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- Sep 11, 2010
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This has been a long time coming... It took me nearly three and a half years to find the perfect words for my initial debut into this community, well guess what, I still don't have them. So I guess you guys get a good story instead! So stay awhile and listen!
I'm not one to post on forums or anywhere on the internet for that matter. As you can see, I am one of the best lurkers around! So why now? What changed? Well, I realized I wasn't treating this community, some of my favorite teachers, as I would my customers. Value is a two way street. I've been taking it from here and giving it away by making happy customers, but I haven't given back any to you guys. I have grown with the forum - know most of your stories, but you guys don't know mine. I'm here to change that starting....now!
Where to begin... It all started back when I was 13. A young up and coming tennis player in Kansas. I loved the sport. It is you versus the world. You are the master of your fate. You are the keeper of your soul. The time, effort, grind, you put in directly related to results. There are no shortcuts in this game. You can learn a lot about business from that sport, and perhaps that's where I first got my drive. Anyways, that summer I was looking to make some extra money. I cannot recall what for. Candy still sounds like something a 13 year old would want looking back on it, but hopefully that wasn't the case.
My friends were all getting jobs at grocery stores. I didn't especially want to do that, so I went down a different path. I started up my very own business teaching tennis at the local tennis courts. Thinking back on it now, I guess I have always had the customer first. I scheduled it during swim team the swim team lessons. If any of you swam growing up, you know those schedules are horrible for a teenager. But it was the most convenient for the parents. They dropped their kids off for swim practice then hop on over to the tennis courts. The parents get 2 hours of freedom instead of 1! Brilliant!
I expanded my tennis business for about 6 years. Private lessons during the school year, and group lessons during the summer. At one point in time, I was making over $60/hr teaching. Talk about leverage!
Unfortunately, I didn't really have a business mentor at the time, so I focused on my engineering degree during college. I went the traditional internship route and got a great job in the energy sector. Most of my friends were having a hard time finding jobs with their majors, but the engineering companies were throwing cash out left and right to get the best talent in. I knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to own my own business, but I did't know what that meant at the time. Perhaps I had forgotten it from those tennis days because I "grew up" or something.
About 4 months into my job, I started to discuss investment options with some of my friends. I enjoyed playing with the stock market in college, and now that I had more money than I knew what to do with (from the view point of a broke college student), I was about to go full force into stocks. I remember talking to my HR manager about my 401k, and she mentioned that she had a couple rental properties. That though had never occurred to me, so I decided to do a little research. I started talking to more people about them and I found one of my coworkers owned 45 in the same area.
I was in awe. He mentioned that he brings in 15k/mo without much effort, and my head started turning. How could he have a full time engineering position AND a fleet of rental properties as well!?! I asked for some reading material. Most were mentioned on this forum years ago, and within that list was RDPD. That was the start of my real education.
Soon after that, I was turning into my mentor. I was purchasing rental properties within months of meeting him. At first, it was for my personal gain. I wanted to diversify my investment portfolio outside of stocks, but something different happened. After I pondered for a while, I reflected on how many people I impacted while I purchased my first property. My realtor, inspector, title company, contractors, management company, and most important, my tenants. They all were provided some benefit because of this selfish thing I did. I discovered I really like this feeling and sought to build upon it. I remember reflecting back to my tennis days and remembered how much I enjoyed watching the kids improve and get excited over it. The same thing was happening again. I wanted more! I was starting the hustling and grind again and loving it.
I found this forum through the RDPD forum. I remember seeing people post about the good old days of RDPD before it became left to die and someone linked over to this forum. That was somewhere in early 2010. While RDPD was always pushing some product on their customers, here there was clearly a different message. People weren't exclusively looking at real estate. People openly talked about other types businesses. Opening up my eyes once again.
While real estate was and has been a good investment, I realized that to exponentially impact more people and grow my income I would need to purchase exponentially more properties. While I enjoy the real estate game, I didn't have the knowledge to make that jump, so I started looking into other avenues.
Like most of us, starting a business and having the leverage to reach nearly everyone on the planet was hard to compete with. I spent quite a bit of time reading up on ecommerce and software development. I realized that there was no point in time where I would be comfortable with all the unknowns, so I just jumped. I now have several irons in the fire all working their different angles to help out my customers. I am still looking for real estate deals, but that is when I need to stretch the legs and get out from in front of the computer.
This post has ended up quite a bit longer than I intended it to, but I guess that's what happens when you have nearly 3.5 years or lurking built up. I just want to thanks all of you for your help over the years, and I'm looking forward to sharing my progress with you guys.
