BLM

You’re not going to get rich off buying a rental house or two. Generally speaking real estate is a slow burn towards financial freedom…especially if it’s your primary vehicle towards making it. It’s different if you’re just diversifying your wealth by investing in some real estate. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. You can get lucky with timing once in a while and catch the market just right. Doesn’t happen with a lot of frequency tho. We had the 08-09 crash that created opportunities and then we had 2020 inflation of assets while rates stayed stupid low. Those events were 11-12 yrs apart. Not saying don’t invest in RE, but consider all options to make sure it’s the best.

I sound like a broken record with this but go find a construction services business that has been around for a long time but doesn’t have an exit strategy. Right now is one of the best times in history to execute this plan due to so many boomers leaving the trades.

Like others have stated it won’t be easy but you should have an idea of this if you’re heading down this path.

Be prepared for it to take time to become successful. Too many ppl looking to hurry up and make money. Take out only what u need to live and reinvest the rest for as long as you can stand it. There’s a direct correlation between delayed gratification and how much you can scale and hire others to do what you’re not good at. My partner and I went 7-8 yrs of reinvesting and it allowed us to scale up with amazing ppl. We’re finishing yr 9 now and our people can run the businesses for the most part. I think 10 yrs is a pretty good timeframe to lock into your mind for how long it’ll take to get to cruise control. That also depends on how big you want to grow and how well you’re able to delegate.

Make quick decisions, always set the tone with a sense of urgency, know how to sell and be good at attracting talent. Of course it would be best if you already have these skills but if not they’re learnable to certain extent.

Almost forgot…my attitude toward leaving a career job is you can always go back and get another one of those if this doesn’t work out. It’s not that big a deal. Sack up and make it happen. If you can’t get over this then you’re likely a massive overthinker and not meant to be running your own company.

My goal has been $100k per month net personal cash flow. Got pretty close and then we sold some companies. I can tell you that I feel better with the personal monthly cash flow than I do with a large investment portfolio.

We stayed in Whitefish for 10days in July. Glacier was super cool. Whitefish is a cool little town to check out. Under the big sky music festival was really cool too. We fished the Flathead river and it was fine.

I liked the Madison River trip I took a couple yrs ago the most with respect to fishing. We were southwest of Bozeman…just south of Ennis. Scenery was unbelievable there with the big sky views. You don’t get those views on Flathead or the snake.

BC…what’s your return percentage on money invested for the companies you’ve sold?

I’m in similar boat. Started a biz in 2016, started 2nd biz in 2017 (had to fire a partner and dissolve), started 3rd biz in 2018, started 4th biz in 2022 and started 5th biz in 2023. We’re selling 1st and 3rd for a really big return. More than I ever thought I’d have. Cool to hear other similar stories.

Business is the best way to get ahead. I tell young ppl all the time. Most folks are just too scared or been brainwashed their whole lives by the education>get a job>save your $ advice from their friends and family. It’s not easy but investing in yourself is the most rewarding thing you can do from a career/financial achievement standpoint.

Got bit by one on the outside of my calf when I was in high school. Itched for a few days and got more and more red/irritated. It started swelling so we went to get it checked out. Had to go on antibiotics for a while. It swelled up the size of a baseball and the nasty looking stuff would come out of it. I got to miss a couple weeks of two a days for football which was a nice consolation prize.

Wild Health

Got an email today that I was drawn! Can’t wait. Never deer hunted in KS.

I started a construction subcontracting business in 2016 with a partner. We had a lot of relationships we built on the front end of our careers that helped us find early success. We cashed some retirement funds and put $10k each into an account to get it going…zero debt then and to this day we’ve self funded all growth. Never really had any doubts. We both always wanted to do it and had the attitude that if it didn’t work we could always go back out in the market to get an another good “career” job pretty easily.

We were profitable from the start. We weren’t killing it early on but we were making money and taking care of our families. We replaced our salaries within the first year or so. Our attitude has always been to scale the company to a size where we can attract great talent. This tends to create a snowball effect when you combine it with great incentives and great culture. We ended up separating that business into 2 companies and we now have roughly 120 employees between them. We now have offices in 3 cities across the southeast. All operational duties have been assumed by our management teams so we have time to work on the businesses. This is allowing for even more growth as we can focus on strategic relationships.

There have been so many things we’ve learned along the way and so many people that have been instrumental in our growth and success. You just have to rip that bandaid off and go for it. Nothing is ever going to have you 100% prepared for the journey. You need to be humble, grateful, determined, hard headed, confident, disciplined, self motivated, self aware, thick skinned, have a short memory and be a problem solver…and a lot more.

We’re about to sale those 2 companies for a large number. Along the way we started 2 other businesses in the construction realm and have plans to start/acquire more. We’ve discovered our skill set is being entrepreneurial and starting companies. I love what I do now more than anything I’ve ever done…I’ll never fully retire.

You need to be patient…do not rush the process. It’ll also be worth it in the long run to delay gratification once you start making good money. Don’t immediately let that lifestyle creep set in. Take care of your people and be creative with ways to incentivize them. Constantly be thinking about how to train your people and quickly delegate tasks so you don’t become the bottleneck. Hire the best people possible at each rung of growth. You’ll really regret those cheap or quick fix hires. They never work out and will be twice as costly as just hiring the right person the first time.

One last nugget…you can start a company and have a nice little lifestyle business. It’ll afford you the opportunity to make really good money, have a 2nd home and travel to really cool places. If you decide to grow it a little bigger than that you need to be prepared to take it all the way to scale. It’s because in between small and large is no man’s land…you’re too big to compete with the small guys and too small to compete with the really big ones. Don’t take that decision lightly. This is where poor capital allocation and under capitalization can put you out of business.

Sorry for the wall of text. I love talking about this stuff!

I’ve done a couple of 3day fasts in the last 3 months. It’s really interesting how your body reacts. I could feel stomach grumbling but not really due to hunger…it really reset my desire for crappy food and cut my down on how much I can intake for the first little while back into eating. I think it’s a great thing to do almost like a tune up for your vehicle. Definitely be careful what you eat coming off the fast. I went right back into normal food on my first one and it wasn’t the best. I took it easier on the 2nd one I just finished and it was a better transition. I was drinking one 24oz container of water with LMNT each day as I was also continuing my workout routine. I plan to do it every quarter and after the next one I’m going to push it up to 5 days. Kind of looking forward to it. As another poster stated it’s really a great test of discipline.