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Million Dollar Shift: How Mike Turner Built Wealth Through Real Estate Market Changes | RARE Agent Show

• Dylan Tanaka • Episode 5

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🎙️ What if you could turn market chaos into million-dollar opportunities?

In this episode of The RARE Agent Show , Dylan Tanaka sits down with Mike Turner, a real estate powerhouse who has mastered the art of thriving in any market. From navigating the foreclosure crisis to creating lasting passive income streams, Mike shares insider tips that every real estate agent and investor can use to build a business they love.

💡 Whether you’re looking to level up your real estate game, attract investors, or pivot into passive income, this episode is packed with actionable strategies.

What You’ll Learn:
✔️ How Mike used foreclosures to dominate the luxury market.
✔️ The secret to transitioning from commissions to partnerships.
✔️ Why solving client problems builds trust—and repeat business.
✔️ Tips for building passive income that secures your financial future.

👉 Don’t just survive in real estate—thrive. This episode will show you how!

Mike’s Most Powerful Insights:
🛠️ "Find where the market’s demand is—then become the expert in solving those problems."
💡 "Stop chasing commissions. Think partnerships, passive income, and long-term freedom."
🔑 "Recession-proof your business by looking for the gaps and filling them."

Connect With Mike Turner:
📖 Free Course: Cash Flow Flips
🌐 Impact Club: Transform Your Community
📩 Follow Mike On Facebook

Recommended Resources Mentioned:
📘 Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Book  – A must-read for mindset shifts.    🔊 Rich Dad Poor Dad Audio
🎧 The RARE Agent Show Playlist: Past Episodes Here

Stay Connected With Dylan Tanaka & RARE Agent Nation:
🚀 Join Our Community: Closings From Listings - RARE Agent Nation
📺 Watch on YouTube: RARE Agent Nation Channel
📸 Follow Dylan on Facebook

🎧 Don’t miss future episodes! Subscribe to The RARE Agent Show and leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review to let us know what you think.

👉 Join the conversation: Join our thriving Facebook group, Closings From Listings - RARE Agent Nation, to connect with other agents and access exclusive resources.

Ready to elevate your real estate game? Press play and let’s get started!

Dylan Tanaka:

Welcome to the rare agent show. I'm Dylan Tanaka, a realtor, mentor, and author. This podcast is dedicated to helping real estate agents like you close more deals so that you can live the life you always dreamed of every week. My guests and I share the stories, strategies, and tools you need to inspire and empower you. Let's make it happen. Hey, Mike, super excited to have you on the show today. How are you doing? I'm fantastic. Thanks for inviting me. Awesome, man. So we start every show because most of us are real estate agents who listen to this and watch this talk about how do you take your coffee every morning?

Mike Turner:

It's been black for a long time. Although sometimes now I've been sneaking in these protein shakes that I have, these just to get some earlier protein, but other than that, it's mostly black.

Dylan Tanaka:

That's awesome. Mike and I have known each other for a little while now. We've been a part of a couple of different mastermind groups, both on the investing and agent side. And believe it or not, Mike, I do remember that you took your coffee black because I don't run across many guys or gals who take their coffee black, but it's something we talk about because I'm a huge coffee fanatic and I actually throw protein in mine every morning too.

Mike Turner:

You can always tell if it's good coffee if it's having a black and that's I had a boss once who I was always had to run errands for and get coffee and he was very particular Go get the beans grind them up at the store and bring them back and it's always black. And then next, I was addicted to it. Just having a black,

Dylan Tanaka:

Yep. Nothing wrong with being a purist. So listen, so you're, you've been in real estate a long time. Why don't you just tell us all about your initial journey into real estate?

Mike Turner:

Yeah it, like many mine happened by accident. I I had some pretty unique jobs. It's taken me all over the world. It was pretty cool. I was, I did manage, I was in a corporate job before this is right out of college, had a good corporate job doing really well, I was able to acquire a house to live in and it was in California. And when I came back and then I left that corporate job, worked overseas for a couple of years, came back and realized my house was double, almost tripled in value. And I was like, and it just blew my mind and opened up my eyes to real estate in a whole new way. And next, I'm reading rich dad, poor dad, and I'm curious and I'm looking and I actually went out. As an investor mindset initially to acquire property. And I started looking outside of California cause the costs are already kind of outside my reach at that time. And and they started, I made some offers and that's how I ended up actually in Idaho. I went to Boise, Idaho, look like an upcoming. Location and it was available to acquire a couple of properties really cheap. And in that process, I was like, well, I want to find more of these. I'll just get my real estate license to help me find more deals. And so I went to school, went to, I was going to school. I was looking around the room and I was like, you know what? Why am I not doing this? Everyone seemed to be making good money with this. It's just a few weeks. I got the bug and jumped right into, working as a realtor and and within a couple of years, I was a broker and I was a broker for, most of my career as a full time real estate agent. Now I'm on the backside of that. I do mostly investment deals but carry my license, use it on every transaction. And that's kind of where I'm at now.

Dylan Tanaka:

Gotcha. We talked off camera, obviously, and you've been in the business just about as long as I have. So 20 plus years. What do you think the biggest change that you've seen from back in the late nineties, early two thousands to today?

Mike Turner:

The marketing approaches are different. Like what worked really good back then. Doesn't necessarily work now. For example, I got some of my best leads early on and built my database by putting a no. Not joking, a ad in the newspaper it was it was that old, it was that first initial dip into direct response marketing and I was learning from some of the gurus out at the time and so I just put up get a list of fixer upper ads, or fixer upper properties, go here, that kind of stuff. And that worked. Initially and then, I think as I throughout my years in real estate, it was constantly evolving. It was constantly evolving how to communicate, how to reach people and and I feel like that's just not stopping. It just continues to evolve. There's some tried and true. Things though, with everything that still have remained the same and giving that personal touch, actually caring about your client and treating people like, like you actually care about what happens to them. They remember that they feel that, and then you become their trusted resource. And so I've. Did business that way and that really led to a lot of my success of getting a lot of repeat clients, but you have to remind them that you're there, though, if you just do an awesome job and never do anything after that they just know so many real estate agents. So as a process of kind of find a way to initially. I grabbed their attention, show them that I could help them. And if I had that opportunity, then I would get, a decent amount of referrals from there.

