Brandon earned a degree in Business Management with an emphasis in Marketing and a Minor in Statistics from the BYU Marriott School of Management (ranked top 25 in the country) for undergraduates. Heather also graduated from BYU in 2015 and they relocated to Cincinnati for Brandon’s job at Nielsen. Heather took a position at Macy’s headquarters, just a few blocks from Brandon.
At that point in life, we were pretty simple. 🙂 We owned one car and we wanted to keep it that way. When I (Heather) was applying for jobs in the Cincy area, I specifically looked around downtown so Brandon and I could commute together. It was usually a 20 minute drive from our apartment during the first year. We loved that time where we could chat and talk about the day.
Our plan at the time was that Brandon would work for two years at Nielsen and then we would go back for an MBA program. He started studying for the GMAT as we were coming up on our one year mark for our apartment lease. We hadn’t planned on buying a house…but for some reason it made sense. We got a deal on a house that needed some work and moved into our first fixer upper! Brandon had some background in construction and we dove into our first real estate adventure. We planned on keeping that house until we moved back for an MBA. We finished the work on the house and soon welcome our baby Ethan!
Shortly after Ethan was born, we started to see things differently. I had been working full time at Macy’s headquarters for the last two years and we didn’t have family in the area. I convinced Brandon to let me stay home with Ethan, and we had the agreement that I had to help bring in some extra income in a different way. I was teaching piano lessons and started teaching English lessons online to Chinese students. I was waking up at 4 am to teach my students and to be honest- it was fun for about two weeks. I was making $8 per half hour lesson, which meant I could make $16/hour. I just wasn’t satisfied!!! I know some people love doing that. It was just wasn’t my thing. So I kept searching…
I don’t know how I got onto the real estate hit list. One day I saw a Facebook ad about real estate investing. I started listening to the free webinars and something inside of me sparked. It made sense to me! I felt excited! I felt like I was onto something meaningful for my family. I started chattering to Brandon during his lunch breaks and in the evenings. I was taking notes during the webinars. During that time, we sold our first house and moved into another fixer upper. This time with a four month old baby. It was a disaster. We left our totally finished house and moved into a house that needed a lot of updates and work. We put all of our “stuff” in the lower level, including our bed. The upstairs was construction zone for painting, ripping open a wall, laying new flooring, painting cabinets, installing a new counter, etc. That first night we moved in and slept downstairs Brandon and I both stared at the ceiling and questioned what we had done. We were surrounded by piles of boxes and bags of clothes. Our baby was safely nestled in his bassinet beside us and was unaware of the chaos around him. I cried that night. It just felt like chaos. We put our house back together as quickly as possible and then had a moment to realize we had walked away with a little paycheck from the sale of our first home. We knew there was something to real estate. But we knew we weren’t doing it quite right.
We attended a three day real estate workshop and our minds were blown. After the second day of class, Brandon yelled with excitement, “I finally feel like I found my calling in life!”
There were a few things in our life that bothered us. We had worked hard and earned promotions at our corporate jobs. Yet there was an income ceiling which was determined by our bosses and by society. We didn’t have the freedom to choose whether we went to work.
For example: During my first year at Macy’s, I had ZERO PTO days. So if I got sick, I either worked while I was sick, or I didn’t earn. So I worked while I was sick.
Brandon fulfilled all of his regular responsibilities as an innovations analyst at Nielsen and earned several awards along the way. In addition, he was aware of the processes being used by thousands of employees. His mind was rolling and he used his basic spreadsheet skills from college to build out an idea. He designed a VBA program (basically a complicated excel spreadsheet) that automated the process and drastically cut down the amount of hours that employees had to work in order to complete their jobs. That program was distributed across the entire company. (Nielsen is currently the largest marketing research company in the world). He saved the company thousands and thousands (probably millions and millions) of dollars and automated a significant amount of work. As a thank you and reward- he was given a $1,000 bonus. Yes- one thousand dollar bonus. That seemed like such an insult! That was the first time that I started to feel what I call “Divine Discontentment”. He was better than that! We were better than that! If he was paying attention and anticipating business needs, and then creating a solution to the problems, that was worth way more than $1,000.
Flash back to the story- we attended the real estate class the weekend after I left my corporate Macy’s job. With real estate- we could earn as much as we wanted. We could apply ourselves and work hard- and see the fruits of our labors. We could work hard now to be free later. We could be present for sports games and activities for our children. We could be present parents. We could travel. I could raise our children. Brandon could retire early and continue his love for golf. We would have the ability to serve others without restraint. We could give and serve and love freely. We saw the future we desired through real estate.
