Introduction.

A decade ago I was living in my mom’s basement with little to no prospects… doing things I didn’t like with people I didn’t like, and was also very much in debt.

Fast forward to today — I am happily married to my beautiful wife Brittany, have three beautiful kids, live in an incredible community, am in good health, and earn more than $100,000 each month through my private equity deals, residential and commercial real estate holdings, and businesses.

Most importantly, I have time freedom. I now spend my time with my family, building businesses, and helping others build their businesses.

Sometimes I wake up and can’t believe it. I am thankful every day for the last decade, the many mentors, coaches, and friends who have helped me get here, and the path it has put me and my family on.

In fact, I believe just this last decade will change my family’s trajectory forever. I don’t take this lightly. I will be the one person in my family who changes it forever.

The journey hasn’t been easy by any means, but absolutely worth every moment (the good and the bad).

By sharing my journey with you here, I trust you will learn from my many mistakes and then avoid them at all costs, speeding up your personal success journey.

“A dumb man makes the same mistake again and again. A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.”

Contrarian take: I think it’s way better to “win forward” than to “fail forward.” Having a strong mental fortitude and learning is important, but failing forward is not always necessary.

Avoiding losses is more valuable than stacking another win.

Chapter 1: Escaping Mediocrity and Victimhood.

After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a Finance degree in 2013, I got a job at Ernst & Young through my friend’s dad (thanks Steve!).

My day looked like this: Jump out of bed, exit my parent’s basement to walk a mile to the metro station, make the hour long trek to downtown Washington, DC — all so I could spend 10 hours with people I didn’t like and do work that I wasn’t trained for, and then metro back for an hour and walk home and go to sleep.

I lived for the weekend. I was the typical victim.

My mindset sucked. I complained about everything, blamed others, and went out of my way to find evidence for why life wasn’t going my way, which by the way is self-reinforcing and very self-damaging - don’t do this.

Usually I blamed the government or society at large. The system is set up against me rather than for me. I frankly got creative in making up flurries of excuses as to why I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of life. I even started gambling with the little money I did have at casinos hoping I could win it big one day and escape my life that way.

Then, one day I had enough. I decided to take control.

Taking Control.

I convinced my girlfriend (now wife) to make a move with me.

Washington, DC was too expensive (Brittany was living in a sunroom of an apartment with glass slider doors and me in my moms basement) and we saw limited upside by staying there, other than being comfortable.

So, we uprooted everything.

At 23 years old, I left my friends and family behind and relocated to Jacksonville, Florida — a city I had never been to, but a location where both me and Brittany could relocate to through Ernst & Young and still be employed.

Upon arrival, I was still depressed. I didn’t know anyone. I still didn’t enjoy the work I was doing. And I was immediately assigned to an audit job in Melborne, Florida, an area I didn’t want to be.

My version of “taking control” just landed me right back into working for someone else, just in a different location.

I realized that working W-2 jobs meant I had very little to no control of my future.

My managers were in control of my fate and they couldn’t care less about what I wanted. They have their own lives and their own goals. The company has their goals.

I’m just another piece of their puzzle that is easily replaceable. Another ant to be lit on fire (for you Hemingway fans).

So I immediately started searching for other opportunities, where at least I would enjoy the work I was doing.

“Don’t sit in your shit!” - this can become a habit, too.

Looking for work I would enjoy paid off and I hit the jackpot.

Due to my good grades and track record with stock market trading during college, I snagged (after 8 interviews) a competitive real estate investment banking job that would allow me to travel from Jacksonville to New York City - specifically 60 Wall Street at Deutsche Bank.

Over the next 8 months I had an incredible experience for ONE reason and ONE reason only: an incredible mentor named Jean.

Jean is a 25 year Wall-Street veteran who took me under his wing, saw something in me, and trained me up daily — for HOURS at a time. This one mentor changed my life.

He always had this funny saying: “You’re either the owner… or you’re owned.” I didn’t quite understand what he meant until a few years later.

Then, after underwriting literally BILLIONS of dollars of real estate deals for single family rental warehouses (don’t fall asleep yet) and small balance commercial properties, Jean and I found out that the Deutsche Bank CEO’s were indicted for a LIBOR scandal and the company had a pay freeze across the United States - which included bonuses (which were just about to be paid out).

This was funny to me because days earlier I was exiting 60 Wall Street and a protestor dressed as a giant rat was yelling at me through a megaphone after a long-day of work where I could barely keep my eyes open. I had no idea what he was going on about, but whatever it was, he was probably right.

After the news broke that we weren’t getting bonuses, I recall one analyst yelling at the managing director, throwing his chair toward him, and storming out, never to be seen or heard from again.

My reaction wasn’t as violent, but once again, I had had enough.

I want control of my work AND I want control of my earning potential.

Bullshit Leads to Finding Opportunity.

In that same week as finding out I wasn’t getting a bonus, I went through purchasing my first house with Brittany and saw how poor the process and communication was.

For instance, my offer wasn’t even presented within 48 hours. I had to knock on the seller’s door and present the offer myself (Brittany called me crazy for doing this, but we still own this house today as a rental).

But when I saw the opportunity for how much money real estate agents could make (i.e. the agent made twice as much as me than I made in a month - when I was working 16 hour days back-to-back - and she had done literally nothing), I saw that I could do this job better.

I knew I could do it better.

With Brittany’s blessing, I put in my two weeks notice to Deutsche Bank, got my real estate license, and was off to the races… though I still didn’t know anyone or anything about selling real estate… and I still was $80,000 in debt. I didn’t care. Anything was better than what I was already up to. My life demanded I take control of it.

The game was on… Brittany gave me three months to perform or I would have to go get another job.

See you at Chapter 2: Unlimited Potential

In the meantime, watch this funny video from 10 years ago that mentions the LIBOR scandal :)