I don’t share a lot of personal stuff. It probably looks on the outside like everything is going great and it’s all success all the time. 

While I’ve been really successful and grateful for this business, it has been a struggle. There have been times of struggle and getting into it was the hardest part. I’m so glad though that I did because my life has changed so much in so many amazing ways. Real estate investing and starting your own business can do the same thing to many other people and because of that, I want to share a little bit about my journey to real estate investing.

About five years ago, I got out of the army, and my husband and I were on active duty. I went to West Point for four years (that’s where we met), and I served about eight years on active duty and did everything I could in those first eight years. I volunteered for everything!

I graduated from Sapper School, went to all the pre-ranger training and I was among the first women to do all the pre-ranger training and all the ranger training. I deployed to Iraq, I volunteered for a deployment to Afghanistan, I volunteered for lots of different things. I did my command while I was in the army and just was honestly really good at it. Definitely a top performer.

I hoped that I could stay the course for a while and we had hoped that we could do the “dual military” thing. That’s what they call it when a husband and wife are in the military. It was going pretty well but we knew once we had kids it would change quite a bit because my husband is very specialized. He’s in the special operations field and that really means he’s super busy and he’s gone all the time. And so we knew once we had kids it was going to just change everything. I guess I didn’t realize how much it was going to change or how much my mindset was going to change until we had our kid. 

I spent three months home with her which I got really lucky because the month she was born, the army changed maternity leave from six weeks to 12 weeks. I actually took an extra week off because I didn’t have child care for her so I stayed home with her for 13 weeks and I totally thought six weeks was a long time before I had my own kid and I was like “what are these moms complaining about”, like “six weeks is plenty of time…” Six weeks is not enough time. 12 weeks, 13 weeks is still not enough time. It is so so hard to go back to work after having a kid. I did 13 weeks in three days into going back to work.

I get called into my boss’s office, he’s a full bird colonel and it’s a really high rank in the army, one step below the general. He asked me how the little tiny room that they set aside for me was working out because I was pumping, and he wanted to make sure that room was able to accommodate my needs to pump so I could keep breastfeeding my baby. I thought that was really really cool because I rarely had a boss in the army that hadn’t even cared about stuff like that. I had thought when I was on maternity leave that I was going to be like pumping in the car but they set aside a room for me, which they didn’t have to. It was literally a closet but they cleaned it out, they put a chair in there and I had my own private space. So, the fact that they did this for me was super awesome. 

He called me into his office to see how I was doing, how things were going now that I was back to work, how the baby was and just check on everything. He was super supportive and I was really grateful for that. Especially because he’s the first boss that I think would have even thought to have a conversation with me about it and to be honest, most bosses that I had would never have been mature enough to have a conversation about breastfeeding, so that was really cool.

I then walked out of the office, got back to my desk and I had an email that said I was going to Afghanistan in about three months. My daughter at the time was three months old. Three months later, I was gonna go to Afghanistan and my husband was already scheduled to go to Iraq that same month. Our daughter would have been six months old so we didn’t really have what they call a family care plan which is where someone comes and takes care of your kid while you both are deployed. 

We would have basically had to send her to my parents or his parents who would have to put her in daycare full-time, pick her up, drop her off and spend less time with her while I was overseas. I thought it was just a really interesting dichotomy from walking out of my boss’s office who cared so much about me being able to breastfeed to oh by the way you’re going overseas across the world. Obviously, it would have been impossible to keep breastfeeding and that was super frustrating.

I just knew in that moment that I wasn’t going. I would not be leaving my daughter. I laughed out loud because I knew there was nothing that would separate me from my daughter. It was hard enough for me to go to work and leave her at home with the nanny and drive 30 miles away, much less 30 hours on a plane across the world. 

So, I knew I wasn’t going to do it. I knew that my time in the army was up because I wasn’t a good soldier. The whole point of being a soldier is preparing for deployment and deploying, doing all those things and I didn’t want to do it. So, I knew that my time in the army was up. 

My husband came home that night. We went on a walk with the baby and we just had a conversation about it. We were like “well this really kind of sucks but the army has made a choice for us”. It truly was not a choice. And because I had already fulfilled my initial obligation and didn’t owe the army anything else, I submitted my letter of resignation the next day. When I say I resigned overnight, I literally did. I submitted my letter of resignation one day after finding out that I was going to deploy.

People have a really hard time with that. I didn’t get out of the army overnight. It took me about six months to get out of the army. It’s a long transition but I resigned overnight. My resignation was approved three days later so it all happened really fast. I got out of the army, I had served at that point for 12 years on active duty and when I got out, it was like nobody cared. 

