Why We Kept Our W2 Jobs For 7 Years While Building

First 10 years of my professional career, I worked in the concerts industry.

The last five of that was in Las Vegas.

You put somebody in their mid-20s working in the concerts industry in Las Vegas, and you can probably paint a picture of what the lifestyle was like.

It was one of the most rewarding chapters of my career professionally.

I learned so much.

I built skills that have still to this day carried me, served me very well as I go through these new chapters of life, but it took a toll on me.

And ultimately I was working for a fraction of the value that I was creating, but I was working six, sometimes seven days a week.

I had normal Monday through Friday office hours.

And then I'd be out at shows three or four nights a week, either working our shows or scouting our competitor shows.

And so there was no time for myself.

There was nothing.

I was putting so many hours in and on an hourly basis, making probably less than $10 an hour on average, again, compared to the time I was putting in.

And so I started building resentment towards my employer and resentment towards my situation.

And it drove me to all sorts of very bad behavior that ultimately ended me in rehab for alcohol abuse on May 2nd, 2019. and that was a big turning point in my life where i had realized that i was expending all of my energy both physically all my all my efforts in my whole life were channeled towards this job in which i was not getting a reciprocal exchange for what i was giving up and it's not just money that a potential missed income that it was costing me it was costing me in my relationships it was costing me in things that i couldn't do otherwise and so through that journey of course i had to do a lot of reflection and understand it wasn't my employer's fault that I was in that situation.

It wasn't my wife's fault.

It wasn't anybody's fault.

It was a product of the environment that I had designed for myself, which is this traditional employment in a role in which there was a very finite amount of upside, if any.

And so when I came to that realization, that's ultimately what led us to invest in real estate.

And less than two months after entering rehab, we bought our first rental property.

And so I had changed and channeled some of the addiction that I was putting towards my vices and this negative behavior, and I redirected it towards this idea of true ownership.

And I said, We don't need to feel victimized by our occupations.

It is not the industry's fault.

It's not anybody's fault, but it's our responsibility to recognize the exchange we're making.

And if we're not okay with that, then it's our responsibility to figure out what we want to do about it.

So for me, that turned into buying rental properties.