The Day I Realized Making Tons of Cash Was Not Success
I never wanted to be successful or even own a home.
I didn't want kids, even though I didn't hate them, and didn't want to ever get married.
Things changed.
I have flipped hundreds of homes, dozens of multifamily, and built millions of square feet of commercial and retail. I live in a house worth more than most in my family had made in their entire career and only owe a tenth of its value on a mortgage. I have five kids ranging from 6 to 29 and am very much in love with my wife.
At one point I had 14 full time employees in the office and 6 supervisors in the field and was running dozens of jobs per month with hundreds of trades. I thought I was doing all this for my family. I was barely making it in time for every game and having to leave early from parties.
One time we went to Disney and I was on the phone the whole time. To the point of annoying others in lines.
That made me tons of cash.
It wasn't success.
What Actual Success Looks Like From the Inside
I sold it all and did nothing for a year.
I completely renovated my own home with my own hands and spent more time with my family than I had in years. Bike rides, surfing, park trips. I bought an RV and we traveled around. No phone calls. No supervisors to manage. No jobs bleeding into evenings and weekends.
It was awesome.
Then I got bored. And tired of watching people fail.
Even though I wasn't in business anymore people still had my cell number and would call for help. People wanting to sell me their homes was rough. There was no good way to pass them off to someone and know for sure nobody was going to get screwed. My whole life had been built around being the middle man making sure everyone didn't fight over dim stuff.
I Tried to Mentor. It Didn't Work.
I didn't have a program or a class or a way to charge people. I just knew several people who had begged me for years to teach them. I tried. They gave up. Most because this is hard.
I don't like clubs or programs that teach people house hacks and flipping. You can't put everything into a hundred books. I had no plans to make money off those people. I just wanted to have people I could go spend money with who didn't need to go into debt to do it.
It didn't work out that way.
Where I Am Now
I flip a few homes a year and consult for REITs and family trusts along with doing maybe one development a year.
I don't hustle anymore other than to chase down one of my kids as they get into my tools again. I don't need to milk money out of every interaction or seek angles. It's just something I do to cure my boredom and feel accomplished while adding to my legacy.
The problem solving and constant learning after 25 years has kept me fed and happy in a way that chasing deals never did.
That is a kind of success I didn't even know was possible.
I'll never spend all I have earned up to now anyway. But showing up for bike rides and not being on my phone at Disney is something I can actually feel good about at the end of the day.
What This Has to Do With You
Most people reading this are trying to build something in real estate.
The question I would ask you before you go any further is the same one I had to figure out the hard way.
What are you actually building it for.
Not the portfolio. Not the number. Your life. The version of your life that all of this work is supposed to eventually produce.
If you can write that down clearly in one paragraph you are ahead of most investors I have ever met. If you cannot you are building without a blueprint. And in construction that is the most expensive mistake you can make.
I don't mentor. But I wrote it all down.
Start at the End: A Real Estate Investor's Honest Guide to Building the Right Thing is available now on Amazon. If you have a question about anything in it I will answer it.
Ready to talk through your project or deal?
