1,000 Posts, Two Properties, A New Career, Scaling Happily
I guess it's a little bit of a tradition to post to the success stories forums when you get to 1,000 posts. So here goes mine.
I joined the BiggerPockets community about two years ago in May of 2014. You can see my first ever post here. At the time, I wanted to have three duplexes by the end of 2014. While that didn't work out, and I only bought one, I can safely say that I am very pleased with how things turned out. Committing to taking action in real estate set off a chain of events that propelled me forward in my career and financially to the point where I still pinch myself every day to make sure things are real.
Let's see how I did.
I joined the BiggerPockets community because I was disenchanted with the American dream that I had been given in the whole "get good grades, go to college, get a good job" thing. I did that. The "good job" part seemed to be a pretty lousy outcome, considering that the job was supposed to make up the best part of my day, for the majority of my adult life. Once I figured out I didn't want that, I looked for a number of alternatives and decided to pursue financial freedom. After looking at many resources on the topic, I decided that real estate investing made the most sense for my objectives as a means to financial freedom.
Here's a Timeline of Events starting after I changed my mindset:
Early 2014 - After that first post, I joined a mastermind group. Through that mastermind group I met several influential local Denver investors like @Ian Brown and @Peter Katz.
Mid 2014 - Then, while getting lunch with another fellow in that group I discovered that @Joshua Dorkin worked in that same building. At the time a starry-eyed podcast fan, I remember that Josh wasn't too happy that this random weird kid barged into his office and interrupted him.
Anyways, I followed up with him about ten times - I figured that by getting to know this guy I could 1) pay him back for all the great information and life-changing mindset that he had given me on the podcast, and 2) get the inside scoop on real estate investing by meeting big time investors that knew what they were doing.
Finally, he caved and let me come in for a lunch.
Then he hired me as "Director of Operations" or in a startup with 5-6 people (@Brandon Turner , @Dave Visaya , @Jarrett Baugh , and @Edd Morgan ) that means "Take care of all the pain the butt issues that no one else wants to deal with."
End of 2014, Early 2015 - Off to the races! In the next 6 months after I joined BiggerPockets we hired @Hilary C. , and many more folks around the world!
Accomplishments:
Real Estate - Ownership interest in Two Duplexes ~ $700,000 in Assets, equity TBD with appraisals. Cash flow About $2,000 per month before expenses, which I am still trying to work out and get a good financial grasp on the average for. I compensate for my lack of ability to estimate these expenses (I keep hearing that they are supposed to be higher, but aren't seeing these big expenses yet!) by having large cash reserves and a huge savings account for any real estate related problems. Real Estate Broker's License for CO. Scalable plan in place, being executed efficiently. World class education from BiggerPockets on Real Estate and Personal Finance.
Career - 1,000 posts on BP. ~50-100 Blog posts to the BiggerPockets blog, with high engagement. Lead for financials for an incredible business. High sales output for the company. 50+ books consumed on personal finance, management, startups, lifestyle design, and productivity read, and actions or habits have been developed as a result of most of those books. A part of the decision-making and strategic process, with a hand in many of the incredible projects going on here.
Happiness - I help people build lives they want, and escape from lives they don't want every day. Every day the company grows, and we get more and more success stories. I went from a kid frustrated with his day-to-day job, sneaking around trying to build a better life, to a slightly older kid that is giddily happy with his job and being a part of something as special as this platform.
Lessons:
- Reading is the most important thing to my successes so far I think. I'm not doing anything original - just have had the best mentors in the world teach me their life lessons in dozens of incredible books. I feel experienced through them.
- Getting feedback from folks smarter than you is key. Sure I have strong opinions, and occasionally I am forcefully and publicly WRONG. Getting publicly embarrassed appears to be the fastest way for me to learn and develop better approaches to writing, thinking, strategizing, and communicating ;). I plan to keep sharing my opinions and thoughts publicly, and to continue to expect wiser folks than I to let me know how wrong I am so that I can continue to accelerate my learning.
- Patience and Commitment - All of the things above are exponential, and all of the areas of my business and life seem to be compounding. The problem is that things went painfully slow for the first few years, and now the rewards are beginning to multiply. If you don't stick with things for 18+ months, I don't think you'll ever begin to see the exponential rewards begin to multiply.
Over the next few years I plan to do the following:
Real Estate: Buy one larger and bigger, and more scalable real estate investment every 12-18 months in areas of town that I want to be a part of forever. Goal is about $3-5M in stable cash flowing assets here in Denver owned between me and my partner by the end of 2018, leveraged 3-1 or so.
BiggerPockets: Grow to 1M users. Develop world-class strategy and investment writing/video/audio content for real estate investors and sales professionals. Develop BiggerPockets into the most beloved brand in real estate, have it become a household name in America, and help millions of ordinary Americans feel comfortable taking advantage of the wealth building power of Real Estate.
Thank you BiggerPockets!
