I hope through this blog I can share my story, encourage, motivate and inspire others to achieve financial success. If a simple guy like me could it, so can you.
Why am I starting this blog?
I was in my 20s when I left my job as a dance instructor. I was still in the army reserves, 2 years of college, and had no idea what I was going to do for work. I remember one significant point that changed everything, and is why I am starting this site. I was in my uncle’s basement with a friend and two of my cousins. I was playing video games with one cousin, and our friend (“Frank”) and my other cousin were catching up. I was, of course, kicking my cousin’s butt in Madden Football, minding my business when I heard the conversation that changed my career trajectory. My cousin asked Frank about our other friend Thomas. Frank went on to say Thomas was doing fantastic. He was working at a Fortune 500 company in Boston, to which I got my full attention. I needed to make sure they were talking about the same individual. Thomas wasn’t the smartest cookie in the group, and given he didn’t finish high school, I was interested in how he ended up at a Fortune 500 company, the year before he was looking for a job.
Frank, went and told us that he had done some incubators program our other friend, Elijah, had done and referred him to. The program they were referring to was Yearup. I called Elijah immediately and told him I needed to know exactly what to do and how this program worked. That same night, I also went into the Yearup website to learn as much as possible. The next day, I met with Elijah, who then gave me all the details and told me to put him as a reference. At this point, Yearup was about to start their next semester, and they were choosing final candidates. I immediately provided all my records, from vaccination records to an essay, which was part of the application process. I was called for an interview in which they told me they were only looking for people who would want to be on the waiting list, as they already had enough candidates to choose from. I decided to go for the interview anyway. A week later, they reviewed all my credentials, and because they had several dropouts, I made it into the program.
This was only the beginning. Through the program, my main purpose was to work at the same company Thomas was in. Now, I was in the program, I needed to find out how to work at this Fortune 500 company. At Yearup, candidates would be given an internship position in the company based on their performance in the program. So, I did exactly that I was the top student in my class, and I could choose where I would work. A year later, after sitting in that basement, I worked at the company Thomas was working at. This was only the beginning of the path to where I am today.
So why start this blog? To inspire others! In my story, Thomas could inspire me without ever having a direct conversation with me. I noticed he achieved something that I didn’t even know was possible. He did reset my mind and show me that you can reach your goals. It might take some creativity, but life is not a straight road. Being someone else to reach the destination might be enough to show you that you can get there. I hope through this blog I can share my story, encourage, motivate and inspire others to achieve financial success. If a simple guy like me comes do it, so can you.
Resetting my mindset
During my time attending the Year Up program, I learned from Jim Rohn’s content. Jim Rohm’s main message was to become more valuable to the marketplace. That helped me reset my mindset, and I turned to books for knowledge; Rich dad, poor dad, by Robert Kiyosaki, 4 hour workweek by Time Ferris, Millionaire Next Door…. This knowledge helped me start the process to reset my mindset and eventually create a new foundation.
Full-time work and full-time school!
After my internship, I was eventually hired as a contractor, and I was told the only way to get a full-time job was through obtaining my bachelor’s. During this time, I was still enlisted in the army reserves, so I would still be training once a month and two weeks a year. The original reason I joined the military was to help me pay for school. After completing one year at the UMASS Boston before basic training, and the second year after returning from basic training. I eventually transferred my credits to Northeastern University. During the next two years, while at Northeastern studying full time, I still attended my military training, while also working my full-time job as a contractor for the fortune 500 company until I finally obtained my bachelor’s degree.
Goals!
Rober Kyosaki achieved millionaire status by the time he was 40. I had no idea how to achieve this goal, but I wanted to become a millionaire by 30! This helped me set my goals towards moving from my parent’s home into my first real estate purchase a multi-family home.
How I raised my salary from $31,000 to $40,000 to $78,000 in 2.5 years.
