This is a brief overview of how I went from a family business employee (with 7 children), only earning 60k/yr, filing bankruptcy in early 2016, to someone who will be completely financially free 18 months after I purchased my 1st property May 15 2017.

I began my Real Estate Study in late 2015, I mostly read books. All the Rich Dad books (but they are full of motivation and mindset, but don't have any actual substance), I read and listened to many podcasts, while driving for my regular job, or while working on my "side gig" where I cut, split, and delivered firewood after work hours. The idea of financial independence when you are working that hard, is incredibly inspiring. So I listened, learned, and saved money. I saved money as much as I could out of my paycheck and saved all of my proceeds from my firewood sales. I found some great podcasts, Joe fairless has a good one, along with Rod Khalief, and BP had a great one. I found it eventually then realized BP had this great website. I found the BRRR method and I was hooked. I live in Rural Illinois and while few podcasts cover rural investing, the principles remain the same. So I began talking about it with friends and family, and when it became apparent that I knew what I was talking about. I had 2 people that wanted to start the biz with me. They both invested $20k each for 1/4 of the business and I kept 1/2 (400 shares) and 1 non-paying, voting share (so that I remained in control, of the final decisions). So now I "owed" my new business 28k dollars, but we had enough to get started.

We purchased a vacant 6 unit building that needed 4 units completely remodeled, and a large old house that we planned to convert into a Triplex. Even though we floundered for almost 6 weeks with a contractor that did horrible damage, We finally found the right guy, ended up finishing 25k over budget and tied up over half of our initial 52k we had to invest, with no way to BRRR out of that messup. Fron there on out, I found much better deals, a SFH that I bought at auction for 12k, it appraised for 40k, we refinanced it, put a 25k lien against it, and it rents for 650/month, pays it's mortgage, and cashflows. Plus we created 13k out of thin air. We also did this with one other house, and a 10 unit building. Altho the 10 unit refi is coming up in May/June. There were growing pains in learning how to use systems (we use "Rentec Direct"). There were growing pains in how to manage tenants, But, all in all, we've been very aggressive when we find a deal. I and my partner @John Hagen have learned a lot, been a little surprised by the speed of what we were able to do. I can say this, you can't do it alone. 

I built a great team. That started with my partner @John Hagen, but continued with my wife who works tirelessly for our rehab crew, which is also headed by our maintenance man, and he's been amazing. My mom (who is the other investor that owns 1/4 of the business) is more of a silent partner, but she has done some small loans from time to time to our business to help it get thru cash crunches that come with growing and rehabbing nearly every dilapidated unit we buy. But I am extremely proud of this team. We currently own 29 multi-family units and 2 SFH's (95% occupancy). We have 7 more multi-family under contract for April, and we are steaming forward. I am proof that even tho u may be middle class and have a lot of things going against you. You CAN DO THIS!!!!

*I "Dave Ramsey'd my budget, and "Robert Kiyosaki'd my investment mind.  You can too!!