Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Smart Dad podcast. Today I'm telling a story that's raw, risky, and real.

It's about the time I bought a house that I had no business buying. Let me take you back to 1998. If you remember, that's when I lost my entire business, everything I owned plus a quarter million dollars of debt piled on top of that. I just had a baby in February, lost everything in June and found a new career.

kind of re discovered a tutoring career. I had been tutoring since 1985, but this was different. And I was walking down the hallways, ran into someone named Amy, whom I had known since my days in college. And I just, uh, just started tutoring and at that school and then word got around and within 30 days, I think I've told you, I had 30 hours a week available time.

at 30 bucks an hour. Obviously I had to drive there, wait in between. So was working over 40 hours a week, but I was only able to bill 30 hours a week. That got me going August, September, October. And, I found out in November, maybe, maybe October, but for sure by Thanksgiving, I knew we were going to have another baby. Found out we were pregnant and we were already too big for the apartment we were living in.


And the manager had let us stay, but we couldn't renew our lease. So we start looking around for what to do. Get another apartment. We had been apartment hopping every year since 1994. And my wife's mother was a realtor at the time. And she said, you know, there's this neighborhood. She tells me about it. I said, that's where I grew up. That's a street over. I used to walk up and down those streets as a kid.

So we found a house. It was the cheapest house. It was listed at the lowest price that had really ever been sold recently in that neighborhood. And we started watching it in November, 1998 and December. And I don't know where you are, but down here, winter is the worst time to sell your home. This house sat and it sat finally in January. We made an offer, full price offer, $155,000.

less than a fifth of an acre, a 1953 three bedroom 2 [bath] house, a garage had been converted to a, a living room. And so there was a little more room, but it was 1700 square feet and they accepted our offer. So I tell you what, I couldn't afford the house, but we scraped together a down payment. My in-laws helped us finance it and, uh,

Today I'm going to talk you through about how that was a great high followed by an immediate low followed by the recovery and the lessons I've learned from it. So today's lesson is going to be packed. It's about family. Of course it's about faith. It's about freedom. It's about finances and it's about future. Wasn't a whole lot of fun. Wasn't a whole lot of food involved in this one. And I don't remember my physical fitness at the time.

I know I was pounding a 12 pack of Dr. Pepper each day, so I wasn't in the greatest of shape, but I want to focus on faith and family, finances, freedom and future today. Just think about those as we're going through this. I was so happy I had a career. I could afford to pay my bills, squeak by, save a little bit, scrape together a down payment. And I remember that it was


March 4th. was a Thursday that the house closed. It was not a fancy or flashy house. Small lot, like I said, a corner lot next to a busy street. But we were zoned to the same high school I went to. One of the best school districts in Texas. We were right across the freeway from my clients. So it was close. It wasn't just a house for us. It was an opportunity. So when we moved in, I remember

Closing and I was actually at the school. was tutoring at talking To Cheryl one of the other tutors, and I just said hey spring breaks coming up What are you guys doing? Are you gonna do tutoring? Are you and your husband and your kids gonna go on a vacation? Kind of what's your plan because I've never seen how the students here do spring break tutoring and She said What are you talking about nobody tutors?

During spring break nobody tutors in March And I didn't understand what she was saying it. What are you talking about Cheryl? She said Nobody has there are no classes until March 29th or 30th or 28 something like that. I don't understand today's March 4th What are you talking about? Well, she explained to me how private school this private school essentially takes three almost three and a half weeks three plus weeks off in March and

Kids don't have regular class. There's no tests. They travel. I just did not understand the private school life. I'm a product of public school from kindergarten through my undergraduate days. And I was shocked. I had just bought this house, just committed to a mortgage and had no revenue essentially to speak of for the month of March. 90 % of my students went to this school because that's where my

word-of-mouth had grown. I had not a good spring break, let's say. I had not a good week, month. It was so stressful. I honestly didn't know what to do and then my mother-in-law showed up and said, I promised my daughter I would give her my commission check.