Dylan Tanaka:

Yeah. And I think that gets lost in the shuffle. Mike you and I, we met each other, like I said, in an event, which is kind of how real estate nerds like us meet. We just connected and I could see, I see a lot of myself in you. Like I think the same way it's about building long term relationships, not getting that stuff lost in the shuffle. Like I said, sure, all this technology is out there and you never have to talk to anybody. But the reality is the better that you can communicate. And the more honest that you are and you actually listen when people talk, that's going to bring you a lot more success. And I think a lot of agents today miss out on that just because it can be much colder world because of all the cold calling and texting and all that stuff and picking up a phone and actually talking to somebody that's where you really build that rapport. So I think that's super important. What's one thing that that our listeners would be surprised that you would tell them about the real estate world.

Mike Turner:

Something I've learned about the real estate world. Or

Dylan Tanaka:

something crazy that's happened to you. Something fun.

Mike Turner:

I once got trapped into a house, cause I found this trap door. I didn't know where it went to, but I could see that it was a slide. This was a foreclosure back when everything was foreclosure. I was so curious. And so I was like, I couldn't, I went down. I'm like, where does this come out? Couldn't find it. I went back up and back up. I'm like, Oh, I can't find where this leads out. So then I was like, all right, I'm going back. I'm going in. So I got my little flashlight out with my phone. I'm like, okay. And I get onto this slide. I'm trying to go slow as it's starting to go down. And I'm like, what am I doing? Cause it's getting darker and darker as I go down this. Slide that's in this middle of this house. I finally get down to this room. Thank goodness My phone is still working because I couldn't find how to get out of this space It just reminded me of there's just so many I eventually found like the little latch and it opened up to this basement Room and I didn't know existed. But the thing is about real estate is what's cool about it is There's so much opportunity, there's so much opportunity to like evolve and become do a part of the real estate that you like. Like I'm talking about a time when I was doing that property. I found a way to no matter what the market does to shift. I got into the business and I was working a lot with investors cause that's what I wanted to be. And so that was my mindset. And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to serve you. But then that kept evolving. And then I was working all types of different buyers and sellers. And. I started a brokerage and I was like, all right, I'm going to do it this way. And I think I know which way I'm going to grow this business. And then the market just shifted so hard. A lot of the homes that I was selling for it used to be 200, 300, 000, we're now selling for a hundred thousand, 75, 000. I was doing some transaction, but I was just like. My pay got cut like in half pretty quickly. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this isn't working. And so then I realized this was happening all over the, my entire market, including the luxury homes. It's, it was harder to find information back then. But I was, I basically looked through the MLS and sell. Of homes that are foreclosures now, what did they used to be priced at? What did they previously sell for? And if I couldn't find that, I saw what mortgage they used to have on it, cause I could find that information. I can say, Oh, here's a property that used to be 2 million. That's now 600, 000. And I started creating this luxury foreclosure list, luxury property foreclosure list in my area. I just spent hours researching it, made it like a. Like a share item, like you gotta, opt in to get it, but get the report. But then they would then ask me to go look at the properties. And so while most people are focused on the listing side of things, I actually dominated my market by going after buyers who most would think didn't have any money back then. There's a lot of people who had money and you just need to show them where the opportunities were. I had one of my best years ever. Why everyone's having one of their worst, because I found a way to find where the demand was and like cater it to. My expertise and something I could do inside real estate and it did take time. I had, it took me a while to create the report, but oh my gosh, it was like most valuable time I've ever spent in real estate. Just gathering that data to share it for free. Then to get clients raising their hand right and left, to use me who then eventually. Three to five, seven years later said, all right, Mike, I'm ready to sell. And next, I'm handling most of the luxury homes in my area. Those kinds of things can be like, can pay dividends. If you just kind of watch the market, look for opportunities, even though when they get hard, there might new doors open up.

Dylan Tanaka:

Yeah. And I think that's huge. You talked about direct response, right? So you had your unique selling proposition. At that time in real estate, because they're just there, there wasn't as many buyers and sellers, right? Because I went through that same shift. I've been in the business just like you a long time. So I think that's awesome to basically to create your own market. They, and then look what it turned into, right? It turned into, it blossomed into those same homes Being sold later and and you ended up being their agent, a lot of agents want to work with investors because investors do a lot of deals, right? They are always buying. They're always selling because that's how they make their money. So, what's your best advice for an agents who want to get started working with investors? And then how would you execute that?

Mike Turner:

There's a couple of ways that I want people to think about it. Cause I missed out on a lot of opportunity. I've now capitalized on it. When you get too sophisticated. Fixated on being the real estate, the realtor, that is sometimes what helps is you got to ask, so I have an investor mindset. First off, I think we all should, we have such direct access to real estate that if we're not thinking about an investor building a portfolio or getting involved with real investing side of, in some form or fashion. That it's a huge missed opportunity, massive. And most agents don't do this because they're so worried about just getting their next commission to, so they can keep the lights on. And I've been there myself, numerous times, but here's the way you can kind of get into it is one, just. Just want, wanting the fact to get more into it and start going to where other investors are, the meetups, the places where people gathering who are trying to do more of that type of business. Here's a quick little nugget. The way I do investing now is I'm still using my license, but instead of me being stuck at getting a 3 percent commission, a billion, Best I'm getting like 30 percent commissions and 50 percent commissions. I'm selling homes now for a hundred thousand, but I'm making the amount of money that I would make on like a luxury home for 30, 000 on it. I'm involved, but I'm involved like an investor. And now I'm looking at like, how can we get this deal done? What part of the process can I help with? And in turn, why don't I just be a partner versus just an agent. And if you're like a partner in a transaction versus just. A realtor, then you, it really opens up a lot more opportunity for you to start gaining equity and growing a portfolio and things like that, even just get paid bigger. So I helped so many flippers over the years. If you just do that, it's great because you can get a lot of stuff. Same customer coming back to you time and time again, and you're off to double ending it and you're helping them with the find. And in the cell, if you want to work with more investors, help them with something that they need help with. A lot of times it's finding deals. You have access to one of the best sources of information. At your fingertips. All right, I'm going to actually look for homes that look like fixers, create a list, and then offer it out to people and let them kind of decide if they want to buy it or not. Now they know that, okay, I, they understand that we're looking for the same things. They get affinity with me. You can start meeting with them and start understanding more about what they're looking for. And next thing you can get somebody who's been using, been in the business for years, but all of a sudden great, you seem like you like, you hustle. Like you're willing to go out and find me.

