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[email protected] and now here's your host, Leister.
[00:00:21] Hopefully you all out there had a pleasant 4 July weekend, specifically the day, but the weekend as well. I did not, because where I am, first of all, fireworks are completely illegal, but it doesn't stop people. Then the, apparently you call the police and they don't really care.
[00:00:42] So the windows in my house are decent enough that it's not as jarring as it would have been my house out in. I had, I owned it. For those that are new, welcome, by the way. But I had a house out in Washington state, so some may have heard that story. I owned a home in Washington state. This was ten years ago. Now, as I record this, that house had the worst windows, no noise, isolation whatsoever. And it was on a busy through fair Main street, and it was uphill from a train.
[00:01:17] And then when fireworks would pop off, it was the loudest thing going. So one of the first investments I made was to replace their, so it had what's referred to as bow window. So it's four windows and like a bow pattern for the master bedroom. That was my commitment is I needed to make sure I got sleep no matter what. That was critical, so I replaced those. That helped a lot.
[00:01:40] But out here, the windows have what's referred to as storm windows. If you don't know the storm window methodology, the idea is you have an interior window and then you have an exterior window. The goal being that the gap between them helps isolate noise, but it's also for, you know, significant inclement weather conditions. In that regard, it does a really good job. There's absolutely no leakage at all. There's no wind. You can't really hear it. Rain, you can somewhat hear it, but not that bad.
[00:02:15] But here, because fireworks were illegal, I didn't expect to hear any sort of fireworks. And yet there were people outside happily popping off fireworks. The house did a decent good job of suppressing the vast majority of them. The only ones that it could not do are the loud booming ones that shake the physical house. And there's a lot of those caused me to ask the question, if these are truly illegal, why do you allow them to be sold? And the answer is because apparently you can get a permit that allows you to pop them off, but people don't, and the police aren't bothered to check and make sure. So this, whoever it was, and I'm pretty sure it was the same house, but some places they treated as 4 July weekend. So they were start. They started, I want to say on the second. And then every evening, all the way through yesterday evening, they were still popping off fireworks. Now when I lived down in California, now, I was young, so maybe I'm misremembering, but I seem to recall they would pop fireworks on the fourth, evening of the fourth, wrapped up, I didn't hear hide nor hair on the fifth. Again, perhaps I'm misremembering, but I don't recall people doing it all freaking weekend long, or certainly not for five days straight. So again, no, I did not enjoy it because I'm not a fan of fireworks. Not just because of the noise. They actually pollute the air. People may not know that they have a high risk for fires. Now, we got lucky because we got some rain, but there's a high risk of fires. There's a high risk of. There's. There's guaranteed pollution in the air because of what they are and people can get hurt. That's that. Or turns out there could be shootings and you can't tell the difference. Audibly can't tell the difference. So it helps hide crimes. Like I'm. I am completely against all things fireworks. As a result, I did not enjoy what I was subject to.
[00:04:16] Let me make myself feel better by telling a story. In response to a question I got, I've said, and if you're new, this is the first time you're hearing it, but I've said, you know, I have. I make a pretty decent amount of money. I was able to put 20% down on this house. That was a lesson learned. By the way, if and this goes 50% of my story, I was committed to doing 20% down this time. The first time I actually committed and bought a home, I did not put 20% down, if I recall. I think I put like 5% down. And I took advantage of down payment assistance services because I wasn't making that much money. Made 75,000 a year. Some of you may listen to that. You're like, only you have to understand in the place that this is Washington state, $75,000 a year doesn't go that far. It simply does not. If you want to survive out there, you're going to need to make six figures. That's just the way it is. Unless you want to live in a slumville, and that's a different conversation. But if you want to live and survive you're going to need to make six figures. So, although 75 grand might sound like it's a significant amount of money, if you live in certain states, like, say, Iowa, parts of Iowa, let's say.
[00:05:35] I understand different states have different costs of living, but that, ironically, is the reason why I'm so much a supporter of working from home. I believe that working from home should negate where you choose to live being a concern for your employer, assuming the type of the job allows you to work from home. Obviously, some careers do not. But if your career, like mine, does not require I be in an office, what's the problem? Let me live where I want to live so that I can take maximum advantage of the lower cost of living in certain places, not having to deal with a commute. Now, what I would learn much later, later, as in within this past year, what I would learn is that you have a give and take, and I'm sharing this for educational as well. You have a give and take. Living in a place with a low cost of living, a reasonably low cost of living, also means you're not going to have access to the goods and services that I think you would really care about.
[00:06:40] So the challenge is to find that perfect balance of how much is just enough to where I have access to what I need.
