Brandon Rickman discusses how finding the right community and support can greatly help in dealing with male loneliness.
Brandon Rickman and I are here to discuss the hidden epidemic of male loneliness in the United States. We talk about how men can find community around them in their neighborhood, church, business, etc. Men need other men to lean on. Learn how to find community as a man in today's world!
Brandon Rickman is a full time real estate Investor in Atlanta, Georgia. As a licensed commercial and residential contractor, Brandon has built several hundred homes, retail centers and franchise stores. Brandon has been building, flipping and wholesaling properties in metro Atlanta for over 20 years. In addition, Brandon is actively buying rental property to build long term wealth. Brandon has also patented, manufactured and sold several consumer products that have been distributed by Home Depot, Lowe's, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Walmart, Target, Dicks Sporting Goods, Academy Sports and many other national retailers. He is married with 1 son and lives in Marietta, Ga.
SIMPLY SOLD ATLANTA: https://simplysoldatlanta.com/
BRANDON'S SOCIALS
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009245433579
LINKED IN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-rickman-9885a22
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On average, men report that they have 1-2 really good friends that they can count on at any given time. One to two people doesn't sound like many, especially given how many "friends and followers" we have on social media. Brandon Rickman and I are here to discuss the hidden epidemic of male loneliness in the United States. We talk about how men can find community around them in their neighborhood, church, business, etc. Men need other men to lean on, learn how to find community as a man in today's world!
I am super excited to have you guys on the show with me. I got a good friend of mine, Brandon Rickman, out of Atlanta, Georgia. Brandon is a real estate investor, but we’re going to be talking about the importance of community. We’re going to be talking about this epidemic of male loneliness and how we can solve this problem of the male brotherhood community. You guys are not going to want to miss this episode with Brandon Rickman. Check that out. Make sure you guys go over to our new website, IronDeep.com.
Speaking of community, this is why we’re having Iron Deep and we’re having our very first retreat on September the 25th 2022 in Timber Lakes, Utah. We rented out a 26,000-square-foot log cabin. We’re going to have max 30 men. We have eight spots open, so make sure you guys go over to check that out at IronDeep.com and apply for our new community of Iron Deep. Also, go over to YouTube. Check out our Iron Deep YouTube channel. We launched a brand new video on Pride and how it is a cancer to the soul. Go check that as well. Now, I cannot wait to introduce you to my good friend, Brandon Rickman.
Brett, how’s it going?
It’s going fantastic. Thanks for joining me on the podcast. I’m super excited. It’s always a pleasure to chat with you, social, personal, and professional.
I’m looking forward to it.
We’re going to be diving into a certain topic because when I think about community brotherhood, Brandon, you gave a presentation this one time about the importance of being in the community. I’ve been doing a lot of research on this. That’s where we’re doing this new venture with Iron Deep and the importance of men belonging to a community. We’re going to be diving into that guys, so stay tuned for that. Brandon, before I start talking about the community, I want to get a little flavor of you. Who is Brandon Rickman?
First of all, I’m a follower of Jesus. That’s the most important part of who I am. I am a husband. I’ve been married for many years now to Kelly. We have a son. I’m a father. Professionally, I am in the real estate world, so we flip houses and wholesale houses. I buy and hold rental properties as well. We’re based about 30 miles Northwest of Atlanta in Marietta, Georgia. That’s where we do most of our deals in and around the Atlanta market.
Brandon and I do a very similar business, flip houses, wholesale houses, and wholetail houses. Brandon, how long have you been doing this?
My dad was a builder when I was growing up, so I’ve been in real estate and construction for my whole life. When I was a kid in middle school, in the summer and on weekends, we’d go clean out houses that he was building. I’ve been involved in real estate and construction for my whole life. I did new construction for a while from 2004 until 2009 when the market took a little nose dive and then came back around in 2014. I started focusing exclusively on flipping and wholesaling and not doing as much new construction.
What’s your crystal ball with the market coming around? I’m going to put you on the spot. Everybody’s talking about this a little bit and we got it done from mastermind. They were talking about, “Is the market going to correct going through a recession.” What’s your take on it?
