Don't Quit

by Kyle Wilson

  I grew up in Seattle and went to a large high school where the only classes I really loved were auto shop, wood shop, and metal shop. My junior year in high school, about 30 of us out of shop classes were nominated for an apprenticeship with a local sign company named Tube Art.

  One of my best friends, Matt Smith, and I were picked for the apprenticeship. Little did we know, we would spend the first year of our apprenticeship sweeping the floor. What kind of apprenticeship did I sign up for? I was supposed to be welding, doing electrical work, painting, blowing neon tubes, and doing all the cool things I saw the other workers doing, not sweeping the floor!

  I almost gave up. I felt like they had hired us as cheap child labor and they were getting the better end of the deal. A year and a half later, Matt went off to a four-year college to be an engineer. He would still come back to work at the sign shop during the summer. I, on the other hand, worked part-time at the sign shop and reluctantly attended community college while living in my parents’ garden shed. I felt college wasn’t for me, but to appease everyone and do what I was “supposed to do,” I attended.

  I loved drafting and surveying classes but couldn’t stand chemistry class. I vividly remember the day I pulled into the parking lot of the community college in my ‘68 Bronco. I parked the truck and told myself, if my future career involves anything to do with chemistry class, I’M OUT! It was time to quit mindlessly following the flock and doing “what I was supposed to do.”

  The whole time I was attending community college, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about the money I was spending to be somewhere I didn’t want to be. I thought it could be much better used somewhere else, although at the time I didn’t know where that was.

  I was about to do the hardest thing I have possibly ever done, tell my parents I was dropping out of college. All I remember of the conversation is that I felt like a total failure and one quote from my dad, “You don’t work with your hands, you work with your mind.”

  My parents told me I was going to have to pay rent for the garden shed I was occupying in the backyard and pay for groceries. I decided that if I was going to be paying rent, it wasn’t going to be for a garden shed in my parents’ backyard, so I moved in with some friends in the foothills outside of Seattle.

  I went to work for the sign shop full-time at barely 19 years old. I had graduated from sweeping the floor and emptying garbage. Working at a sign shop was fun. I enjoyed going to work. It was a combination of auto shop, wood shop, metal shop, and art class. Now that I was working full- time, my new boss was Dan Lister, a guy who would change my life a year down the road. The sign shop paid for a community college welding class to allow me to get my welding certification. Finally, a community college class I wanted to go to! With my new certification, my job was building Starbucks coffee signs. I would fabricate and weld the aluminum frames, take them to the paint booth, paint them, wire them, apply the vinyl, and crate them for delivery. Seeing my creations from start to finish was awesome.

  One day, my boss Dan Lister told me to come into his office. Am I in trouble? Dan lit up a cigarette. I’m sure it was difficult for him, but he explained to me how I was the hardest working, most dedicated, responsible, quality craftsmanship worker they had on the shop floor and his favorite employee. This made me feel great! He must be giving me a raise, I thought. The conversation turned a corner when he told me he didn’t want me to work for the sign shop anymore. He said they were never going to pay me what I was worth. He said I was young, and I needed to find a better paying career. Dan said, “You know, my brother is a union electrician. He makes really good money. Why don’t you go see what they have to offer you.”

  I took Dan’s advice to heart and went to the union hall to see what it was all about. About a month later, after a barrage of math and aptitude tests, I was accepted into the apprenticeship to become an electrical apprentice.

  I had just turned 20 when I started my first day as an apprentice. My first job was at Boeing. We were to be working on machines that made aircraft parts, I was told. I showed up with not a clue of what electricians actually did. I figured we would be doing stuff with wires. Boy, was I wrong! My very first task was unloading a truck. I had to move thousands of feet of rigid metal pipe in 100 pound bundles all the way across a sweat-inducingly hot building to our work area. I was exhausted when my journeyman threw me a hand bender and asked me to run some pipe. I’m sure he could tell by my stare that I had no idea how to accomplish the task. He was annoyed when he said, “Oh, you must be a first year,” and proceeded to give me a 13-second tutorial on how to use a hand pipe bender. Learning to bend pipe by hand was not an easy feat. I had a bone pile of pipes pretty big before I even got my first piece of pipe installed. I sat in my truck at the end of the day filthy, sweaty, and exhausted. I was ready to quit.