After graduating from college, the Fortune 500 company still didn’t give me a full-time job. This was my first disappointment with corporate America. After working years, improving my skills, and getting a bachelor’s to what I presume was the obstacle to full-time work, it still didn’t work. This is when I started to understand the importance of networking. At Northeastern, I became good friends with Chris. Chris was a litigation specialist, and during our college years, he was offered a new position in a new eDiscovery startup. I told Chris the situation I was in at work, and he said he knew I would be superb working under him in this new startup. He would train me, and I can have a 6-month trial to determine if it would be a good fit. I got the opportunity to switch from my internship job to a potential full-time job. Through the first 6 months, I averaged about 55 hours of work per week. After 6 months, they liked my work ethic and provided me with a full-time salary, benefits with a starting salary of $40,000 per year. I took the offer, but was disappointed at the numbers, as the work hours would equate to about 15/hr. Nevertheless, it was a higher salary than my internship, only because my internship position didn’t provide any additional paid hours than 40 hours per week.
I had built an outstanding professional relationship with Michael, the manager I worked for at the Fortune 500 company. A year before I left, Michael left to take another position within the fortune 500 company. Michael and I always stayed in touch, and he wanted me to come back and work with him as an IT Auditor. Now, I had my degree, years of experience, and since they needed an abundance of IT auditors, the job was for me to take. I went for the interview for process purposes and was given an offer within a few days of the interview. In this new position, I was going to travel, learn about process development, and start at a salary of 62,000 per year while only working 40 hours a week. The salary and opportunity growth were something I couldn’t pass up. It was going to be $22,000 higher with only 40-hour work days. I worked here for 8 months, learned about business integrations, process writing, process development, and had the opportunity to audit different branches of IT from software and hardware.
Then, changes started coming. Traveling was going to stop, and upper management, including Michael, were all living. My colleagues and travel were the main. Michael again left to be a partner at another firm where he was going to start his own IT Audit department. Always maintained a friendly relationship with the small litigation company, and would have lunch with Chris and other old coworkers. Chris, wanted me to work under him again. In those 8 months since I left, the company grew, and now they needed to establish processes. With my new experience, I was ready to take on the task. This time, my salary was going to be 78k. I wasn’t going to be doing support, and I was going to do something I enjoyed, and I was going to be at 40 hours per week.
Building relationships was the main reason I obtained these positions. I had the credentials and work ethic, along with being prepared for the opportunity. The relationships I built helped me achieve a higher salary at building the position I wanted to have.
Buying my first home
While working on my other career ventures, I never took the eye off the price. During this entire time, I still lived at my parent’s home. My career allowed me to help them with their bills and save some money for my future home. I worked on fixing my credit, saved as much as possible for a down payment, and got educated on the market. I went to an open house daily for a year until I finally found the place at the price range and the location I wanted. It was a Boston home next to public transportation, both train and bus. I also had a shopping center with whole foods, a movie theater, a bowling alley, and restaurants only 2 miles away, and only one stop on the train from the home. The home was a short sale that needed work. I saw the potential and put it on offer. The home was on the market. I ended up getting an accepted offer for 335k. Little did I know the learning process I would go through to purchase the property. It took me 8 months to buy the home, since the home had two mortgages, and the banks were negotiating back and forth on the amount they would get from the short sale. At several points, the offer from each bank expired, and they had to return to the negotiating table. In March 2014, I finally bought my first home, and now I need to repair it. Took me 3 months and learned a few things myself. Now, I have a seven-bedroom two-family home ready to rent. I rented the second unit at 1850/month, and I went from living at my parent’s home to living in a 4 bedroom unit on my own on the first floor. The second-floor unit mostly covered my mortgage.