It’s funny, I get asked that question by everybody who finds out that I’m in real estate. “Tell us the secret. What’s about to happen?” With interest rates rising, that limits the amount of buyers who can buy properties. For the last couple of years, properties have been appreciating so much. You had a lot of newbie flippers and beginners who are getting into the game and doing well. Also, buy-and-hold investors were buying a lot of rental properties to hold onto because rent rates were going up. As interest rates have climbed, they’ve almost doubled in the last couple of months. That limits the amount of people who can afford to buy and hold properties and people who are willing to take tighter margins on their flips.
We’re going to see a pullback. Now, we’re seeing it on our side because we’re in it every day. We’re starting to feel some of the initial causes of a slowdown. I don’t think the general public sees it yet. They will once the news media picks it up and starts talking about the slowdown. With inflation and interest rates going up, we’re going to see a slowdown. I don’t expect it to be as bad as it was in ‘08, and ‘09 when we were in business at that time. It was terrible. There were a lot of banking issues at that time as well that we don’t have now. We’ll see a correction. It will get back to what normal real estate is, and it won’t be this crazy fast appreciation as we’ve seen over the last couple of years.
Time will tell. We’re going to see what’s happening in the next few years. It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be an adventure. We’re all ready for it. Brandon, as I mentioned, before we start talking about you in real estate, this is going to be themed around the importance of community. I was reading an article in MindJournal. It talks about the silent epidemic of male loneliness and has some stats in there that 1 in 5 admit to having no friends.
1 in 3 say they can’t count on anyone as a best friend, and 44% of men, so nearly half of men, feel lonely, either sometimes often, or all the time. It’s a big problem, male loneliness. Especially as business owners, sometimes we feel like we always have to be on our game and have it all together. Can you talk about that a little bit about your own experience? What do you see out there in this article, this silent epidemic of male loneliness?
I would agree with that article. If you ask men in general how many best friends or people who know their family well, know their kids, know their business, what they’re doing, and who know each other well, most men go through life with 1 to 3 a maximum of people who are close to them. Most of them, the majority of men, when you ask that question, don’t have anybody. I’ve experienced that in my life. Certainly, as you said, as a business leader starting companies and running companies, you have different things to discuss. You have different issues than a lot of people who work for other companies.
It’s even more lonely for those of us who run businesses. It’s a difficult place to be. We need community. We need other people in our life. We need people who know us, love us, and want what’s best for us all. Men and women, but women generally, are better at finding community, spending time together, and talking through important issues, whereas guys are more like, “Yes, let’s go get some wings and watch the Braves game,” and stay on a surface level. They don’t let people in too deep. God didn’t put us on earth by ourselves. He didn’t put us on an island by ourselves. He intended us to live in a community with other people. It’s dangerous to be without any community or without anybody who can help you.
The scripture says a man’s ways are right in his own mind. It also says that our heart is deceitful above all other things. If my heart naturally has a tendency to do things that are worldly and not focused on God and what he wants me to do, and I don’t have anybody else who can help direct me on the right path, you put those two things together, and it’s the natural tendency that you’re going to slide down a hill. It’s lonely, and it’s vitally important to have people in your life who are willing to step in and help you and point out some of your blind spots.
That’s very interesting that you say our heart has that natural instinct to go towards what the world wants, that our flesh desires, want to be our own God, and we drift. I was listening to a speaker one time say, “We never drift towards God.” We never, “I’m going through life, going through the motions. I ended up close and intimate with the father.” It never happens. We never drift that way. We drift the opposite way. It’s like in a boat. If you lay down on your boat for a little bit and then you get up and look around, you drift to don’t even know where you’re at.
I don’t know if that’s the same quote that you read from Levi Lusko, but he said that. He said, “We always drift and we never drift where we want to go.” It takes intentionality and focus to get where you want to go.
Let’s talk about your own life. Was there ever a time when you felt like you didn’t have community or where you lacked community? Maybe you were going through something that you didn’t have any other men or friends to lean on.
