The Red Road to Real Estate (Part 1)

[James Lusk]

Allow me to catch you up to speed before moving forward. My career path has been more crooked than a hunchback lawyer. I began like most; working odd jobs throughout high school. From grocery store cashier to pizza delivery, and the deeply noble position as an electronics employee with Wal-mart. Once I graduated and was fronted with the looming adulthood question whether to pursue college debt or a trade career, I did the natural thing. Neither. I jumped from one customer service job to the next till I married my wife and decided to try to become a "grown up". I enrolled in some classes for a degree that I had zero interest in but had what I thought a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. After my first semester of college, we moved back to Minnesota (where I was born), from Alaska (where my wife and I met) and I landed a construction job whilst I waited for eligibility to receive in-state tuition so that I may return to my scholastics endeavors. It was at that time I realized one could actually enjoy what they did for a living. I mean I didn't love installing windows in new development housing projects, but it was the first job I had worked that didn't revolve around retail customer service. It was refreshing to not have to wear the veneer of the service industry. So I made the grown up decision to skip out on school and pursue a passion as a career.

I am certain you're wondering just what fervent passion of mine did I turn to for a profession. Why none other than the mundane career path of the ever renowned tattoo artist. In 2006 my wife and I saved up every penny we could for six months and moved 956 miles from Minneapolis, MN to Wichita Falls, TX. It was there a professional tattoo artist and shop owner I had met in Alaska had opened up her business. I tracked her down and proposed myself and a fat tuition fee to learn the trade and she accepted. You may be asking why would I choose to relocate such a distance just to learn the sacred arts? Well, you see there are two birds, and sometimes you have just one stone. My wife is originally from Texas and most her kin still reside in and near the Ft. Worth area. I thought it would be a great adventure, and my wife could be near her family. Win and win.

Fast forward six years. I had successfully made myself into a tattoo artist, started a family, and managed to keep my wife by my side. She was pregnant with our second boy, and life was pretty darn good. Then one fateful day in the midst of permanently drawing on someone, whose name I now forget, they had suggested I read a book entitled "Rich Dad Poor Dad". And so I did. Now I know you're probably thinking, this my epic start into all things real estate, but that is not the turn this took. Upon completion of that book, I had a fire to start some sort of business that would develop residual income for my family's future. However, I continued on with my principle of applying passions to career and ended up opening a gym. I did every thing it took to get certified and affiliated to open a CrossFit gym in Wichita Falls. I loved fitness, had been doing CrossFit for a bit, and the market saturation for this style of fitness center was slim to none (actually, it was literally none) where I lived at the time. I thought I had the absolute recipe for success. Truth is, I fell into the classic case of the technician thinking they could run a business. I learned much later that there is a big difference between working in a business and working on a business. Long story short, I sold the gym to a couple of established business owners and it is alive and thriving to this day.

And then there was three. My wife was now preggers with our third boy, the tattooing economy plummeted in my town, and Obama Care had been enacted. This was the perfect storm that forced us to start considering how to actually live like an adult. At this time we owned a home, had a couple cars, and were making ends meet in the face of the declining tattoo industry. Yet, we did not have health insurance for ourselves and no real retirement to speak of. I felt I had to take serious action. So I did the natural thing and went back to school to become a firefighter. I graduated as an EMT and was quickly deterred from my local fire department due to my visible tattoos. Little did I know that venting to a friend at the CrossFit gym would butterfly affected my path to finding a job with BNSF Railway. Soon after I was hired by BNSF as a signalman. See, I knew a guy who knew a guy and that guy got my foot in the door for an interview. Our prayers had been answered. A well-paying career with uber benefits and financial security we had never truly experienced.

