Always Rolling The Dice

I have created many companies since my first incorporation in my twenties. Mostly they have been construction related as my expertise is in industrial construction, but in my later years I have also become deeply involved in real estate and currently have three real estate companies and a construction company incorporated. Starting a company is easy, but keeping one profitable and flourishing is much more difficult. Rarely have I trusted myself enough to make my living from my ventures, but twice in life I had to because my day job failed me, or me it. One of Tim Ferriss’s standard interview questions is, “What is your favorite failure?” – what he is referring to is which one taught you the most.

When I was in my early twenties I negotiated the purchase of a concrete sealing company in Houston, Texas that had been in business for thirty years, I believed that I could build a multi-million dollar business and make all the right decisions to run it smoothly. It was ran by a married couple and only did half a million in revenue per year, which was fine for them. I grew the business into a million and a half the first year while maintaining a voracious meth habit. I also did not make all the right decisions as my drug habit intersected with a completely lawless side of my life that was unsustainable. I believed I was invincible and every step through life has taught me that humility is the key to true success. I thought it was my own hustle that created the forward momentum in my life, and that still has something to do with it, but it is not how fast you hustle, it is doing things right the first time in a deliberate fashion that creates profit. And profit is success in business – it is needed to grow, thrive and simply survive. Does that mean that it should be the only objective in business, no, but it has to be at the top of the list. The older couple that owned the first business that I agreed to buy, mainly through sweat equity, were not prepared for 200% growth and they were certainly not prepared to have a general manager that worked 24/7 and crashed every third day for eighteen hours. I was a force of nature that overtook them like a hurricane and after a year we were lawyered up and I was facing doing the next ten years in prison. They paid me what they owed me, only because I had material worth that in my garage so I held it hostage – zero humility or ethics. I was the green ooze that my wife describes people as when they are the antithesis to humanity.

I am not sure that I learned anything in the moment – I knew everything at twenty five and now that I am fifty I am pretty sure that I know very little and just the realization of that is the largest step forward. I look at problems differently now – I don’t search for a quick solution in my mind, I download as much information as possible and find and expert or experts on a solution for that problem. I want a solution that lasts, not one that plugs the damn with a finger. I did learn from that first failure in buying a business that I had all the right instincts to create an opportunity for me to own that longstanding business and that I certainly knew how to grow sales. I had to build on that later in life.

I was released from prison at thirty years old. My wife had held onto our house, but she could not afford the mortgage so she rented it out and lived in a small one bedroom apartment. Somehow she had started to pay the IRS for money that I owed them and we had zero credit as we had stopped paying all our credit cards when I was locked up – it was simply time to survive and leaving our unsecured debt unpaid was advice that we had received from a CPA versus filing for bankruptcy. When I came back to the world we had very little and thirty thousand worth of debt to pay the IRS. The reality was that I felt great with nothing at that point – I had the love of my life and sex was back in the picture which was enough for a lifetime. It took me a while to get back my capitalist swagger and I made very little money as a felon trying to get back into the workforce, but we were happy and decisions were made that were far more important than financial standing. My wife is three years older than me, so if you do the math, you can see that it was time for us to start a family. We moved to Pennsylvania to be by her family and I went to work for her father. Over the next several years we did create that family – a son and later a daughter – and we dug our way out of debt and reestablished credit.

When my wife had our first child, I had worked my way into a successful position at a corporation and she was able to stay home and be a mom (working for my father-in-law did not work out). She is a wonderful mother and that was the focus. We didn’t have extra, we just had meals at home, health insurance and a functioning used vehicle, but we had family and we had nature as our playground. We hiked and we camped for entertainment and I worked hard and provided and Maria worked hard at keeping me and our family together.

