A funny thing happens when you nearly drown — you start to think about what you really want to do with your life. You lose patience with the obstacles holding you back. Like the 9-to-5 grind, a whopping 2 weeks’ vacation per year, and never-quite-enough money to pay the bills each month, much less for any of the extras that make life real special.
It was 2001 and I was on a raft with some friends on the Ganges River in India, crashing through Class 5 rapids when I suddenly found myself overboard and underwater — and without much breath left.
A near death experience does wonders for your life. When I finally surfaced and stopped choking, I looked to the raft in the distance and saw my friends laughing at me. For them, this had been an amusing spectacle. For me, it was a new beginning.
I knew the time had come to stop just day-dreaming, and finally become the entrepreneur I always wanted to be. In the past, it seemed that the time wasn’t quite right. On that day I realized the time would never be exactly quite right. It was just up to me to actually make it happen.
And that’s just what I did!
I ran out, quit my job, and fell flat on my face a few months later. Teetering on the edge of financial ruin, once again my friends were laughing. But this time they tried to hide it behind a facade of polite concern. But I knew they were thinking. “We knew he’d never make it. He should have kept his good job while he had it.”
But that near-death experience had changed me. And I kept at it.
After flipping my first property for a handsome profit, I went and flipped another one. Then again. Then again. And then again.
My business and lifestyle took off and I’ve never looked back. Now my old friends aren’t laughing anymore.
Yes, one deal can change it all.
Since then I’ve been featured by CNBC, Kiplinger’s Magazine, HousingWire, The Washington Post, The Washington Examiner, Financial Lifeline Radio, numerous cable networks, and The Scotsman Guide, among others.
Success brings its own breed of problems. You want to be able to keep your business running without having it interfere with your vacations and time with family. But that was a problem easily solved by real estate wholesaling as well.
For fun, I raced a friend to see who can be the first to visit 100 different countries. I hit that goal and continue to travel as I’m forever passionate about it.
I figured out how to structure my real estate wholesaling business so that I can operate remotely from anywhere in the world and no one even knows I’m gone.
Sure enough, people started asking me “How do you do it?” and “Can you show me how?”
The truth is there have been ups and downs, I’ve made mistakes, and have had my share of frustrations and setbacks, as well as my share of growth and dizzying success. But that all helped me figure it out correctly.
With teaching others now my mission, I’ve helped hundreds of average people to replace their income, quit their jobs, and turn full-time to real estate investing. It may sound corny, but I think of this as saving lives — saving them from debt, isolation from family, income & lifestyle limitations, and sheer boredom!