Starting Over At Age 53 Was Not In My Plans!

Ships are safe in the harbor but that's not what ships are built for.

?Is living a life you love worth the risk??

Starting over at age 53 was not in my plans.?

My Journey back from the market crash of 2008-2011.

I am about to be 100% transparent with you.

My Story Is Filled With Bad Choices, Broken Pieces And A Lot Of Hurt.

It’s Also Filled With A Major Comeback, Freedom In My Life And Peace In My Soul.

Successful Legacies are NOT built by ...

Working Less

No Stress

?No Pains?

No RISK

I grew up in a very stable blue collar home in the suburbs of the Midwest during the 60's and 70's.

?My Dad was a union plumber and Mom was what, in those days they called a housewife.?

Dad got up early to go to work and Mom stayed home and took care of me and my 2 sisters.

?We only had one car so if Mom needed the car for the day they wrapped us kids up and loaded us in the car to drive dad to work.

?My oldest sister was the "Brainiac." She could attend class, listen to the material or read it once, and got straight A's.

?I was the blue-eyed boy in the middle, I was not as intellectually gifted as my sister, however I did have a more adventurous side.

?Risk for me wasn't an issue if the reward was worth it. Back in those days Dad's belt did the talking if I misbehaved.

?I remember thinking to myself before doing something I wasn't supposed to do…” was it worth the whooping?" Then I would go ahead and do it - suffering the consequences.

My younger sister, of course, was the family "darling" brown hair, brown eyes, dimples, and could do no wrong! I guess by the time she came along I had worn my parents down.?

Dad worked a lot of side jobs in the evenings and weekends for extra money. He was a loving and devoted husband and father.

?He knew the meaning of sacrificing his own comfort to provide for the family. (Seeing that sacrifice made an indelible impact on my own role of providing for my own family in the future.)

?My parents both pushed me to go to college, however I was an average student with poor study habits, so for me college didn't seem a realistic part of my future. I suppose I thought I would work construction like my dad.

?After high school I started working as a laborer on a construction crew.?

Over the next few years I had some of the worst jobs on the planet. You know the TV Show "Dirty Jobs”, that was me! I was finding out what I didn't want to do for the rest of my life.

Then an opportunity came along that I thought was a dream come true - to work for the railroad!

Good pay, good benefits, a career that I could support a family on. After an interview and a very thorough physical exam they started me on a probationary status.

Three days into the job I got a call from the yardmaster telling me that they weren't going to hire me after all. I was crushed!!!?

Apparently my x-rays uncovered a deformity in my low back.

?I remember his words to this day, “If I hire you to get on and off of boxcars for the next few years, eventually I'll be paying for your disability for the rest of your life.”

?(Apparently God had another plan.) Persistence and perseverance were qualities that I had learned well, so I picked myself back up and began looking for the next opportunity.

During that summer I ran into a friend of mine and his father, John.

?An entrepreneur, John was starting an insurance company and offered to hire and train me for a career in insurance.?

This was my first exposure to the idea of working in business using my mind and personality.?

For the first time I realized that I didn't have to do physical labor to make a living, and I enjoyed what I was learning.

My communication and people skills began to improve. It ignited a love for learning that I had never known before.?

You may have heard of the Motivational Speaker and Trainer, Zig Ziglar.? Once I heard him speak I knew I was on the right path.?

Over the next few years I grew my skills and business acumen and enjoyed moderate success.

In the early 80's Ma Bell and AT&T split up and a new opportunity came my way. I was fortunate enough to be hired by a visionary entrepreneur in the telecommunications field.

I was first hired as a salesman but was quickly promoted to office manager in charge of hiring and training. I had found my next career and I loved it!

Unfortunately after just a few short years of growth and success the parent company decided to shut down the operation and I was out on the street - starting over!?

I have to tell you I was pretty discouraged. I took some time off and painted a house or two for the summer for extra cash before I re-engaged in pursuit of a new career.?

The year was 1986 and a very wise pastor suggested that my personality and professional skills would do well in the field of Real Estate.

?Interest rates at that time were around 12% and dropping.? The market was beginning to rebound.

I took his advice and got? my Real Estate license.

If I was going to work in real estate I wanted to work with and learn from the best.

I went to the most successful office in my town only to find that they would only hire seasoned, successful agents.

So, I went to work for another company and started my new career.?

I thought it would be easier, but it turned out to be much more challenging than I thought.

?I persevered and began to enjoy a new career path.

?It was during my fledgling years in real estate that I met and married Janet, a local school teacher.

?It was 1989 and my dream of having a good career and a family looked like it was coming together.?

