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- Sep 10, 2013
- 154
- 210
Hello everyone. I'm happy to be here with you all. I must say this is probably the best internet forum I've seen in a long time. There aren't just people here with millionaire aspiration; there are people who have actually done it. This is my first post, so I'll do my introduction first and then get into my Fastlane plan.
My story is a lot more common than I initially thought: son of immigrants who came to this country wanting better for their children but believe that the typical slowlane life is the one and only way to do it. For the majority of my life, my parents pushed me towards the path of medicine. I went along with that because of course a good son should always do what their parents say no matter what (/sarcasm). But I remember one day during my junior year of high school, my anatomy and physiology teacher invited a physician to speak to our class. Something about this guy jumped out at me and greatly bothered me. He was an Asian man in his 40's. He was a doctor so that meant his income was at least better than average. But there was something about the way he spoke. His voice was extremely monotone. He didn't really have a whole lot of energy in his demeanor. After he gave his presentation about his career, we had time to ask him questions. I immediately knew what I wanted to ask him. I raised my hand and said "What made you want to become a doctor?" His response: "Well it was something my parents wanted to do when they came to this country". I had essentially seen my future and that was the moment where I started to think differently.
With every year that passed, I just knew that I didn't want that life. I never chose it; my parents did. When I got to college, I was struggling greatly both academically and emotionally. I knew in my heart I was wasting my time and energy pursuing something that I truly had no desire to do. I went from being an honor student in high school to being on academic probation in college. My parents being who they are felt like they knew best and weren't going to change their mentality. So after an up and down journey and much soul searching, I got to the point in 2013 where I was done. I accepted three crucial things which then resulted in making major change in the direction of my future:
1. My parents (like most people) just are who they are. They will always have this belief in the standard "get rich slow" and "play it safe" mentality. I don't need to have arguments with them to try and see things my way.
2. No one can live life for me. They may have a career path they want me to go down or a person they want me to marry or whatever else. But at the end of the day, I would be the one who has to put myself through it. So why waste my youth and energy trying to live out someone else's dream?
3. Time is more on my side than I think. I just turned 25 this past weekend. Yeah, there have many some wasted years after high school just floating around with the pre-med thing, but it's not impossible to think that if I start now that I could be on a path to allow me to retire by 35 or sooner.
After about 23 years of living life under the instruction of others, I broke out of that. Like completely. I essentially majored in every major available in the science department to find something I could get into that would still make them happy. That wasn't going to work. Just wasted more time. I knew that I was at that point where I had to either do what made me happy or made them happy. There was no more middle ground at this point. I Didn't drop out of school, but changed my major to a business related field. I figured I had been in school for so long I might as well finish. Not surprisingly, my parents weren't thrilled that I wasn't playing it safe anymore. School is everything to them. If you don't get a degree in a medically related field, you're setting yourself up for failure according to them. I didn't care. Maybe I was just going through my rebellious phase at a later age. But I was tired of being depressed and close to suicide because I was doing something I knew in my mind and in my heart I wasn't meant to do.
I had done step one: break free from the old mentality. Good. But, I was in a weird place. I knew where I didn't want to be, but I didn't know where I actually did want to be. Keep in mind, I was essentially driven into one mindset and one area my whole life. It was medicine or bust. Seriously, I never had those times as a kid where I got to explore who I was as a person and think about the possibilities life had. That decision was made for me.
So I kind of went through life as usual while looking for something to do with my life. Through a chance meeting, I ended up meeting a guy at my job who was a "real estate investor" (I used quotes for a reason you'll see in a sec). He gave me his card and told me that if I was looking to learn to make some extra money to give him a call. Well, being a college kid with a commissioned sales job that was starting to dry up and who was trying to find himself, the prospect of learning real estate was appealing.
I called the guy up and he explained a bit about what he did. He wholesaled houses. As he explained it, it was the way to become a real estate investor without having cash or credit. "Wow! This is what I was meant to do" I thought. It seemed amazing. He directed me to videos and articles by a few of the top wholesaling gurus out there who made it sound so easy. I asked him if he would take me on as a mentor and he agreed. We'd work together and do a 50/50 split of any deal we did together. Based on how big some of the wholesaling checks could be, I was excited. Like most gurus, he did a great job of hyping it up even going as far as to all but guarantee that I'd make $10,000 in the next 30 days. Didn't happen. I could make a an entirely different thread about my wholesaling journey, but I'll keep it brief. I didn't make any money in the first month, or the second, or the third, or the fourth. Even worse was the fact that this mentor was about as absent as you could get. He took a trip out of town for two weeks even though he told me we'd get together and work side by side. Nope. In fact, as the months went by without me getting a deal done, he became harder and harder to reach. He eventually disappeared. Interestingly enough, he linked me to his blog that he was going to chronicle his wholesaling journey with in an earlier email. This guy wasn't doing 5-10 deals a month like he claimed he was. As it turns out, he had just done his first deal when I met him and agreed to be his student. He actually managed to get two other people to sign up as his students as well.
