I was an aircraft mechanic

I spent four years working full time and putting every extra dollar into real estate before I could quit that job. Not four years of a plan coming together neatly. Four years of buying what I could afford, fixing it, renting it, and doing it again.

Today I own fifty rental units, a self-serve car wash, and a few short-term rentals, and I’m partnered on a dozen more doors. The wash is the one I film, because it’s the only one that pays me in quarters.

I bought it run down. The automatic bays hadn’t worked in about a decade. The previous owners had let it go far enough that the business it was built for had mostly moved on to the competitors. I renovated it out of cash flow, over time, which is slower and less impressive on camera than writing one big check, and is also the only reason it worked.

Every month I collect the cash, count it on camera, and put my profit and loss spreadsheet on screen. Gross, every expense line, the mortgage, and what’s left. I do it because when I was trying to figure out whether these things made money, nobody would show me theirs. The comments check my arithmetic every week, which keeps me honest, and which is the whole reason the numbers on this site are worth anything to you.