[00:06:50] It's not a crime ridden, you know, cesspool, but it's not breaking the bank, which goes to the down payment. And the lesson I learned, again in Washington state, I only put 5% down that house.
[00:07:03] The price that I. Yes, that I settled on was only $10,000 lower than the current place. But I had a, at the time, only put 5% down because it's all I had. I was not committed to saving the only motivator for me buying a home. Back then, I was leasing a town home, and it was. I'm pretty sure it was like 1525 a month for a townhome. It was a really decently nice townhome. The only thing I didn't like about the townhome is some neighbors moved in who had allowed freaking dog. And every time they would leave, the dog would scream bloody murder. And then kids who would. And it's a townhome, so nobody's above me or below me, but we could hear it through the sidewalls, the walls might have been paper, might as well have been, because the kids, you could hear him playing and bouncing balls on the hardwood. It was a nightmare being in this place, and it didn't have essential anything. It didn't have central heating. It didn't have central cooling so when there was a. It was in a convergence zone it's referred to which is convergence for blizzards high risk of blizzard. We got stuck. I've got to figure it was about 4ft of snow. I'm figuring based on how high it was 4ft of snow surrounding this business it was cold and it was just snowing snowing, snowing to the point I couldn't and I was on top of a hill I could not go and get any food for this brief period of time. I actually had rations military rations at one point because I was so concerned about the fact that I simply couldn't get any food. The closest place, it wasn't that far but it was so cold I couldn't tolerate being outside. I've only ever experienced cold like that. If I recall as an adult on three occasions this situation in Washington state 100% was brutal cold. Even my manager called it out. Utah has a city called Snowville and it's true to the name at certain parts of the year because not only does it snow a lot but you don't see anything for miles. There's no civilization whatsoever. From miles on end when you look in every direction all you see is snow and nothing else. You barely can see the road because they were not plowing the roads you know to keep up with this business. And then Siskiyou summit. Siskiyou summit, or Siskiyou Pass is in California. It's the border between northern California and southern Oregon and to get up there you either take the coast or you go in the center. Taking the center is where you hit Siskiyou pass. Siskiyou pass at certain points tends to snow and have ice on the ground.
[00:09:50] Okay, I can drive snow, I can drive ice but it's especially dangerous number one at night. Number two because there's no guardrails and it's a very tight set of windy turns and it's very dangerous up there. Those were the three points of the most brutal cold I had ever felt up to that point I'd never felt anything like that.
[00:10:12] And I, you know I come to the place I'm at now and I was. I dropped my car off to get some service.
[00:10:21] Sure. I took my. I had a scooter I. I gave it away. I had a scooter and I figured okay sure, I'll just go ahead and drop my car off and I'll just take the scooter back to my unit because it wasn't that far. It was less than a mile away. Hey, I need the fresh air. Fine.
[00:10:38] I don't know what was going on, and perhaps it's something medical that I'm not aware of, but all I know is I'm riding on the scooter and the cold is hitting my head in such a way because I'm going, you know, a reasonable clip. Its hitting my head in such a way that by the time I got back to my unit, I had an ear splitting headache, I was dizzy as all get out. I never felt such discomfort in my life because it was so cold. It was brutally cold. Limbs, everything couldnt feel a thing.
[00:11:11] So Im used to the cold, but in my older age, I can no longer tolerate it to the same degree that I did before.
[00:11:19] So that was one of the things I was concerned about with the place that I went up in Washington state, because the situation with the townhome is cold and snow. And I actually did have a snow situation in the house when I bought it. That was 2014, but the house was. It has a furnace, it had central heating. I was really comfortable. I, you know, it came and went. It was a non issue. I loved it.
[00:11:45] Fine.
[00:11:47] But again, going back to the whole money situation, I had bought a home that I frankly could not afford because the state of Washington sold me on the narrative that it was okay to buy a home with less than 20% down and to take advantage of these down payment assistance and all these other programs. All you have to do is take a class and we'll essentially give you money to buy a home. And then the whole scam of the tax credit. I'm not going to bore you with that story again.
[00:12:21] Suffice to say, everything that I did back then was a mistake. And I was guided by the mortgage broker, by the realtor, the state, all of them guiding that it was a good idea because their motivation was simply to close the deal, get the money, get it paid. Your governments, state and federal, they're committed to getting more people into single family homes, into condos, townhomes, basically get more mortgages going, which contributes to the disruption and the bubbles and everything that we see.