Dylan Tanaka:

That's all they want to find. Right. Mike is someone who's willing to hustle and work.

Mike Turner:

So if you want it, and I think it's a great strategy to work with investors, find somebody who has the means and ability to actually get stuff done and you can find them. Sometimes they're often in your community doing content. Sometimes they're at these meetups, they're on these Facebook groups instead of just going off and saying Hey, Pick me and not providing any reasons why to say instead, but like, how can I help you? What are some ways that I can help you and go to them with here's a way to help them solve one of the riddles that they're working on. And you don't have to solve everything, but you just have to be trying to help them solve it. And that goes a long way to getting them want to work with you. Saying you're eager to learn to be more involved to don't, you don't have to pretend everything, you can be really honest about here's what I'm, I can do. And here's what I'm working out, but I would love to learn from you too, because people who are made it, they liked it. They want to pass it on. Many of them want to pass it on. And so just being willing to like, Hey, I'm wanting to help you. And in turn, I'd love to learn from you back. That's like music to my ears. When somebody says that to me cause all right, cause I'm going to give it to you. Cause I want to share it and not everybody is wants to like hustle or do anything. And so that's that's some advice is be willing to help solve one of the riddles and be open to asking yeah, I'd like to do more business. Do I like to, cause I want to learn from you. You'll be surprised how many doors open up just from doing that.

Dylan Tanaka:

Yeah that's super strong advice. And I remembered what I was trying to say earlier on my last question, and that was creating value. You talked about the luxury foreclosure list. You created value for people who had the 600, 000 to throw into a 2 million property. No one else did because you created value again. You're an entrepreneur, so you want to solve problems. You want to create value because you and I are trying to knock on those doors also, right? And make sure the guys and gals who are, way above our pay grade, want to open the doors to us. How do we get them? We know, how do we get them to open the doors by creating value? I think again, that's something that. agents can really, especially today with a lot of the changes with the commission, if you are representing a buyer the seller now doesn't have to pay you a commission as an agent. That's a huge change. Well, Mike, how do you get someone to pay you? There's two ways. Well, maybe three. Number one, you can use a gun. Number two, luck or number three, earn it. So we as agents, entrepreneurs, investors, we have to earn it. And we do that by creating value and then creating rapport and then keeping that, that circle going. I want to go back to something that you brought up. You talked about not just making 3%, which, let's be honest, 3%, 6%. That's huge. We make a lot of money as real estate agents when. The housing prices are so high, but let's go back to you saying, I don't want to just be an agent anymore. I want to be a partner. Well, break that down for us. Like how do you just become a partner?

Mike Turner:

So the way I got into, I made the shift from being just a real estate agent to, it's sometimes dealing, you call it like a hybrid, right? Where now I'm doing both. I went to a past client and I came to him with a proposal. Hey, what if I go out and find a deal and I can prove it to you? Cause I, I've shown you in the past that I know what I'm doing. I know enough people are doing fix up around the area. I have this plan of where we can go in. I can enhance the value. I can see what the ARV is after repair value up. Property, I know this market so well now that I know where we can be on this and still win what I would need for you to make that happen. What I like to do is I'll handle everything if you can just handle the costs and we'll split it. So they're kind of the banker or your money. Yeah, I'll put you on title if you want the whole thing. I just want to be able to split. And even don't even worry about the commission. Oh, I'm still going to do one. I'm going to do my normal thing, but we'll just split whatever we earn. And the first one that we did, I made 25 grand instead of, nine grand, which is what could we sold it for, 300, 000. I made so much more just by presenting that opportunity to be a partner versus just the real estate

Dylan Tanaka:

agent. And by Mike, by creating more value also. So because you weren't just, Hey, I'm a real estate dude or an agent. I'm going to write an offer for you, throw it in, and maybe we get it. I think you went a lot deeper, right? Yeah, I know. I hired me, I can coordinate all

Mike Turner:

the contractors because some people with money, a lot of people with money don't have the time and, or the knowledge base to go out and do this. And so if you can solve that gap and many real estate agents can, because this is what they do. This is what they're trying to do. Full time have potentially have more access to more connections, whether through their office or their. For their community that they're in, being able to leverage that to try and solve whatever riddles they're trying to solve. And so, yeah, that's hugely beneficial. So sometimes if you go out I don't know how many times in my career, I saw an opportunity like, wow, this is a really good deal, but I didn't have a client to sell it to. I'm like, Oh, that was frustrating. It started being able to do now. It's like, all right, well, if I find an opportunity now, I can. Present it to my audience. Hey, here's this thing that I'm seeing who would like to partner with me on this. And just by throwing that out there, you're changing, you're like becoming like no other real estate agent that they're probably hearing or listening to. They're like, I want to help both go make some more money on this. And versus this is my cost to help hire me versus so that's how you can approach into the partner thing is like. That, that, that opportunity is wide, wide open.

Dylan Tanaka:

We as partners versus regular agents, nothing wrong with regular agents, but once you get to that level where you're looked at as an expert and you can present yourself that way. And I, I know you're behind the scenes, so I know you're a numbers guy. I know you're super honest. I know that you're like super hardworking and you're digging in the trenches. That's how we find those deals as an entrepreneur. That's really how you persevere. Right.

Mike Turner:

You have to be taking some action in order to create more momentum or a pipeline of something for your business and just waiting for it to come along is not going to work and not not long term anyway being proactive and deciding what you're going to go after. And I think a lot of real estate agents are doing the same things. And so they're all often getting the same results. Look at your market because every market's different and just kind of see like, where are the opportunities? Where are the challenges? Sometimes if you can solve a problem inside a challenge, it just opens up so much opportunity for you. Go into that gap and start working it.