I would say most of my life was like that, certainly until my early 30s and mid-30s. Growing up through high school, we had friends and we hung out together. In college, I did, but then after college, you’re getting into your trying to figure out what your career is. I don’t know that most people settle into that until they’re a little bit older, but you’re working, you’re trying to pay your bills, and you’re trying to find what you want to do. You’re trying to pay for a house and trying to get married. You have so many other things that you’re focused on.
It’s certainly when you do get married and have kids, that makes it even more difficult because it’s not very common for men and women as couples find other couples that they’re close to. The male might be close to the other male, and the wives don’t get along real well or vice versa. From what I’ve seen, working with a lot of young married couples, including myself, try to find other couples that they can do life with, and it very rarely works that way.
It usually ends up that if they do find community, women generally find community easier. Men drift along between work, husband, and father, watching a ballgame once in a while. They drift through life like that. For me, it got to the point where they were making bad decisions, nothing that was too far off the rails, but not making wise decisions or ending up in bad places with business. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I needed someone or people in my life who could say, “Have you thought about this? What about this? What do you think about this option?”
They’re not telling you what to do, but they’re giving you different perspectives. The best way to make any major decision is to get feedback from 4, 5, 6, or 10 trusted people, advisors, or family members, whoever you get advice from. Then take all that information, think through it, pray through it, and then make the best decision possible. You can’t do that if you’re operating on your own.
Was there a point in your own life when you went out with your buddies and tried to find couples to hang out with you and Kelly and couldn’t quite match up? Was there a point where you did start to find community and where did you find that?
Yes, we did with a few couples. I’ve been working on it for quite a while. There’s only been 1 or 2 couples in the years that we’ve been married that we have found another couple to do life with. Interestingly, one of those couples moved away a couple of years after we started doing life together. The other couple, the second one, we’re still close to nowadays. We travel with them. Our kids are similar in age and they’re good friends. We’d spend a lot of time together. Both of those couples we met through church. For those of us who are active in church, getting into some life groups or Sunday school classes for adults, but whatever it is, there are 20 or 50 other couples who are in similar age groups and similar life phases.
If you show up to church, a ballgame, or a bar, the chances of you meeting other people who are in the same life group with the same age kids are very similar. You might have 50 people, but it’s all different ages. If you go somewhere where they have the kids or the families all in the same age bracket and kids in same age bracket, then you have 20 to 50 couples that you can get to know and see which ones you line up, spend time with, and go to dinner with. It takes time. It takes intentionality. I like to use the term road miles. Whether it’s with couples or with men building groups together, it takes road miles. It takes going through some of life’s ups and downs together to form those bonds. It takes time. We hadn’t been a huge success for us, but I would say we’re probably in a small group of people who have found another couple or two that we can do life with.
I like that term, road miles. It takes time. It is going through those different experiences together, life throws you a lot of curve balls, a lot of ups and downs, and going through certain things together. I mean, a lot of times men find community and they take themselves back to their college days. I played on a sports team and the reason why one of the big things was I had that sense of community and we worked hard together. We battled together. We won and lost together and went through those experiences.
That’s an example, but when you reach certain ages, it gets harder and harder to find because you’re so packed with family, business, and everything else. Let’s talk about the business. I’ll throw out this question. A lot of business leaders are reading this. How can a business leader cultivate community or a sense of community? How would you answer that question?
The way that we’ve done it was through a mastermind, which is a great way to do it. I’m a fan of mastermind groups in general. We are in Collective Genius together. I don’t know if I’m allowed to give a shout-out to Jason Medley and Collective Genius. Our mastermind group is a group of people from all over the country who are real estate investors. It is the people who flip houses. There are some commercial folks in there, multifamily, and self-storage, but there are a lot of people who do single-family like we do. By us all coming together on a regular basis, we get to find other people who are in similar businesses. We already have that common bond.