[00:12:54] You might be surprised, but the programs are designed to get more people in those. You may hear that they're going after apartments and multifamily and the single is not sustainable. They are committed to getting more people into those properties because that's where they collect property taxes. Property taxes are a significant source of revenue for almost every state and city out there. So they actually want people to take those mortgages. The credit score to get into a home loan is actually critically low in most cases. 620 credit score is going to get you into a home. A 620 credit score is not difficult to get, even if you don't have a lot of credit. Essentially, if you have at least one credit card and maybe some sort of a loan that you paid for about six months, I guarantee you you're going to get approved for a home loan. Well, think about this. If you only make $75 to $80,000 a year, and again, some of you may be cringing at me saying only, but it's still a small sum of money in the grand scheme. If that's all you make and you're trying to get a house and let's say, or even a condo, let's start small and let's say the condo is $200,000 a year, you're thinking, well, if I only make 75,000 a year, let's say, on a house that's, you know, $200,000, that's not too bad because the monthly, you know, the mortgage is only going to be about, you know, $1,700, $1,800, depending on the rate. It sounds good, but that's predicated on the down payment you put in. The down payment that you put in is going to lower your monthly payment. If you take advantage of those programs, they're stacking on a bunch of garbage, almost swore a bunch of garbage that's going to skyrocket that monthly payment to the point it'll start getting dangerously close to the amount of money that you make per month in income, which is part of the screening process for the loan. When they, and it's called loan to value, they want to make sure that you will have some padding and you're not basically extending yourself. But that's based on not having those extra fees, not having mortgage insurance, not having the escrow.
[00:15:08] That's assuming you're not doing those things.
[00:15:11] But if you do those programs, you will be doing those things.
[00:15:15] The situation is, if you're able to, I said it before, if you're able to do 20% down, I would recommend you do 20% down and not avail yourself of those programs.
[00:15:28] Because if you could not afford 20% down, chances are you really can't afford the home, no matter what you think. That's just the truth of it, because there's so much that's going to. It's built to trap you, especially the escrow.
[00:15:42] Escrow is a simple story.
[00:15:44] They can change how much you are required to pay into it based on the assumption of certain things like your taxes increasing. So it could be, it's an extra thousand dollars, right? But they can require more than that. They can just say, well, yes, a thousand, but just in case we're gonna make you pay 1500, maybe you don't have it, maybe your job, let's say you have two income and you lose one of those incomes, so you no longer can afford that extra. Maybe you were supposed to get a raise, you didn't get it. Maybe you had an unforeseen expense.
[00:16:22] Predictability in the monthly is more powerful than the rush of getting into a house.
[00:16:29] I'm not suggesting that you should forego getting a house. I'm saying that, and I'll emphasize if you're capable of doing it, and I know it's hard, trust me, if you can do it, make sure you're doing 20% down.
[00:16:44] When I did the less than 20, I ended up spending. And again, that house was $10,000 less than my current one. But the mortgage, the payment was $400 more per month. And you're trying to make the math work.
[00:17:00] The math works out because a, the loan, the balance of the loan was still high because I hadn't. I didn't put enough down to offset what that was going to be. The more you put down, the lower the principal, the lower the remaining amount that's due on the home.
[00:17:19] When you put less than 20% down, you're required to do the mortgage insurance. The mortgage insurance is usually one hundred bucks to two hundred bucks over top of it. When you put less than 20% down, you're usually required to do escrow. Depending on the state, depending on other considerations, the escrow is going to be a couple hundred bucks more. These are saddled upon you and the program that enticed me in the first place with this business, which was the tax credit I was supposed to get of $3,000 a year that they screwed me out of, literally, at the closing table.
[00:17:55] That was the cherry on it. Because if I had been approved for that, it was a wash. Because I would have had no tax bill, meaning I could have used that money that I normally would have spent on taxes to offset the increase in the monthly. But because I didn't learn about it till the closing table, there was nothing I could do. I was not going to back out when I was already that far down the weeds. That's why it was a scam, because they don't tell you these things. Despite them knowing and the situation that caused it in simple form.
[00:18:26] The only reason that they screwed me out of that whole tax credit is because when I had applied for this business, pretty sure I was only making 70,000 a year. The threshold for this was about 78,000. In order to qualify for this program for the tax credit, you couldn't make more than 78,000 a year or some crazy number. So at the time, I'm making $70,000, I'm under the threshold. They said, it's not a problem. My boss fought tooth and nail, and it was a whole political nonsense. That's the reason I left that company, because of how difficult it was just to give me a basic raise. He had to fight to get me a raise because he knew I was the hardest worker in the building. He knew that if I left, which I eventually did, he knew if I left, they were going to crash and burn, which is essentially what happened. It happens every company I go to because I have skills that are niche skills. They're difficult to staff for, they're difficult to find, and they're difficult to keep. I'm actually very easy to keep.