I don't remember. She gave us all of it. I don't think it was a hundred percent, but she handed us at the end of March when her money came in nearly $4,000 check.

because of her commission from selling the $155,000 house. Well, a guy who was making $900 a week knew that $4,000 a month is essentially my, my take home. And I, I cried, had tears of joy in private. was praying and waiting for something to happen. I didn't know what to do. And this check appeared. I didn't realize my

wife at the time and her mother had had this conversation. I didn't realize when we were at list when we were making an offer and the listing was there that the close date would be perfect and that we would have everything lined up. So needless to say if you've ever had a miracle check dropped into your mailbox dropped into your hand, someone just hand you money you did not expect. What I do is I say thank you to God.

and I show gratitude. I did give my standard and yet not just trite 10%. So I was left with $3,600 after I had given my tithe and it was enough. It was enough because we were used to making that much money. So what did I do? I bought a house I didn't know that I couldn't afford.

My money was gone because of the down payment. I then had no revenue. But when those students got back in town, the last three days of the month, four days, March 31st, by April 1st, I had talked to every client, every mom, every dad, every student and said, May is right around the corner. My final schedule is gonna be booked. And you know what I did? I booked my


final schedule at the end of the month of May, almost full 16 hour days, six a.m. in the morning, seven a.m. in the morning, 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I even had Friday and Saturday tutoring. I told my mom, I told my wife, I am so sorry. Mother's Day falls in the month of May. I will not be around. I have no time to even breathe. And then I realized

Really within the first couple days of April, my schedule is full and the phone is going to ring. So I recruited a couple of folks I knew. Jennifer really strong at the languages, the writing, the reading, all the foreign languages, really, really good on that side of the brain. And then Josh, excuse me, John was really good on the math, the sciences. And I talked to them and said, listen, I'm probably going to have overflow. What do you charge per hour? Here's what I charge per hour.

What would you think if I sent you some business and kept $5 or $10 an hour? And they said, of course, I'd take the business. So we set up a little referral system. Sure enough, by the middle of April, the month of April, by May, they were filling up. They were working hard. We got some folks who wanted summer tutoring. I built some little camps where I had taught kids to read and we made it. We made it. We survived.

April and May we survived summer August comes around and I was hitting the phones driving by houses knocking on doors saying hey you guys when you school when you starting what's volleyball what's football and I was trying to figure out how to get them back on the schedule sure enough everything starts filling up by September October I brought on two more tutors I figured out how to get approved to go into these schools I figured out how to get background checked

and I could put students on my 10 a.m. or 9 a.m. schedule. I had students at six o'clock in the morning before their morning sports, before their school practice, before their figure skating, whatever was on their schedule. I had Jewish folks in our community who would work Sunday mornings at 8 a.m. I would drive to the part of town where there was a lot of Jewish folks concentrated. I would serve them and work with their families and I would drive.


back to where I was and folks who had gone to church and got out at noonish, they were ready to start tutoring at, you know, one, two, three, and four, five o'clock. And then folks who had ranches and farms and lake houses and beach houses, they were coming back in from the weekend and they needed to get ready because Monday was the next day and I had five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 o'clock tutoring with those students. I was working and I went from billing 30 hours a week

in 1998 when I started to billing 60 hours a week myself, raising my rates to $40 an hour for my new families, bringing on those more tutors. And I was able to go from making $900 a week and really barely making it to earning more than $80,000 a year in revenue. Now we had expenses and other things, but I look back and think about the house I couldn't afford.

and what it drove me to do. Because here's the deal, men. You just sometimes have to work hard. And I thought I was good at math and I thought I had planned ahead. But how do you know what you don't know? I probably could have asked better questions. I probably could have had conversations. But man, four kids by summer of 1999 had the house, had the work picking up in the fall 2000.

And we were moving and shaken. really figured out how to go back to my book selling days in college and optimize every five minute interval. It was incredible. That house we couldn't afford forced me to innovate, forced me to recruit, forced me to lead. And man, we were living frugal. We were living on rice and beans and beans and rice as they say, but I was saving.

putting money away, trying to pay down debt, and had a home that I thought we could stay in for a while. It's small enough, but my kids were all small, four kids born in under four years, so we had plenty of time.