Dylan Tanaka:

Look for the seam. That's awesome. So something I like to talk about, Mike is my biggest failures, right? And what's been your biggest landmine that you weren't able to avoid in the real estate business?

Mike Turner:

Real clearly, my biggest mistake that I made in my 20 plus years of having a real estate license. In the first couple of years of having a license, I stopped trying to be an investor. I put all my energy into becoming the best real estate agent I could, which was good. I created a brokerage. I had a good brand. I had a good run, had a lot of good years, had some tough years. But what I missed on all of that is that I'm using my real estate license not only to do Realtors things, but also to do investor things. I'm working on creating a portfolio so I don't have to work forever. If you can create with any business and real estate's no different. Okay. Being a real estate agent is no different, but part of your business, and they don't talk about this in real estate school and they don't talk about it and anywhere, most places that I'm listening to, if you're not doing something inside your business and that's what you have, if you have a real estate license, you have a business. If you're not creating or looking to create some sort of reoccurring income, you're so successful to any market shift and change like the, whatever's working now could change so easily. So if you're not creating some sort of reoccurring income, something approaching passive income, at least partially passive. And so if you don't have that, then you're really, you're just, you're always so dependent. So let me give you a quick example. So just recently, I had my best year financially ever. In real estate, like I just made so much stinking money from flipping houses, not from getting commissions, but from being a partner and getting huge chunks because the market was just like screaming up, it's coming out of COVID coming out of

Dylan Tanaka:

COVID. Yeah. It was just this

Mike Turner:

weird time. And even though I was making mistakes and I was having delays, all that kind of stuff, the market just kept rising and

Dylan Tanaka:

rising.

Mike Turner:

Then coming in 2022. And during that time, like everybody was getting in. So all my lead sources were like getting filled up and more competitive. I tripled my ad spend because I wasn't getting the leads that I wanted and couldn't seem to secure another deal. And so the whole beginning of 2022, I'm just struggling. I'm like trying more things, spending more money. And and then I. Finally, it opens up for me, finally opens up like an April, like going into May and I land five or six properties to do more flips on because you're only as good when you can reach solely commission based or one time payment based, you're only as good as you're like your last deal. And eventually you got to make something else. It could be a huge last deal, but how much gap is between your next one, can it have a huge impact? So I finally secure a bunch of other properties, but at that time, of course, interest rates are just soaring up right from 3 percent to now seven. And by time I land those deals, I kind of realized. I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble because the way my cost, my, my market is reacting to that, is that the cost of the, to my end buyer that I normally sell to just doubled in cost for them, cause what their mortgage payment is going to be compared to what it was

Dylan Tanaka:

went up.

Mike Turner:

Yeah. So I know my end sale price is going to be significant impacted and all that kind of stuff. I basically clawed my way through 2022. It was pretty much a wash that year. I realized during the, when I was going through that process, like flipping homes, sounds cool, it is fun. It's big paychecks. It's a pretty wild ride. It's very sexy

Dylan Tanaka:

when you're done with that project, right, Mike. And you're like, okay, cause I've seen yours and you're just like, you're so proud. You're like, look at my baby. It's so

Mike Turner:

beautiful. Yeah. And, but I went through this process of learning it was just, and I've always known this and I've always tried to have some kind of, recurring income with my business, but I just didn't rely on it enough. And it was kind of hard to create in my marketplace. And so I just, I was like, I'll just go make more money. Here's what I'm finding 20 plus years and almost 25. But eventually you're going to get tired of hunting for the next deal. Like always on to be in the hunt for the next client, the next whatever. If you're always on the hunt, you're just dependent upon if something happens to you and you can't hunt or if you get sick or you have to deal with help family or, whatever the case is. So having that base of reoccurring income, and that's why it works for any business, because then, before your month even starts, you're going to get paid. Right. When you have that residual. Yeah. And if you can get that up high enough, then if it can cover most of your, monthly expenses, well, then that is true financial freedom. Because if you're, It doesn't matter if you're making 50 grand a year or 500, 000 a year. If you're having to work, 16 hours a day, every day to know where to keep it coming in, well, then you're still trapped. So even though that the idea of making all that money is so attractive, it's if it stops immediately, if you stop, well, then you kind of have. A problem. So if you're, if you find your way to climb that up into the higher bracket, then using some of those resources, some of your experience and things to start building that out. So that's what I've been really focused on the last two or three years building up that recurring income. And I found some niches and same way I did it like years ago of looking for luxury foreclosures. I found a different niche underserved market, a gap, and I've used that to kind of get me where I want. And so. In the short period of time, I basically have almost generated near about 100, 000 in passive income per year that I've kind of have locked up and it's just a shorter period of time. And I've done that mostly with other people's money by partnering. And so, It's a huge advantage to think about it. Like we, we essentially partner as real estate agents. That's our commission, right? We just get 3 percent of it by being a true partner. Like from the get go, this re changing the game, you can sometimes, I get, like I said, I get 25%. and 30 percent commissions and 50 or whatever your situation is. And that's just a really underlooked strategy that I'm fully embracing now and having lots of success with.

Dylan Tanaka:

Well, and I love what you said there, Mike, our, I think our careers have kind of paralleled each other. We started at the same time. We're no longer the young guys in the room anymore, but now we're saying what those old guys said to us. And it's don't ever sell a property. And for some of us, we want to be landlords for some of us. We want to build some other type of residual income, but you're never going to be free, right? You're never going to build that business that you love. That's a big part of the, our Facebook group, our community rare agent nation. My goal is to help real estate agents create predictable paydays. So they can build a business that they love, which means that they can live however they want and whether that's 50, 000 a year and you're happy, or it's 5 million a year, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but you and I know enough guys and gals who've been entrepreneurs in business long enough when we can see some of those people and we're like, they've done it because we just know we can see there's this thing in their eyes where they're so calm because it's like you said, they might try something new, something big, a big flip, start a brokerage in a new state or something crazy like that, but they can afford to do that. And they can afford to put their time into it, which is the most important part, not just the money because they have that residual income coming from somewhere. So

Mike Turner:

it's a game changer. If you can incorporate that in your business for at least the amount of financial stress that can lower, if you have some amount of money coming in and it's hard making a shift to that, because if you have an opportunity to make 400 a month on a property versus, I don't know, 15 grand, right? I was going

Dylan Tanaka:

to say 15 G's or 400

Mike Turner:

a month. It's hard, to kind of sometimes reconcile that. That's where you have

Dylan Tanaka:

to fill your pipeline with leads. You talked about having leads constantly in there and things that you're working on. If you have more paydays popping out, right, then when those bigger ones come, or you can make that decision of staving off, taking the big paycheck today for a longer term paycheck that lasts maybe forever.