  But, remembering how much I disliked my first day at the sign shop, the next day, I showed up again.

  When I was 22, I figured out what to do with the money I saved from not going to community college. I decided to use the money for a down payment on a house in a small town in the mountains east of Seattle. This was a way better investment than college in my eyes. The small town also had a fire department I joined when I moved there.

  The union apprenticeship was a five-year endeavor of working and going to school at night, but I finally graduated.

  I worked as a journeyman for several different contractors and was laid off several times when jobs would end. I had a dangerous hour plus commute to Seattle during the winter over a mountain pass. Between the commute and being laid off, I knew there had to be a better way of making a living where someone else didn’t control my destiny. So about a year and a half after I had my journeyman license, I started working on the side, wiring houses near home on evenings and weekends after my job.

  I decided I wanted to do electrical work on my own full-time. I gained my journeyman license from my union apprenticeship, but this was only part of the requirements to start my own electrical contracting business. I had researched what was required, and the list was long, including state and federal licenses, bonding, insurance, and most importantly, an employee with an administrator’s license. I didn’t know how to afford an administrator, so I decided to get the license myself. I signed up for an evening community college class. When the class was over, I went to take the electrical administrator test. My sails quickly deflated when I received my failed test results. I was ready to quit before I had even begun as an entrepreneur. I didn’t need it, I had a good paying job.

  I ended up taking the test a month later and passed. With everything else already lined up, I was in business, but I didn’t have enough work to support my mortgage and bills.

  My very first job I did rewarded me with a $1000 fine for a paperwork error I made. The first job almost bankrupted me before I even got off the ground!

  I was ready to quit. I had no business being in business for myself. I was a good electrician but knew nothing about business, bookkeeping, taxes, payroll, employees, or even a business plan.

  I had been with the fire department for four years at this point, and they offered to pay for an evening EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) certification class. The class was a full quarter, and I ended up with my EMT license. One of the neighboring towns had a position open, and I decided to take it. I committed to working at Medic 1 every Tuesday. At least I would have one day a week of guaranteed income even though it was minimum wage.

  My plan was to do my estimating, billing, and bookkeeping in my downtime at Medic 1, and I would have the rest of the week to do electrical work. In case I couldn’t get my business to work, I was still paying my union dues so I could go back to work for the electrical union. My biggest problems were getting homeowners to pay me, dealing with bookkeeping and billing properly, and managing flaky employees.

  Countless times in the first several years, I was ready to pull the plug on the electrical business and work full-time as an EMT. I’m glad
I didn’t quit. 10 years later, owning my own business opened my eyes to me being the one in control of my own financial future. Creating my own paycheck was risky but not as risky as relying on someone else to give me a paycheck and letting them control my financial future.

  I met Emily on Valentine’s Day 2010, and in about a year we would get married. I had a lifelong goal of being a pilot and decided that I needed to get that accomplished before I got married or it would probably never happen. So, I found an instructor and an airplane to rent, and in about six months, I was ready to take my test. I failed the test and was so discouraged, I almost gave it up. Six months after failing the test, I decided I had way to much time and money invested in the endeavor, so I got over it, called the instructor, took a few more lessons, and ended up passing the test. I’m so glad I didn’t totally give up on that dream, as it has been one of the best ongoing experiences of my life.

  Shortly after getting my pilot’s license, Emily and I decided to build a new house for ourselves in a neighboring town. It was time to say goodbye to the fire department, who had eventually made me their chief, that I had been a part of for 15 years and my 10 year job at medic 1. We rented out the house we lived in and moved to our new property in a 10’ truck camper. If you’ve never had the experience of building a house with your spouse, it is quite the marriage-building experience!

