How I Got To Be Where I Am Today!

I was born in October of 1983 into a wonderful family who loved me very much.  My parents were great parents and, in my opinion, they did a good job rearing me!  Beginning with the first grade I was taught at home.  Although I rarely enjoyed my school work, I was good at most everything except spelling.  My mother always told me that I never passed the third grade when it came to spelling.  All I can say is thank God for spell check!

I met Lindsay at a camp when we were both 14 years old.  It took me the whole week at camp to finally muster up the courage to ask Lindsay if she "liked me" and let her know that I "liked her."  That only happened because circumstances worked out just right!  We had a connection from the very start and began corresponding frequently because she lived in Georgia and I in Virginia!

Lindsay and I had a lot in common and we quickly became the best of friends.  She was also from a wonderful family.  Like me, she was home educated and her parents had done a great job rearing her as well.  Lindsay was also a entrepreneur.  She raised dogs, bred them, and sold the puppies.  Before we were married, she made enough money to buy her car, fund three mission trips, put a down payment on our first house, and furnish our house.  I also had the entrepreneurial spirt.  I purchased my first rental property at 17 years old.

I graduated from my home school studies in 2001 at 17 years old.  When I graduated I already had 20+ credits from our local college.  I had began taking classes at age 15 thinking I would like to go into something business related.  As soon as I started taking business math and getting into accounting, I thought that it was way too boring.  After graduating, I went to our local community college to study engineering!  I knew that I loved to build things so I believed that Civil Engineering would be a good fit.  After one year at the community college I left and went to Virginia Tech.

After one year at Virginia Tech, Lindsay and I got married.  It was 2003 and my life has changed rapidly since that time.  In 2006, I graduated with my Masters degree in Civil Engineering with concentrations in Construction Management from Virginia Tech. But, before I graduated, we had two little boys, Isaac and James.

We decided we wanted a little bit of adventure, so when I graduated we looked for jobs all over the world. We ended up moving to Williamsburg Virginia (the top family vacation destination) so I could work with a large construction company. We lived in Williamsburg for exactly 1 year. During that year we had our third child, Grace. Three kids in less than 4 years. . . YIKES.

My Family in Williamsburg 

Left to Right: Daniel holding Grace, James, Isaac, and Lindsay

The job was great experience and the company I worked for was very good to me, but Lindsay and I were ready to move closer to family and for me to begin working less hours. We began making plans for me to join the world of self employment and work with a good friend of mine as a scheduling consultant for construction companies. However, just before we made that jump, an opportunity came available for me to work for a local southwest virginia construction company. The owner was an older gentleman and the plan was for me to work towards ownership of the company.

Lindsay and I moved our family to Bluefield Va. and purchased a small ranch style house which needed a lot of work. I worked during the day and remodeled our house in the evenings. My heart was not really in the job and there was plenty of other DAILY distractions with two toddler boys wrecking the house and the van and my lawnmower (I will save the stories for some other time). It was early 2008 and the economy was on the brink of heading into a depression. Jobs were not easy to come by with the construction company and I'm sure it was evident my heart was not much in my job. I was laid off March of 2008.

Picture of Lindsay and I

Being laid off was a hard experience for me. I felt like a failure. I felt unwanted. I didn't know what to do. I immediately began applying for jobs with other contractors. I contacted my friend to see if there was still a chance I could join him as a scheduling consultant for construction companies. My friend gave me quite a bit of work to begin with, but there was not much hope on the horizon for this to become my new career. I began making plans to start my own construction business but was a little too scared, due to the economy, to go that route. I almost purchased some DVD rental vending machines believing that they were going to be the next big thing in the vending business. (I still think that would have been a very good idea. I missed the boat on that one).

Lindsay and I had always enjoyed real estate and read a lot of real estate investing books.  I never looked at this as becoming my job but always wanted to invest.  At this time I thought I knew about everything there was to know about real estate! Lindsay had studied and passed the exams to become a realtor and we already had two rental properties. However, I never could understand how a person could rapidly grow their real estate portfolio. In my mind it took a long time to save up that 20% you needed to put down on a property. I read books about 100% financing and owner financing and people finding these super deals. . . but I never saw anything like this. Those people were just lucky.

In April of 2008, Lindsay and I went to a Rich Dad Education seminar in Newport News, Virginia. At this seminar our eyes were opened wide to the possibilities of the world of real estate investing. I realized that I only knew a small portion of what there was to know about real estate. It was super motivating and I was ready to come home and fly into action. The only problem was, I felt like I had a small coffee cup and I was standing in front of an open water hydrant trying to collect all this real estate knowledge as it spewed forth. I realized that if I wanted to make this my career, I needed a lot more education.

Since that time Lindsay and I have spent over $50,000 attending classes and seminars and listening to motivational speakers and networking with other investors. I believe that it was worth every penny. We have attended classes on Foreclosures, Lease Options, Sales and Negotiating Techniques, Wholesaling, Asset Protection and Tax Strategies, Creative Financing, Land Development, Commercial Real Estate and many others.

We also decided that if we were serious about investing in Real Estate we needed to move to an area with higher demand and more opportunities. In July of 2008 we moved to Christiansburg Va. to begin investing in the New River Valley as well as Roanoke Va. (the largest city in Southwest Virginia). By the end of 2008, we had increased our real estate portfolio adding three new duplexes, one single family home, and a single wide trailer.

2009 was a year of many changes. The biggest change was the addition of Mercy to our family. Secondly, we added another 8-9 properties to our portfolio in addition to purchasing and selling or wholesaling several properties. We were 100% focused towards acquiring rental property. We were constantly cash poor and we still did have enough cash flow to support our rapidly growing family. I was still performing some consulting work and other odd and end jobs to make ends meet.

Towards the end of 2009 we decided to begin rehabbing houses and selling them hoping for a "big hit" to build cash reserves, pay off debt, and rocket our investing career.

In 2010 we successfully rehabbed and sold over 4 houses in addition to wholesaling a couple of houses. We rehabbed a 5th house which we have not yet been successful in selling. It is my opinion that this is the most difficult market in my lifetime to sell a house. We never did have the "big hit" we were looking for but still did relatively well. Additionally we became more conservative in acquiring rental properties but still managed to acquire another 9-10 properties including two student rental properties I am very excited about! Towards the end of 2010 we realized that not all our investments were "deals" and began to get rid of underperforming assets.

That brings us to the present time, Year 2011.