Originally posted by
@Shane H.:
@Roger Laughary
Long answer to your question. My novel below:
EXTREMELY unhappy with my job, had been for years, have thought RE and running my own business has been my calling for a # of years but didnt know how to break the chains and get out of misery - lets just say if you are stuck in a bad place you have more things working against you mentally to get out of it.
I've dabbled in residential investments and done a few things/deals since 2006, worked in insurance claims since 2004. Insurance claims sucks and I'd recommend no one ever go into that field. Not my worst enemy. However as horrible as the job can be I did learn a lot of things I can carry over into what I do now. Not apples for apples stuff but the basic concepts that translate well into this industry and others. One good thing was the company I worked for the last 10 years had a very generous retirement/profit sharing program which ended up facilitating my business purchase. So, in the end or up until now the pain was worth the gain, however if I could skip insurance claims I'd probably go back and do that.
So I'm having an attitude problem and other things going on in my life, I realize in order to get out after hearing the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk and others on the BP podcasts, (though have to credit Vaynerchuk the most) I need an attitude adjustment. Things continue to decline at work during 2016. Late summer of 2016 I decide to get away with the family on a vacation. It's a state I'd consider moving to so figure why not look up a fellow BP member in that town and see if they'll meet as I'd met and tried to meet a # of people in ICT. Said member agrees to meet me and little did I know when reaching out to him he had a long history of successes in his life and had reached heights I'd only dreamed of and then some. We have an hour or two meeting, he agrees to keep talking to me on occasion and he happens to be involved in assisted living and sung it's praises. That hour or two I spent with him and the energy I pulled from him played a pivotal role in helping shift my mindset change to where it needed to be. Without that meeting I wouldnt be here today. I'd read about assisted living before but until I met him never thought it was possible I could get into the field.
So fast forward some more and a little more background, I'm still working on correcting my attitude, and as luck would have it my wife has been working in the assisted living/skilled nursing/group home setting as a front line grunt level employee ever since I'd met her in 2012 (grunt is said with the utmost respect - she worked hard) so I started to bounce things off of her.
Keep in touch with fellow re investor - agreement is reached that I can travel out of state and shadow his assisted living ceo for a week...did so March 2017 and learned a ton.
More depressing things happen at my job April 2017 so upset with w2 job and all the negativity in the industry I was in.... one night I'm carousing re for sale listings, business listings etc and find this business newly listed for sale on an obscure bus website. Converse with broker, send him my balance sheet, he says I'd qualify to buy - I thought there was no chance in hell I could qualify for a loan but he says he knows a way. I have little cash and what little wealth I have is on paper in RE and in my 401k. Business is listed for 7 figures. However sending the email to him I figured why not and I'll never know unless I try. Showing is set up.
Throw it in my wifes lap we are going to look at it - she gets over it in 3 days :) and we look at it - she walks through the place and tells me she gets a great vibe and feels it looks like it's well run. We go back and forth for 3 weeks and get an agreed offer - I get paperworked to death and finally get a prelim approval for an SBA loan utilizing a ROBS (roll over business startup) to fund the down payment needed. Thank God for this IRS allowance and vehicle and thank God there was a bank willing to underwrite this loan. Local banks in Wichita basically laughed, same for Topeka, well not literally laughed but stated I needed to be at least $500k liquid and have as many assets as the businesses was worth - at the rate I was going I wouldnt get there in my lifetime. (Also have to credit another BP connection - used mysolo 401k guys for the ROBS setup and they were great)
So after a few hiccups and having to put the brakes on the deal for 2 mos during summer 2017. (Had to wait for a flip I dove into headfirst in Wellington to sell so I wouldnt have any underwriting issues or extra liens applied to me by the SBA lender)
Property sells and closes end of July so we can finally move forward. I had a lot of dumb luck as time went on and this was one of them - I nearly maxed out my HELOC on personal residence to fund the flip - which was a good thing - it raised my LTV on my personal residence high enough the SBA lender couldnt put a secondary lien on it. So I can give little tidbits of advice if anyone ever gets an SBA loan and uses a ROBS vehicle to fund a business, re startup etc.
We takeover Oct 1 - survive a major scare of almost losing our key employee and admittedly I had no clue what in the hell I was doing - Thank GOD for my wife helping me through the process and taking the role as counselor, motivator, and sounding board for ideas as we've went through this - she's focused on nursing school as she'll be attending Baker to get her BSN starting here in a week and finally get that out of the way after a few hiccups on the education side in the past. So things are tending to look up. This whole attitude adjustment paid dividends and I always thought what some of the guys said about positive thinking, law of attraction etc was hokey - I think theres a lot of truth in it now. I think I'm far from a success story and have a long ways to go, but the one thing I'm happiest about is I got out of a job that literally was killing my spirit and taking a toll on me physically and mentally. I personally haven't felt better in years.
This facility now that I've gotten used to it certainly provides more joy than I ever imagined. Being around positive people and the residents who are appreciative of you trying to take care of the place is payback enough. I went into this thinking if all I can do is get an avg place to live, have a couple cars and eat Id be happy. So far so good - hoping to expand the place in the future and walk away after handing most of the day to day elsewhere so I can focus on other things and just oversee. I'm not that great of a leader so need someone else to do it. Not really my strong suit. I'm more of an organizer and person who cares and can handle 15 things and delegate and think outside the box kind of guy.
Wrote kind of a novel but hopefully that gives you some insight - - definitely not something to take lightly to get into. To go back to where I'm finding outsourcing companies, compliance etc, a lot of things I knew nothing about.... a lot of it I've felt out the previous owner, the current executive director and due to another referral due to my wife from a Wichita memory care owner I hired a consultant that specializes in running facilities like these and has more experience that he'd forget in a day than I'd gain in 5-10 years in this business. He's been worth the investment, and so has our executive director. We plan on giving her 5-10% of the company - will probably be the equivalent of $60k to 100k in dollars that we paid for the place - hopefully in 5-10 years when we sell we can triple that # for her - I dont really care about the money - she's a key employee and without her we dont do well. Still need to structure the ownership giveaway to her and it will vest over time but something I look forward to having done this summer and in place.
