This business works!

Well I've turned the corner. All year long it was a struggle, always a light bill or gas bill to pay, constantly using parts money for personal use to keep bills paid. Always having negative cash flow or some other collection phone call. But now all my bills are paid and I'm looking at a stack of checks to deposit into my bank account, which has around 4k in it. Sure most all of that is parts money, but I have another paycheck and a bunch more rent coming in just two weeks.

I'm not rich yet, but hey, having turned the corner with positive cash flow now, I'm paying off little credit cards and starting to dig myself out of debt now. Rather than hanging on for life and having that feeling that you are out of control, I'm now feeling in control. Its such a great feeling. I've had it many times before, but now I feel like this is a permanent thing. Its not a temporary contract where once my game deal is over, I'm broke again. This is the real deal, and I'm now seeing how and why the real estate business has made more millionaires than any other industry. Its just a damn safe business to get into.

But I think I was uniquely qualified to get into this business. I started my career fixing cars, and learned how to paint, replace parts, swing a hammer, scrape things with putty knives, weld, repair frames (similar to foundation work and framing actually), etc. That made fixing houses very easy for me, having all those finely tuned repair skills, and a tool box full full of useful equipment.

Then I learned a lot about geometry, angles, and design from making games. I had to build houses, buildings, condos etc in 3D for games. So I learned a lot about designing homes, furniture, etc all from games. I studied a lot of architecture to get realistic feeling levels, and believe it or not, that all helped me when I got into fixing up rentals.

Finally, I had a lot of people skills from runing my own businesses the last 18 years, so reading contracts, hiring contractors, and just knowing a bum or liar when I see one is another skill set I had acquired over the years.

So really all I had to learn to do this business was some construction techniques which I picked up from books, you tube, and my mentor, and the rest I had learned from rich dad books/games and my previous experiences.

But I plan on putting all of everything I know, into a course to offer people down the road. Sure I had some advantages, but I had some disadvantages too, like crappy credit from going bankrupt twice now. I had to learn to buy houses with very little to no money down, and how to find funding, etc. So down the road I want to share all my knowledge in a monthly forum or something, for a low monthly membership fee, like 9.99 a month or something. It will be an ebook with a forum so people can share their experiences, and success stories online with other real estate investors.

But thats probably a ways out yet. I want to try house flipping and be 100% debt free, then I will devote a few months to writing my book. I think I will be debt free by middle of 2010, with probably 2500 a month in passive NET income at that point, and a six figure income from house flipping. We'll see, I've got a lot of ambitious goals, but so far I have pulled everything off, and the future is looking brighter all the time, and my area has an abundance of decrepid old houses noone is crazy enough to fix but me :)