In conclusions, I will send you off with one of my favorite quote...
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
I'm not one to post on forums or anywhere on the internet for that matter. As you can see, I am one of the best lurkers around! So why now? What changed? Well, I realized I wasn't treating this community, some of my favorite teachers, as I would my customers. Value is a two way street. I've been taking it from here and giving it away by making happy customers, but I haven't given back any to you guys. I have grown with the forum - know most of your stories, but you guys don't know mine. I'm here to change that starting....now!
Where to begin... It all started back when I was 13. A young up and coming tennis player in Kansas. I loved the sport. It is you versus the world. You are the master of your fate. You are the keeper of your soul. The time, effort, grind, you put in directly related to results. There are no shortcuts in this game. You can learn a lot about business from that sport, and perhaps that's where I first got my drive. Anyways, that summer I was looking to make some extra money. I cannot recall what for. Candy still sounds like something a 13 year old would want looking back on it, but hopefully that wasn't the case.
My friends were all getting jobs at grocery stores. I didn't especially want to do that, so I went down a different path. I started up my very own business teaching tennis at the local tennis courts. Thinking back on it now, I guess I have always had the customer first. I scheduled it during swim team the swim team lessons. If any of you swam growing up, you know those schedules are horrible for a teenager. But it was the most convenient for the parents. They dropped their kids off for swim practice then hop on over to the tennis courts. The parents get 2 hours of freedom instead of 1! Brilliant!
I expanded my tennis business for about 6 years. Private lessons during the school year, and group lessons during the summer. At one point in time, I was making over $60/hr teaching. Talk about leverage!
Unfortunately, I didn't really have a business mentor at the time, so I focused on my engineering degree during college. I went the traditional internship route and got a great job in the energy sector. Most of my friends were having a hard time finding jobs with their majors, but the engineering companies were throwing cash out left and right to get the best talent in. I knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to own my own business, but I did't know what that meant at the time. Perhaps I had forgotten it from those tennis days because I "grew up" or something.
About 4 months into my job, I started to discuss investment options with some of my friends. I enjoyed playing with the stock market in college, and now that I had more money than I knew what to do with (from the view point of a broke college student), I was about to go full force into stocks. I remember talking to my HR manager about my 401k, and she mentioned that she had a couple rental properties. That though had never occurred to me, so I decided to do a little research. I started talking to more people about them and I found one of my coworkers owned 45 in the same area.
I was in awe. He mentioned that he brings in 15k/mo without much effort, and my head started turning. How could he have a full time engineering position AND a fleet of rental properties as well!?! I asked for some reading material. Most were mentioned on this forum years ago, and within that list was RDPD. That was the start of my real education.
Soon after that, I was turning into my mentor. I was purchasing rental properties within months of meeting him. At first, it was for my personal gain. I wanted to diversify my investment portfolio outside of stocks, but something different happened. After I pondered for a while, I reflected on how many people I impacted while I purchased my first property. My realtor, inspector, title company, contractors, management company, and most important, my tenants. They all were provided some benefit because of this selfish thing I did. I discovered I really like this feeling and sought to build upon it. I remember reflecting back to my tennis days and remembered how much I enjoyed watching the kids improve and get excited over it. The same thing was happening again. I wanted more! I was starting the hustling and grind again and loving it.
I found this forum through the RDPD forum. I remember seeing people post about the good old days of RDPD before it became left to die and someone linked over to this forum. That was somewhere in early 2010. While RDPD was always pushing some product on their customers, here there was clearly a different message. People weren't exclusively looking at real estate. People openly talked about other types businesses. Opening up my eyes once again.
While real estate was and has been a good investment, I realized that to exponentially impact more people and grow my income I would need to purchase exponentially more properties. While I enjoy the real estate game, I didn't have the knowledge to make that jump, so I started looking into other avenues.
Like most of us, starting a business and having the leverage to reach nearly everyone on the planet was hard to compete with. I spent quite a bit of time reading up on ecommerce and software development. I realized that there was no point in time where I would be comfortable with all the unknowns, so I just jumped. I now have several irons in the fire all working their different angles to help out my customers. I am still looking for real estate deals, but that is when I need to stretch the legs and get out from in front of the computer.
This post has ended up quite a bit longer than I intended it to, but I guess that's what happens when you have nearly 3.5 years or lurking built up. I just want to thanks all of you for your help over the years, and I'm looking forward to sharing my progress with you guys.
In conclusions, I will send you off with one of my favorite quote...
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
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