  10 years ago, I made a goal that I was going to be retired by the age of 35. 35 came and went. I was disappointed in myself, but wrote it off as setting my goal too high. When I was 37, I decided I needed to try hard to make up for not being retired by 35 as planned. I had a friend, Jodi, at Medic 1 who I noticed was buying rental real estate. She and her husband Andy were more than willing to explain how real estate investing had worked for them. With way less education than I should have had, I decided this was the quickest path to retirement, so I got a line of credit against our newly built home and used the money for the down payment on a commercial multi-tenant building. Within a year, we had purchased two more mixed-use historic buildings.

  Emily and I were managing these buildings and their 13 tenants by ourselves. This was one of the worst experiences I have ever had. I was ready to give up, but I decided to get educated in investing to save this endeavor. We decided to start attending as many real estate seminars and meetups as time and money would allow as well as listening to as many real estate investing podcasts as I could. Attending seminars and meetups has been the best education, far better than any four-year school could have provided.

  I’m glad I didn’t give up on real estate investing. Emily and I now own millions of dollars in cash flowing, buy and hold, commercial real estate, and with our financial education, we now help others to invest in real estate to make money.

  Looking back at my life, most large accomplishments have come from pushing through fear, doubt, and uncertainty. I have been accused of being overly optimistic before. I guess I don’t really see it as being optimistic. I don’t see the problems, I just see something I want or that needs to get done and I figure out how to get it done.

  If I would have given up on any little obstacle I came across each time I wanted to quit, and not pushed through to see it finished, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today. Don’t give up just shy of reaching your goals in life.

  Life doesn’t happen TO you it happens FOR you, for a reason. If you take responsibility for all your actions and stay positive, the universe will provide the results you need.

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  TWEETABLE

  Life doesn’t happen TO you it happens FOR you, for a reason. If you take responsibility for all your actions and stay positive, the universe will provide the results you need.

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  Brad Niebuhr and his wife Emily have built an impressive multi-million dollar cash flowing portfolio of multi-tenant commercial and mixed use investment properties. Brad also runs a successful electrical construction company.

  Brad is constantly expanding his knowledge in real estate investment, which has led to him being voted into an elite inner circle group of fund managers and to a recent appearance on one of the top real estate investment podcasts. To learn more about Brad’s projects and opportunities to get involved, please reach out to brad@fcinvestllc.com

  CHAPTER 21

  Because Others Gave, I Give

  by Tami Damian

  I t was Christmas Eve. Mom gathered her three youngest daughters around her. The girls were 8, 11, and 13. With great angst, Mom told them that this year Santa would not bring them gifts. The family was going through troubled times. Their home became too unsafe living with an abusive alcoholic. It was time that Mom took the girls away from their home, their small town, the state, and their dad. They left with barely more than the clothes on their backs. The littlest one insisted on going back into the home they were leaving to get her baby doll. Even though time was of the essence in escaping town, she told her mom, “I need someone to love me when I’m alone.” They temporarily lived in an older sibling’s basement, then moved to a small duplex in a town where things and people looked and sounded different than back home. In fact, the girls went from living in a place where everyone knew them to a place that seemed like a foreign country.

  That fall, they went from riches to rags in a car drive of fewer than 90 miles. The girls shared a bed in the basement. Mom slept on the couch upstairs. They had a donated Christmas tree, yet it looked bare with nothing underneath it. Mom planned stockings with small necessities for each girl on Christmas morning. Mom reiterated the news to the girls―do not expect Christmas presents from Santa. The teenager stated that Santa wasn’t real anyway. The middle girl was mad about everything in general. The youngest, the one Mom worried most about, looked up at her mom saying, with her eight-year-old wisdom, “Mom, Santa doesn’t care if we left Dad. He’ll still find us.” Tears brimmed in Mom’s eyes; the littlest one kept thinking that they were the bad ones, for leaving. She wished the littlest one wasn’t alone so much to take the phone calls from her drunken father. However, Mom had to work and get her GED, and the two older girls’ school schedules kept them away. Mom placed the little girl on her lap.