Online business Failure
Through full-time, searching for a home, I also worked on my side business. The idea was to set up an online library for local instructors to sell their classes as membership. The site would have Yoga, Pilates, and Dance instructors. The students would pay a monthly membership and have access to all instructors’ content. The instructors would receive a commission for every student who would join the membership. We also provided the option to buy individual courses. The idea was excellent, since we had many college students in the Boston and Cambridge area who would miss their teachers once they left town. The idea was that local instructors could make money from online courses. At the time, technology was a little more limited, and I would run the site along with providing the video recording. Although we were able to reach 100/month in net earnings in a short time. I didn’t have the experience to learn how to scale. I spent thousands of dollars on consultants and trying to grow the business, but it didn’t work. I was trying to do it all on my own, from video recording, editing, streaming, site management, and networking. Then my mother had a health scare for the whole family, which she is still recovering from today. This along with working a full-time job, buying my first fixer’s upper multi-family home. It was too much to continue, and I hung up the globes on this project.
Learning about passing income.
After only 4 months of living on my own, I felt a 4 unit 2k square foot apartment was enormous. I decided to post the room in the back of the house for rent. After all, most of the time I spent it at work or my then girlfriend’s place. I would be at home only a few days of the week. I rented the room, and now this along with my rent from the second floor paid for the entire mortgage! Based on the knowledge I gained from Rich, that poor dad, his philosophy was don’t restrain yourself to the things you want. Make more money. So I decided to rent the other two rooms and get myself a brand-new Mercedes C class. One of the rooms I rented would pay for this.
The reset year 2016
After ending my five-year relationship with my girlfriend, I started to bounce back. I was dating and life was good! Terrific job, new car, new house, and the time to focus on me.
Coming home one day, I realized there was smoke coming from my tenants apartment on the second floor. I reach out to find out that I need to clear everyone out of the house, since indeed there was a fire. Over the next hours, I watched the firefighters put out the small fire on the second floor. After all, it’s set and done, the fire damage was minuscule compared to the water damage. There was an appraiser who on the same night had people closing up my roof, and we set a game plan to meet again in the morning. Through the next few days, the appraiser helped me reach the right people to start looking for a rental apartment. He got a demo crew to open the walls and set dehumidifiers to dry the home, and accessed the home to review the value of my lost belongings. He also hired a laundry mat that specialized in fires and helped save as much as possible my clothing. In the meantime, I have to decide what to do with tenants on the second floor who didn’t have rental insurance. The tenant ends up moving back to their parent’s home, and I eventually got a rental through my insurance while the repairs of the house occurred. My roommates followed me to the rental apartment.
During this time, I was hoping to start another business with my dance partner. We decided we wanted something flexible, and online business might be the way. So, we started to look into the options of purchasing an online business. This is when the real estate agent that sold me my first home calls me and tells me of a flipping opportunity. Now, at this point, I didn’t have it in my mind. But with the additional rental money along with the check to replace my items, I had some cash available. My dance partner was a videographer, and she was selling a video production company. We decided to make the leap and buy the home. We received some additional funds that we borrowed from investors and purchased the home cash. The numbers checkout, and although we purchased it, we had to find a way to fund the renovations part of it.
Real Estate Education
We were highly invested and wanted to educate ourselves in real estate. This is when we turn to the Biggerpockets podcast. I still remember the days when we would listen to biggerpockets for 2-4 hours a day. We did this for months and eventually started networking at local real estate meetups. We made friends, we still bounce ideas and get references from up to this day.
Door Knocking at banks to get our first loan.
Banks don’t like risk. It usually takes years to obtain a bank loan. We knew we needed to reduce the risk a bank would be taking to have any chance. We set up a more experienced team of real estate agents, mentors, financial advisors and lawyers. Most importantly, we had a terrific deal for the bank, and this outweighs anything else we could have done. We were coming in with no experience, but we own a house we bought at $250,000 and was worth $300,000 on the market, and we were only asking for a $100,000 construction loan. This was the biggest way the bank would reduce their risk. We started to go bank to bank, and all of them said no. We kept making calls, and finally, one loan officer who got to know us and had just started in that branch said she would personally take us under her wing. It was the first of many loans, and she is still our loan officer and mentor 5 years later!