[00:19:30] I need to be adding value, which means you have to listen to me when I'm telling you this is all jacked up and we've got to fix it. Two, you pay me what I asked for. It's that simple. This company didn't want to do either one of them. Okay, well, my boss was fighting to keep me. He worked as hard as he could to try to keep me and did everything in his power to try to make it happen. Eventually got me approved for this raise. It was clear in the HR documents it's a one time raise. It is not guaranteed. They tell you 50 times this is not guaranteed. It's unlikely you'll get it of this size again. We're doing as a one off because we're trying to true you up because we see that you're underpaid. Fine, because I was underpaid. I took a cut to go there because I was so committed of getting out of California. That's how bad California is. Fine. So he gets me the raise. I go to 75,000. Or actually, it was 75. Now I think it. I was at 75. He got me the raise to 82. The threshold was 85. That's what it was.
[00:20:30] Fine. So then the raise happened while I was in the process, while I was working the paperwork and everything else, I get to the closing table. They understand that now my income is increased because the bank has to do a re screen to understand what may have changed in your situation. Okay, my income's gone up. That actually should have made them smile. In effect, what it did is I was told straight, well, looks like you got a raise to 82. The thresholds 85. This is a $7,000 increase of, you know, and you could get another 7000 increase, which could put you over that limit next year, which could disqualify you. So we're just going to disqualify you now? Well, wait a minute. I'm qualified. I've been qualified. Yeah, but you could get the raise. No, no, raises are not guaranteed. They said that HR even committed to writing something that said he's probably not going to get this again. It's a one time something. It is not guaranteed. They still wouldn't flex. So now I lose the one financial incentive. And in hindsight, I should have walked away from the table because it didn't make sense for me to go forward without that tax credit. But it was either that or end up spending $2,000 a month renting a town home, suffering under a barking dog and horrible kids at the top of a mountain. For me, it made better sense just to commit, pull the trigger, do this, and try to find a different job, which eventually I did. It didn't work out and other stuff happened, but I took that as a lesson learned when I was going through for this house of mistakes in the process that I needed to course correct and avoid and make sure that I didn't fall into the same trap this time. Number one, I was not going to do a state program. Number two, I was committed to getting 20% down. And number three, I was going to negotiate that price down as much as possible. And number four, I needed to make sure that I was going to be happy in the home from day one.
[00:22:26] This is a difficult blend. What I just described. It is very unlikely you'll be able to find that same blend within your price range, such that you'll be tempted to take advantage of those government programs. And I'm not telling you not to. I'm saying, in my experience, all of it's a scam because they're designed to close as many loans as possible because the government's need that money. Your mortgage bankers and brokers want that money. They want those incentives and the commissions. Everybody's in on it to make money. Doesn't mean that you don't go. Just be careful. And if you can do the 20%, I recommend it. I believe it gives you peace of mind, it lowers your principal, avoids the whole escrow avoids the mortgage, insurance avoids a lot of the headache that is inherent to the process when you are dependent on those programs.
[00:23:17] So I closed the home, right? The one I'm in now closed the home. 20% already paid in. I just paid the first mortgage payment that was due on the first. It was paid two days early because of the way the bank payment was done and I overpaid it.
[00:23:34] It was close to double. Close to double what? The normal was to chew away the principal is the goal to pay it off quicker to get it to the point, even if I decided to not stay here, which I don't plan to stay here permanently, but at least I wanted to increase how much equity was going to be in the home such that when I do leave, I have more equity to play with and it's easier to flip it to something where I really wanted it. That's going to take a little bit of harder work down the road. Suffice to say, I feel comfortable. Comfortable paying double and not blinking at it. Comfortable that the mortgage will be paid off in quick order, comfortable that equity is built and that I have net value. And my advice to you is, if you can figure out the 20%, I highly recommend it. There's an empowerment that cannot be understated when you do the 20% compared to when you don't. Not doing the 20% seems like the easy path, and it probably is, but I'm guaranteeing it's going to bite you in the tail end. Some people, it works perfectly fine. I think it's the worst option for anybody that's considering buying a home, in my personal opinion anyway.
[00:24:46] So then with the 20%, I get questions and people want to know, well, you're in a situation where you're able to scrounge up that kind of money and you get paid a lot. And this is true. And some may want to know how, especially if you're younger than I am. And I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that any of what I'm describing is easy, because it's not. It's hard work.