But something weird happened during that time. I began to change. Despite the many, many, many failures and 100% guaranteed deals that fell through, I kept going. I had never had this level of determination or drive in my life. Maybe it's cause I knew that I couldn't go back to my old life and path. That persistence paid off. About six months into, I got my first wholesale deal done. It felt amazing. The check was for $2,000 which many actual real estate investors would consider small. But that was at the time the largest sum of money I had ever gotten at once. I couldn't believe it. I kept going. I saw many of the same struggles as before. But the next check came four months later. Still a long time, but I rationalized it as being shorter than the first one. This one for $2,000 again. I kept going. The next check was for $2,100 and came the following month. A fundamental change had happened in me. I saw the insane amount of determination and drive and ambition I had for something I knew nothing about. I was a member for a short while over at the Bigger Pockets forum and I remember in one thread an experienced wholesaler mentioned how there was a sweeping wholesaling craze initiated by gurus that was causing the market to be flooded by a wave of individuals who do things the wrong way and send out bad deals. By his estimation, maybe less than 10% of people who try wholesaling ever actually get a deal done. It may have been an arbitrary number, but his thinking wasn't far off. Here I was with three deals in 7 months. That felt pretty good.
Somewhere right after I got that third deal done, I stumbled upon The Millionaire Fastlane . I was intrigued by the preview chapters and went ahead and got the whole book. I was amazed at the insight. It's like everything I felt in the back of my mind came to the forefront. I knew fundamentally that "get rich slow" couldn't be the only way. I read and re-read the book and fundamentally changed how I view life. This is where things got interesting. I had to look at my current business venture differently as well using the CENTS principle
Need: the target market in wholesaling are real estate investors who are looking for houses to make money from. If I look at it honestly, I couldn't really say they were the ones who had a need. If anything, the eventual renters and homeowners they'd be selling to had a need. Whether or not these investors actually needed to get a houses from me was debatable.
Entry: as I mentioned earlier about the guru craze, everyone mow believes they can get into it without cash or credit. Of course everyone has to start somewhere. The problem is that if you've ever read a wholesaling course by any of these gururs, they teach you to a$$ yourself off as an expert when you talk to homeowners and potential buyers. You're now left with a market filled with people doing things the wrong way to make a quick buck and therefore giving every other wholesaler a bad name. I've actually met some buyers who said they won't buy from wholesalers because of bad experiences with bad deals.
Control: absolutely none lol. I can't tell you how many deals Were pretty much locked in at didn't happen. I kid you not. I actually took the time to look back at how many deals looked like they were going to happen. A total 11 deals with a potential total of over $50,000. Yeah, you can't control whether or not the siblings who inherited a house will fight among themselves and decide not to sell or that a buyer will submit paperwork and a deposit but then disappear off the face of the earth (there was a whole lot more life this).
Scale: wholesaling is essentially a commissioned sales job. If you don't do a deal, you don't make money. There's no passive income unless you go the guru path and try to outsource your work to students for a 505/50 split and call it mentoring.
Time: similar to above. All of my time went into this for a times no money. Definitely not Fastlane.
And that brings me to today. I had to reluctantly move back home because the job I had at the time had major changes to management which resulted in lower wages. And it had been Three months since the last deal and I had what should've been a $30,000 deal disappear because of shady real estate agents. I was no longer able to afford the place I was staying in (that good ol' sidewalk, you're always one event away lol). I emphasize reluctantly because there has been nothing pressure and questions as to why I haven't graduated. My parents are starting to think something's wrong with me. It's kind of patronizing to be around people who you can tell don't really think too highly of you anymore. My feelings aren't hurt like they would've been a few years ago. It's just more of an annoyance. BUT, I do use it as more Fastlane fuel. Become as successful as I can as quickly as I can to get everyone off my back once and for all.
I'm a big believer that nothing in life happens on accident. Everything I've experienced has a purpose over the past two years has been especially important to where I am now. Real estate definitely wasn't my path, but it helped me cultivate a ferocious tenacity that will take me far moving forward. The job that I worked at for almost three years gave me a lot of knowledge in a specific niche that's going to help me in my current venture. And being back home will force me to prove to myself how seriously I take the fastlane mentality while surrounding by people still trying to hammer the slowlane back into me.