Mike Turner:

There's just so many ways to create reoccurring income, to build up a business in a smarter way. I just wish I knew that better when I was younger. Yeah. I knew that going in, I mean, I read the books, I got, I heard, you talk to the guys have been in a long time, but I tried a little bit and I was like, ah, and then all of a sudden I'd like, Oh, I can go get 30 grand if I go do this. And it was attractive. And I moved away from a lot of those strategies. I tried a lot of seller financing when I, in 2008, 2009, I had a lot of those deals go south. I got burned out doing that. It took me a while to kind of come back and to get back into leveraging my license in that way. And I'm so thankful that I have. And so now I'm helping other people realize it too. I have a free course that I help people see. And you know what I find from these people that I'm helping is that if you have a real estate license, you have, you're so, you're starting so far ahead. There's so many people that want to be investors that. Don't have, they're starting from ground zero. You're, at least with a real estate license, you're trained, you're dealing with it, you're seeing it every day. You have such an advantage. If you're not at least considering being a hybrid agent, you're really leaving a lot on the table and if it helps you get to your end goal with ultimately, being able to be more financially secure in your older years, like it's definitely something that you might want to work towards, it's just cause it's just a game changer.

Dylan Tanaka:

I can't agree more. Obviously I've been preaching that. For a decade or more. And Mike talked about, he's got some free info for you guys. I'm going to have all of his contact information in the show notes and at the end of the show, so don't worry about it now, but we'll make sure you guys get access to whatever Mike wants to give you access to. So I wanted to ask you about what's on your retail real estate radar right now, just kind of where we're at in the world, what do you think is a trend that. Agents today should be looking at

Mike Turner:

There's movements happened in the market right now that we should pay attention to if you feel like something's extraordinarily overpriced pay attention to that. So, for example, in my market for a while there four plexus and those types of properties got super popular and it got super popular by big money and the big money can. Pay for those low cap rates and they don't mind it. And so they just drove the price up and up and to ridiculous numbers. And we're stopped making a sense. Yeah. And so, and I see a lot of more naive, younger, investors like, oh, okay, this is the path everyone says I should take. Therefore. I should get one of these and they've spent way too much money buying an overpriced asset. So I'd pay attention to what appears to be overpriced and things like that in your marketplace and things like that happen. But also I've been playing a lot in the affordable side of the market, the affordability side, because it tends to be the most protected in recessions. And this is going to

Dylan Tanaka:

say affordable, but I wouldn't have sounded

Mike Turner:

very intelligent. Yeah, no, but if affordable, like the bottom of the market, like what is the lowest cost housing in your area? And a lot of times as realtors, we avoid that because our commissions are so small and therefore you should if you can sell luxury homes, might as well get a better, bigger paycheck. I did that too. At the same time, you might find that the people who are buying those luxury have money to spend on affordable. Housing investment projects, and those are really good opportunities to capitalize on in your market because the way that everything is getting more expensive, people are going to be forced to downsize and they are what I've been doing in my efforts and myself and my partners that we're going out and we're finding the most affordable house we can find. We make them a little bit nicer and then we. Put them back on the market. And a lot of times we offer financing on that process. And because I say I keep an equity in that opportunity. I get cashflow. My investor gets good cashflow and we solve, help solve a problem, our community, because a lot of people who are needing affordable housing can't always afford to then fix them up. So if you can go in and just make it decent and make them excited about living there, well, then this is a great area. Now. To, and to make it more financially viable for you in time, you invest in that you become more of the partner side again, versus just the commission only by, helping out with more steps in the process potentially, and really it's actually not even that more, a lot of times we end up doing a lot of these things and we just do it for free because we care by being in there. And a lot of times people are very open to that because they want that deal flow to continue. So if they know if you're. Some investors are savvy enough to know that if you're rewarded, we're going to keep, and I always tell people too, is I, because I'm part of the deal, I'll look after it. If it goes South, I'll go in and help fix it. I found the buyer in the last place. I'll find another one. And so I take some of the concerns off their plate and therefore get more access to, the opportunity.

Dylan Tanaka:

Plus you're an equity partner in that. So you. Care. I'm not saying that all agents are bad, but you care a lot more because what happens to that deal affects you even more, even though it should affect us just as regular agents too, but it definitely makes you kind of keep your eyes on that basket with that baby in it,

Mike Turner:

you got skin in the game. And even though you're being given it. You've been given the skin, but at least, that, that goes away. If the payment stopped coming in, it impacts you, impacts everybody. And therefore, yeah, you are way more motivated to get it resolved versus being completely detached.

Dylan Tanaka:

What change do you see in the market on the retail side in the next 12 months?

Mike Turner:

Everybody was hoping for lower interest rates, and it just doesn't seem like that's really in the cards. I feel like some people are excited and fearful about what might happen with the economy going forward. I feel like even if you are in the side of you're excited about it, I still expect it to get worse before it gets better. better because every time you make changes, which is what the next administration is promising, it's going to have ripple effects. Even if those changes are good, it can have negative impacts. So I don't know. So I'd say that I think it seems like even though everybody was predicting lower interest rates, it doesn't seem like to be that bad. It may be as possible as it was before. And then inflation not really going away as well as we had hoped it would. And that's sometimes not in the control of whoever's president is sometimes it's like the supply chains around the kind of world is breaking down and that has all these ripple effects.

Dylan Tanaka:

Yeah. There's macroeconomics that. That we don't really understand or know about as regular old real estate folks.

