing was you guys had one salesperson that was all that was left and it was this really nice kid.

His profile picture on Slack looked like his high school prom photo. And so I was like, what do I have to work with here? And really Nice kid, but I couldn't push him hard. Right. Because he was the only one.

And when I step into organizations, I'm just a bull in a china shop. And I just come in and ask a lot of questions. And I apply accountability because we just need to have clarity.

I mean, I think that's probably one of my favorite things about what Better Life Tribe stands for, is the accountability. Right. Like what you guys do. And I'll have you talk about that in a second.

But, like, I could only apply so much accountability to this sales rep because if I. If I broke him and he left, then we're really hosed because I don't have just a bunch of closers sitting around waiting to work on something.

So when we got started, Better Life TRI was really, like you said, finding its fit and give a little vision.

I think I would love for people to hear about this because I think more and more people need to hear about what it stands for and how they can get valued and get help in growing their real estate investing. But you did something really unique in that you focused just on experienced real estate investors.

And talk about that and talk about kind of the vision of how it's evolved and what they get out of it.

Speaker B

00:09:38.800 - 00:11:12.580

Yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of it comes down to, like, you know, the advice. I think Hormozi put it in $100 million offers.

But it's like if you say, I'm a consultant, period, like, okay, that's. That's helpful to some level. But if you're like, oh, I'm a business consultant, well, now you're worth more money.

Now I'm a business consultant that helps china shops sell more china. You can charge a lot more money. Like, the more specific you are. Right. The more generally valuable you are, even if the advice is the same.

So the idea was I could just say I help people invest in real estate. My theory was, and still is that if I segmented that to we help existing investors scale.

So you are already a landlord or an investor, but you're not already financially free.

You're not super wealthy driving a, you know, whatever, fancy private jet, like, we can help you get to private jet status, maybe, but that's a specific type of person.

And by doing so, I narrowed out, you know, I closed out 90% of my potential audience because 90% of people don't own any real estate or rental properties in America. But I think that was still the right choice. In fact, I probably should have gone more specific.

I probably should have just been, it should have been like, existing investors who want to do mobile home parks, I think, or multifamily. I probably would have been even more successful, actually, had I got even more specific.

So that was a choice there, but it was like existing investors. And then you. You don't have to bring in the. The newbie questions, you know, like, what's an FHA loan? Or how do I get my first property?

Or I don't know what direct mail marketing is.

And, like, those are important questions, but just not the kind of person that needs to figure out a 401k plan for their team is not the same one that needs to figure out what a FHA loan is. They're just two different types of people.

So I wanted to serve the Better Life Tribe for existing investors, and that's what we've really focused on. I've since launched another program called First Deal. That's the opposite.

Speaker A

00:11:12.580 - 00:12:56.790

Yep. And I think First Deal pairs well that. That last year, while we were building out the sales team and.

And as we would get leads, there would obviously be newbies that needed support. And I, like you said, I mean, 90% of the market doesn't have homes. And.

And I think so many of the info leaders out there, gurus, whatever you want to call them, do make most of their money off of newbies because there's just more of them and they're more eager to get over the hump. But I think Better Life Tribe, the other thing that I really loved was the accountability of, like, hey, you guys start out with pods.

And I thought they were great. They're kind of like our old mastermind group of what you and Jared and Sean and I were in for years on end. And.

And that just great, friendly accountability goes so far to help us achieve our goals. That's evolved since. And now you got coaching.

And the other thing that I thought was interesting was, and this is a great reminder for anybody listening, if I ever tell you to raise your prices, just work with me, wrestle with me to figure out how to raise your prices. Because I'm not the guy that's like, oh, you should be charging triple. I'm not that guy.

In one of my other client testimonials, case studies we've got here on the website and in my podcast, Matt Kaufman, they were severely undercharging, and I walked them through the process of, like, how to raise prices, and they probably ended up raising them about 45, 55% somewhere in there. And that drops right to the bottom line.

But it takes time, and I think you guys, when I first told you, I think you were charging 2500 or three grand a year. And I'm like, man, you guys should really be at 10 grand. And I remember telling Matt, and Matt was like, I don't know. I don't know how to get there.

I can't stomach that. I can't. I can't think of what we have to deliver. But you guys were already over delivering.