But what it did, it gave me a focus toward the future. So let me fast forward to 2004. So now it's five years. We've been there a while and the home was filling up. Had another baby in 2000, another baby in 2003. And once again, Thanksgiving 2004.

we were expecting. thought, man, we are, we are blowing up at the seams here. And so we need to figure out a way to expand. I had been saving, I had been putting money away. And the crazy thing is I had just turned 30 and I had lost all that money at the age of 23, 24. I was able to buy a full quarter acre, which was quite a bit bigger.

relatively speaking around the corner from where I was, was able to contract with a builder and I was going to build a brand new, nearly 5,000 square foot, six bedroom house. And I was going to get the deal of a lifetime because I knew the builder and I had been saving. So we were able to, I guess, bring down costs because cash plus low debt, can bring down costs. I can tell you when we moved out,

in May of 2005 and my wife was in her last month, last weeks of pregnancy. It was such a relief that everyone would have space. We'd be able to spread out and I had taken that down terrible stressful season from 1998, 1999 and just brute forced our way into a

whole new situation The neighborhood was turning we were probably the first house to to be built and within months we saw houses torn down and houses going up and the property values were going up and The infrastructure was increasing and I can tell you looking back What I learned is you want to if you're buying strategically you want to buy the cheapest house in your neighborhood


If you can afford it, if you're trying to squeeze in, you want a great neighborhood with great neighbors and you don't want to be the most expensive house. It worked out. I was able to keep this house. My in-laws were able to live there for a while. They were able to sell it for, think $300,000 for dirt value to a builder within a few years. It worked out that we built another house down the corner because I kept having babies and the neighborhood just kept blowing up.

I didn't realize I was going to go into the home construction business, but the home I couldn't afford put me on a path to solve problems. And before I knew it, I was not just making it in business. was building a thriving business. We were serving dozens and dozens, then hundreds and hundreds of families. And within all that, I tried, I didn't always succeed, but I tried to make time.

For my family and my faith I was able to go on the summer church retreats and volunteer two weeks out of every summer I was able to go to Alaska and do mission work with my family and with my co-workers I was able to go to Europe and do mission work there I was able to go to Mexico and do mission work there We did a lot of fun things in the summer that won't work because as I told everybody in the company we work so hard

during the school year that each of us needs to take a break in the summers. So here's some of the lessons that I took away from this. One, I get it. Have your plan, plan your work, work your plan. Sometimes, as Tony Stark said in Iron Man, you gotta learn to run before you learn to walk. And I just jumped in full force and I adapted.

to this crazy, crazy, this house situation. I stretched, I thought I could do it, I thought that I knew I could do it. I was living lean, I still wasn't prepared. I had my faith, God's timing showed up. I had my family, you my in-laws were there, my wife was there, she was staying home with the kids, and I was working my tail off. I was free to fail.


again but it was up to me and I said I'm not gonna fail again at this and then I had my future in focus I said this is better than renting it's an appreciating asset it's an unusual time and so I took advantage of that so my questions for you today are where do you need

to go through a pivot. Maybe you don't need to just survive something. Maybe you need to have a massive breakthrough. Again, I'm not telling you jump off of a cliff without a parachute or without a skydiving equipment or parasailing equipment. What I'm saying is sometimes life happens and you just have to react. I thought I had planned for every eventuality. I thought I was living small, had some money and I just couldn't solve for every variable. Remember I had one vehicle.

We had all those kids, but because I was close to where I was working, it saved me tons of travel time, tons of gas, tons of logistics, and I was able to squeeze it all in.


If you have your priorities, when the stress shows up, they will stay your priorities. If my story today stirred something up inside of you, if you've ever taken a risk and seen that it worked out, then that says a lot about you, your faith, your strength. If you've ever felt the weight of not having enough and then having someone provide for you and come through for you.

then you can understand what that feels like. would love for you to tell me how this affects you. If you've been through hard times, if they forged who you are today, I think as we go through these highs and lows and lessons, you'll see that every low was either followed or preceded by a high. Oftentimes the high and low are the same event. It's simply how we react that matters.

So with that in mind, want to leave you with this. Learn from other men's mistakes. You're going to make your own. I've made plenty. I've just lived long, long enough to tell you some of the strength I've gained, some of the, some of the hope I've gleaned from these stories from my mistakes. So if they've helped you in any way, let us know, drop us a line. Thanks so much for listening to the smart dad podcast. We'll talk again next time.