That was my intro. Long I know. If you read it cool. If not, just skip to my next post where I'll start my progress thread with my current Fastlane journey.
My story is a lot more common than I initially thought: son of immigrants who came to this country wanting better for their children but believe that the typical slowlane life is the one and only way to do it. For the majority of my life, my parents pushed me towards the path of medicine. I went along with that because of course a good son should always do what their parents say no matter what (/sarcasm). But I remember one day during my junior year of high school, my anatomy and physiology teacher invited a physician to speak to our class. Something about this guy jumped out at me and greatly bothered me. He was an Asian man in his 40's. He was a doctor so that meant his income was at least better than average. But there was something about the way he spoke. His voice was extremely monotone. He didn't really have a whole lot of energy in his demeanor. After he gave his presentation about his career, we had time to ask him questions. I immediately knew what I wanted to ask him. I raised my hand and said "What made you want to become a doctor?" His response: "Well it was something my parents wanted to do when they came to this country". I had essentially seen my future and that was the moment where I started to think differently.
With every year that passed, I just knew that I didn't want that life. I never chose it; my parents did. When I got to college, I was struggling greatly both academically and emotionally. I knew in my heart I was wasting my time and energy pursuing something that I truly had no desire to do. I went from being an honor student in high school to being on academic probation in college. My parents being who they are felt like they knew best and weren't going to change their mentality. So after an up and down journey and much soul searching, I got to the point in 2013 where I was done. I accepted three crucial things which then resulted in making major change in the direction of my future:
1. My parents (like most people) just are who they are. They will always have this belief in the standard "get rich slow" and "play it safe" mentality. I don't need to have arguments with them to try and see things my way.
2. No one can live life for me. They may have a career path they want me to go down or a person they want me to marry or whatever else. But at the end of the day, I would be the one who has to put myself through it. So why waste my youth and energy trying to live out someone else's dream?
3. Time is more on my side than I think. I just turned 25 this past weekend. Yeah, there have many some wasted years after high school just floating around with the pre-med thing, but it's not impossible to think that if I start now that I could be on a path to allow me to retire by 35 or sooner.
After about 23 years of living life under the instruction of others, I broke out of that. Like completely. I essentially majored in every major available in the science department to find something I could get into that would still make them happy. That wasn't going to work. Just wasted more time. I knew that I was at that point where I had to either do what made me happy or made them happy. There was no more middle ground at this point. I Didn't drop out of school, but changed my major to a business related field. I figured I had been in school for so long I might as well finish. Not surprisingly, my parents weren't thrilled that I wasn't playing it safe anymore. School is everything to them. If you don't get a degree in a medically related field, you're setting yourself up for failure according to them. I didn't care. Maybe I was just going through my rebellious phase at a later age. But I was tired of being depressed and close to suicide because I was doing something I knew in my mind and in my heart I wasn't meant to do.
I had done step one: break free from the old mentality. Good. But, I was in a weird place. I knew where I didn't want to be, but I didn't know where I actually did want to be. Keep in mind, I was essentially driven into one mindset and one area my whole life. It was medicine or bust. Seriously, I never had those times as a kid where I got to explore who I was as a person and think about the possibilities life had. That decision was made for me.
So I kind of went through life as usual while looking for something to do with my life. Through a chance meeting, I ended up meeting a guy at my job who was a "real estate investor" (I used quotes for a reason you'll see in a sec). He gave me his card and told me that if I was looking to learn to make some extra money to give him a call. Well, being a college kid with a commissioned sales job that was starting to dry up and who was trying to find himself, the prospect of learning real estate was appealing.
I called the guy up and he explained a bit about what he did. He wholesaled houses. As he explained it, it was the way to become a real estate investor without having cash or credit. "Wow! This is what I was meant to do" I thought. It seemed amazing. He directed me to videos and articles by a few of the top wholesaling gurus out there who made it sound so easy. I asked him if he would take me on as a mentor and he agreed. We'd work together and do a 50/50 split of any deal we did together. Based on how big some of the wholesaling checks could be, I was excited. Like most gurus, he did a great job of hyping it up even going as far as to all but guarantee that I'd make $10,000 in the next 30 days. Didn't happen. I could make a an entirely different thread about my wholesaling journey, but I'll keep it brief. I didn't make any money in the first month, or the second, or the third, or the fourth. Even worse was the fact that this mentor was about as absent as you could get. He took a trip out of town for two weeks even though he told me we'd get together and work side by side. Nope. In fact, as the months went by without me getting a deal done, he became harder and harder to reach. He eventually disappeared. Interestingly enough, he linked me to his blog that he was going to chronicle his wholesaling journey with in an earlier email. This guy wasn't doing 5-10 deals a month like he claimed he was. As it turns out, he had just done his first deal when I met him and agreed to be his student. He actually managed to get two other people to sign up as his students as well.