A few weeks later, I was browsing for a flip online. I was on auction.com and found a house that looked like a good flip. It was only about 20 years old and had good bones. It was an REO (bank owned) property from foreclosure. The inside had terrible paint jobs and there was some vandalism. But that was an easy fix! 🙂 Brandon and I had a deal that we wouldn’t buy anything without consulting with the other if the price was over $50. Well….. I broke the rule. We were looking for a flip and the house was at a low enough price and the auction was ending…. and Brandon was at work. So I bid and won a house at online auction… I was so excited that I got the house at the price I did! I was grateful Brandon went along with it and wasn’t mad. 🙂 He was a little surprised, but for some reason he didn’t seem all that surprised.
That became our first official flip! It was a bi-level that needed cosmetic work and it seemed like a huge project. We did a lot of the work ourselves, with some help from high school boys we went to church with. That project took four weeks to finish. We pulled all nighters because Brandon was still working his corporate job. He had also taken a new job with a competitor company for a promotion. I remember one night when it was probably about 3 am. My baby was asleep in his little nest in a corner of the house. I remember just wanting to lay down on the carpet for a minute. I didn’t want a blanket or a pillow, I just wanted to fall down and not move. There were some dark hours in that house. We persevered and the house turned out really nicely. We were able to sell the house quickly and finished our first official flip. We bought that house for $117,000 and sold it for $167,000 a couple months later. I think the rehab was about $13,000. We had been stressed because we had two mortgages (our own home and the flip). Regardless, once that flip was on the market, we found our second flip. It has been one project to the next since that time.
The second flip was a more extensive rehab. It was more intimidating and it was a bigger house. That house about killed us. We bought it the end of September 2018 and then finished the work right around New Year’s. We listed it and had back to back showings all day. We thought we had it in the bag. The house had really turned out super well and people loved it. Most people wanted more space for that price range, though. We had a lot of great feedback, but ultimately had to do a price drop. After the price drop, we got an offer and the house went under contract. A week before closing, our buyers had to back out because the people buying their house fell through. We were devastated. During that same week, the basement suddenly had flooding in the lower level. The brand new carpet was sopping wet and water was in the floor vents. We had foundation work done and luckily found someone honest to do the work. We ended up selling the house to the original buyers after a lot of delay and stress. We were so relieved to sell that house. While all of that was happening, we bought the property that became our first Airbnb in January 2019.
I honestly don’t know how we made it through January-July of 2019. Those were some of our darkest hours… in our entire lives. Brandon had left his corporate job in August of 2018, so we were living on stress and love. During those six months, we sold that second flip and finished two other large rehab projects that we would keep as rentals. I got my real estate license. I finished the education in a few short weeks and passed my licensing exams in April. We asked Brandon’s mom from California to fly out and stay to help with our son while we tried to work through a couple tough projects. She came out for 10 days and saved us. Brandon and I both worked hard from dawn until dusk and beyond. We didn’t usually get home until midnight and we would start all over the next day. We always want to know that our baby is in good hands when we can’t be there. We now have multiple rental properties that are cash flow positive. And they are totally remodeled properties.
We pushed through those summer months and I joined a real estate sales team that would provide a fantastic vision and training ground for my sales career. The first few deals that I worked were raw land, new build, investment properties, a condo, and finally the good old regular traditional sales of existing homes. All the while, Brandon picked up contracting jobs for other people. That provided us an opportunity to take some risk off our shoulders and to just earn money.
Brandon has more than tripled his income through real estate. We thought he had a good income at his corporate job, and this new career choice has changed everything. We have replaced what I earned working full time with passive income from our rentals. We acquired a significant amount of debt when we started this journey for all of the tools and education necessary. Our goal this year is to pay that off. That burden still seems heavy, but the reality is that if we can pay that amount off in one year… we are on the right path for success the rest of our life. 🙂 That story is for another day.
My hope is that from sharing our experiences, others will take away hope and drive to pursue their dreams. People thought we were crazy to leave our stable corporate lifestyle. We WERE crazy to jump off the cliff so abruptly. We didn’t understand how it would work, but we believed we could make it work. We also felt like it was part of God’s plan for us. We wouldn’t have done any of this if it weren’t for revelation and direction from God.
If I could jump back in time and see Brandon and I at the beginning of this journey… I would tell us:
It’s a good thing you don’t know what’s coming. Just know that you will do it. You will do INCREDIBLE things that you haven’t dreamed of yet. The future is brighter than you know. DON’T QUIT. DON’T QUIT. Don’t listen to the nay sayers who used to be your friends. When you can’t walk any more- CRAWL and don’t quit. You’ll get back up. You’ll be ok. Hold onto that dream. It can be your reality. You will amaze yourself.
That is what I would tell anyone who is working toward a goal that will change their life for the better. You can do this. Be smart and do good things.
If you want to build passive income and wealth, education is really important. Make sure you know what you are doing enough to not make a big mistake. You will still make learning mistakes along the way, but educate yourself so you don’t make mistakes that will break you. If you’re interested in short term rentals and hosting an Airbnb property- I highly recommend our short term rental course. We have combined our own education with personal experience and want to share that with others. You can change your future.