Yonkers, NY · Member since 2017 · 506 posts · 95 votes
Hi everyone, my name is Michael I'm 14 years old and I live in westchester county in New York. I want to start some sort of llc or other corporations so I can sign contracts and invest in real estate before I'm 18, what do you guys think about this? Also, I need to get capital to be able to do this so I was thinking of some things to do, here are some of them:
Buy and sell things online for profit
Maybe get a brokerage to invest in forex for me(some other type of investing like that)
Do bird dogging (don't have money to market though)
What do you guys think of these strategies? Also, do you guys have anything else I can possible do to raise funds? I am very motivated and trying to get started in real estate investing! Thanks!
@Account Closed - Love your ambition, Michael. At 14, you are thinking the right way. Your age shouldn't stop you from going after what you want.
1. First, consume as much information on real estate as you can. Podcasts, forums, books, etc. At your age, people will question your ability to know anything. Be as educated as you can.
2. Network. Uber to a real estate events if you have to. Surround yourself with bosses who get things done. This will help elevate your game and get you into deals.
3. Volunteer your time to a realtor or flipper or someone with lots of deal flow. Real experience is the best reference to have. Reading can only get you so far. Work for free if you have to. It will pay off in the long run.
Do these things and your world will open up. You will find yourself in opportunities and ways to make money. Over time, someone will take a chance on you. Chase your dreams buddy. I'm rooting for you.
Michael, not that I know of. Many are entry level or beginners courses. Though they may require some basic knowledge of algebra or math skills. They usually mention this in the introduction. Many are also self paced, so you can do them in your free time (on weekends. I'm well aware that your lessons and homework will take up most of the week. Also, a good knowledge of Excel and other such tools would be helpful. I have taken some recently on finance and contracts, the instructions are easy to follow. They also have forums for the students, there you can post any questions and some one will reply. My favorite is edX.com. but there are others. Wish you the best.
Just a note.... Warren Buffet was 11 years old when he made his first investment. I am glad to see that some young person is thinking about more than just having fun.
@Account Closed a lot of people are encouraging you to study in school how to be an entrepreneur. I disagree. Teachers tend to have an employee mindset and they teach from their employee perspective which is not an entrepreneurial mindset.
I think school can be great to learn how to work hard (often doing things that may not interest you) and how to set and reach goals, but not a great place to learn to be an entrepreneur. If you want to develop the mindset of an entrepreneur, you may have a better chance of doing that by spending time with entrepreneurs or by reading things hey have written. Here is a list of some great places to start on your journey:
The Richest Man in Babylon
Secrets Of a Millionaire Mind
Sell or be Sold
The 10X Rule
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Rich Dad’s Cash Flow Quadrant
Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing
Shoe Dog
You may ask your parents to get you these books on audible for Christmas and it may be the longest lasting present you ever get. These books may just change your life.
@Account Closed the first thing you need to do is thank your parents. I don't think I've met many 14 year old's with your drive. I love the cutting lawns advice, it will teach you more than you know. Absorb everything you can, continue to learn and you will hit the ground running when the time comes. Keep up the good work, I have a feeling we'll be seeing your name in future headlines!!!
Michael, I have 2 boys, 16 and 19, and they too want to buy their first real estate deal. Here are some suggestions:
1.Start an online store using a drop shipping business model. Maybe in the swimming or pool niche. Use FB ads and PPC to promote it ($5 day) Didn’t you say you are a top swimmer?This would require very little capital to start since you don’t buy any product. I have an e-COMM biz like this and my kids are going to take it over and use the money for buying real estate.
2.Learn WordPress (and build your online store in WP). Then look for freelance gigs locally or on Upwork or other sites. You can make $25-$50 an hour typically. I hire WP developers frequently and good ones are hard to find.
3.Use what you know. Give swim lessons to affluent families who have their own pools (consider Liability Releases and liability policies first). Do a YouTube channel on swimming or self-publish a book on competitive swimming and put it on Amazon. You will be recognized as an “expert” just by having the book and your background. Your local media/newspaper might pick-up a story on you. This will get you higher paying gigs doing lessons, speaking engagements, etc. and bring even more work to you. You can pick and choose who to work with.
4.Amazon FBA takes a lot of capital. My son wanted to do this, so we spent weeks doing tons of research and speaking with sellers. The YouTube videos make it seem like you can get rich fast. But the sellers I talk to have invested many thousands to get it started and 12+ hours a day in time.Selling non-FBA on Amazon, etsy, eBay etc. is a clever idea.
5.Someday, open a Roth IRA (have your parents do a custodial account, that's what I did for my kids) and put money in it. Convert it to a self-directed when it makes sense and use those funds to buy RE. The income/profits are tax-free for life. There are threads here on BP about this.
6.College is a smart idea even if you don’t want to go. My oldest is the same way, not a fan of going to college but he will. We visited FGCU.edu a few days ago. They have a new Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship degree, and you can minor in real estate. Spoke to the dean, toured the labs, visited with students. Top notch Entrepreneurship program and tuition is a little over $6K a year. Can you get your Associates in high school in NY? Here you can do that for free. Then transfer to a 4-year for the last 2 years, so its $12K total for a 4-year plus dorms, books, etc. Pell grants will help plus some small loans. We also have Bright Futures Scholarships so if GPA and ACT is high, the state pays for college, if you go to HS here. You can move here after HS and establish residency for in-state tuition. Or see if NY offers something like this you can afford.