[00:25:11] That's the biggest thing you got to click is hard work. There's no easy way to get to where I'm at. It's hard work, and in many cases it may take a long time. Now, if you're an attractive girl, you get shortcuts just because of society. Everybody else has to work and work hard. The first step, which I would share is just my opinion. The first step is to understand what it is that you're good at separate that from what you want to do for a living because sometimes they're not the same thing. What I do for a living is not a hobby anymore. I don't enjoy doing what I do for a living. I used to used to be a hobby that is working with technology in all forms. Then I saw how its being misused and abused. I see how were rushing towards it. Instead of having it serve us, we want to serve it with your phones and all this garbage, which was never the intent, which turns me off. It is a path to an end. I use that skillset in order to make money. It is not because I enjoy it. I no longer do. So what do I enjoy? These are things that I would consider doing as a career if they made enough money. I'm a landscaper by hobby. I'm actually working to renovate the lawn that's here because I've done it before in two different places and I have an aptitude for it.
[00:26:31] I actually still have somewhat of an interest in audio and video, you know, television technologies and, you know, HDMI and all that. I do have somewhat of an interest in those. I have an interest in acoustics. I actually hung acoustic panels in the room that I'm in right now to get the right set of acoustics. I'm interested in video lighting technologies and I've done very amazing stuff there. I actually enjoyed hanging the ceiling fan and the lighting, except for when it's an older home. I enjoy the audio of the microphone that I'm talking to you on right now. I enjoy the phone. Getting the phone set up. The whole home is wired. The phone jacks are active, but it's my own provider. I have the backup like I normally did. There is no cell phone. There's no text message, but I can make it receive calls better than anybody else. To the point the contractor had to use my own service because his cell phone failed him. So I have an interest in making mine do what I want to do. I do enjoy smart technologies. Navigation. Right. Using navigation tools to get to a to b. Sure. I have no problem with that because it's serving you. It's not that you're blindly following it like a phone tends to try to do.
[00:27:45] So. None of what I just described what I enjoy doing for a living. I know I would be frustrated doing it. I know I'd be angry and aggravated doing it because I don't want to do something I enjoy doing and have to listen to somebody else tell me what to do. I want to call the shots. And so it's hard, and I said it when I was younger. I remember I never wanted to have my hobby be my job. I know some young folks, that's kind of their start point. I'll take my hobby and I'll turn it into a job. I felt that was the bad thing to do because all it was going to do is make it to her something I enjoy. I no longer enjoy it because somebody else is telling me what to do. So when I was writing books, I'm doing it for myself. Nobody's telling me what to do. Nobody's telling me what to write. Nobody tells me how to publish it. I ran that, and I published the book so I could get the experience of what that was like, and I understood what it was, and I knew I was going to go back at it once I got back to a settle state. I would love to track down the other four books that I wrote, but I'm not sure any of my friends kept the copies that I gave them. And as far as I know, all the other working copies were destroyed. But I would love to track those four down because now, with what I know, understood what went wrong with all of them. As I was trying stuff that I essentially had a really good story, I just had pieces in different places and was trying it when I was really energized. But nobody told me how to do it. Nobody was controlling what I wrote or how. Obviously, when you go with certain publishers houses or whatnot, there are certain rules. You got to follow the story. Still yours. You run that in the music business. I considered. I chose not to because I saw how so many musicians get exploited and continue to this day to get exploited. I didn't want that. I didn't want when even Prince was complaining about how he was treated, I knew it was a rigged game, didn't want to get into it. So I started my own business after I'd had the nonsense happen with the hospital. This is in Oregon, 2019, and I realized this is just a. A nonsense show, and I'm not going to play by those rules anymore, and I split up my own business.
[00:29:59] So the short answer to the question of, well, how do you get to that point?
[00:30:04] In my opinion, trying to work with something that is your hobby is doomed to fail because the companies don't care that it's your hobby. They're trying to dictate to you how to do the work because they feel like that's what they have to do. They don't want to trust that, you know, how to do it because you enjoy doing it. And yes, I am rushing a broad stroke, but that's my experience. Every company, every single one has done the same thing. If I enjoyed it, they're telling me how to do it and I know it's wrong. I know it's screwed up and it kills my love of whatever it was such that I didn't want to do it anymore. And I never wanted to feel like I'm being dictated to when I know they're incompetent and they don't know it like I do when I get past that hospital. And that was a bad experience overall, it was free money. But I don't want free money. I want to be effective and valued, used. You know, my brain, it's not going to last forever. I'm already having issues with it.
[00:31:06] After that, I started my own business because I needed to control the narrative of money flow. I needed to control money in and better control money out. And the only way to do that was to, first, increase the money in.