Speaker B

00:12:57.030 - 00:13:05.990

Yeah, that's. That's the irony, isn't it? It's like, in fact, to charge more, which we're about to bump up to about a 10k price. I think we're almost there.

It just took a little bit.

Speaker A

00:13:05.990 - 00:13:07.070

Hey, it's only taken a year.

Speaker B

00:13:07.070 - 00:13:20.540

Yeah, it's only taking a year, but we're almost there. But like, to do so, we're eliminating more, which again, was also advice of yours. Like, we needed to limit.

That's just so stupid because I'm like, I was providing more value then, or at least more stuff.

Speaker A

00:13:20.940 - 00:13:22.380

Options. More variety.

Speaker B

00:13:22.460 - 00:13:42.550

More variety. More options. But that gets people confused.

It gets them, you know, oh, yeah, I know I'm doing this and this and this, but I'm missing out on these seven things you offer. Therefore, I'm not getting my money's worth.

Where if we only offered them one thing and they did that one thing, then they would say, oh, I'm getting 100% of my money's worth. And it's stupid that that's how logic works in people's heads.

Speaker A

00:13:42.550 - 00:13:43.710

The psychology. The psychology.

Speaker B

00:13:43.710 - 00:13:44.790

It is how psychology works.

Speaker A

00:13:44.950 - 00:16:14.650

Dan, Ariely. Predictably irrational. Like, if you. If you need a reminder, like, go read that book of just how irrational humans are, right? Very much, yeah.

And I think this is also too, like, the caring, capable, visionary coach, which is what you are, and I've done that plenty myself. We see all the potential. We see all the options that we can help people with, and we flood them and we drown them.

Like, how many times have you had a coaching client where you're just like, oh, no, I completely overwhelmed them, and they're paralyzed and they can't take any action. Right.

Because you saw so much potential in them, and you saw so much potential in where they were going, and you were excited and you want to encourage them. And I think that's the balancing act of being able to meet people where they're at.

And so I'm really stoked that better life, tribes finding that groove. And I think some interesting things came out of it.

One was you guys had just hired a marketing director and he came on board right when I came on board. And we got along just fine. But I was like, something's not adding up. And I think this is the nature of remote, busy, fast paced organizations.

Was realizing. It took about two months for Matt to realize that he wasn't full time, he wasn't Giving you guys 100% focus, which is what you guys had agreed to.

And so it became something that I was pushing Matt. I was like, we really need to replace this guy. And Matt came around to it. You guys had already had that conversation. I wasn't saying anything new.

But that validation of like, hey, we need to manage more clearly, especially a key role, somebody who's driving all of our leads, somebody who's in charge of all of our creative. And again, the wheels kind of came off when I just was applying basic accountability pressure.

Like I'm driving sales, I'm driving the sales team, I'm dealing with all the leads, I'm trying to get the feedback loops and things aren't improving, things aren't changing. And then he starts shirking the responsibility to me. And I was like, something's off.

And so I think that for a lot of companies, you hire somebody and it usually takes six months for somebody to fizzle out, but then the opportunity cost. Right. Of well, you're not getting 100% out of them. You're not getting the. Things aren't optimizing and improving as quickly as possible.

So for me, I think putting the pressure on and getting him out of there in two to three months was a benefit. And then I found a new agency that came in. They've been great, They've improved traffic. That's right.

Speaker B

00:16:14.810 - 00:16:17.170

I forgot they came from you. That's right. They've been phenomenal.

Speaker A

00:16:17.170 - 00:18:14.840

Yeah, yeah. Gray and his team, they're fantastic. And over there at whole founder, I think it's wholefounder.com if anybody wants to go check them out. So.

But it's like continually applying that accountability pressure. Right. And I think that's more than anything what my clients benefit from. Nobody hires me for that. Nobody wants that.

It's just a side effect of the intensity of. Perry Marshall, my buddy that I do a lot of work with. His son calls me the Eye of Sauron.

Because when I get fixated on a client in our year long group, I just kind of bear down like the Eye of Sauron. I'm like, no, this doesn't make sense. We have to get the answer. We have to work this out.

So I think that was really Good side benefit for you guys was just like getting the marketing team upgraded and then the fun one that is unique for you. And I was looking forward to sharing this insight for anybody listening was we needed sales reps but we didn't have a proven process.

And so my recruiting method is very bespoke and typically I go, I'll just give it out there. I've already gone through it on another podcast episode. But I go to indeed and I write a very bespoke ad just for your company.