I won't go into a lot of detail but it turned out that she was very emotionally damaged and unfortunately it didn't rear its ugly head until after we were married.

?I thought I had found the perfect companion.? We had so much in common, I thought.? We started off being inseparable, but after only 3 months that began to change.

?She left our marriage, cleaned out the bank account and the house.

?I literally didn't have a bed to sleep in!

?The love of my life walked out never to return.

?I was emotionally gutted!!!?

The best way to describe how I felt was that I walked around with an open chest wound! My heart had been ripped out!?

Well, if I had learned anything from life it was that I had to be willing to persevere when things get tough and keep moving forward.

?I was so emotionally devastated I could barely put one foot in front of the other.?

The only thing that kept me going was my faith in God and that he had a plan for my life.? A plan that was far greater than my own.

?So I was starting over.

?With little money and very few possessions I began to put my life back together. I somehow scrounged up the courage to keep moving forward, when an opportunity was presented to me.

?I was asked to invest $300 to be coached by one of the top real estate coaches of that time.?

To be honest with you, I didn't have $300 but I knew if I was going to make it in this business I had to have better training and coaching than I had received up to that point.

I made the decision right then and there that I was going to succeed come hell or high water, so I whipped out my credit card and signed up.?

Fast forward 1 year and I graduated from the program 2nd from the top.

Better than that I was beginning to make some real money!?

Guess who now started recruiting me? You guessed it, the top office in the city!

?I switched companies in 1990 and have worked with and around some of the best in the industry.

In 1996, I found and married my soulmate, Dr. Tracy Tye. She is a Doctor of Chiropractic and just happens to be 12 years my junior.

My life was finally coming together. My career was on track and growing.

In 1998 our son was born, our family was started.??

Fortunately, my business was successful enough that we didn't need Tracy's income so she stopped working outside the home. Two years later our daughter came along.?

Now I had a new problem, how do I balance my life as a husband and father with a successful real estate career.

A successful real estate career doesn't happen by working less.

I had to find a business model that would give me work-life balance, so I hired another top business coach.

That business model was based on focusing on providing world class service to our current clients instead of chasing new business.

?I call it slowing down so I could speed up.

We began to experience new growth because our clients were referring their friends and family to us.?

We went from chasing new business to attracting it which freed up more of my time and was more profitable.?

Family life and business were on track.?

The market was treating us well so I sold some investment properties that we owned and purchased 16 acres where we built our dream home.?

Did I mention my wife loves horses? We have 4!??

Business continued to grow and I felt like we had a good work-life balance.?

Tracy homeschooled the kids and I ran the business. Together we were very involved with the kids’ activities and loving life.

The year was 2008 and we began to experience a significant change in our always stable, always improving housing market.?

Most people call it the Crash!!!

?From 2008-2011 house values in the Kansas City? area dropped 36%.?

People were losing their homes right and left.?

Because we had an established business we were able to hold on and still make a decent living until late in 2010 when for me the bottom fell out.?

We were writing business, doing short sales, and helping people go through foreclosure which was becoming commonplace as business owners, executives, and wage earners were losing their homes.?

This crash affected people no matter their social? or economic status.

I went through "hell" during that crash working on transactions that would never close.

I went from November 2010 to April 2011 without any closings!?

That's six months with no income from Real Estate!

I was working, however the transactions weren't closing. I began doing side work cleaning out foreclosures and mowing lawns to put food on the table and keep the lights on.?

In April 2011 it was as if a light switch was flipped and we started to get our business back on track, homes sales were coming together, and we were making a living again but it was too late for us.

?Our home went into foreclosure!

It was devastating to our finances and my ego.

I felt like I had let my family down as we had to move from the country to a rental property.

One of the lessons I learned from my father was to never give up. When life knocks you down; get back up and keep moving forward.

I found inspiration from this Winston Churchill quote that he delivered during a speech to the British people. This was during the relentless bombing of London by the Germans,

?"Never, Never, Never Give Up..."

After getting the family settled into a new way of life living in town, Tracy and I put our heads together to re-evaluate our business. Together, we made new goals and our plan to rebuild. Soon our business was growing again and we began the long process of credit repair.?

Today we have a thriving and growing business.?

Not only did our family stay together through all of this, Tracy and our son are both now licensed agents and working with me in the family real estate business.?

Since the crash we rebuilt our financials and purchased another home on acreage with room for the horses.??

Why did we recover when so many didn't?

First, my wife and I chose to face this challenge TOGETHER.??

Secondly,? I never quit, I never stopped learning, I never stopped growing.