Zero Knowledge to First Rental in < 1 Year

[Craig Curelop]

Today is June 23rd, 2017. Rewind one year. It is now June 23, 3016. I have just finished reading Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Work Week and I feel as though I have found the secret to a happy life. Creating a passive stream of recurring income that exceeds my monthly expenses. Living in San Francisco, a startup idea was definitely my ticket out. After dozens of lousy startup ideas, the thought of investing in real estate dawned on me. 

I went online and typed in, "real estate investing." I stumbled upon BiggerPockets, but admittedly was quite skeptical. Instead, I typed in "Real Estate Investing" into Amazon and bought the first book that came up. Brandon Turner's, "Book on Rental Property Investing." At the time, I had NO IDEA that BiggerPockets published the book. So after getting through the first few chapters and saw all of the "unbiased" praise, I decided to check BiggerPockets out. 

Over the next few months, I educated myself. I listened to every podcast, watched almost every webinar, and found my self frequently analyzing deals and perusing the forums. In one of the August 2016 webinars, Brandon told us to write down a specific goal. On my white board, I wrote down, "to purchase a multifamily property for $300k to $600k that cash flows at least $100 per door by June 30, 2017." 

Guess what? It's June 23rd, 2017 and I closed on a duplex for $385k that will cash flow me ~$500 per month. Weird how that works huh? 

It gets weirder. After listening and learning from these guys everyday for the past 8 months, I somehow got the opportunity to move to Denver and work with them at BiggerPockets. That's right, I went from knowing absolutely NOTHING about real estate to being a BiggerPockets employee in less than a year. 

It's crazy how life always seems to work when you put your mind to it. I give a HUGE thank you to the entire BiggerPockets team for providing great, easy to understand content that seemingly reduces the entry barriers to real estate investing. On to the next one :).