I am not going to lie to you; acclimating to a career in railroading was not super easy for me. It was a lot of hard work, answering to the "man", and a tremendous learning curve (of the electrical systems). But I persevered and actually have grown to like it on some level. However, the nature of my schedule is no bueno. You see, I work an eight on, six off rotation. Which equates to me being gone 60% of each month, which means 60% of each year, which comes out to 60% of my children's lives. This just does not reflect our values and principles as a parental unit. My wife and I want to look back on our lives with me being present as a father for our kids. Yet, it wasn't till I had saved up all my vacation and took nearly an entire month off in December of 2016. It was at this time I remembered just how much I loved seeing my kids each day. Hence forth I enacted a fervent determination like I had never experienced before.

I knew I had to get back into business for myself. This go round I was convicted to achieve this goal as intelligently as possible. Starting from January 2017 I began waking up at 4:00 am each day. I spent every day reading, learning, and deciding just how I was going to create a life that would allow me to be home with my kids again. Naturally, I thought it had to look like a brick and mortar gym again, being as that fitness was still a primary focus in my life. I soon realized that I would have to reach certain metrics of financial revenue streams prior to my resignation from the railroad. Basically, I had to get some money coming in before I could safely quit my railroad job to commit to opening the gym. I then decided to engineer an online remote coaching business plan while my wife was working more toward real estate investments. Over the last few months, I would dabble in real estate now and again with minimal focus. My nearly full attention was on building my online training business and networking with local gyms to see if I could generate revenue with them as well. It wasn't till a mere four weeks ago my wife sat me down for a serious talk. She saw how many hours each day I was pouring myself into working and conveyed to me the potential return on my time investment had I shifted my focus into real estate. Basically, she said I could make more dough for the time spent in real estate investing than within the fitness industry. She explained to me that changing focuses could lead to us reaching our "why" much more quickly. As well as allow me to do as much or as little as I would like in regard to my passion for the fitness industry. And you know what, I married her for a reason. She's (nearly) always right.

So where are we now? Within 30 days from then, I formed our limited liability corporation and developed the first division of our real estate investment company. We agreed to pursue the path of wholesaling as an entry into the industry. Now I didn't reinvent the wheel here or anything. I just spent tons of hours tirelessly studying what successful people did within the realm of wholesaling. I can't help but feel like there is not enough time in the day, little alone the year, to keep learning the depths of the real estate rabbit hole. Of course, the bulk of my research has been in the vast content provided by BiggerPockets. All the posts, podcasts, and books have aided us in developing our systems and planning our acquisition strategy to pull the trigger on our business.

Which brings me to why I felt prompted to start this journal that will log our journey. My hope is that I will share something on here that will help someone else and I am able to pay it forward in some small way.

So, without further a do here is our first week in review.....

On Thursday of this week, we were geared up to purchase our direct marketing mail list from Listsource.com, as well as had our mailers sourced and priced out to order. That same day we had received all of our LLC documents in the mail and brought them down to our local bank to open up a business account. As we were cutting up with the banker who was helping us get setup, he joked about needing to sell his house but it needed some work. Not thinking much about it at the time, I made a cavalier response and thanked him for helping us get our accounts opened up. We then went home and placed the orders for our mailers to go out. The following day I could not stop thinking about what our banker had said, and if he could possibly be our first deal. So I grabbed his business card and hit him up at work. My first cold call went great. I got him to say a price that was below market value and set up a time the following day to go look at the property. I hung up the phone feeling crazy excited. So, it is now the following day as I am writing this. My wife and I met with him this morning to view the property and begin negotiations. I think it went pretty well. The property only needs cosmetic work; roughly 10k in our knee jerk estimation. The house is just sitting there vacant and the main thing holding him up from listing is that his ex's junk was left behind when she moved out. So we negotiated a bit, hit up how he is throwing his money away on an expensive storage unit and left him with an offer to consider. All in all, it was a great learning experience just to get to go through that process just 2 days of officially starting our business.

Our outlook and attitude is hopeful and determined. I am really excited to begin this journey with my wife and laser focused on making our dreams become a reality.

                                                                                                                      "The more you learn, the more you earn" - Warren Buffet