On March 31st, 2016, something epic happened: the company I worked for let me go.
It wasn’t just me; it was also another 400 people, or about 85 percent of my department, as all our jobs were outsourced to another firm.
While it was difficult to walk out of the door after being there for nine and a half years, relocating for the company two times, and earning multiple promotions, there was also a calm over me because seventeen months before this, I had seen the writing on the wall and took massive action to replace my income before this event.
In September 2014, I was in the middle of moving my family from Orlando, FL, to Fort Myers, FL, where the company was headquartered. We had just sold our home and were living in temporary corporate housing. We were building our dream house, and there were two months to go until it was completed. When I turned on CNBC’s Mad Money show, I found Jim Cramer placing the current CEO on his wall of shame.
I looked at my wife and said, “We are in trouble.”
I think I said something much worse, but you get the idea.
You see, I served as an executive of this Fortune 300 company, and I knew that a change in CEO would bring big changes for me, especially at my level.
I began trying to determine how I could protect my family and my salary. I had always been told that it would take you one month to find a new position for every $10,000 per year you need to replace. Based on that rule of thumb, I was going to be out of work for a long time.
I also didn’t want to move my family AGAIN, and the jobs and career choices in Fort Myers were very limited. When my company moved its headquarters to the area, it was a very big deal. They were and still are the biggest fish in the area.
My first thought was to find something involving real estate investing. I had dabbled with it for years, investing in mobile homes, tax lien certificates, and notes, but nothing quite clicked with me. I wanted to flip houses or rent them, but my capital was tightly held in my company’s 401K, locked up from me for other investing.
I spoke with a land investor, listened to his podcast, and was blown away by the sales other land investors were making with raw land.
There were three big draws here:
1) the land was cheap, I mean, really, really cheap.
2) Other land investors were reporting 300 to 1000 percent returns.
3) you could sell the land on owner financing without worrying about Dodd-Frank or other regulations so that I could create a passive income stream from land.
I purchased my first property on November 8, 2014, for $4,000. It was a 40-acre property in Pershing County, NV, and I sold it on December 29, 2014, for $12,100, with $100 down and $100 per month for 120 months.
My second property was a 1.25-acre property I purchased for $700 and sold for $3,000 cash.
From there, I was hooked. In my first month, I purchased five properties and sold them all within two months, four on terms and one for cash.
I just kept doing deals. In 2015, I sold sixty-eight properties, and by March 31, 2016, my last day on the job, my monthly note payments (passive income) from the sold land were greater than my corporate salary. I walked out of the building with mixed emotions, excited to scale my land investing business and scared to death without having that corporate salary every two weeks.
I finished 2016 with 198 sales and sold over $1,000,000 of land.
Looking back at the last year, I have to say that getting outsourced truly made it the best year of my life.
Being your own boss is incredible. There are so many benefits you can’t list them all, but the one I enjoy the most is the freedom.
I work when I want, how I want, and where I want. I don’t have to worry about how my boss judges my work; I’m the man.
After enjoying this year of freedom, I want to help others. We all have that self-doubt; at times, we wonder, “Can this work for me?” My advice is simple: decide on your goal, put your head down, and work toward that goal hard for three months.
After three months, firm up your next goal, put your head down, plow again for three months, and keep believing in yourself. You can do it! You will create the life you want. Just keep driving toward your goal.
Earning the freedom I was seeking took seventeen months and three days for me. I hope you can get there even faster.