My husband deployed and now I’m out of the army. I’m home with my almost one-year-old now and it was like nobody cared. Like it didn’t really get a true “thank you for your service” and I was just amazed at how much of a non-event it was because to me it was like the biggest event of my life.  Becoming a mom was so so hard. It was such a huge transition for me but then honestly, I think that leaving and losing that network, and losing my sense of identity was an even bigger deal. I mourned that loss. I struggled with that loss every day. 

I still do miss it. I still miss the people I served with. I still miss the mission. I miss the mission mindset. There’s so much about it that I miss and that was me. I was meant to serve in the military and I loved it! I was good at it.

Now, I am staying home with the baby and my husband is deployed. His career took off when mine came to an abrupt halt and that was exceptionally hard and I presented him and his career embarrassingly much. I don’t even want to say how much I resented him and he would leave or he’d call from being overseas and he would be like “I wish I could stay”, and I was like “you do not wish you could stay here”.

I was bored out of my mind at home with this baby and it was so so hard. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I felt so guilty for feeling this way because I was around all these stay-at-home moms. I was suddenly surrounded by everyone who had kids. Before that, I had literally no friends with kids. All my friends were professionals that I met in the army and no one had kids. I never hung out with kids. 

Then, I went from that to hanging out with people who had kids because I now had something in common with them. I just thought that’s what we would do and we did all these play dates and blah blah blah… I was so unhappy and I was so unfulfilled. I felt like crap about myself and about my life because it seemed like they were all loving their lives and they were enjoying it. They were meant to be stay-at-home moms and I was just miserable and I hated myself for it. I felt guilty about it and I resented my husband and all this stuff. 

I struggled. I really, really struggled with my own mental health, my sense of identity, with my purpose and I think it’s important to put that out there because so many women, so many people struggle with this. You’re not alone. It’s really hard. It’s hard becoming a mom. It’s hard leaving a full-time job. It’s hard being a stay-at-home person. It’s hard to transition in general so if you’re feeling that, just know, first of all, that you’re gonna get through it but I think, the thing I learned the most is that I needed to figure out how to stay connected with those people that I felt most in common with. I didn’t realize that until I started getting into real estate. 

I found my people again and I was so fulfilled. I actually was working with a lot of military veterans at the West Point Network. I was really connected with and it was life-changing for me. So, I think if you’re really struggling with the transition, try to figure out what it is that you’re struggling with and focus on that one thing. For me, it was the network and I have a feeling it could be that for a lot of people. Just work on that. Work on figuring out what that one thing is that’s bothering you or making you feel not content or unhappy, and just work on that one thing. I bet it will make a lot of other things fall into place. 

Back to the story, I started investing in real estate and the whole point of buying the first one was to offset my husband’s income. I knew if you purchased real estate, you could write off the depreciation and you could write off the mortgage interest on your taxes so, my thoughts were since I don’t have any income, I can offset my income and be contributing toward our collective income at that point and then also be building something for our future just by purchasing this one door, this one single-family home. 

I bought that first door and I was just hooked. I saw the power of real estate at play and I had needed more. It was like a drug and it’s important for me to tell you that when we were closing on that house, my husband was deployed. He was somewhere in the Middle East. I went to the title company to sign the papers and I had a power of attorney so I could sign for him because I needed his income to buy that property. I just got a conventional loan and I needed to sign for him so, we got a power of attorney drafted by the military lawyers and the title company didn’t like it. They wanted us to use their particular power of attorney that they drafted for that transaction. 

I left that day because I had no way to get in touch with my husband and I had no way to have him sign it. He had to sign it in front of a notary. Just getting the first document was this huge to do because he was in this remote area. I was like, “Crap! Maybe this is a sign. Maybe we’re not supposed to do this”, and I left that initial closing balling. I was crying so hard and we just found out we were pregnant with our second kid. 

My husband had just left and I was just devastated. I was like, “Maybe, this isn’t meant to be. This is my first deal.” I pulled myself together. We got the power of attorney signed in together and it went back and I actually closed the second time. Then, it was just hooked and I was ready for more. 

At that point, that was three and a half years ago, our net worth was a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Now, three and a half years later, I just did my quarterly accounting and before I tell you what our net worth is, I want to tell you I have a goal this year of becoming millionaires. I want our net worth to be one million dollars. 

We have a quarter to go and this is the beginning of October that I’m recording this. We just did a calculation of our net worth and it is nine hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars!! It was a hundred and twenty thousand dollars three and a half years ago and it is almost one million dollars. By the end of this year, we will be billionaires

That’s amazing! I’m about to turn 35 and my husband just turned 35. We’ve been doing this for three and a half years. We’re gonna be millionaires. 

I want your story to be like mine…it’s not going to be easy but you can be successful. Successful in the way that you define success. Let’s chat about it!