But something weird happened during that time. I began to change. Despite the many, many, many failures and 100% guaranteed deals that fell through, I kept going. I had never had this level of determination or drive in my life. Maybe it's cause I knew that I couldn't go back to my old life and path. That persistence paid off. About six months into, I got my first wholesale deal done. It felt amazing. The check was for $2,000 which many actual real estate investors would consider small. But that was at the time the largest sum of money I had ever gotten at once. I couldn't believe it. I kept going. I saw many of the same struggles as before. But the next check came four months later. Still a long time, but I rationalized it as being shorter than the first one. This one for $2,000 again. I kept going. The next check was for $2,100 and came the following month. A fundamental change had happened in me. I saw the insane amount of determination and drive and ambition I had for something I knew nothing about. I was a member for a short while over at the Bigger Pockets forum and I remember in one thread an experienced wholesaler mentioned how there was a sweeping wholesaling craze initiated by gurus that was causing the market to be flooded by a wave of individuals who do things the wrong way and send out bad deals. By his estimation, maybe less than 10% of people who try wholesaling ever actually get a deal done. It may have been an arbitrary number, but his thinking wasn't far off. Here I was with three deals in 7 months. That felt pretty good.
Somewhere right after I got that third deal done, I stumbled upon The Millionaire Fastlane . I was intrigued by the preview chapters and went ahead and got the whole book. I was amazed at the insight. It's like everything I felt in the back of my mind came to the forefront. I knew fundamentally that "get rich slow" couldn't be the only way. I read and re-read the book and fundamentally changed how I view life. This is where things got interesting. I had to look at my current business venture differently as well using the CENTS principle
Need: the target market in wholesaling are real estate investors who are looking for houses to make money from. If I look at it honestly, I couldn't really say they were the ones who had a need. If anything, the eventual renters and homeowners they'd be selling to had a need. Whether or not these investors actually needed to get a houses from me was debatable.
Entry: as I mentioned earlier about the guru craze, everyone mow believes they can get into it without cash or credit. Of course everyone has to start somewhere. The problem is that if you've ever read a wholesaling course by any of these gururs, they teach you to a$$ yourself off as an expert when you talk to homeowners and potential buyers. You're now left with a market filled with people doing things the wrong way to make a quick buck and therefore giving every other wholesaler a bad name. I've actually met some buyers who said they won't buy from wholesalers because of bad experiences with bad deals.
Control: absolutely none lol. I can't tell you how many deals Were pretty much locked in at didn't happen. I kid you not. I actually took the time to look back at how many deals looked like they were going to happen. A total 11 deals with a potential total of over $50,000. Yeah, you can't control whether or not the siblings who inherited a house will fight among themselves and decide not to sell or that a buyer will submit paperwork and a deposit but then disappear off the face of the earth (there was a whole lot more life this).
Scale: wholesaling is essentially a commissioned sales job. If you don't do a deal, you don't make money. There's no passive income unless you go the guru path and try to outsource your work to students for a 505/50 split and call it mentoring.
Time: similar to above. All of my time went into this for a times no money. Definitely not Fastlane.
And that brings me to today. I had to reluctantly move back home because the job I had at the time had major changes to management which resulted in lower wages. And it had been Three months since the last deal and I had what should've been a $30,000 deal disappear because of shady real estate agents. I was no longer able to afford the place I was staying in (that good ol' sidewalk, you're always one event away lol). I emphasize reluctantly because there has been nothing pressure and questions as to why I haven't graduated. My parents are starting to think something's wrong with me. It's kind of patronizing to be around people who you can tell don't really think too highly of you anymore. My feelings aren't hurt like they would've been a few years ago. It's just more of an annoyance. BUT, I do use it as more Fastlane fuel. Become as successful as I can as quickly as I can to get everyone off my back once and for all.
I'm a big believer that nothing in life happens on accident. Everything I've experienced has a purpose over the past two years has been especially important to where I am now. Real estate definitely wasn't my path, but it helped me cultivate a ferocious tenacity that will take me far moving forward. The job that I worked at for almost three years gave me a lot of knowledge in a specific niche that's going to help me in my current venture. And being back home will force me to prove to myself how seriously I take the fastlane mentality while surrounding by people still trying to hammer the slowlane back into me.
That was my intro. Long I know. If you read it cool. If not, just skip to my next post where I'll start my progress thread with my current Fastlane journey.
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