I’m just like you. By 33 years old, I had a Net Worth of $35+ Million, and it wasn’t all just on paper either. I had five fully paid-off Lamborghinis in the garage, a Full-Metal Batman Tumbler replica (street legal), two Nissan Skyline GTRs (R33 and R34), a 1994 Toyota Supra Turbo, three additional daily driver cars, a $3 Million dollar home (paid off), a 3-unit rental building in Chicago, and millions of dollars of income coming in yearly from two businesses I started in my 20s.

At the time of writing this, I am 35 today, and the snowball only got bigger these past 2-years.

Like I said, I’m just like you.

Allow me to explain.

I didn’t grow up rich. I was born in a middle-class family in Schaumburg, IL. A suburb of Chicago known for having a large shopping mall and a few office towers (and an IKEA, which I worked at in High School).

You won’t find many Lamborghinis in Schaumburg.

And while I didn’t grow up rich, I didn’t grow up poor either. My Dad worked in sales and my Mom worked in Insurance. They each made around $110K per year when I was a kid. So while we couldn’t afford luxury cars or first-class flights, I also wasn’t slumming it as a child and had an awesome 90s/2000s upbringing that I look back incredibly fondly on.

While in high school (18 years old, Lambo crazed and about to head off to University of Iowa in a few months) I used to browse car forums like FerrariChat.com. And one day, while on FerrariChat.com, I stumbled upon people discussing “The Fastlane to Millions” online forum. The name sounded cheesy and like some get rich quick website at first to me. But I checked it out nonetheless (thankfully), and it couldn’t have been further from that. It was a free forum where entrepreneurs from all different walks of life hung out online and discussed ideas, business wins, business losses, and personal life wins and losses. I was hooked instantly and started consuming every thread on the forums from so many amazing men around the country. As a young 18 year old, I wrote a long introduction thread (it’s still there today) and began to make friends here. These online friends became real life friends, and a few of them heavily influenced my decision to make my major in college at UIOWA finance. They told me regardless of what you choose to do in life, finance will be the foundation and the most important fundamentals of your successful business.

So I decided to major in finance. But I couldn’t wait through 4-years of college and then multiple years after to start making money. That’s just not the hustlers code! So I continued consuming threads on The Fastlane and BiggerPockets.com forums and I knew that I wanted to buy some form of rental real estate so I could become the cash flow king of Iowa City, baby! Only problem: you can’t buy real estate without an income. And as an 18 year old full time student, no income I could even obtain at the time (an hourly job) was going to be enough to finance a multi-family property. So I started searching for “cheapest real estate deals” on Google.

A lot of the initial search pointed to “bird-dogging” or “wholesaling” real estate deals, but I felt like these types of deals were for bottom feeders who wanted to work transactionally for each $ they made (more like a broker) than actual cash flow. And that’s when I stumbled upon an amazing book called “Deals on Wheels” by Lonnie Scruggs (RIP). This book taught you how to buy Mobile homes for very little money ($1,000-$3,000 range) and sell them for double by financing them to buyers (seller financing). So I used all my savings a did a Lonnie deal on a home that a bank owned that I bought for $3K. I had already built a buyers list using a listing on Craigslist (when people would call, I’d tell them it was sold but I had another one coming soon). So I called my first buyer from my list of 60+ people and sold it day one to a Columbia immigrant named John for $7,000, with $1,000 down and 10% interest for 36-months. So at 19 years old, I had $197 of cashflow per month. And these were the first hints of my superpower. From there, throughout college I flipped iPhones on Craigslist. I won two elevator pitch competitions. Did a second mobile home deal. And by the time I was a junior (21 years old) I had $400/mo in cash flow and had locked down a prestigious summer job Investment Banking at Merrill Lynch. I kicked ass all summer and got a full time offer to come back after I graduated (and a signing bonus right then as a Jr. of another $12,000). So senior year was pretty great =) Investment banking was my first level up (like eating the mushroom in Mario). But banking earnings have a ceiling, and all I was doing in this job was essentially using raw brain horsepower – not my full analytical superpower). Still, I was making $110K per year out of college back in 2012. This contract with Merrill allowed my to purchase a 3-flat multi-family apartment building (finally!) at 22 years old straight out of college. So now I was making $3,600 in rent (with a $1,600 mortgage) while working my $110K job. I was living in a rough area, but really stacking cash. But I knew I was only staying at Merrill Lynch for 2 years so I could launch my own business (buying mobile home parks…. which actually never ended up happening), so I needed to SAVE as much as possible. During my last 6-months at ML, I worked hard any hours I got outside of work and launched an eCommerce business in 2014 as my time at Merrill was ending. I hoped it could do $100K in sales per year, and help fund RE deals. But this business now does $15M+ in sales per year. After launching the site, I purchased a 6-flat in January of 2015 with a partner (Jack), and purchased a distressed car wash in September of 2015 as a “passive investment” (those do not exist, no matter what anyone tells you lol), also with Jack. The car wash business grew to 7 locations, 100 employees and $13M+ in revenue with $5M+ in cash flow per year.

So how did I really do it? Did I just get lucky on timing and what I chose to focus my energy on? How did I choose my niche or field of work? How did I go on to begin earning in one year what would take either one of my parents 20-years to earn, by the time I was 30 years old?

My Superpower

I wasn’t born knowing what my superpower was. I didn’t even know I had one (or a few).

But my superpower is that I am analytically creative (and my brain works like a computer). I am highly adaptable when it comes to thinking and problem solving. And I’m highly competitive. People are often shocked at the things I can remember and rattle off quickly. Whether it was something they said five years ago, or reciting movie lines from a film I haven’t watched in 10 years (and cringing a bit when others try to do this and butcher the words).

These abilities have been with me since childhood. I’ve been able to take in loads of information and synthesize it as long as I can remember. I'm not saying they are better than other people's abilities, they are just mine.

When I see opportunities or holes in markets, I go for them. While all the smartest kids at Stanford were trying to create the latest App, I was focused on unsexy high-cashflow businesses (and yes, long before that chick on Instagram who pretends to have 40 businesses, which is just not possible or in any earthly way efficient).

The funny thing is, I have to work hard to be great at math — yet so much of what I do in business is finance. [That said, creative marketing (promotion) and sales have always been what I gravitated to the most.] And for my close friends, I am the world’s greatest hype-man when it comes to talking them up to others.

One More Note

As I am writing this chapter in a book (which I may or may not release), in early 2025, we are on the precipice of one of the most major shifts in technology of the century. It might even be the most major shift of all time for humans. That shift, is Artificial Intelligence.

I really wanted to get this book published, and get my thoughts organized on paper, while we are still in an age that could be considered “pre-AI” for the masses. Yes, the early AI models have been active for the past few years, but the adoption rates are still relatively low and we have only scratched the surface on AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

I am a firm believer that AI will be as big a leap for humans as the internet was when it was created and adopted by the masses. It might even be bigger by an order of magnitude. But for those who can remember the early internet (think GeoCities websites) compared to what the internet is now in the full-blown age of instant social media and information — I am sure that AI has a long way to go.

I will say that I am well versed in various LLMs, ChatGPT (I have been a PLUS user since 2023), Claude, and have already spent more than 3,000+ hours learning about and playing with AI.

Anyways, another major reason I am writing this is because deep down I am a highly-emotional, music, film, dog and people loving guy. And I have no idea where we will be in 20 years, but I’m sure I can look back on this with nostalgia of simpler times.

No AI was used in the raw creation of this text (or my potential book). But you can bet your ass I used AI to make grammatical checks and a rough cut on the first edit.