Good luck. Nice to see an ambitious boy like you on here. Don’t let anyone deter you. There is always a way.
Hey Michael, sounds like overall your interested in developing capitol and education, until your 18 and can hit the market running, if not sooner. Thats a solid plan. You have a lot of options. My advice: Your end goal is to be an entrepreneur, so start working jobs that are not only going to help you build capitol for down the line but also teach you the skills for your future ambitions. So as many have mentioned above, and I'm sure you're tired of hearing it, start a grass mowing business, or something of the like. It can be anything really but in this example you gain experience:
building something from nothing
dealing with rejection - people are gonna say no
experience with success - people are gonna say yes, and you get the experience of analyzing why and how to improve your approach
Hard work - there is never a substitute for this
You would learn more than that but those are some, additionally, if you wanted to treat it like a real business, then you aggressively work on growing and learn even more, build it into a business:
Expand your clientele until you need to hire additional workers to keep up with demand
You will now have to manage others and engage with different personalities in order to make it work
Add additional marketing to grow and on and on
So from the above, you can probably see a massive investment of your time and determination with the pay out of capitol and experience which will directly relate to your end goals as a real estate investor. It's the business skills and experience that you would really be profiting from and if done correctly you would build capitol at the same time.
Just some thoughts, regardless of what you do, I recommend finding/making a job that teaches you solid skills to aid you in the future. Oh and don't discount the military or school, it would be a long way out but as someone who has done both the knowledge you can gain from both through experience is the real gain. It's the intangible knowledge.
Hi Michael! I️ would recommend not start by an LLC until you’ve done a few deals to avoid paying minimum state taxes. If you can manage to get leads and appointments set at properties find a local investor at you local REIA chapter who will give you a fee for finding deals in the area. Often times $1,000-$5,000 depending on how good the deal is that you have!
This all sounds familiar... I was in your shoes at that age.
At the age of 14 I started flipping cell phones, Then at 15 flipped cars. That's how I was able to get some experience. And start building capital. It's was a great experience. Strongly recommend.
Christi Hawkins will do, from now on I will be open to do almost all entrepreneurial business actions and learn from the successes and the failures. Thanks!
Julius John I will give all of these good thoughts, that's what I mean by being open to it. And after much thought I will try it out learn about it and see how it goes. Each thing will be different and it's the learning experience that I'm looking for.
Also, I do hang out with my friends all of the time. I'm just looking into my future right now.
OMFG, these old people with these awful non scalable income ideas.
There still is lots of growth in digital currency
ethereum seems to be something I have heard about from a lot of younger people.
If you are young and you can't program, understand how to run marketing campaigns or sell your less than useless.
There is a marketplace on here where people put jobs not sure why you haven't looked there. Most of the jobs that are put there are horrible sales gigs and 100% commission but they can provide invaluable experience and some amount of training. A lot of these roles are remote and you can get a work permit.
You can work for one of these people and cozy up to these investors.
A lot of these old people who provided terrible non scalable ideas are horrible at marketing their businesses. You need to learn what they are doing. What kind of results they are getting and how to help them get s better yeild these older non tech people already buy a ton of services what's to say you can't provide a service to them.
I had my first business at 14 providing tech services to mostly older people. Old people will always tell you awful things like go to paint fences, cut the grass, rake leaves these were great in the 1950z, 1970z etc...
You need to learn how to negotiate, sell, be part of a team, maybe do some of the rehab, comps, how to set expectations and manage them when they are not met.
Many of the important things above are learned with bigger deals and when requirements are not well defined or subject to the shifting business landscape. Painting fences usually doesn't have opaque requirements.
Jason Monroe that's so true. That why I want to focus more on online businesses as well. Another plus is that people also won't know my age. Technology is important nowadays, but I will still also do some hands on things.
As long as you can mask your voice on the phone you can tell people your whatever age you want.
As far as email as long as your vocabulary isn't sheeet you should be fine.
People talked about WordPress Which is written in a language no one uses anymore but the blog platform is popular go figure.
Old people are great for stories. Ask some of the old people on here what they have learned about negotiating and what hasn't worked.
When you ask (old) people about what hasn't worked it will re-inforce a better more effective approach you read in a book.
Old people who think they are helping love giving book lists without telling you how it changed their behavior and what behavior they had before that was causing them to perform in a sub optimal way.
Jason Monroe what is Wordpress? Also, my vice is pretty deep for my age so I don't think I have to worry too much about people thinking I'm young, lol.
If you need to create awareness you gotta tell people about it. Putting up a web page is one way to do that. WordPress is a platform written in PHP to help you create web pages to get the word out so you can annoy your friends on snap,Instagram, Facebook about how your (awful ) "premium" content is worth paying for.
There are lots of videos on YouTube about WordPress and the uses. In the marketplace on biggerpockets there are people who advertise tools some of these "tools" leverage WordPress to create awful "premium" content or their scam / "partnership opportunity" is mentioned in the marketplace and the link they tout goes to a hosted WordPress blog.
A good occupation to get into in the Marine Corps would be a 6672 Aviation Supply or any Aviation occupation or you can just join the Air Force since they are easier on there standards.The military is just like a 7am to 4pm job . I know people who have received there college degree for free while still being full time in the military .
Michael Kantar when I got started I had a niche in Blackberrys and HTC (not sure if they make either now) when I would meet with people I would tell them if you have more I'll come pick them. (Made it easy for them to sell me more) I would say in any industry you go in, it's better to have 10% competition vs 90%. So find a niche..