But at the end of the
day, I think everybody wants control of their own financial future.
This is a common story where people work their whole lives.
Somewhere.
The company gets sold, it merges, it shuts down.
They lose a big contract, whatever it is.
And all of a sudden you're like, Wow, I just
I put my heart and soul into this company.
And now, you know, I get treated like acts.
We talk a lot about getting out of that that rat race.
Right.
But if you're in that situation where you have a W-2 job,
understand, there's
there's a couple of different leverage opportunities you can take from there.
Right.
When you go to a bank
to apply for a mortgage to buy a rental property, for example,
they will look at you very differently because you have a job that's consistent.
You've been there for years.
You have a steady income.
You're gold to that bank, right?
As opposed to somebody like me.
I'm unemployed. I don't have a job.
They're going to look at me very different.
What you're saying is when you have a W-2
and you have income coming in, it's easier to get finance.
Right, because it's actually hard even for me,
like, you know, because I don't really I don't have a paycheck coming in.
You know, we're living off our passive income.
So that's a very, very interesting point. Yeah.
So I realized I needed to leverage that.
Right? So that's one thing.
If you if you're a viewer out there and you're trying to figure out,
how do I do this, how do I invest in real estate or start my own business?
How do I get that capital to start?
You know, having a W-2 job provide you that opportunity
by going to the bank and getting a loan for your business or for real estate.
The other thing, it allows for
is if you're working for a company and you have a41k, right,
chances are you can borrow your own money out of that 41k
as seed capital to invest in real estate or to start your own business.
Right.
So there are two very good ways that even if you have a W-2 job,
you can leverage that to build yourself higher.
Yeah.
And a lot of times those employers will match that, for one.
So you put money and they put money in and it can grow exponentially.
And then, yeah, Tony's right.
You can basically you can do all kinds of stuff.
But why did you choose real estate?
I actually leveraged my condo.
I had purchased a condo I was living in and I took out
I refinanced it to take out some equity to purchase my first quad.
Right. For unit building.
It wasn't the best building.
I probably wouldn't purchase it today, but I still owned that single day
and I did it.
I still own that building.
It's still cash flowing very nicely for me.
Ended up allowing me to leverage it and go into building.
So I ended up building a couple of spec
homes, right, that I then sold and cash flowed from.
And so yeah, it really started there.
And I'm not special, I'm not real smart.
I'm just, you know, like anybody else out there
trying to figure this out and make a better life for myself.
Yeah.
Real quickly, what did you buy the four plex for the quad?
I bought it for 301. What is it worth today?
Eight.
Okay, so half a million bucks there? Yeah.
Not to mention the cash flow, right.
Which is really what you are after. That's really what it is.
Yeah, because that's what I'm living off of.
I'm not living off of my equity.
It's great to see these these properties appreciate in value.
But you could you could sell that.
You can scoop that equity.
And that is the point here. Or refinance.
Yes, your tenant is paying down your mortgage for you.
Your tenants, your for tenants as long as you keep them for.
Yeah. They're paying your mortgage, right? Yeah.
And that is the model.
It's rinse and repeat.
Once you buy your first one and you get over that initial hump and any fear.
And if they're exactly right.
Well, a lot of us have been there. Right.
We have that fear going into our signing, the purchase and sale, managing tenants,
whatever it is, property managers, once you get over that initially,
the others are just like, you know, pretty easy.
Yeah. Yeah.
And it's just like anything that you don't know and tell you, you.
Just got to do.
It. Yeah. Okay, then.
Okay, so you start doing some specs and then you started doing what else?
So 2008.
Yep. Happened, right.
Fortunately, I had sold off my spec homes
and I was looking at the market trying to understand what was going on.
And you know, long story short, I was very fortunate.
I'd like to say I was very smart.
But in hindsight, I think it was more luck than smarts.
I ended up buying a ton of bank owned foreclosed properties.
Right. And so here I was.
And again, going back to the W2 job, I was in a position
where I was still working my corporate job at at that point, and
I'm buying foreclosed homes that were vacant.
I'm going in as a W2 employee.
I can show that I have current income through my job.
They're not worried about that property that foreclosed property,
not cash flowing, because I have my income
to be able to support the payments on that property.
Right.
So that allowed me to buy these fantastic properties
that were foreclosed on, $0.50 on the dollar.
Right.
And be able to go in remodel and then rent out and cash flow once again.
Yeah, right.
So so now let's fast forward.
At what point did you say, okay, I'm done with.
Corporate, I had enough rental property where I was like,
these properties easily pay my expenses
and I had to make a choice.
Did I want to go down that real estate
route or did I want to go down the corporate route?
And for me, I chose the real estate route
because it provided me so much more freedom in my life.
Well, 8 hours a day plus, right? Absolutely.
I mean, now you could replace it with what you want.
Though, apps.
And so when I made that decision and I, I left the corporate environment,
which was a difficult decision to to make because that was good money.
I had been working a fair amount of time and I was making good money.
So it wasn't like it was done, you know, a nonchalantly, right?
It was with a lot of thought, but I never regret it.