From Retirement to the start of an Idea..

One of the reasons that I like Real Estate over equity (Stocks/Bonds) investments, is that you can improve your returns by hard work. In all my previous Real Estate Investments I had been fairly successful because I was in control.

It was my first Syndication where the results were not mine to control that ended badly.

This did not turn me off of syndications, but only made me think that if I did another one, I would definitely be able to take it over and get it into a reasonable state. If you read the first 10 chapters of My background, you know that story.

The frustration I felt when I could see that project going downhill pushed me to look into learning more.

So in late 2017 I signed up for a Strata Management course. In the USA the job would be called a Community Manager, where Strata = home owners' association (HOA) .

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If I did not mention it before, there was a time between 2015 and 2018 when I am retired. I tried lots of new things including ice skating, yoga for stiff men, volunteering at my Church, Chinese classes, and guitar lessons.

I also read a lot of books. It started with a few classics , Mansfield Park, all of  Sherlock Holmes, The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment. Then I started covering all different topics: Health; How Not to Die, The China Study, Transcendental Meditation: Philosophy; The Gulag Archipelago, Man's Search for Meaning (Frankl) , 12 Rules for Life(Peterson): Self Help; Tools for the Titans, Way of the Wolf(Belfort), Principles (Dalio). As I started to develop my plan I started to read more and more RE investment books and have read about 10 so far. The RE books are the ones that were recommended by the BP podcasts and mentioned most frequently by guests in the question... , name the RE investment book that had the most influence.. like Rich Dad Poor Dad, The ABCs of RE investing, The Millionaire RE investor, (also other book, not RE that most affected you. The Millionaire Next Door, The Richest Man in Babylon, etc.

Because of the way things were going in my Kansas investment, and because I started to listen to a ton of youtube videos by Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, Les Brown and a few others about having a plan and being motivated, I decided to take a class in property management. I completed the course in mid 2018. At least one of my friends told me not to be a bum, so and started sending out job applications 1/week until I got a job in late Summer 2018.

I vowed never to invest in another syndication without having the ability to take over the property and run it in place of the GP.

As time went on and I developed my skills, I came up with a new long term plan. This plan was 20 years long. I first posted about this idea on another investing forum which I will describe next time.

BTW the book that affected me the most is Man's Search For Meaning (Frankyl)  It is a tough read as in hard to stomach, but if your at a low place, it really puts things into perspective.