Mike Turner:

What that means is that things are going to stay, I think, relatively expensive. I mean, I feel like that could change over the next few years, but I feel like not this year, next 12 months. I mean, it's better than it was, because at least now there's some movement of change, and people might have a little bit more. A little bit more optimism going in, but they're still facing the same challenges that they were. If you're going to stand out, I'm seeing a lot of agents have, some have success in this market. I was just having coffee with a couple of different ones. I'm always, that's usually my first question. How are you doing? Because I know so many people I've been around for so long in my market. I know so many people, there's some people kicking and I was like, well, what are you doing? They're like, how are they

Dylan Tanaka:

staying ahead of the curve? That's kind of what I've been waiting to ask you that question. They communicate

Mike Turner:

with

Dylan Tanaka:

the people,

Mike Turner:

right? They talk to them. So it seems like a way of just it's like they actually communicate. And so they don't actually have to know what it is, but they kind of understand and empathize because they're communicating. So it seems like the key is that. They're picking up the phone, they're having conversations with them, not asking for business, but just ask, checking in and talking them and having the, asking the same question about their upcoming year, what they're thinking and how their life is going.

Dylan Tanaka:

Let me interrupt you. I'm curious if you had a room full of agents who worked for you, your brokerage and they're all looking at you and there's 50 people in the room. 50 agents and they're saying, what's one skill or strategy that I should brush up on for today's market? Maybe even like over the next five years. Do you think that's what it would be as communication?

Mike Turner:

I would do what opposite I tell them to do the opposite what everyone else is doing and that is communicate but like real communication So less texty, whatever And you still do your socials and still do the stuff, but I would say pick up the phone, send an actual card, actually try to connect on a higher level. And or if you're totally like techno minded and you don't do that kind of stuff, well then be more open on how you can meet, like you comment back or making it more personal. I think what people want in this world. Is someone that they can trust if you can get to that category in their brain of like, all right, whatever happens to real estate. I know I can trust this guy. And one of the ways I did that is I would share with them my thoughts, what I'd see in the marketplace. I'd share with them what I'm seeing, what's going on. And then I would then communicate with them outside of that in different ways. And so I just Would find ways to show them that I'm in the mix and then I would just talk to him about it. And so I kind of dominated in that space just because they don't know, but they want to talk to somebody that knows more than they do about certain subjects. So it makes, and so even if you don't, if you're new, if you want to target that neighborhood. No more than anybody else in that neighborhood about what's going on as far as like real estate and stuff like that. And show that you have that. So you don't have to know everything, but show that you are a trusted resources around the place where you want more business. And then they will come to you for that.

Dylan Tanaka:

That is amazing information right there. I think that again, we pass over that a lot, what's going on. And maybe we can go one layer deeper, Mike. I know, I think you, you have a high A lot of people don't understand there's a difference between EQ and IQ. They're two different things. So again, let's go back to that room of of 50 hungry agents looking at you and you're the guy who's teaching them how to set themselves up for the next 12 months. You said that having real communication, but what does that look like? Just one layer deeper.

Mike Turner:

Okay. One layer deeper is. Just a combination of the two things I just said, where do you want more business? What kind of more business do you want? Is it this neighborhood? Is it, working with investors? Is it working like more luxury homes, maybe condos or where do you want to get more types of business? Lean into it. Take this next two or three weeks and just study, get information, gather. What kind of information do they want? And just dig and pull it and find it and then start communicating about that specialty, that space, that thing, and then you can share it in multiple ways, but then you can allow, she gives you excuse and then check in with somebody who knows already showed some interest in that. Or if you were trying to find new customers. You can put it out to the space and then they have to opt in a lead magnet and to saying, yeah, I'm interested in that kind of stuff. And therefore it gives you a reason to follow up with them. What, what else can I provide you or what, just allow you to go deeper with them. And so that, I think that's what I would focus on. Like whatever they were trying to do more of, you can do this in an hour a day. Today with AI, you can do an

Dylan Tanaka:

hour for sure, right? With that strong black coffee in the morning when nobody's out there up to bug you.

Mike Turner:

That's right. And you'd be surprised how wildly valuable that is. And then the perception that starts, if you can be a little bit consistent with it, you will start cementing yourself in the audience that you're trying to attract. Just kind of own it. Just know that you're going to be super strong in that area that you're choosing to focus.

Dylan Tanaka:

Awesome. Yeah, that's something you can take to the bank and start acting on right now. So we want to talk about proving something. Mike has been my hero since the very beginning of this year, because every single day he posts, whether we want to call it a journal, a diary, his own blog, but it's all been on Facebook. As far as I know, it's on Facebook every day. I, and I've told him, I've tried to heart everyone. And I bet you, I've only missed him. Maybe 10 of them because I see it. I sometimes I'm up Mike's what's this guy hurting my stuff at four in the morning for, right. But I wake up early or I'm up all night working, whatever it is. So Mike, talk a little bit about that. And I don't know, have you gotten anything from that or just kind of share what you're talking about out there? So maybe some of these viewers and listeners should start following your personal profile on Facebook.

Mike Turner:

Why I did it writing was not my, it's never been my strength. And so it would kind of felt like this limiting factor. I was kind of. Irritated me. I've done some hard challenges for you where you do a 30 day challenge of some fitness thing. Or I once did a challenge of doing like a hundred burpees a day, those kinds of things you don't want to do in order to better yourself. I had the crazy idea of like, all right, I'm just going to publish every day. And and hopefully over the course of the year, I'll get better. What's cool about that. I mean, it's sucked so many times, because there's so many days you're just like, Oh my gosh, not today. I mean, I've written on boats, in the middle of cell boats in the middle of nowhere. I've been on airplanes course, lots of times doing that when I'm sick after a party, it's 2 AM, I shouldn't be communicating at all, but it's allowed me, there's been so many benefits by doing that in the sense of I've only published really on Facebook. If I was smart, I would be pushing it out to other platforms. Sure. And maybe I'll do that this year. But the point was, is that by doing that type of commitment, it's helped me kind of grow so much over the year because it's helped me, it's forced me to kind of self analyze. Kind of look at the world and what am I going to write about today? And just to be more observant and it's strengthened me as a human, as a character over the course of the year. And I thought I was in a pretty strong spot when I started. I feel completely different being almost a year in now. It's been one of the hardest things I've ever done. It's been fun now to kind of, I'm getting, I am getting better at it. And I don't know yet where it's going to go and lead, but I do love being able to just share my heart. My life. Kudos to you. I mean, you're one of my fans, man. Because you can put it, you can put work out there. This happens to all real estate. You put out, he's you work hard in something, you put it out in the world. I know this has happened to you. Cause haven't anybody who publishes anything is and then you're like, nobody looks at it. You're like, or you get like one or two and it's like, all right, well, I got it out there that felt good. I'm glad I did it. I wish it had a bit more reach because I was hoping it would have more impact. At the same time, it's a start. You don't have to look at it. It's one piece of a big puzzle. Well, and it's a

