Do Army Warrant Officers make good real estate investors?

[Joshua Wynn]

That’s a rhetorical question because of course they do and I’m going to be proof soon.

Good afternoon BP friends. If you haven’t guessed I’m an Army Warrant Officer that’s delving into real estate now. I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of financial freedom and entrepreneurship but didn’t take much action in that direction until 5 years ago when my wife and I started an online retail business. That’s been successful and has allowed my wife to quit her 9-5 job. But it’s not very passive and definitely not financial independence.

This past October my brother invited me to seminar with special guest Kevin O’Leary. He didn’t really know the details of what it was about other than generalized business and financial freedom. So I said sure, I’ll go. Even if it wasn’t a good seminar, I always enjoy time with my bro.

Turns out it was one of those real estate guru intro seminars that use a completely unrelated celebrity (Mr Wonderful) as the bait. We got a hook in our mouth and signed up for the 3 day workshop, only thing though was that I was leaving in 2 weeks for Warrant Officer Candidate School and could make it to the date they tried to rush us into. But they agreed to let us go later when I returned (how nice of them).

So I had always been interested in real estate but never really knew how to get started other than buying my own home and eventually moving but keeping it as a rental. This seemed like the perfect way to get some good info at a low cost cuz I knew the workshop would be full of marketing ploys disguised as advice and motivation, but there’d be some nuggets of info there too.

Soo . . . after school my brother and I could never sync schedules at the same time as one of these workshops. Ultimately me and his wife went to one held in Bellevue, WA last month (May 2019). We went in with our heads held high and our BS armour polished bright! And we almost left 3 days later $30k lighter. Ha! They lay it on thick! But we did survive, learned a lot of good entry level info, and survived without spending a dime. All thanks to BiggerPockets!

During all our back and forth deliberations about paying the hefty fee to get all the great mentorship, my sister in-law mentioned a podcast she’d been listening to called BiggerPockets. I’m an avid podcast listener so I subscribed and started listening to the antics of Brandon and David that night. I also did research about real estate workshops and the company for the one we were attending. Low and behold I found great information, blog posts, forum posts, and videos about “gurus” on BiggerPockets.

We decided we could become real estate investors through hard work, patience, and self disciplined education. Especially with the help of this community. So I am diving in head first.