What according to you makes one a powerful entrepreneur? How do you integrate the same thought into your leadership?
Impact. A powerful entrepreneur is someone who can make an impact on the world. Taking a quote from Steve Jobs, “Let’s make a dent in the world.” Anyone who can not only make a product or can provide a service, but can quite literally change the world, has power.
I remind my employees constantly that we are fighting to preserve and enhance affordable housing, an already scarce necessity. Together, as a company, we can preserve affordable housing raising the property value up to the highest and best use. And together we can enhance the product with our initiatives like credit builder and our partial college scholarship.
Talk to us about your growing up years. What is your earliest memory as an entrepreneur that you can remember?
Stand UP Comedy for Charity. I went to Charlotte Catholic High School and as a senior, I wanted to be a standup comedian. As you can imagine, hosting a comedy show, even for charity, would be a tough task at a Catholic school. It took recruiting students to perform, securing teacher backing, and then all the things a small business would require from marketing, budgeting, accounting, sales, etc. It functioned like a non-profit. At 18 years old in 2005, I helped raise over $750 for charity, performed in front of hundreds of my fellow students on a Friday night, and took my first step toward becoming an entrepreneur. While the standup comedy career path failed, my entrepreneurial journey began.
What prompted your interest and subsequently your foray into the investment space?
Financial freedom. From a young age, thanks to video games, I learned the importance of money and how money serves as a tool to deliver what you want. While in video games, money might provide upgrades, in real life money can afford you material things but more importantly, time. The more successful I become, the more I realize the value of time. Once I hit 22 years old, I realized working for others wouldn’t deliver financial freedom, at least not quickly. I began reading as many books as I could about investing and quickly discovered entrepreneurship would likely be my best bet for wealth creation.
What is the approach followed by you to help people attain financial freedom with Mobile Home Park Investing?
Give. I give my time, my knowledge, and my network all for free. When I started in 2015, I had no money, no network, and no experience. Most people wouldn’t give me the time of day, few podcasts/blogs/training existed, and finding internships or jobs within the space felt impossible. To pay it forward, I look to give the incoming generation as much as I can, for free, in light of the struggles I had back when I got started. If nothing else, this is my way of saying, “stop making excuses. I didn’t have anything like this when I got started. Look at me now. You can too. Here’s free stuff”
What have been the biggest challenges and learnings for you being an entrepreneur from an early age?
Upgrading my inner circle. When I began my journey to becoming a full-time entrepreneur, I didn’t realize how much of my inner circle was holding me back. I had started plenty of entrepreneurial ventures in my early adulthood, but all were part-time gigs my friends and family thought were “cute”. Now that I wanted to make a full-time job out of, and invest everything I had into, a bonafide business, all of a sudden, all the naysayers in my inner circle outed themselves. The process of cutting people out, and finding quality replacements, was time-consuming and honestly, emotionally brutal. While the list of other challenges and learning is lengthy, the biggest and most painful, bar none, was upgrading my inner circle.
Looking at your journey, what would you change if you were to start again?
Go faster. I get asked this question frequently and honestly, it is difficult to criticize how I started because it ultimately worked out. The only real thing I would change is I would have put more effort into it upfront to hopefully learn, network, experience, and grow, but faster. Otherwise, I’m just nitpicking in hindsight.
What would be your advice for young entrepreneurs and business leaders struggling to take that leap of faith?
Bet big on yourself. When you are lying on your deathbed reflecting on your life, are you going to say, “Wow I’m glad I stayed at that 9-5?” Heck no! Even if you fail, you’ll probably say something like, “Wow as a young person, I had COURAGE!” I firmly believe you take pride in bold decisions, even if they don’t work out. So, in the worst-case scenario, you’ll be more than fine. Oh, let’s not forget, in the best-case scenario, IT MIGHT WORK.
Finally, what does the future look like for you and Mobile Home Park Investing? What are you most excited about?
I started with no money, no network, and no experience back in 2015. Flash forward to going on 8 years and I have bought 80 properties, spanning over 4,200 units and growing. I feel like I am just getting started at 35 years old, and before I have even reached my 10-year mark. What gets me the most excited about MHP investing is simply that I have a chance to be the change I want to see in the world. I want to see impoverished people given the chance to better themselves, hence my credit builder and a partial college scholarship. I want to fight to preserve and enhance affordable housing, serving as a beacon of hope for a class of people and an inspiration for change for everyone else. What gets me more excited than anything else is simply knowing that through my skills, network, and capital, I can not only protect and improve my own properties, but I can inspire and educate others to do the same. We have a long road ahead to truly make a noticeable difference in affordable housing, but I am so excited to be at the forefront of the incoming generation of property owners.
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