[00:31:21] Second, control the money out in a better way. Taking what I learned, all the different things that were experiences over time that didn't go as well as I wanted to. Learning the value of investing money. Learning why it's important to control, spend, and not just buy, just for the heck of it. To this day, I, you know, there are things that I do purchase, but I purchase them because, and I justify the reason why they must be purchased. For example, as I'm setting up my office, there are certain decorative things that I must purchase in order to make it an effective office. Because in order for it to be a usable office, it's got to have sound control. That's where the acoustic panels come in. That's where the drapes come in. I've got to have a monitor because I'm going to be doing presentations. I've got to have specific lighting because I have to control the camera work, the camera itself, the ceiling fan, airflow. All of these are investments in this experience that I require because I know it's going to pay forward when I get back on video for everything else that I'm doing. So while it's a lot of spend, it still didn't make a dent in what I was doing. But that took getting to where the money that I was making exceeded however much I could justify spending in any one city. That's where I'm at.
[00:32:43] I got to the point later, it took a while, but I got to the point later where I was making more money than I could justify spending. That right there is all about experience. I'm 23 years in my craft over years and years and multiple training sessions and certification things and some college. I did a little bit of college, but I got certifications up to Yin Yang and then hands on experience and working with different companies and ultimately not settling for a company to devalue me and moving to, not being afraid to jump to another company.
[00:33:18] Hey, look, I'm here. I'm available. You got a need, let's talk and let's make this happen. Then once I get on my own and I create my own company, I set my own rules, I set my own rate.
[00:33:31] I think I told the story and some renew may not have heard in 2020. So this is the start officials start the pandemic. As recognized, I had just signed my second client. I was making half a million dollars a year by that point with just two clients because of the way everything worked. Well, the problem is, one of those clients, actually, both of them were hospitals. One of them had to crunch down the budget that they would use to pay somebody like myself because of COVID because they were getting people in the beds so they couldn't afford to pay contractors like myself. It wasn't that we terminated the contract. It wasn't that they didn't need my assistance. They couldn't afford to pay me.
[00:34:11] That hurt a little bit, but it was so much more than I needed. I still had the one client, and I was able to continue using them for a while. That client, the first one that I ever signed back in 2019, started playing games and just to tell the story of why I was so pissed off about it. As I wrap up, when I left the original hospital, this is full time in 2019, and I go to start my own business. I started my own business in April 2019.
[00:34:39] It took all the way to May before I identified a client. And then it took all the way up, literally, to August before we were able to sign a deal.
[00:34:51] They did not accept the initial rate I wanted, but it was still more than I had ever made up to that point.
[00:34:59] But I had exhausted all of my savings. I had nothing to my name. I took a train out there because I wanted. They required me beyond sight. I didn't have any money, and I was concerned I was not gonna be able to pay rent. I probably could have done unemployment, but because of what happened with the hospital, it would have been a battle because of the fiasco. Eventually, I would have won by going to court because of it, but I didn't want to fight it. I didn't have the time. I needed to get something now and get something settled and just kind of move on and get the heck out of Oregon because it was a terrible state.
[00:35:34] So I start in August. I go out to the client. I'm broke to the point I was concerned I wasn't going to be able to get my train back because I only do a one way tickets on the trains, and I was considering pawning some stuff. That's. I was. When I say broke, I'm talking broke. I had no money.
[00:35:52] The client was nice enough to say, you can go back home early. So I didn't have to eat the last two days of the hotel. So that helped buy me some time. And then, you know, I got started getting the first payments after a couple of weeks. I didn't have to go back out to the client and I could work from home then. I just need to go once a month, but that's not that bad. And then I ultimately started doing the train more, you know, pre book it, that I'd save a little bit money. I was doing a sleeper room because that train ride is like a day and a half.
[00:36:24] So cool. Everything's fine. Then near the end of this year, since 2019. Near the end of the year is when I decided to relocate to Nevada because Nevada was like four and a half hours away from the client. Now I can drive my car to the client, not have to eat. The train trip out there sounded good at the time, but then that's. Again, Covid hits and everything goes loose. I have to drop the second client because they can't pay me this first client. Now, this is the one that I first had, and this is what I was getting. This first client starts doing the whole, you know, unconscious bias training and harassment training. I'm like, wait a minute. I'm like a plumber. I'm like a window washer. I'm a contractor. I don't work for you. I'm not doing these. What are you doing? I'm my own boss. I'm not doing your stuff because again, I'm not paid the rate I really want to. And they had already gone through two stints where I was. They have this process where to renew. You have to do all this paperwork, and you get kicked out of the system and you go unpaid for like a month. That happened twice. So I'm already on pins and needles with these people because they're not on top of their process to keep people on boarded for the renewal. So I went months without getting paid. Now, I wasn't hurting, but still, I'm pissed because of the way they're treating the contractors, and then they're doing this unconscious nonsense and all this. So I start fining them.