I was eventually promoted to a regional sales manager and asked to move to the southeast. The decision to move was one of the more difficult decisions we have made as a married couple, but the family dynamic in Pennsylvania was not perfect and we decided to start our own chapter in Athens, Georgia. By this time, we had reestablished our credit and I began to get my entrepreneurial itch once again. I tend to get bored doing the same thing every day, so I look to make money on the side. In Pennsylvania I had even started a company with two of my customers, this was definitely a gray area when it came to ethics, but it really helped my sales as well as got me back into the world of business ownership which excites me. Once I landed in Athens I still had the ownership in the side business in PA, but I wasn’t getting any distributions as they were just surviving – they are now thriving and my 20% share would probably be worth a million dollars – I sold it back to them for $30,000 with my original investment being 20k, so not the most lucrative array into business ownership. I had picked decent business partners in Pennsylvania and had learned a lot in the three or four years that I was involved.

In 2008 construction came to a halt with the financial crisis there were no loans to fund construction projects. At that point I shifted my career to selling automotive coatings, but as I saw dirt starting to move again in 2012 I started another side business. I had a hard working neighbor who had a mowing business as well as worked for UPS and I was sure that I could created a small business that would bring him greater wealth. In the end I was wrong as I had to join the business after I was fired from my automotive coatings job. I built the business to millions of dollars in revenue, but I did not have people or systems that were sustainable. As always, I didn’t have any trouble getting the work, but high levels of stress tend to translate into anger for me – this is never a healthy way of being. I was offered a job at a big construction firm and slowly shut down my business.

The firing from my ten year automotive coatings job sparked my version of a midlife crisis. During a four year period I had four jobs and wasn’t sure if I would ever get back to a situation with a six figure income and life changing bonuses, which I had accomplished in the automotive market. I learned my most important lesson in business during this time as a friend asked me to invest in a rental property with her which became one of my more successful side businesses and created enough revenue to bridge me through the transition from job to job. We started an LLC and bought three properties over a year or two. We turned two of them into Airbnb’s and my wife and I became the hosts and the cleaners. This was hard work that was done on weekends mostly, but these properties brought in more income than a standard rental and helped us build a nice portfolio of properties over a five year period. The lesson was that building a business with people you admire and respect and that have different skill sets than you are more likely to succeed. My original partner and myself brought in another investor and doubled our portfolio with the new cash infusion – this new investor was also someone that I had great respect for and added positive energy to our team. This business is still afloat even though it has changed quite a bit as we have had to pivot due to laws in Athens turning against Airbnb’s. We sold our short term rental properties and turned everything remaining into standard rentals and even gave them over to a property management firm. We did a better job managing them as we cared more about every aspect, but passing off the responsibility turns the investment into something passive that sustains itself and should provide us with great retirement income sometime in the next ten years. We are down to very little debt and the business sustains our tax and insurance bills as well as debt service. Once the debt is gone – the money now servicing debt will become income for all of us. Another key lesson is that nothing is easy or fast. Our assets have grown in value, but we have not become cash wealthy from our real estate investments – it is a long game as every aspect of wealth creation has been.

The struggle through the midlife crisis included working for my own construction firm, winding that down and working for a large construction firm, then trying a short stent as a hospice sales person and because of the miserable failure at that, starting another construction company with one of my old coworkers. This discombobulation also came during the covid 19 pandemic which made things even more difficult to maneuver. The final construction start-up that I participated in with a coworker flourished during covid and the coworker had all the traits that I did not – his organizational skills were flawless and we built a solid company that is still thriving today. I left this startup to go back to the original large construction firm that I worked for before my failed hospice career. I had two reasons for not staying at the startup even though it was doing fantastic – one, my coworker promised me 25% of the business if I was to bring in a certain amount of contracts which I exceeded and he only offered me 15% when the actual paperwork was put in front of me. Second, I didn’t want the stress of being a founder in my late forties when I was offered a job back at my old firm where I was going to be the BD Manager, which is dramatically less stressful and where I excel the most. I am an expert at building relationships and growing books of business. I am also a good project manager but the stress that builds during large projects feels like it is taking years off my life. Doing work what I enjoy, sales, is much more sustainable and, of coarse, I have started a new firm on the side doing flips of houses, but that is for another post.

Learning from mistakes is valuable in all aspects of life – building better relationships, better businesses and maintaining physical and mental health. I am more concerned with who I share my life with than how much is in my bank account, but if I can make money with people that I love and admire then I have the best of both worlds.