It’s a matter of finding other common bonds that you have with people. For us, in Collective Genius, there are now about 200 members. Those of us who are in a similar business talk to each other and realize that we have a common faith. We’re all followers of Jesus. We formed a group of us because we have similar interests and started getting together on a regular basis and starting having calls every other week to further connect not only on business but on personal stuff and family stuff. That’s the intentionality that’s required to build community. Every male wants community, whether they know it or not. They don’t know how to find it.
One of the problems with it is there’s not a clear definition of what community looks like. My definition of community might be a little bit different than your definition of community. I define it as people that you can do life with, other men who know me well enough to know when something’s wrong without me having to tell them. I have a friend, who my best friend, John, always asks the question, “How’s your heart?” It is an awkward question if you’re not used to it. I’m like, “Kelly’s good. Business is good, Harrison’s good.” He’s like, “Great. How’s your heart?” He’s asking a deeper question. He drives to a deeper answer.
Constantly asking those deeper questions, he’s pulling out what matters most. What’s in my heart? What am I thinking about? It requires being authentic with each other. If I’m going to try to live on the surface and not share what’s going on in my heart, what my fears are, and what my concerns are, you never get beyond the surface-level conversation. As business leaders, we have to find other people who are in similar businesses or similar life phases and similar kids’ age groups. You have to find people who are willing to be authentic. You have to find people who are willing to be intentional about pursuing that relationship and then be willing to put in the time or put in the road miles.
You described your vision as my next question. The vision of creating a thriving community is about being intentional and going deeper. Why we created Iron Deep is to try to go a little bit deeper. The definition of community, a lot of people would say, “Let’s go see the Braves game and get some wings,” which is some sort of sense of community, but do they really know each other? Do they know when something’s off or is going on? I love that question of how’s your heart. That’s a deep question. A lot of times, we don’t think about it.
We go through life. We wake up, we do the same things, and we don’t take a step back and like, “How is my heart? Why did I make that decision or get upset in that way?” That’s a great question. Does that like throw you off when someone asks you that? You said it’s an awkward question that you get out there. It might throw men off, but you guys have that relationship that you’ve had, maybe the road miles.
We get together at least once a week for coffee or lunch, and then we talk on the phone probably once or twice a week. We have done that for a couple of years. I would say that’s how I learned to build community from John. He’s old now, a little bit further in age than I am, and much smarter than I am. He pursued a relationship with me after we met the first couple of times. For whatever reason, he thought that it would be a good idea to be in a community with me. I didn’t know what that looked like, but he continued to pursue me and reach out, “Let’s get together.” He made it a priority on his calendar, “Let’s put it on the calendar and stick to it.”
I learned from him what that looked like, and then I was able to use that in other relationships as I’ve tried to build community with other people. We have had the time together, which has been great. The question is a little bit off-putting. You probably don’t want to hit somebody with it the first time you go get wings together. They might be like, “You’re strange,” but once you have had several conversations with someone and you’ve both identified that you want to find community, you’re looking for a community, you’re trying to find other people who are in a similar life phase that you can do life with, and you meet a couple of times, then it’s okay to talk about, “We want to be authentic.”
“We can certainly go have fun and go to the Braves game or go have wings or whatever. Let’s do that too, but sometimes let’s have deeper conversations. Let’s talk about how your marriage is how your kids are.” We’ve been in some of the groups that I’ve been involved with. We’ve had guys go through divorces. We’ve had people go through affairs and parenting issues. We’ve had a couple of guys who had to have their teenage kids kidnapped in the middle of the night from their house and taken out to Utah to go through a three-month-long program. Those are real-life things that happen. This world and society are not set up to make family and faith an easy thing. It’s constantly coming at us. That’s real life. That’s what it looks like. Having other men who can step in and help you work through those real-life challenges is what community is all about.
Let’s take a pivot here and talk about the responsibility of a community type of leader. I know that we speak and hang out with business leaders all the time. We’re always leading things. A lot of us are driven individuals, so we’re either leading our business, leading our families, or leading some sort of community. Let’s say there’s a man out there who wants to create more community, wants to be intentional about it, and gets some guys together. What would some of his responsibilities and what does that role look like? It seems like you always have to have someone leading the charge, or else, you start drifting and you don’t drift toward community, you drift towards isolation and loneliness. Can you talk about that a little bit?
