What Is The Why?

Over the weekend a new client asked me, “You’ve been at this real estate game for a long time.  Why do you keep doing it?”

That got me thinking about the last 50 years and how I got here.  My ‘Here’ is a lake home in the Pennsylvania mountains, a thriving real estate sales and management business, and lots of paid-off rental properties.  Of course, family always wins over things, but we are talking only about 'things' here.

So back in the day, even when I was working for $1.00 / hour, learning how to paint houses and which end of the hammer to use, I wasn’t chasing the money.  I wanted to learn, and then apply whatever knowledge I was able to gather to help myself by helping others.  And funny thing, that philosophy worked out pretty well.

When I made the decision to leave contracting and enter the other side of the business—real estate—it was a giant leap of faith.  I always was fascinated with construction and houses, buildings and structures, and the ‘how’ of what people did to earn money from these properties.

Fortunately, I was lucky enough to receive some of the best sales training in the world, and I was so gung-ho to succeed (and scared to death of failure) that it was the most intensely focused few years of my life to that point.  It took almost a year to close my first transaction, but then the floodgates opened and I ended up helping lots of people and made more money for myself that year than any two years I’d spent as a contractor.

The years flew by, good and bad cycles, a growing family, sickness, and health, along with the inevitable bumps in the road that might knock you down, but not keep you from getting back up.  I kept on studying and learning.  I only considered it a ‘bad day’ if I didn’t learn anything new.

So back to the question:  “Why keep doing it?” 

Answer:  “Squeeze and orange, and you get orange juice.  You never get apple juice.”

Real estate and trying to help others, it’s just what I do.  After all these years, it’s what I still love to do.  I have the desire and need to produce! One of my goals is to help investors along that same path.  Build a trusting relationship and locating the right investment property for them. Then make that opportunity happen with the purchase, and manage that property as if it were our own, and help train and pass on my knowledge to my successor(s).

We want to help motivated investors realize their intentions of financial security—perhaps even create 'generational wealth'.  And more times than not, I end up making good friends while doing it.  Real estate has been very good to me and my family.  I want to pass that along and hopefully leave this place a little better than how I found it.