This is when I found another tremendous potential flip. We found another excellent opportunity where the home was for sale at $300,000, and we could sell at 649k. We were able to get that home under agreement and purchased it with no money. We leveraged my home to do so. Now with 3 homes, we had to find a way to fix them all and pay our monthly mortgage.
2016 continues
As the year continues, we started to stabilize our new real estate business and soon learned the risk involved in the business.
Contractors began to show their true colors, and both contractors started to default on their promises. The contractor I had hired for my home went AWOL, and the contractor we hired for the two flip projects started to request ridiculous payments. Eventually, they both went AWOL all together.
As I still have a full-time job for now! I learn the department I work for will be sold. Our department was not reaching their numbers. After 2 years, I created a searchable database for all employees’ positions in the company. Database was extremely useful to get jobs completed across departments and train others on how to do it. I did help switch from paper invoicing to digital ticketing system, which allowed anyone in the company to view each job on queue, providing more information for anyone from sales, customer service to support. While also creating a database of how each individual job was completed, which also created another realm of process development. Now, my full-time salary was going to be gone on November 1, 2016.
At this point in 2016, I had this going on for me;
· Burned home
· Contractors went MIA
· Getting Laid off
· 3 mortgages
At this point, we had to take it one step at a time. We started by having me manage the subcontractors myself. Now, although I had paid the contractor supervisor. I was running the three projects. I finally decided to fire the contractor working on my home after finding a better option. I found someone to take over the completion of the project.
Making money fast
We first reduced all our cost. We knew we wouldn’t want to sacrifice our healthy eating habits, so we came up with a different solution. We provided healthy meals to a few family members, and they would in turn pay for the groceries. So, at the end of the day. They got 3 meals a day with snacks, no need to buy groceries, and their meals were home cooked for the whole week. Bye bye grocery bill.
To make extra money, we decided to start a small landscaping company. I was going to use some guys doing construction in my house, and they would be making extra money. We were making a few thousand bucks a week by simply putting fliers around the neighborhood and expanding to nearby neighborhoods.
I had told the contractor working on my home that payments would come from insurance once the work was complete. Before that, I was upfront cost from my salary to the other contractor.
Once my home was complete in mid-November, we went to full Airbnb, which was a form of house hacking, which allowed us to live for free in our home. Now, we removed all our expense and made money from Airbnb, landscaping. My partner would freelancing her video editing skills. We build enough income to pay our 10,000 a month combined mortgage payments. We were going to make it!!!
Between managing the subcontractors and babying the contractor supervisor, I did push for the completion of the projects. We were able to sell two condos and the single family home. We broke even on the single family home and made some money on the sale of the condos. Now, we had established a relationship with the bank, investors, and had the knowledge to get a project from beginning to finish. We also had our funds back and had established a way to survive without a full-time job.
Financial independence
After the sale of those homes, we had our funds back, and invested in our first multifamily outside of my home. I managed to get the home fixed while having tenants living in all three units, although the original plan was to sell the property. We decided last minute against it.
Our first rental outside of our home provides enough income to not need to do groceries for others, and the strenuous work of the landscaping company. In a short time, we built loyal clients for our landscaping company, who wanted us to continue to serve them. We decided this was not our path, and thanked them for the opportunity.
We created a construction company to reduce our risk with contractors where I would be the project manager. I had built a network of subcontractors that I could trust, and put together a team I could trust.
Our construction company would manage all our flips and rental projects over the next couple of years. Since we were housing hacking, the home covered our home expenses. We built a 13-unit rental portfolio that today provides enough income to cover our expense and more.
Today
My goal is to continue to grow my real estate investment portfolio, but more importantly, to help others achieve their goals. In the last year, I guided friends and family in purchasing homes that will create the same foundation it created for me. I hope to continue this quest and expand to as many people possible and by creating a blog is like setting a manual database to help guide others on how I did it.
Drop me a line!
I’m accepting new clients through the rest of the year. Please drop me a line and we’ll get started with your next project!