What I’ve seen in my experience is the person who desires it or knows what it looks like, who’s experienced it from other places has to be the driver of it. Back to the problem of the definition, if your idea of community is, “I want to get together once every three months and have wings, and we’ll talk about the weather,” that’s not real community to me. Because I’ve lived in an experienced community, I know what it looks like. We first have to define, “This is what it’s going to be.” We want to find people that we get to know each other well enough. We’re going to spend the time together. We’re going to get together once a week, or we’re going to have a call twice a month, or whatever.
Figure out what those timeframes are so that you have something on your schedule that you can plan around, can be intentional about, and you’re committed to it, so you plan other stuff around it as much as possible. Things come up and people get sick, but you try to plan around it because it’s going to take a while to go deep enough to have the community that you want. Having someone who’s experienced that in another group, or with other men, or who has lived that needs to show other people how to do it. You can read books about it, you can talk about it, and you can tell people about it, but until you’ve experienced it and know what it’s like, I don’t think you have a true understanding of how to do it.
Once you’ve experienced it and once you’ve gone through some of those trials that I talked about with people, hardship in general, like you were talking about with sports teams, when you fight together, when you win together, and when you lose together, that builds community. The same thing in life within the business and in the community, in general, is once you go through some hardships, the ups and downs of life over a period of time, it naturally draws you together because you’ve been fighting together, you’ve been winning together, and you’ve been crying together. One of the key things that I’ve seen is someone to lead it, who’s been there, does it, and is willing to take the reins and run with it.
That’s awesome. Good stuff guys, super important. Let’s talk about the results. You’ve had community in your life, and you’ve not had community in your life. Talk about the differences. What does it look like when someone has community and they’re going through life together with somebody else, with some other men specifically, or versus someone who doesn’t have that? What are some of the results that you’ve seen in your own life?
It’s been a game-changer. It’s one of the most important things that I’ve done in my life. My faith and my family are most important to me. At the same time, we face adversity, questions, and difficulties all day, every day. Examples of not having community are, you’re facing all that on your own. Even if you are a believer in Christ or you’re a follower of Christ, if you’re on your own, if you’re by yourself, the Bible tells us, like we talked about, our natural tendency is pulled towards society or this way of life and not towards God’s way of life. If you’re by yourself and you’re on an island, you’re easy to be picked off, you’re much easier to make poor decisions, much easier to be doing things you shouldn’t be doing, and allow temptations to creep in, which can harm your marriage, family, and business.
We lead a community group at our church, for an area that we live in, Kelly and I do, and I’m part of two men’s groups, which are mentoring groups. One of them has been getting together for a couple of years. The other one has been together for a few years. The first one is all different age groups. We all met at church and we’re all friends through that. The other one is younger couples we wanted to share what community looks like. I experienced it in the group that I’ve been in for a couple of years. Me and another guy from that group started a group in their late 20s or early 30s who were getting into their families and careers.
We’re trying to show them what community looks like. They’ve bonded. Because we’ve been together now for a few years, they’ve had road miles. They’ve had time to form those bonds. I’ve seen examples of one of the guys in our group, whose wife decided she wanted a divorce. She left and he didn’t want it. They had two young kids and he was so distraught. He tried everything he could to repair the marriage. She was done. I remember he was kneeling down and ten of us were standing over him with our hands on and praying for him. When we finished, his ottoman was like covered in tears. He was bawling.
We were all bawling. Fast forward a couple of years, he did go through a divorce. He met someone else years later and got remarried. They have a special needs child. She’s a special needs teacher. They have so much in common. God repaired what was broken through that, but he would tell you now that he couldn’t have made it through that time without his community praying for him. Those were some dark times, and he was by himself. We created a calendar where, “Today’s my day to call him. Next Wednesday is my day to go out to lunch with him, Tuesday is your day, and Thursday night is your night.” We held him up during those times of difficulty. There are lots more examples like that, like people losing jobs.
