I realized I am an entrepreneur at the age of 30!

The Dream

It’s 2 pm and I am sitting in one of my engineering classes in college taking my last final exam. I was so excited, I had a job lined up working for the Department Of Defense and I was finally going to be an engineer, and make lots of money! I graduated and I moved half-way across the country from Florida to Oklahoma to start my new journey and for a while I was happy. I liked the job and the people that I worked with. A year after being at my job I became the “fat man in a red BMW convertible” as Tim Ferris puts in his book, the fat man syndrome is the guy making a great salary by any standard but is living in a cubicle habitat, ceiling tiles and weekends at the mall.

My Fat man in the red convertible was an SS soft top Camaro, the one that I had always wanted back in college but could not afford- suffice to say life was good! I enjoyed shifting the gears roaring down the Midwest highways while everyone looked and admired from afar, it was my baby! I thought this was exactly what I was supposed to do, it was exactly what my family told me to do ever since I could remember, go to school, get good grades and get a job and you will be able to have all the things that you want in life.

Denial

A year after buying that Camaro, the best thing that could have happened to me happened! I got into a bad car accident. I was physically okay, but truth be told mentally I was not, a lot of emotions went through my head at the time, at first I was very angry because I did everything I was supposed to do, I had “earned” this sports car and now it was a total loss. I got good grades in school, I did plenty of internships and frankly, I worked for and deserved this car!

The next emotion that I experience was pure sadness and a sense of defeat, it’s like someone pulled out the rug from underneath me and I fell 30 stories down. I was in a rut and did not know how to process where I was currently in my life. I thought about going back to the dealership and buying a new Camaro, maybe that would make me happy again but would that last? I thought about suing the guy that hit me and taking him to court. Maybe I could take it to a shop and see if they could repair it, even though the insurance claim it was a total loss. I buried my head in the sand and did not know what I was supposed to do.

The last emotions that I felt were a sense of peace, calmness, and reflection. As I began to reflect, I thought about an argument that my wife, who was then my girlfriend and I had a few months before the accident, I don’t remember the cause of the argument but what I remember vividly was her saying, “you’re making all this money, but you have nothing to show for it” For some reason, that woke me up because up until that point I thought having a nice place and a nice car was a sign of success but instead I was a rodent running on a wheel to stay afloat to keep up my appearance. When I had the aha moment, I remembered that back in college I had the interest to invest in real estate but I did nothing about it. I created a biggerpockets account, I browsed the site for a few weeks and never went back to it.

Acceptance

A few days after the accident, I was back at work and I felt very empty. As excited as I was to graduate college a few years prior and start a career, this was not the result that I was hoping for. I felt like I was starting back at zero. My wife and I decided to move back home to Orlando and this is when I realized that I had the entrepreneur spirit in me and it was lying dormant all of my life and finally I was going to do something about it and ditched everything my family taught me growing up. I did not want to be stuck in a cube until I was 62 like my fellow peers. I logged back into my biggerpockets account after years of not using it and I decided to start a local meetup in my area so I can learn from the individuals who are doing what I wanted to do and to my surprise, I received a lot of support from other investors in the area which has resulted in the meetup group growing more and more each year. I have learned so much from the individuals in that group and it is with their support that I was able to start my real estate investing journey.

Future

Currently, my portfolio consists of three units, one single-family which we acquired in 2019, and a duplex which was acquired in May of 2020. All of the three units are cash-flowing about $1000 per month and that small amount is worth a lot more than the salary I have to trade 80 hours’ worth of time every single two weeks to receive a paycheck. As an entrepreneur slowly clawing my way out of the rat race, I now view my paycheck differently. As the Fat man in the Camaro, I saw my paycheck as a way to raise my status and enjoy life with my family with the few hours afforded to us during the weekend. Now that my entrepreneur side has fully taken over, I only see leverage!

Leveraging my paycheck as much as possible so I can free myself from the cube farm and truly have an abundance of time to spend with my family and do the things that we want to do. Looking ahead I plan on growing my portfolio by adding two more multifamily properties this year and increasing the cash flow. My wife has been supportive throughout this whole journey, she did not know that she married an entrepreneur because I did not know that I was one until recently but we have adapted and are taking on the journey together.