What age range are you at your best? 20's? 30's? 40's? 50's?.....

[James Wise]

I figured this would be an interesting discussion to have. I am really excited to hear from the folks who are much older than I am on this one. As they say "you don't know what you don't know"

@Jay Hinrichs

@Russell Brazil

@Chris Clothier

@J Scott

@Joshua Dorkin

@Brandon Turner

@David Greene

@Joel Owens

@Scott Trench

@Nathan Gesner

What age range do you think you ARE, WILL, or HAVE BEEN at your best in your career?

When we are young we are often inexperienced. With age often comes wisdom and success but it also comes with a slow down. We loose our never ending energy and begin to slow down. We focus more on family and enjoyment when we've crossed off a lot of our life goals.

Me personally, I am 32 right now. I didn't come from any money and when I was in my 20's I worked a ton of crappy jobs including managing a Radio Shack, stocking pop for 7up, delivering pizza and installing / selling Invisible Fences but I had a plan to make it big. I got started on this plan at 21 but it wasn't until I was 27ish and burning both ends of the candle for several years that I was able to completely quit my regular job(s) and devote myself full time to my real estate business. 

Today I run a portfolio of companies with 60+ employees and have sold over $150M of investment real estate so my plan worked but if you talked to me 10+ years ago I was just some schmo schlepping pop onto shelves at grocery stores working for bosses I knew I was smarter then but wasn't ready to put it all together just yet so I was the only one who knew or believed this. 

I still work everyday as I write this. Probably put in 65+ hours a week but truth be told I am not working as much as I was when I was 25-30 and it was do or die. At that time it was a 6am-Midnight grind every day. I've got a son now (more on the way) and am putting much more emphasis on a work / life balance than I was a few years ago. So with that said, I'd say my late 20's I worked the most and the hardest but it's likely that my 30's will probably be the decade that I was at my best as I won't be ready to slow down from what I am currently doing but will be working the smartest now that I've got some experience to goal along with the resources that I've built for myself. As I hit my 40's and beyond I see myself going down to a "normal" 40 hour work week.

So with all of that said what age range do you think you ARE, WILL, or HAVE BEEN at your best in your career?

• 20's?
• 30's?
• 40's?
• 50's?
• 60's+?

[Dean H.]

@James Wise

This is great!!

I'm an old man of 62 but it took a lot of tumbles to get where I am. The nice part of being the old man in the room is I can just plug along on my path and don't even desire to play the game hard like you young bucks and does do.

I can invest in single family for all cash in B - C areas for cash flow and you youngsters can tell me how much more I could make with leverage in multi family and I can just turn down my hearing aids and chuckle. I've been down the leverage road since an amortization table was in a book, yeah like a paper book.

I can put receivables in a shoe box until there is enough in there to buy another shack because I don't even want a newer car or boat. As long as I can remember where I stashed the box every 6 months or so there just seems to be enough in there to buy another pig.

I still live in my own home but when I remodeled it years ago I did put the master on the ground floor and put 36" doors in so I wouldn't skin my hands wheeling the chair around. You youngsters all want to live in a loft these days, I still remember when it was cool to have forced air with the ducts under the sheet rock.

I'm just going to waddle down the hall now and enjoy the fact that I raised 4 kids to be more successful than myself, have some great grand kids with more on the way, my lovely wife has stayed with me on this crazy train and maybe they too will want a shoe box full of deeds someday.

You youngsters rock on and get the world tackled, as long as I can still see the screen on my laptop i'll enjoy reading of your victories and not on BP and James I just enjoyed another tenants from hell a couple hours ago. 

@James Wise