Dylan Tanaka:

cumulative effect, right, Mike? Like you, you're, I know you're in pretty good shape. You don't do that by going to the gym once and you get nothing out of going to the gym once except up here that, that, empty space between our ears says, Hey, we did it today. Now we've got to do it again tomorrow, but we can't do it again tomorrow if we didn't do it today.

Mike Turner:

It's a cumulative effect, and I think anything you do, if you can commit to anything, even like a hundred days, 30 days if you can kind of commit to something like that's a great topic coming into the new year in the sense of finding something that Is you can do that's hard that you know have could potentially have a ripple effect of positivity in your life is a great thing to get yourself to become something more and because it's kind of this forced accountability and especially if you make it public, then you kind of like really forced to do it.

Dylan Tanaka:

I was never a Keller Williams guy, meaning like I've never had my license there, but they have that calendar with. You do your one thing, however many days in a row. You've seen that of course. Right. It's the same principle, right? It's once you do that forever, and I'm sure Mike has friends and family who think he's crazy. I have friends and families who think I'm crazy. I think he's crazy for writing that every day. Cause I have read it at times and I'm thinking, where was this guy at? Writing this because I know he's not at his desk every day at noon, writing out, three or four, 10 paragraphs. And some of them were really long. Some of them were shorter, but they weren't one or two sentences for the most part. And you were sharing. I know. I wish I had done that. Yeah. You were, you're sharing more, more personal stuff. I think to me than business, because business is kind of boring. And even for you, just by hitting that every single day, you have no idea who's reading that and what can come out of it. And like you said, it's kind of like exercising and going back to the When you write every day and you can kind of think clearly for a few minutes, it's a little medicinal. I think we're kind of rounding third base, heading towards home. But I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up your amazing partner, your wife, I want to talk about her a little bit and your passion project. Where do you want to start? You want to start with her, the passion project

Mike Turner:

in 2009, my second daughter was born. And in 2009 or 2007, my first daughter was, my first daughter was born and that's when I opened up my real estate brokerage and pretty much put all my chips in on this new idea. And by 2009, when my second daughter was born, all the foundations of everything I had been working for the past three or four years had been crumbling down because I had employees, I had overhead, I had. All these things in the market was just crushing me. And I just felt, and I was working stupid hours and I remember holding my child in my arms and like this wondering I feel like I was such a failure. Cause I didn't know how I was going to make the mortgage payment. I'm already like losing, I'm having to liquidate some of my other investment properties that I had I'm just like, everything is terrible. In my mind. And I just felt and I'm struggling to get her to go back to sleep. And it's I just suck at everything. It's felt like I sucked at everything. I remember thinking like, gosh, if I could get out of this, if I could get out of this riddle what would I want to do? If once, if I could climb out of this hole, what would I want to do? It wasn't like, I want to make so much money. It was like, if I. Didn't have this financial catastrophe on my shoulders. What would I want to do? And I just had this dream of doing this thing of if I hadn't, enough, whatever that was, I would then go and take trips with my kids and travel and do fun stuff and go on adventures with my family. And that moment I was thinking about that. I was like, gosh, that's it. That's what I want. That's. That's the coolest thing in my mind. I can think of. And once I kind of cemented that vision of what I wanted my life to be like, it was the craziest thing, things started falling into place. And some of those things where I like, I found a copy of that four hour work week and I read Tim Ferriss's book and I kind of realized, Oh, how things you can do from, like it gave me a whole kinds of new ideas and then actually, what's. Then like six months to a year, I had rented out my house as a, as vacation rental and they pay up front for that. So that not only did that cover the mortgage, but then I was able to go and fly my family someplace cheap and live cheaply for three months during our slow season, during real estate. Now I lost maybe some possibilities of some transactions during that time. But what I gained was like, I felt like I was so wealthy just by doing that. I felt. Wealthy. Next, I realized, wow, this is a really cool way. I can leverage this real estate license because I can do some things. I'm still working part time while I'm away. I can, leverage some people in my office. I can do this and do that. That started a trend over the next 10 years of us traveling about three months a year overseas. That's what we averaged. And my wife started writing books about during that time too. And a couple of them did extraordinarily well. A couple of them hit the New York times bestseller list. And most of them all involve our family in some form or fashion. They're kind of humor essays. And initially when they were babies, it was like just struggling to have deal with babies and, hard parenting is, and so they're all kind of humor based and eventually they kind of came more travel based because we were traveling so much. And so we did one from, she did a book when we were in Australia and then our book was. We're in Brazil and another one for Mexico and things like that. Kind of created this really cool family thing that we're able to do. And my wife was able to push into her passion, which was writing. That was all came from the possibility. One of the reasons why we were attracted to real estate in the first place is like the freedom of not having to go work for somebody else to have that autonomy to kind of live the life your way and want to, you don't have to report to some other, boss or be limited by how much vacation time you can have. That's what real estate did. And real estate also helped me do what I'm wearing as t shirt now, right? It's called impact club. This came out of an idea. I was actually at a real estate mastermind where it was all real estate agents and we're sitting in a room. We're of course talking about how we can improve our business and how we can do things. More different, more rare. We came up with well, how can we do something in our community that really impact our community? People start pitching in. Well, I've liked, I've seen what these people did. I like that. And then the people were like, ah, I've seen this. So we started looking around like entrepreneurs, like what are other people are doing? That's interesting. That seems to work. And then eventually we came up with this idea called impact club, where it's like taking the ideas of other people we liked and kind of creating our own little community thing. I was like, I love the idea. I'm going to run with that and Boise, Idaho. And I did, and that was a seven years ago. Now I started my, my first event basically can we all, I like. I kind of take over like a pub or a brewery or some kind of cool event space, but make it kind of casual and fun and say, Hey, anyone can come. But if you want to be a club member, we all chip in a hundred bucks so we can, give, three nonprofits is really cool experience. And like they come, they get five minutes in a microphone and they talk, we do get the money based on a few different things, but basically it's a fun, easy, you meet people you invite your clients, like It's just easy. I have other realtors from across, my area that show up. They're all fans. We go and we do something impactful to our community. That idea, which was really simple of idea is generate over a half a million dollars of impact in my community. All from 100 donations, half a million. That's what's, that's the thing of being consistent with something. Like it just can continue to have impact right now. It's just my wife and I, who basically run that little side hustle that generates such good community, give back

