Ramblings of a NOOB!

Let me start by stating that I am not a real estate investing expert or even close. I’m a real estate newbie in every sense of the word but I’m not new to business. I've spent the last 15 years working within the corporate world of the Telecom industry. I started as a traveling technician and worked my way up to senior management. Along the way I've owned a major interest in a restaurant and my own telecom network services company.

Also along the way life taught me what divorce and bankruptcy were like. When the recession landed it hit me hard. Personally I was over extended in the restaurant and the telecom work dried up for my services company. Both businesses had to be closed down and I walked away with huge piles of debt. It all came crashing down and I declared bankruptcy in late 2009 losing almost all material assets. Thankfully I still had easy access to a corporate job to feed my family. Around the same time my marriage deteriorated and I was suddenly divorced with primary custody of three young children. By this time we were living in Dallas which happens to be 700 miles away from my family. In late 2011 I took a remote home office position with my company and moved back to rural Northwest Florida and earlier this year married a wonderful woman. We are raising four beautiful children together.

So here I am having achieved a measure of business success and losing it all. Then realizing that everything that was lost was insignificant compared to relationships that formed from the ashes of my failures. Other than pure grandiose narcissistic gratification why am I writing this on a real estate investment site? To provide an anchor point for the beginning of my real estate investment career and give me comical reading material in the future when I look back on my REI newbie years.

My wife’s career in property tax appraisal piqued my interest in real estate investing; she was constantly receiving calls from investors about local properties. I’ve been curious about REI for several months but didn’t really take it seriously. It was a wishful daydream at first and I had the false impression that REI was the sole domain of BIG POCKETS! That it was something the smaller players could dabble in but would face insurmountable capital acquisition goals to really be successful. A few months ago I had lunch with a CPA and bounced business ideas off of him. I figured he saw the books of numerous local businesses and had a decent understanding of their performance. We didn't discuss specifics of any business in particular but the one statement that stuck with me the most was that real estate investment plays a huge role in the success of the wealthiest people he knew.

Through the BiggerPockets educational tools such as: podcast, forums, and the online beginners guide I saw opportunities abound. The site gave me a glimpse into the mind’s eye of real estate investors all along the gamut of the success spectrum and cemented my focus on real estate investing!

I have two short term goals currently in front of me:

Acquire my Florida Real Estate License by the close of 2013.
Acquire an investment property by the close of 2014.