I can probably name 4 or 5 different examples within those two groups where someone has lost a job and brought it to the group and shared the difficulties, concerns, and fears over that. We’ve come together and not necessarily given them a job at our companies but pointed them in the right direction. It’s things like that that whether it be difficulties or celebrations, when people have babies, sell their company, or have big wins as well, we celebrate together. We have a Christmas dinner every year together with all the wives and the husbands. We do a weekend trip once a year for the wives and the husbands to get together. All these things that we’re doing are forcing us into that community. It’s been huge. It’s a game-changer. I wouldn’t want to do life without my guys in my life, that’s for sure.
You talk about all these different types of experiences too. It goes back to doing life together. You’re not meeting a gentleman getting a beer and wings so often, but you’re doing life with families. You’re doing trips, which is a different type of experience and stressors. You get the kids around, and that can be different. You’re seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly of people and you’re letting people in. That’s amazing. The last thing is, talking about impact, making a difference in the kingdom, and making a difference in the world, I believe that we can all do it. There’s so much better together. What’s your take on making an impact and making a difference in people’s lives when you have that community and when you can do it together?
It’s similar to our faith. God doesn’t call us into his family so that we can say, “I’m saved. I’m going to heaven and not worry about anybody else.” He gives it to us so that we can pour it out to others and share it with others. It’s similar. I believe that every male in the world desires community. Whether he knows it or not, most of us know it. Certainly by our early 30s to mid-30s, we know that we’re lonely. Even if we’re married and have kids, we’re still lonely. We want community, but we don’t know how to find it. Those of us who have had a community or have been in a good community need to also share that with the next generation.
Find those younger guys who you know are going to struggle, either are already struggling with it, or they’re going to struggle with it because every male, in my opinion, does at some point. Find those younger guys and help show them, not that you have to be part of their community. In the one group that I was talking about, where we have the twenty-something guys, I’m in a different age group, and my son is older, so I’m not necessarily going to be in their community. I’ve been with them for a few years, so we have some bonds, but the goal was to teach them how to do community and to show them how to be intentional. They’ve picked that up and run with it. That’s our duty.
Back to what I said when we started, God didn’t put us on this earth by ourselves, and he didn’t put us on the island by ourselves. His model with the disciples was that his desire is for us to do life with people and to help each other through the things that life throws at us. It’s vitally important that we learn how to do that, we’re intentional to find out what it is, and then to not only find it for ourselves. Find a group for yourself to be in a community with people of similar ages and life group or life phase, but then also be willing to pour it out to the next generation.
I love what you’re doing, pouring into the next generation, the younger guys out there, and the same as John showed you. He’s pouring into you and now you’re pouring into other people. That’s what God calls us to do, to keep impacting people’s lives. My wife and I were talking about this about someone who is all about their self-pleasure and their self of getting in the best shape, having the best vacation that they can experience, the most pleasure in their life, and the miserable life at the end of it all. The most fulfilled life is if you can give back, if you can impact people’s lives, and make a difference in people’s lives. We can do it so much better together. It’s contagious. Brandon, thank you so much for sharing. Do you have any last tips for our audience out there?
I enjoyed it. Thank you, Brett. I appreciate your time. It’s always great to catch up. I know we talk usually a couple of times a month, if not more, and see each other on a regular basis, but it is always good to catch up and talk about. I know we have a lot of similarities and common interests. It’s always great to talk to you. The community is probably one of the most important things. That is why I shared a presentation on it. It’s one of the most important things as men we can do. I would encourage all your readers to figure it out and commit to doing it. It’s not easy, but it’s vitally important to success in this life. Encourage people to dig into it and commit to doing it.
It sounds awesome. Thank you so much again for being on the show. If you’re looking for a community and you want to be around business leaders of faith, go check out our website at IronDeep.com. That’s a wrap. Brandon Rickman, thank you, buddy.
Thank you, Brett.