[00:37:52] They're paying the fine a couple times, but then they get the my contact to call me and complain about why I'm charging this fee. And I'm like, because I'm not going to work for them. And I told you I'm not doing it. You tell the customer, you run that relationship. You tell them he's not doing it because he doesn't work for you. You can do that. It's in the contract that you have the right to do that. I'm telling you to do that. If you don't, they're going to keep getting, you will keep getting fined until they, you know, whatever. They wouldn't stop. So I had to drop that client. Despite my every effort, I could not get them to stop. I did not want to continue doing the nonsense, and I dropped the clients. Now I don't have any clients.
[00:38:30] I had saved up enough.
[00:38:32] I made the decision to hire two kids from college to try to do rebrand the business, get some new marketing going on, get a fresh set of eyes on stuff, hopefully get somebody to hit the ground, boots on the ground, and just go to businesses and see if we could just say I only needed one client because I made so much money per client. Even with two employees, I still could have made it work because I paid them 40,000 a year each. But even with that plus, for me, I still would have had enough money just with one client. That's how much this was lucrative in the skill set that I had. Unfortunately, those two didn't work out for different reasons. Now I'm treading water because I paid my savings to pay them, to keep them on board until I no longer could. And then I had to shut the businesses down. Well, now the money's starting to dwindle out of. And I tell that whole story.
[00:39:27] And the reason I was so committed to getting out of Nevada, I tell that whole story simply to say Covid changed it all. Covid was the worst thing to happen. Despite how much money I was making.
[00:39:40] Covid changed at all. Covid changed my perspective about it. Covid changed my comfort with spending. Covid changed my thought process. Not because of the disease, mind you, but because our government simply didn't care. Our government didn't care because no matter what I tried to apply for, when Biden took office, everything became harder to get all the aid became harder to get. The suffering increased. And I felt it. I was this close to being homeless. And when I say homeless, I stress homeless because I gave my car away. I didn't have a car to be living out of. I didn't have anything.
[00:40:18] I had to walk and get food through a certain thing. And that was not fun. I know it was bad. And it wasn't until I was able to sign this client I'm currently working with, I was able to sign them at the very last minute because I had exhausted all other avenues and I was going to be homeless in one more month if this did not sign. So I get this one and now I'm back up track. But the perspective has changed. Everything changed. I took, and initially they weren't paying anywhere close to what I needed to really, you know, sustain it. Got there, but I had to bust my tail and work and show them I'm worth keeping. So I'm worth paying to keep and you're underpaying people. And then they essentially doubled what it was. Now I'm in a good spot. And then I made sure to save and stack to get that 20% because I knew I wasn't going to be able to rent in the new place that I came and I was going to have to buy something despite me not really wanting to.
[00:41:20] I had to step back and say, if I buy now, it gives me assurance and insurance against what happened with COVID to some degree, because renting is the reason that the COVID was so painful, because of the way the government was treating people. There was too much risk. There was too much risk of losing just a place of roof over your head that I couldn't justify in my story and everything I just described. It all started with simply getting frustrated with companies going back and getting certifications in various things. I literally just got certifications of various things with no real target per se. But I knew that the best aptitude I had was in technology of all forms. All different types of technology was my strongest aptitude. Later I would develop other aptitudes. The ability to communicate, the ability to present, the ability to do business requirements, the, you know, business process improvement. And these are things that I learned by simply working and mentoring people.
[00:42:22] I was fortunate I wasn't raised as in parents. I wasn't raised with a lot of these skills. I was forced into it. I had mentors, I'll say two of them, who took me under their wing and made sure I was developed into that person and pushed me in that way. But I had to self actualize. I had to say, I'm tired of this. I don't want that anymore. I've got to get somewhere and I know where I want to be. I know that's going to take some, some doing and I got to figure out how to do it. And I just tried some stuff. Let's figure out how to get some certifications.
