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Value/Post Ratio
76%
- Jan 30, 2012
- 655
- 497
I want to be painfully honest while writing this and tell you everything I am not first, very quickly. I am not a millionaire. Yet. I am not the owner of any type of exotic autos whose price tag could bankroll an entire third world country for a year. I am not a “Guru.” And last but not least I am not broke. But I feel like it sometimes.
I guess if I had to define me I would sum me up by saying that I am a man on a journey with too many damned paths in front of him. I have been self employed since 2004 (or self jobbed if you prefer) and I have been in and out of a few businesses that kept the bills paid but never brought in enough income to change my lifestyle. Most notably (oh I am not a professional writer either) I have owned about 6 rental houses, a mental health agency and a home health agency which I currently own and make a living at.
Now that I think about it I really could’ve entitled this “A Day Late and A Dollar Short” because that’s how 2 of these businesses were started and ended. OK real quick I got into real estate investing around 2002 just when mortgage loans were being given out like condoms at the health clinic and money back at closing was the waaaayyyyy…Thanks Carlton Sheets my credit wasn’t really that important to me. I was introduced to mental health through a mental health worker that was working with a client living in one of my rooming houses. The money she told me these agencies were making seemed un-be-lievable. Me being the paranoid dude that I am I met with a few agency owners, did my due diligence and confirmed what was told to me. Many of these guys were raking in upward 200k per month. Yes I said per month. Back then the hourly rate for the type of service I was going to offer was $54 an hour, per client and many of the providers had at least 200 clients (Medicaid) that were authorized 30 hours per week. Do the math. So I developed my policies and jumped in …Head first. Only to be stopped by the cold reality of “too good to be true” and it was.
Right after I jumped in little did I know that Medicaid decided they were tired of paying millions of dollars out to guys like the ones I knew just to have them show up at the BMW dealerships with bags full of cash. Blinging on the states tab was about to come to a screeching halt and many of them would later owe the state millions back, go to jail, or go into hiding. And there I was with a $1500 per month office lease (oh yeah I thought I was about to be balling) and insurances that were costing me another $700 per month. It stayed that way 10 months before I made a dime. And even when I did start to make money I was only grossing about $6,500 per week. Before expenses.
Eventually the state would regulate mental health so much that it would become too expensive to provide the service. They would pay millions of dollars to private contractors to audit agencies like mine so meticulously that in 90 percent of the audit findings they were requiring 30 day paybacks of 300k to 2 million dollars. Due in 30 days. You can guess that many of them didn’t have it. Fortunately I was not one of these because I figured if I did things correctly and offered a quality service the business would prosper, the state would be happy and we would live happily ever after. Not.
After 3 or four different state revisions to the service and dealing with applicants applying to my company that were infected by the thought process of many other corrupt and out of business agencies I decided it was time to pull the plug and do something different. Which was a lot more gratifying but I would soon learn riddled with some of the same headaches on the employee side of things.
The money that “I” invested into that first business came from a real estate deal that I put together with a 30 unit apartment complex that I technically owned for a day then sold to a couple in California (I live in NC) for a 180k profit. After I paid all the closing expenses and gave them some cash back at closing I wound up with about 127k for myself. Not bad for a property I owned for less than 24hours. But it took me a year to close this deal. This was really the second flip that I had done like this the first netted me 30k but these deals distorted my reality about how money could be made. You see that first and second real estate transaction made me want to make money in huge 6 figure chunks from then on. I believed that every transaction could and should bring in 6 figures. Little did I realize that that’s not how most business transactions work in the beginning, I had become blinded by my own ignorance.
My current business has taught me the value of patience, planning and marketing. Am I content where I am right now financially? HELL NO. But at least I understand why I am here. I am not tickled about dealing with a lot of employees either. Humans are unpredictable, which leads to unpredictable outcomes in business. What I do know is I had been so focused on hitting a home run every single swing that I forgot about how all the base hits would still get me home. But on a more consistent basis.
I now own a few good domains and some good ideas and my first goal is a pretty simple one, MAKE ONE DOLLAR. That’s a base hit for me, and it does something else. It implants the belief that if I can make one dollar from a product or service that I am selling on the Internet that proves to me that someone values what I am selling enough to spend his hard earned dollar on it. Which means to me that I have something of value that can be sold. The next step is simple. Find out how to reach a million more guys like him that find value in what I have to offer and convince them to buy it too.
I know it sounds simple but it took me 3 businesses, a totally destroyed credit score, 8 years and countless thousands of dollars to learn this truth. I never mentioned that 2 of my houses were foreclosed on because most of my money was locked in to the business with the big payoff that never happened.
The Millionaire Fastlane is my Rosetta Stone assisting me to see and understand money, as it is plentiful but abundantly accessible only to those willing to understand the laws of wealth. So if you are like me or like I was, I share my story only in hopes that you avoid a lot of the traps I walked in to. I am 41 years young and leave you with one piece of advice? Make a dollar first then duplicate, duplicate, duplicate.