But I couldn't really do that with you guys because most people looking for a sales role are wanting full time, proven capable like step into and make money. And we were in a big unknown.

And so the cool thing was Brandon does have a fantastic following and so we were able to go and mine his following and say, hey, we need some part time closers that ideally are already doing real estate investing already like Brandon, get it. And are just looking for something fun to do on the side. And so I was grateful that Matt pushed me because I wasn't ready to recruit.

But by having that ace up your sleeve, really with your list, we got some fantastic talent and it was super fun because you do have a fantastic tribe and I really enjoy those people.

Speaker B

00:18:15.320 - 00:18:40.760

Yeah, they're good people. It's one of the things that, you know, there's a lot of benefits to.

There's a lot of downsides, but a lot of benefits to having that kind of influencer status, like a big following. But the number one most important is just the people you can attract to you.

Like all the people that I know that I work with, almost all of them came from my audience. All the best people come internally. There's some specific roles.

You know, obviously like when I go and hire a marketing person again, at some point, like that's going to be a specialty role. Maybe they won't come from my audience, but a lot of stuff comes internally now.

Speaker A

00:18:41.320 - 00:18:58.360

Yeah. And I think I love the old Chinese proverb. I usually use this in a organizational behavior frame, but it works too with like communities of.

It says the fish stinks from the head down. And so what it means is, however the leader is behaving, the rest of the organization is going to behave.

Speaker B

00:18:58.520 - 00:18:59.160

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A

00:18:59.800 - 00:19:47.530

Not to blow smoke up your beard, but this is something that you've done a great job is building and curating quality, quality people. And so it was really fun because as I did the recruiting out of your following, like everybody was just really nice.

And I remember there was one guy, he was the only Guy, I was like, no, this isn't a fit. He was like a full time manager at a bank and was thinking of leaving his banking job. And I'm like, bro, nope, I can't let you do that.

Like, this is unproven. You got a stable thing. He was just a little bored. But again, he was willing to jump off a cliff for you.

And I'm like, I can't, I can't let you do that. Like, you got a wife and kids and the whole nine. Like, so anyway, I think it turned out well and you guys turned a profit by the end of the year.

Last year. I remember you texting me and thanking me to get you out of that hole.

Speaker B

00:19:47.530 - 00:20:06.220

So, yeah, we, yeah, we, we turned it around. It took, yeah, a little over probably.

Yeah, I don't know, probably maybe 90 days from the time we were truly like, oh, shoot to like, hey, we're surviving. And by the end of the year, yeah, we actually, I think, yeah, I don't know how we did that.

Like, I mean, other than just your help and a lot of smart people working a lot of hours really hard.

Speaker A

00:20:06.220 - 00:20:49.200

Yeah, you got a great team and everybody was all hands on deck the whole time. And so I think that for me was just. I knew it was going to be work, I knew it was going to be hard.

I just really wanted to get you to the other side because once you stop that bleeding, then you can take a breath, then you can look around and see, oh, okay. Where is the path to 10,000 members? Where is the path to making a bigger impact? So yeah, thanks again for coming on and talking about it.

I really appreciate all your help. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I won't volunteer to do many turnarounds like that.

This is probably, it's probably like the Princess Bride, that machine, like how many years it took off my life.

Speaker B

00:20:49.360 - 00:20:53.600

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Just move the dial up one.

Speaker A

00:20:53.760 - 00:21:09.210

The dial. Yeah, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta pick and choose which ones.

But it was a lot of fun and I was really grateful to help because I saw the vision and obviously happy to help you out. So tell everybody how they can follow you, how they can find you. Are you looking for more growth in open door capital? What's that doing?

Speaker B

00:21:10.090 - 00:21:25.130

Yeah, I mean we're always trying to grow an opener capital. We're not buying a lot of real estate right now, but we buy stuff occasionally. But yeah, I mean Instagram is my like go to.

I'm like a 13 year old girl when it comes to Instagram, so I'm on there all day long. So beardy Brandon. Beard with a Y at the end of it. Beardy Brandon.

Speaker A

00:21:25.610 - 00:21:26.730

Nice. Thanks, bro.

Speaker B

00:21:26.810 - 00:21:27.450

Thank you.

Speaker A

00:21:27.850 - 00:21:34.570

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