Histories and Beginnings

What this blog is and will be is a place where you can share my journey from some normal guy not doing anything with his life upwards to a successful real estate investor. There's always the chance that this will fail, sure -- but I've become far too familiar and comfortable with failure. It's about time I stopped all that. I hope that this blog will serve as both inspiration, a guidebook, and general school of hard knocks advice, and probably the occasional side-track, too. Come along with me and learn an exciting new trade that will always be in demand! Or just sit on the sidelines and watch. If you're reading and have any input to give you are most certainly welcome here.

So it shall begin.

Here's the thing: I'm not really all that special. I like to say I am, and I am a little smarter than the average person (so say the tests), but I've done diddly squat with all of that... So what's it count for? Pretty much nothing apart from giving me this warm fuzzy feeling every now and again. It's very not useful.

I took a major step several months ago: I shelled out $200 to go to a 3 day seminar on how to invest in real estate. Whether or not I describe this event in a few years as "life changing" has a lot to do with this blog and where it goes. This seminar was hosted by Fortune Builders and had some ex-NFL player who's on television now named Than Merrill who owns a business that does real estate investing. It was certainly educational. I drew a whole lot of information out of it and pieced a lot of stuff together that's been brewing for a long time. It was almost coming together.

Rewind... 9 years ago? (Give or take.)

I was living in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It's not a very exciting place. What it did have was me and my girlfriend. Well -- she walked out (one of the few relationships where it had nothing to do with me, honestly). I launched into a bout of depression. Even when depressed, though -- I keep mentally active. Probably a self defense. I keep my mind active and engaged with something and it keeps me from being too mired in the problems. I played video games while listening to an audio book. Actually all sorts of them. I listened to Robert Kiyosaki (better known as Rich Dad), Tony Robbins (of 7 Habits fame), Zig Ziglar, etc. But the one that really did it for me was this huge 20+ chapter book that broke down how to invest in real estate. I listened to it. Then I re-listened. Then I took it with me on a drive to Missouri to visit my buddy in the army, and listened to it again on the 12ish hour trip one-way and back again. I apologize for not knowing the title, but I may be able to dig it up again in the future.  It outlined everything in detail about how to do this stuff.  It even broke down into some very specific tips on how to do some things.

I was motivated enough that I found a real estate agent and started going out with her a couple times a month and looking at properties that she thought were a good fit for me that fell into what I could finance with my pre-approval from my lender.  I had bids in on three properties, and was the day before closing on my first 3 unit property.  Complications arose with my employer, though, and they refused to verify my employment.  I was a 1099 worker and hadn't done anything with them in the last few weeks because I was busy with this new stuff and they decided to get petty.  So everything fell apart.

Jump forward back to nearly present time.  I go to a free two hour sales pitch for real estate and I think to myself "If everything this very successful man has described to me is available for 200 dollars or less I'm in."  Before he finished his sentence ending with "one hundred ninety seven dollars" I was on me feet and headed to the back tables to pay for my new education.

Those three days were useful, absolutely.  If you have a chance to do that seminar with Fortune Builders I recommend it if you plan to go into this business -- they tour nationally, and you can find them on their website ( http://www.fortunebuilders.com/ ).  I took what I think is roughly 50 pages of notes over those three 8 hour days.

Since then I've done very little with it.  I've done some searching, and a little bit of poking at things, but nothing very serious.  The most significant step I've taken is being the screening agent for someone else who is working very seriously at getting into investing himself.  An old high school friend who I met at the seminar.  After a few meetings we decided that we would be a very good fit for each other, and we've got half a dozen potential deals floating out there right now.  One or two of them are likely to stick and I'll see me first paycheck from these efforts before the end of the year.

This isn't enough.  My army buddy and I talked over this past weekend and decided we needed to work on our discipline and build a business in real estate investing in a serious way.  Today is the first day where serious effort and changes to bring about a better life for both of ourselves and everyone around us begins.

I am going to outline my entire process, my efforts, my business goings-on, and everything else I think is relevant here.  Failure isn't an option I can put up with any longer.

This first entry is the gateway to the start of it all.

Welcome aboard.