Congrats

Bonus:

DEFINITELY visit Half Moon Hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica to rest and recuperate. The staff are incredible 🇯🇲🙏🏾

If a schoolteacher and a factory worker with no college education can become that successful then what’s your excuse for not trying?

You are luckier than them just thanks to the Internet being around.

Ignore the people who think that you should go big or go home; Ignore the people who think that you are taking too long and don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to be all things to all people or having a bunch of side-hustles.

The biggest takeaways for me after spending time with them was that:

1. Starting small is better than never starting
2. Slow and steady is a viable option
3. You only need to be really good at what you are focused on

We exchanged contacts because after sharing my lessons about success, he asked me to come and speak to his monthly team meeting because he tries to inspire his staff once per month and felt that I did more for him in 15 minutes than he has done in 15 years.

Then they started buying more over time and slowly built up to 1,800 properties over 40 years.

Now they can afford to spend 12 days at one of the most expensive hotels in the Caribbean.

They scraped together to buy their first rental property. They cut the lawn themselves, fixed the doors as needed, etc.

He came home that night and asked her if she was getting a 10% raise next year? Nope.

He wasn’t either but there is this thing called depreciation and if they buy a property, they can use depreciation next year and basically give themselves a 10% raise.

The wife was so excited to tell the story about how 43 years ago she was a schoolteacher and her husband worked a factory job in the day while going to community college at night and his accounting teacher taught them one word that would change their life:

Depreciation

1,800 was the answer.

I immediately asked if it was a fund or their own money.

They never took any outside capital, only loans as needed.

I asked how long it took and how they got stared…

40 years and it started with a single property.

Now I had to know why…

“We are in real estate”

My decades in the family office world have taught me that if someone is staying at a fancy hotel and says that they are “in real estate” I should be asking them ONE question:

“How many doors?”

This means how many properties they own (they all have a front door 👍🏽)

It was disappointing to hear that within a week of being in Jamaics this couple could pinpoint a major cause of the reason the country has underperformed its potential.

I asked them what they did for a living, curious about why they thought about taking initiative as being important:

when he wasn’t driving them around he said that she just sat at a shop in a lane smoking weed.

They couldn’t understand why he didn’t take initiative with the rest of his time

They loved what they had seen over the first 6 days but said that they just had to ask me a question but they weren’t sure if it was their place to ask.

I said go ahead.

They said that their driver was great. A nice young man who took great care of them BUT…

I needed a place to rest my drink so I asked a nice friendly couple if I could put my glass in the table for a second while I grabbed some of the food going around.

They heard my Jamaican accent and so we got to talking about Jamaica and their experience so far.

this also reflects the pervasive belief among many americans that there is a clear and obvious division between the “deserving” and “undeserving”