My Journey Into Investing
My journey as an investor is an untraditional one. I didn’t go to school to become an investor, graduate, then get an internship at Blackstone or Goldman Sachs, get hired as an analyst, work my way up to Managing Director, then leave and start my own company with a few partners from previous firms. In fact, when I did my first deal, I had no clue what private equity was and I had no money. But what I did have, which is what I believe to be the most important piece, was someone who introduced me to investing who was extremely successful.
In August of 2009, 3 weeks into football camp, I found out my scholarship would be suspended until further notice. I was suspended from college football due to poor class attendance and grades. I had 1 week to move off of campus before school started and scholarships would kick in. I caught a Southwest flight back to Florida a few days later.
Between August of 2009 through 2010, I had done numerous things including coaching high school football, substitute teaching and personal training. The gym where I was a personal trainer, is where I was introduced to investing. I had the chance to train some extremely successful investors in the fields of private equity, investment banking and real estate.
In 2011 I was invited to a real estate project that a client of mine had acquired from another real estate developer, who had went bankrupt during the financial crisis. When I arrived, we talked sports for 15 minutes, then he walked me through what he was doing, and why he had invested in the property. He told me two things after walking the property for 20 minutes. If I see a property that meets a certain criteria he had listed, write the address down and call him. About 90 days later I had done my first real estate deal, and I’ve been in the world of investing ever since.
Throughout this time, I’ve never really fit in with most traditional investors. I have no private equity or investment banking background. And every piece of knowledge I’ve acquired was by doing. I would contribute a lot of my investing experience to being lucky. I was born at a certain time period, that allowed me to graduate high school in 2007, which would lead up the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. This enabled me to start my career in 2011, which some would say was a golden era of real estate investing due to the financial crisis.
Throughout this blog, ill be breaking a lot of these stories into pieces as I continue to take you all along my journey as an investor.