Twenty years on the tools
I'm Brendan Barnhill. I've been doing digital marketing since 2006: first inside some very big companies, then for my own clients, and now for my own portfolio. RankRent exists because the most useful thing I can do with the twentieth year is show the working to people building their first asset.
Where the twenty years went.
The corporate years, 2006 to 2022
I started in digital production in 2006 and spent the next sixteen years running digital marketing inside serious companies: five years at Lendlease, four as global digital marketing manager at Aramex (then Fastway Couriers), and five more leading digital at Furnware Group. I managed marketing operations across Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa. Big budgets, real accountability, and the discipline of having to prove what marketing actually earned.
The name on the door, 2022 to now
In 2022 I went out on my own through XYD PTY LTD, and I've run my agency from Cronulla since: embedded digital marketing for Australian businesses, from medical suppliers to tradies, where I do the work myself and sign my own name to it. No account managers, no juniors, no outsourcing. The client gets the person on the door.
The portfolio, 2026
In October 2026 I put my own money where the method is: fifteen rank and rent sites across the Sutherland Shire, St George and the Northern Beaches, built on one system I'd happily hand a paying client, documented move by move in the Ledger. The portfolio is weeks old, every tenancy is vacant, and it has earned nothing yet. You get to watch what happens next, which is precisely the point.
The school, next
Teaching is the natural end of showing the working. The course and the school package twenty years of practice into the specific craft of building a suburb asset: honestly, compliantly, and with the boring guards that keep it standing. I'm trying to help people build the thing I'm building, one territory each.
What I will and won't tell you.
The ground rules of this whole site, stated once, here.
I will show you real sites, real timelines, real costs and real mistakes, including mine. I will not show you income screenshots, promise you a monthly figure, or imply the portfolio earns money before it does. When a tenant signs, you'll read it in the Ledger with the real number attached. Until then, the honest answer to "does it work?" is: watch.