I started my real estate adventure by purchasing 2 single family houses in Oklahoma with 2 cousins, mistake #1. I also helped my mother get 2 rentals to help supplement her retirement, mistake #1b. I see why they say, never go into business with family.

Over time, I discovered mistake #2 was not buying them right. I paid too much!

Mistake #3 was not having knowledgeable people around to be able to ask questions. It felt like everyone I found were self-serving, looking to line their own pockets, or not willing guide because of fear of competition.

While I was running my inspection business, trying to build a real estate business, and taking care of 4 rentals with family, I was also going to night school to get a degree in MIS. I discovered working on computers was not in my DNA and switched to a degree in Finance.

I completed my AA in business at a 2 year school, transferred to a four year school to finish up my finance degree. I finished all the degree requirements only to discover I was extremely burned out and had to complete another year of electives to satisfy a minimum number of credits at that university.

This burnout led to me selling off my rentals, dissolving my business with family, and having my mother take over managing her own units. I took a break from school and shed all points of stress in my life. During this time, I found myself unemployed and having difficulty finding a new job due to not completing my degree or having formal training beyond high school or military.

Looking to improve my investment skills, I decided to get my residential home inspection license which led to me starting HLC Home Inspections. While building this business, I started making connections with others in the industry. One realtor in particular made me an offer to come work for her if I got my real estate license. I jumped at this opportunity buy getting my license, signing up with her broker, only to discover all she wanted was the sign on bonus from me joining that office.

I took this opportunity to run both my inspection business and real estate business simultaneously. Having both licenses, opened my eyes to both worlds. I had a unique perspective of how these two industries working together.

While performing an inspection on a house, I got to chat with the seller and found he was a commercial construction superintendent for a large local company. This simple conversation changed my future. I researched commercial construction careers, and found a construction degree is typically required. This led me to researching schools in my area that provided degrees in construction. I had two real options, University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State University. Anyone who’s familiar with Oklahoma, knows, there’s only one real option here. BOOMER SONNER!

I jumped back into school while using my home inspection business to feed my family. I graduated with a degree in construction management, moved to Dallas Texas to work with a large construction company building projects anywhere from 30 million on up to 1.2 billion. After 5 years, my wife and I decided to make a change and moved to Nashville TN where I work as a project manager on projects ranging from several million on up to around 300 million.

I am now at a point in life where I realized retirement isn’t far off and I need to find something outside of stock markets and 401k’s to invest in. This leads me back to my mother, as she approaches her end years, I hate to think about this, but she wants to leave my sister and I one of the houses I mentioned earlier.

The house I will get is in a lower income area, currently worth $95-100k, and she still owes about $25k on it. Looking at refurbished houses in the area, potential value of the house could be $130-140k range.

Discussing options with my wife, we are looking to take ownership of the house, make some much-needed repairs, and getting it rented out. Our end goal is to get it paid off for cash flow and use the equity to buy another house. Ultimately our goal is to have 10 paid-off houses that will add to our retirement income.

Nashville, Tennessee

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