It Took Me 8 Years To Make Money

It Took Me 8 Years To Make Money

You guys are familiar with my story. I scaled my business and gained massive success, but I always make sure to mention that it took me eight years to do that and to develop my processes. When I tell you How I Networked My Way To Success or How To Manage Hundreds Of Tenants Without Full Time Employees, what you need to understand is that I learned these things through a slow and painfully learned process, which led me to create a successful and automated business. BUT that doesn’t have to be you. Before we get into that, here is why it took me so long to start making money:

When I first came to this country, I’m going to be honest, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t have tax returns, a credit score or a network. The non-existing tax returns ended up being the biggest hurdle during those first years. Not having tax returns meant that no matter how much money I had at the time, there was no feasible way for me to do business in the United States. However, to build a business and get to a place where I’m paying taxes and getting tax returns, I had to start somewhere.

Loans? Banks?

The way loans work in this country is that when you go to the bank, they ask you for two years of tax returns before anything else– including your credit score. Why? Because tax returns don’t lie. You can tell people you have 5 million dollars and be broke, but your tax returns will always show the truth.

Solution

Now coming to the US, I was not able to sponsor a loan and no bank would give it to me either. What I decided to do was find someone who I trusted, and could rely on, to partner with on my first development. I knew that no matter what, I was going to get this development going, no was not an option for me, nor has it ever been. This was a problem I knew I had to use my creativity to solve. This is when I found the right partner, whose tax returns and balance sheets would do the trick, and trusted them to sponsor the loan. All they needed to do was sponsor the debt, I brought the money, I designed the project, I built it. I had no idea at the time that there is actually an entire business for people who do this and the person lending you their returns is called the key principle.

This alone set me back one year because it took me the full year to find land AND find a key principle

Once I started the development process, then I had to learn how to deal with two major vendors:

1. The general contractor– who needed money.
2. The bank– who was issuing the money.

This happened through a slow and painful process called the draw schedule.

What’s the Draw Schedule?

The draw schedule is a detailed payment schedule for a construction project. This is how it works:

Rather than the bank lending the money for the project in a lump sum, the bank will set up a schedule for the money to be given in installments depending on certain criteria that need to be completed, the criteria are usually milestones that are passed during the building process. This makes sure that the money is not given all at once, but the contractor can still receive payment for their materials and the work they have completed up to that point.

My Take Away

Learning this whole process and completing it for my first flex space development project took three years in total. This is not only a very different process from how things are done back home, but the debt structures alone are a whole new world for me. However, despite the setbacks and learning processes and the mistakes, the project was significantly successful. I knew that from there I needed to exit the development, and do this all over again. Woah! I know what you’re thinking, this sounds painful, but once you learn all the lessons, and go through all the processes, you will find that this is scalable, and very easily doable. Replicating and fine tuning the process took an additional few years, but here we are today building flex spaces faster than we know what to do with. We are now able to lease the spaces out before they are even completed and develop the projects in record time using the systems and processes I put in place. Also, I am able to sell the developments even before they are completed just based on the network I have built of the buyers that are around me and are interested in this asset class.  

Now What?

All in all, yes it took me eight years to develop the process I use for my business and scale it to 9 figures. BUT that doesn’t have to be your case. I can show you how to replicate my systems and processes in two years with  Flex Space Untapped. If you think you’re up for this, and want to develop and sell flex space without the long and arduous journey, then this might be the right fit for you.

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