How/Where I developed my 20 year plan.

I used to post in a poker site where I used to study poker. They also had/have lots of other forums for things like diet/exercise/ policits.. and investing. The site is called 2+2 and the forum is called "Other Topics" and the sub heading is "Business, Finance and Investing" That forum was pre Bigger Pockets and one of the threads is called "Ask me anything about Real Estate Investing" Interestingly a lot of pro and semi pro poker players went into either equities investing or Real Estate investing after the US made it illegal to gamble online. The profile of a lot of ppp and investors use the same skill sets. They have the ability to do lots of math and make calculated risk/investments/bets AND they have patience.

Waiting for a good hand is the mark of a pro. If you are sitting at a table for 2hours and have folded every hand, that Q8suited starts to look good. They also have a bankroll and usually an unexplained gap in their employment that makes getting a W2 or T4 job harder to acquire. but I digress..

What I wanted to say was that my new plan started out much simpler than what I have now. I started a new thread and in my first post..." My current goal is to make 100k per month in passive NET income. That may sound ridiculous, but my last goal was set too low and when I hit it I retired and it took me a long time to get my mind turned around."

So from there I started posting what actions I did that week to further my plans. I asked the other posters to criticize my plan and help me smash the weak points and keep reformulating it until I got something that looked like and actual plan.

I had 3 major projects on the go when I started my plan. On was the Kansas-Vancouver swap that i described. Another was a Separate warehouse that I owned and the third was a block of extended family real estate that I am still working on to get resolved. I later added a 4th plan to do research on the next investment property after the Kansas-Vancouver Swap.

It was a very vague plan to start. I did not have any meat to it so I started doing homework. I studied may markets in the beginning, purchased books, listened to BP podcasts.

Over time the plan developed and I looked 20 years into the future and then worked backwards. I looked for all the components of running a successful RE company and decided to go with Buy and Hold. I also drew up a rough diagram of all the components (necessary team) to get to my 20 year plan. I then chunked it down to see where I was weakest and where I could study/work and give myself the most confidence in achieving my goals at every level. The two biggest areas of weakness in my major failure described in the 10 part introduction was that the building suffered from high vacancy and poor maintenance. It was a circular downward spiral. Poor tenant screening lead to poor tenants, petty crime, and a poorer and poorer clientele which in turn lead to even higher vacancies and late/missed rent payments.

So that Is how I came to work as a Strata Manager and started running buildings and budgets. I managed buildings from 10-66 units. I had 11 buildings in my portfolio. I fixed everything related to town home complexes and high rises, Arborists to Window cleaners, penthouse to parking garage, and break ins too! I built up a list of maybe 200 trades that were used on all my buildings and got used to all the terminology. I never knew what a tube vault or a moon key was until I started managing Strata. I have worked on Elevator repairs, re-roofing projects and maybe half a dozen insurance claims and am very comfortable in that area now.

Next... The second stage of my plan is Rental Management. Better Screening = better tenants.