I guess if I had to define me I would sum me up by saying that I am a man on a journey with too many damned paths in front of him. I have been self employed since 2004 (or self jobbed if you prefer) and I have been in and out of a few businesses that kept the bills paid but never brought in enough income to change my lifestyle. Most notably (oh I am not a professional writer either) I have owned about 6 rental houses, a mental health agency and a home health agency which I currently own and make a living at.
Now that I think about it I really could’ve entitled this “A Day Late and A Dollar Short” because that’s how 2 of these businesses were started and ended. OK real quick I got into real estate investing around 2002 just when mortgage loans were being given out like condoms at the health clinic and money back at closing was the waaaayyyyy…Thanks Carlton Sheets my credit wasn’t really that important to me. I was introduced to mental health through a mental health worker that was working with a client living in one of my rooming houses. The money she told me these agencies were making seemed un-be-lievable. Me being the paranoid dude that I am I met with a few agency owners, did my due diligence and confirmed what was told to me. Many of these guys were raking in upward 200k per month. Yes I said per month. Back then the hourly rate for the type of service I was going to offer was $54 an hour, per client and many of the providers had at least 200 clients (Medicaid) that were authorized 30 hours per week. Do the math. So I developed my policies and jumped in …Head first. Only to be stopped by the cold reality of “too good to be true” and it was.
Right after I jumped in little did I know that Medicaid decided they were tired of paying millions of dollars out to guys like the ones I knew just to have them show up at the BMW dealerships with bags full of cash. Blinging on the states tab was about to come to a screeching halt and many of them would later owe the state millions back, go to jail, or go into hiding. And there I was with a $1500 per month office lease (oh yeah I thought I was about to be balling) and insurances that were costing me another $700 per month. It stayed that way 10 months before I made a dime. And even when I did start to make money I was only grossing about $6,500 per week. Before expenses.
Eventually the state would regulate mental health so much that it would become too expensive to provide the service. They would pay millions of dollars to private contractors to audit agencies like mine so meticulously that in 90 percent of the audit findings they were requiring 30 day paybacks of 300k to 2 million dollars. Due in 30 days. You can guess that many of them didn’t have it. Fortunately I was not one of these because I figured if I did things correctly and offered a quality service the business would prosper, the state would be happy and we would live happily ever after. Not.
After 3 or four different state revisions to the service and dealing with applicants applying to my company that were infected by the thought process of many other corrupt and out of business agencies I decided it was time to pull the plug and do something different. Which was a lot more gratifying but I would soon learn riddled with some of the same headaches on the employee side of things.
The money that “I” invested into that first business came from a real estate deal that I put together with a 30 unit apartment complex that I technically owned for a day then sold to a couple in California (I live in NC) for a 180k profit. After I paid all the closing expenses and gave them some cash back at closing I wound up with about 127k for myself. Not bad for a property I owned for less than 24hours. But it took me a year to close this deal. This was really the second flip that I had done like this the first netted me 30k but these deals distorted my reality about how money could be made. You see that first and second real estate transaction made me want to make money in huge 6 figure chunks from then on. I believed that every transaction could and should bring in 6 figures. Little did I realize that that’s not how most business transactions work in the beginning, I had become blinded by my own ignorance.
My current business has taught me the value of patience, planning and marketing. Am I content where I am right now financially? HELL NO. But at least I understand why I am here. I am not tickled about dealing with a lot of employees either. Humans are unpredictable, which leads to unpredictable outcomes in business. What I do know is I had been so focused on hitting a home run every single swing that I forgot about how all the base hits would still get me home. But on a more consistent basis.
I now own a few good domains and some good ideas and my first goal is a pretty simple one, MAKE ONE DOLLAR. That’s a base hit for me, and it does something else. It implants the belief that if I can make one dollar from a product or service that I am selling on the Internet that proves to me that someone values what I am selling enough to spend his hard earned dollar on it. Which means to me that I have something of value that can be sold. The next step is simple. Find out how to reach a million more guys like him that find value in what I have to offer and convince them to buy it too.
I know it sounds simple but it took me 3 businesses, a totally destroyed credit score, 8 years and countless thousands of dollars to learn this truth. I never mentioned that 2 of my houses were foreclosed on because most of my money was locked in to the business with the big payoff that never happened.
The Millionaire Fastlane is my Rosetta Stone assisting me to see and understand money, as it is plentiful but abundantly accessible only to those willing to understand the laws of wealth. So if you are like me or like I was, I share my story only in hopes that you avoid a lot of the traps I walked in to. I am 41 years young and leave you with one piece of advice? Make a dollar first then duplicate, duplicate, duplicate.
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And in the spirit of full disclosure, I am not a millionaire (yet) either.
