What's your Mission, Vision and Values?

[Aaron Hollingshead]

What are you working towards?  

During my 5 years in real estate I've flipped 8 houses and acquired 7 rentals while working overseas.  In my account, it's been a good run.  The problem is I've had trouble figuring out my vision for where I'm headed.  It's not that I've got shiny object syndrome, on the contrary, I have found my groove with flips and rentals.  But I'm not sure how big I want to grow and I wonder if having a mission or a goal would help me.  

This all came from me seriously considering paying off 6 of my 7 houses which would take my cash flow from around 15,000 a year currently to about 50,000.  I know that conventional wisdom (and 99.9% of BPers) love the value of leverage and might call me crazy but I just keep wondering about the value that reducing my debt would bring.  

Additionally, imagine this.  Right now I have a net worth of around 350,000.  If I pay these off in 5 years, that number should be closer to to 800,000...Sure, I could leverage and hope to get more properties, but on the flip side, I might be able to position myself to be close to early retirement by generating this large amount of yearly income.  

I have tried to look up stories online of people blogging about WHY they paid off multiple investment properties off early and sharing their experience, but all I come across are models and opinions (mostly against it).  I'd love to hear from somebody who has taken this route.  

Have any of you paid your properties off with a long-term strategy, goals, mission, etc?  Thanks!