Dylan Tanaka:

and it wasn't that hard to do. Keep it pretty simple. That is awesome. I've seen what you guys have done with impact club and I'm always just blown away by it.

Mike Turner:

Well, it's fun to be able to share yourself with your community in ways outside of your normal, your. Daily hubs. Absolutely. Yeah. Because it makes you real and more authentic. And again, the more real they see you, the more of a community, family, whatever person you are, then the more they want to be engaged with you to support you and your business and all the initiatives that you're working on.

Dylan Tanaka:

What's on the horizon for Impact Club over the next 12 months?

Mike Turner:

I previously had this pipe dream and it's still on the shelf of expanding it into multiple markets and help people launch theirs and stuff like that. But I need to solve a few other things with my current businesses before I get too distracted with something like that. So right now I'm looking at strategic partners to, and this is a good way to actually grow your business or whatever you're trying to do. So it's like sometimes it's not how it's who can help you. Grow. And one of my investor groups, communities here, the leader of it's a great gal. She's super smart and she's doing a lot of good things with it. She's like a huge fan of impact club. And so I was like, all right, well, let's collaborate and let's find a way to, maybe we can incorporate this into your group, so we can kind of combine forces here to help it expand and grow more. So things like that. So that's what I'm looking for. That is just kind of how to be strategic and find strategic partners with that. And then time. Like right now there's two clubs in existence. There's one and one in Maryland. Another friend of mine,

Dylan Tanaka:

I saw that. I saw that. I'm like, wait a minute. What's it? So that's what really intrigued me. I'm like, that's, I'm like, hold on a second. I thought Mike started this thing. What's it doing across the country way over there?

Mike Turner:

Yeah, actually we started with actually about a half a dozen groups in a different spots. The goal was to kind of be the beta testers on that. And then ultimately, once we kind of figured out a plan to launch it in more markets, the challenge was, is that it had different people, whoever was running it had different challenges of getting the, that built and momentum and all that and keeping it and there's expenses involved with it. It's a

Dylan Tanaka:

thankless job to build a community until it runs on its own, which Takes a long time to get there,

Mike Turner:

We're just starting to make some headway there and then COVID and things like that, so, but yeah, but my friend out in Maryland does it he's on a whole nother level with it. He's he's now he's just surpassed a million dollar of total donate to his community. So it's just absolutely. Transformational of what he's accomplished in his community and you know He's kind of wholly branded his whole kind of his business around that it's kind of think his business now called impact real estate or something like that. It's cool what he's been able to do but my idea is Yeah, eventually if he and I can raise one and a half million dollars, just the two of us. Can you imagine the billions we could do if we could just get this in more markets? So that part gets me excited. That lights me up. As soon as I get more of that, my reoccurring income up a bit higher, maybe I'll have been able to have the freedom to go do that.

Dylan Tanaka:

Yeah. You need the freedom to do that. You and I both know big guys and big girls around the country, or maybe even around the world that if you get the right thing in front of them, but you have that excitement and you say, just like partnering on deals. I'm going to put the work on my back. I just need you because you can put it on your big website or you can give a million dollars, whatever that is. Some people can give a million like that or could send one email out and it could change everything, right? It's being able to to keep that engine running, in between. So I liked how that goes back to needing that, the residual income.

Mike Turner:

As an entrepreneur, we can make a mistake sometimes. And I'm very guilty of this, of putting too much on our plate and then not fulfilling our obligations well enough in all of those situations and those things suffer. So the main thing you can do right now, what you should do right now is really focus in on just a couple of things and get really awesome at them. And that's going to really help your business is going to help a lot of different things. Being able to say, I like that. I might want to go after that soon, but maybe I got to get these other two things then. First, hammer that out. I'm trying to do that. It's been a struggle cause I love to do, get my hands in all kinds of things,

Dylan Tanaka:

the curse of an entrepreneur, right? So Mike, last thing I want to ask is if you could sum your real estate business up and into one sentence right now, what would it be

Mike Turner:

going all in? On passive income. I'm all in on it. It gets me where I want to go.

Dylan Tanaka:

Well, listen guys, if you want to follow the amazing Mike Turner, you can follow his Facebook page and all of his information is in the show notes below. He's got links in there to impact club and anything else that you want to know, just reach out to us. But Mike, we absolutely thank you for your time. It's been an amazing show.

Mike Turner:

You're a rare breed and I hope the people who follow you or in your community recognize that because you actually do care. You show up you're making a difference. And I just, I'm super impressed by you. I think anybody who's in your community is really lucky and should lean on it. You have so well connected to, you're just a wealth of knowledge and experience. And so good luck to your community. And I can't wait to be a part of it, even if it's from afar, because you're kick ass. And I think this whole rare agent. Thing is exactly the mindset of what you need to have to survive in this kind of new landscape we're in, giving a place, people, a community to come in, to gather, to find out, see ideas and to learn. I think that's just so cool.

Dylan Tanaka:

Thanks for the kind words and we'll see you guys on the next show. If you got a lot out of today's episode with Mike, you're going to love this. He shared his ultimate game changing strategy exclusively for our free Facebook community closings from leads. Don't miss it. It's available only for members. Click the link in the show notes to join and hear the rare edge today. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode until next time, keep it rare and keep it real.

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