  “You’re right. Santa knows that Daddy is sick, and we had to leave for safety,” Mom reiterated this message, hoping the girls realized that their father wasn’t a bad person. Mom wanted the girls to understand that alcoholism was a disease. Their father, WWII Bronze Star Marine, one of more than 12 children from a poverty-stricken family, didn’t choose this disease; it was part of his DNA. Mom continued, “This year Santa won’t have enough for all the children.”

  The middle girl angrily asked, “If money is scarce, why did you drop that money in the red kettle?”

  Mom knew this too was a learning lesson for the girls, one that would hurt, but perhaps carry into adulthood. “We had an extra dollar; certainly, someone out there needed it more.”

  The middle daughter didn’t concur, because right before the holiday break, there was no extra dollar to buy her teacher a present. The oldest just looked at the littlest girl, knowing this wouldn’t help the nightmares. Unfortunately, the nightmares were based on the last days with their father.

  The teenager always cared for the little girl. She even had suitcases packed before Mom realized that they needed to escape. The teenager would do anything to protect her little sisters. Still on her mom’s lap, the little girl announced an amazing faith and belief. “Mom, I know that Santa will come. I’ve been good. I know that he wouldn’t forget us. I know he will be here…. Mom, I believe.”

  There was little use arguing, because God knows, there was no sound reason why this happened. What kind of mother leaves a solid home, taking her daughters from a small town to this huge city? She had only pennies to her name with no education and little work experience. She quit school to have her first of six children with this man she loved dearly. As she told the girls, he was sick. The illness she could handle. It was the night that he almost took their live
s that she knew she had to leave. The night he thought he was still at war and the family hid in an attic. She told the little girl to be quiet and not talk. She was supposed to just hold her baby doll and make no sound. The little girl’s silence probably saved their lives. Now, she barely talks. Mom taught her the lesson “don’t talk” too well. Mom asked the girl to recite the story of Rudolph, Santa’s red-nosed reindeer. It was on TV each year on the little girl’s birthday. Through that story, the little girl understood the hurt of bullying. She told of Rudolph helping others even when he needed help himself. Speaking of the misfit toys, “If Santa brought those toys, I would love them like they deserve.” The little girl recalled the scene when Santa announced, “I’ve got some bad news, folks. Christmas is going to be canceled.” Tearing up, she declared, “Santa never really cancels Christmas.”

  This little girl might have a hard life, but she had such a soft heart. Mom could only hope that this soft heart would be used for good and not be used against her little girl. At bedtime, the little girl lovingly hugged and kissed her mother. Her words were, “Don’t worry Mom, Santa will come. I believe.” In the middle of the night, the little girl crawled upstairs to find her mother sobbing into a cold cup of coffee. She sat on Mom’s lap, comforting her. “Don’t cry, Mom. If Santa is too busy to show up tomorrow, he’ll still find us. Let’s believe together.”

  The next morning, the girls awakened, expectant and energetic and ran upstairs. The tree was bare underneath. Each had a stocking with an orange, an apple, assorted nuts, underwear, and socks. Not the kind of presents that Santa brings. Ironically, they didn’t even have a nutcracker. They later used a hammer to open the nuts. The two older girls were angry over the entire situation―leaving their home, their school, and their friends. They were angry at having nothing and being made fun of by their peers. They were angry about receiving socks and underwear. But the youngest remained optimistic, “I believe,” she asserted. Late in the morning, someone knocked on the door. The little girl jumped up yelling, “Santa, Santa!” Mom prayed that it wasn’t her soon-to-be ex-husband, not wanting to call the police on Christmas.