[00:43:00] Let's target certifications I know I can achieve. Let's target certifications that look like they're in some demand. Let's look at some jobs that they're at least somewhat entry level to where I can work my way up. Let's try to just show that I'm standout. I stand out in a crowd. Even when I was working call center, I was showing that I was stood out in a crowd to look appealing to another department that may hire me, that may pay me more money, that then opens up certain other doors where if I show a good enough job and I get a raise and then I get a promotion and something else, then I can parlay that into a different company. And you bounce and it takes years. Some people luck out. They go to four year college of whatever, and because of bias, those people get thrown into a good paying job fresh out of college. Those people usually wash out because they were never trained to do the soft skills side of things. They're still stuck in the text message world. They were never taught how to do email, they were never taught how to do customer service. They were never taught how to do process improvement. So they suck at the fundamentals that make you as a worker effective in the workspace, whereas that's all I had. I didn't go to college fresh out of high school because of familial family related issues. I went straight into the workforce, thrown into the workforce to my detriment, and I had to sink or swim. And that's what it was.
[00:44:34] I was fortunate to run into a mentor who I refer to as the director, who took me under her wing and showed me what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do to step up and survive. And I took her lessons and I kept massaging them over time. Then I supplemented that with various certifications and various learning around things I knew I could do, things I knew I could pass, things I knew I had the skills for or things I knew I had the aptitude. As better said for that I could easily get certifications in and then look for those jobs and they're out there, they may underpay, they may pay suckage, but they're out there.
[00:45:14] Little known fact, I've never worked fast food ever in my life. I never expected that I would. Primarily because I knew it was just not going to work for me. Not just from a paid perspective, but because of the way that it worked. It was never going to work. I worked retail for a whole two weeks and didn't last because I didn't. I quit. I wasn't going to do it. It wasn't for me. And there was other situations. But the point is, for anybody who's curious, well, how did you pull it off? If there is no magic formula, there is no single bullet. And anybody who tells you there's a bullet, like Zig Ziglar or some nonsense, there is no magic bullet. You have to figure out what works for you and you have to figure out what you are good at. What is it that you know you can do? And you may have to parlay that into a job, but try not to target specifically your hobby unless you have no choice. If you have no choice, that's fine, but I wouldn't go after it as the priority. I would go after what you're good at. Because sometimes what you're good at isn't the same as your hobby. Sometimes what you're good at, you don't like it, but you just simply are good at it and you don't really know why. That could be sports, that could be technology, that could be gardening, could be painting.
[00:46:30] Sometimes what you're good at is the thing that you despise.
[00:46:36] That doesn't mean that you can't use it to make some money. And that's. That's the biggest secret I can tell people.
[00:46:42] Identify what you're good at, irrespective of whether you like doing it, and then separate the fact that you don't like doing it from the fact that you're good at doing it and use it to make the money. That's going to get you to the point that you can start doing the stuff you really do want to do, which may take some time, and you have to be patient with it because it usually takes years. If you're your twenties, I would argue again, unless you're an attractive female, it's going to take you years to get to a comfortable point where you can sell yourself to somebody else for anything and you can command your own rate. It takes years. I've had people I've talked to in their fifties that get angry at me when I tell them, you need to start at a lower pay they think they're worth more. I would argue that the market is harder than it used to be.
[00:47:34] Way harder. I started out of high school making $8 an hour. At the time, I was making more than my peers. That was not common, certainly not when minimum wage, I believe, was 575, if I recall correctly. And most of my peers that were working were making about $6 an hour. And I'm already at eight now, mind you. I'm full time, they're part time. And in my case, my company was abusing me like crazy, and I didn't know it. The point is, though, I was making more at that time simply because I had that aptitude for something that they needed, and that was the sales pitch. And that's what I would impart to you, in my opinion. Find what it is that you know you can do well.
[00:48:21] Use that to parlay into getting comfortable.
[00:48:25] I'm talking in life so that you can have time to do the stuff that you like to do. Because in most cases, what you like to do doesn't translate to what you're good at. Sometimes it does, but in most cases, it doesn't. If you're trying to get to where you can do what you want to do, and that's either starting your own business or nothing, but you're trying to get to that point, you have to say eat crow before you get to that point. You use your skills to help you get there. That's my recommendation to anybody curious. And it's not easy. I don't personal. I don't pretend like it is. I'm just sharing lessons I had to learn the hard way over many years now because I'm old. Many years of thinking it through, of all the different things that I could have done differently, and there wasn't very much I could have done differently because of my situation. My situation didn't allow me to take a different path. I will tell you that my situation was a tough one because of who and what I was at the time. Distractions, relationships. There were so many problems in my way that I had to get rid of. Once I get rid of those distractions, things got a little bit clear. Then it was just a matter of effort and dragging myself through the mud to get to that finish line. I'm still not there, but I work hard and harder and harder to make more to get to that point where I could finally settle and do the stuff I really want to do.
[00:50:18] Whoa.
[00:50:23] Close.
