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mcpretelin

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Jun 1, 2020
16
22
Thousand Oaks, CA
Hi everyone, I am Marco Clark Pretelin. Thanks for reading my intro!

I'll try to keep my story concise and pertinent. A few years ago a friend recommended I read TMF , so I did and it helped my confused mind a lot. At the time, I was about a year into recovery from my traumatic brain injury in 2014 where I broke my neck falling over my bike on the sidewalk. Before the accident I had worked countless barista jobs, security guard work, production assistant, bus boy/dishwasher, host, construction, sears sales job, some food places, and maybe more my brain's blocked out. After the accident, a friend suggested I enroll in massage school, so after a year at A2Z in Thousand Oaks, CA, and a failed first state test, I passed the second try and became licensed. I worked not for a company but instead tried to implement what I could from TMF . Although I was (and still am) tied to temporal prostitution, sacrificing my time to go and make money, I have been able to earn much more per hour by working for myself. All the clients I have are my own and I can make the money directly. It was very satisfying at first, and I even saved up a few thousand $ to go on vacation to Italy, which had been a bucket list dream, and well...since I almost did kick the bucket, it was the first to cross off as soon as possible.

I still work as a private massage therapist and it accounts for some of my income, but most of my money I make working for my dad and his construction business. He is a carpenter and we do kitchens, baths, custom cabinetry out of his garage, etc. We also do electrical, plumbing, tile, almost everything ourselves. I have learned a TON with him and honestly, it's the reason that ever since I was young I wanted to be an architect. When I got together with my girlfriend in 2017, she encouraged me to follow my dream and finish school. Since then I have completed almost all courses necessary to transfer, with a focus on Architecture from Ventura Community College.

I work most days a week, sometimes weekends too, or some massages. In order to pay for half the rent of a two bedroom apartment in Camarillo, CA, I have to work all month. Dad pays me 200$ a day which is better than minimum so I'm barely help afloat. Massage income too, I can make a great hourly, but barely any hours, and still tied to my work. I have to leave my dog and girlfriend on the already limited weekend time we have to go massage some dude? C'mon. And my week? Again, I'm gone and my dog has to hold his pee all day. My roommate won't take him out even tho he's collecting unemployment on top of BHA from the government because he's an ex Marine going to school now. I get frustrated because I often see many lazy people around me seemingly rewarded for their lack of effort, and I meanwhile put in a lot of work daily, and for the same or less pay. (Unrelated, but again I have still not received my pandemic aid $). The point is, I am so sick of relying on anyone else, my dad, the govt, my roommate, etc. All I want is for my hard work to be properly channeled so that I can build a financial foundation to start a family. I don't want money to ruin a marriage or fatherhood. I don't want to stress about my car breaking down. I also don't want to be tied to a life at a desk, working as an architect but discovering it's not my life dream but instead nightmare.

I have been reading Unscripted aloud to my girlfriend in the mornings and we are both passionate hard workers. She is so smart and an extremely talented artist. I also encouraged her to signup here. She's a personal trainer who worked for a gym but I helped her start her own private clients. She's also going back to school, currently at CSUN for kinesiology to become a physical therapist. After just a few days of listening, she and I are both having second thoughts about our future plans. I intended to apply to USC hoping to take advantage of their free tuition program. We intend to stay together. I am so thankful that she's on board, open minded and supportive of us working together, learning more and planning our best future.

TLDR;
27 male mid-college idk wtf to do lol
working working working
 
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Kid

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Mar 1, 2016
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Maybe not the what you're looking for but did you consider doing google ads for other construction businesses.
It could be better for you since you can find common ground with other construction business owner since you know it from inside.
 
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mcpretelin

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
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Jun 1, 2020
16
22
Thousand Oaks, CA
Maybe not the what you're looking for but did you consider doing google ads for other construction businesses.
It could be better for you since you can find common ground with other construction business owner since you know it from inside.

Thanks for the idea, no I had not considered that before. I'm not at all familiar with that territory but I'm always open to learning!
 

mcpretelin

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
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Jun 1, 2020
16
22
Thousand Oaks, CA
Update*

It’s been 3 years and in some ways, we’ve made a lot of progress! In other ways, we’re still struggling to really get started right.
My girl and I are still together and looking to tie the knot perhaps next year! We've begun flipping homes, myself becoming a licensed contractor and her becoming a licensed real estate agent.

In 2020 Covid hit and when I wrote my intro post I was considering college. We were listening to the bigger pockets podcasts and reading this forum. I can’t believe it’s been this long already! Sadly, I’m not at 1m. However, here’s been our journey briefly…we had conversations with my girlfriend’s uncle who is an investor himself. We wanted to get his advice and guidance and had no clue it would lead to him wanting to invest in us. Rentals were our primary interest, but he felt that he didn’t want his money tied up for long and that by flipping, we could earn $ faster and put my construction skills to use.

In the beginning I wasn’t a licensed contractor and had no crews. My girlfriend wasn’t our agent and we were being mentored by a friend of her dad’s. A supposed expert. I didn’t get the vibe he had our best interest at heart, but he helped us buy and sell our first project. It took waaay longer than expected. I wanted to do a quick and simple project, it being my first time and all. Plus i was used to working w ny dad. Not being the boss. So here we were, October 2020 in escrow on a fixer in our hometown. My girlfriend and I worked too hard on that one! We demoed the chimney ourselves, relocated a bathroom, and formed our shower concrete curb on New Year’s Eve. It was full of memories and mistakes. For example, after a few months in, the investors got caught up with the mentors idea to do an addition. We had originally agreed to keep it more simple and fast, but they felt (and convinced us) that it would be worth it. Ok so long story short, i drew the plans and contracted the work and got it done. 18 months after we moved in, we finally had sold our first flip! The mentor had priced the home too high in my opinion and after multiple price cuts and months on market we sold… for a very tiny profit. Our cut, my gf and i, was 40%, 20% each. We walked away with just under 25k each. To be honest, i was still happy because even though it was 18 months of hard work, i learned a ton and felt that it could be worse starting a new business.

Our next project showed me just how much worse… we bought the next one just months before selling the first. We paid too much, skipped out on important fixes to save $, and failed to design things properly. We broke even, technically made 200$ after 8 months and 1.55m invested. So ya I’m still traumatized by that one! However, that home was was also priced high, this time by a new mentor. We’d since parted ways with the first guy, and by the time we were ready to sell that 2nd one, my gf and i had our licenses. She sold it with her new mentor, but it was very rough.

3rd times a charm! We did this one in 4mo, now at a 50% split, and profit was about 140k total. The 4th project we did even better, 12 week completion, 160k profit.

We live in southern California and these properties often times are not cheap to acquire as fixers, especially when we’re so selective with our area. Therefore our return is on the high is about 13-14%. We are working on 2 now, and plan to sell them this upcoming spring.

I’m so excited and proud of our progress. We were living in the flips for the first 3 years and only this year got a 1 br apartment. It’s been nice having a kitchen and not living in a demo zone, but we’d really rather be house hacking. In our area tho it’s so expensive we aren’t able to afford something yet. I feel that as far as we’ve come, I’ve still got caught up doing way too much work myself as a means of saving $, but losing out on time. In these 3 years I’ve gained a lot of experience, and our savings has grown a bit, but not nearly at a fast lane pace. So, if you got this far, thanks for following! Mainly this has been eye opening for myself to read my old posts and make myself write this update. I’ll definitely try to keep them coming more frequently, if only to hold myself accountable! Looking forward to refining my process by learning from all u guys!

Thanks @MJ DeMarco for this great place! :)
 

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