10X It

A Three Properties Five Years Seminar Post

Share this post for me! ⬇️

_{Read to the bottom for the 3 Properties in 5 Years Plan}

For two years, our team leader Jeffrey D’Angelo at Keller Williams Coastal and Lakes & Mountains Jeff had been hounding me to quit my teaching gig and go Realtor full time. For two years I told him I did not need to quit teaching because I was already doing Realtor full time. In fact, between the two careers, I put in close to 90 hours a week.

My entire identity was wrapped up into being a professor. And I liked real estate well enough, but teaching has always been a passion—one of the reasons for writing this blog series really, and one of the reasons for putting together the Your First 3 Properties in 5 Years seminar. I don’t really “do” real estate as much as I assist people in reaching their goals, which was what I was doing teaching anyway. Real estate just happens to be the medium I move through to support my activities of bettering not only my own life but bettering others as well.

Somewhere in the middle of my third year in real estate, I was doing taxes and discovered I more than doubled my teaching salary and the teaching position had a weird glitch in the system that didn’t allow me to take as big of a specific tax break if I just quit altogether. Those were two straws.

I really really couldn’t imagine not being in the classroom though. And one day, I’m hanging out at the KWCLM office doing some paperwork, turning in a closing, and Jeff said, “Hey, Steve, why aren’t you renting a cubicle?” Well, ‘cause it costs $81 a month and I already have a nice home office. He responded, without a second’s hesitation, “I’ll give you the space free for three months and see how you like it.” And that was straw three. The camel’s back broke.

I didn’t realize how important a small office cubicle was to me until that moment. For ten years I taught at Great Bay Community College as an adjunct professor, a part-time employee delegated to an adjunct lounge that 75% of the faculty shared, which was kind of sort of okay until they moved us into a literal broom closet and reduced the number of computer terminals available. They did provide a coffee pot to kind of smooth things over, you know. I guess that was nice.

Me looking for a substantial raise at the college was about moving through the linear hoops I thought I had to jump through one at a time: volunteer service on committees, help the school find a new president, serve on all-college panels, work harder longer, join the union, negotiate for a raise, get hired full-time. But I was never hired full-time. I got nowhere with my efforts because of the system that was set up around me.

Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy’s book “10x is Easier Than 2x” argues achieving 10x growth is simpler, more effective, and more fulfilling than striving for incremental 2x improvements. 10x thinking forces individuals to make radical changes and focus on high-impact activities, which leads to greater innovation and success. This mindset shift encourages abandoning linear, effort-intensive strategies in favor of exponential, high-leverage actions.

Real estate was a radical change. At that first closing, the title officer slid a check across the table, which I picked up in my little grubby hands, and read off the numbers: six thousand three hundred sixty-two dollars and fifty cents. In just three weeks I made what teaching two classes paid over four months.

Then some random person I met asked me what I did for a living, and I said, “Realtor.” Which was mind blowing because here I was a Professor, but I didn’t say professor, I said Realtor.

“10x Is Easier Than 2x” starts with Michelangelo.

Michelangelo’s aspiration to sculpt Hercules and later create the Pieta pushed him far beyond his current abilities, embodying the essence of 10x thinking. And to begin his journey he did what many people would have refused to do. At seventeen years old he fixated and secretly obtained and dissected human cadavers, a crime punishable by death in 1493 Florence, Italy. This mindset encourages focusing on the most impactful actions and eliminating distractions, leading to greater innovation and success. By aiming for 10x, one simplifies decision-making and leverages their unique abilities for maximum impact.

In that first year of real estate with less effort, with less work, with less struggle, and less stress I made about $18,000. I’d doubled my annual income in one swell swoop. And in that second year, I made $38,000 in real estate, more than doubling my teaching paycheck, and more than tripling my annual overall income. This year, by the end of the summer, I’ll have made $46,361, about $10,000 less than the previous 2023 overall, but that projected number for the end of August does not include what I have built up in the pipeline, does not predict all the way through until December.

The most impactful action for me was real estate. Teaching was a distraction. But I didn’t recognize teaching as a distraction. I thought real estate was the side gig.

Look, I hustled to start several different businesses in the past and always quit my regular 9 to 5 too soon, finding myself scrambling for any kind of job—pizza delivery, line cook, grocery store worker, third-trick gas station attendant. Teaching was safe. Because the school never hired me full-time, I was never laid off. Because I was relatively tech-savvy, when the pandemic hit, and we transitioned to online teaching I picked up extra classes because the olds didn’t know how to use Zoom. And as much as teaching could be unpredictable semester to semester, the job was certainly predictable enough. I had two kids I needed to take care of (still do), a house, a car. I needed to keep the lights on. Put food on the table. Etcetera etcetera.

I told my wife several times, “I can’t believe Jeff is trying to get me to quit my job. Does he not have any sense of responsibility?”

I’m not suggesting you quit your job, but to identify your high-impact actions. Jeff helped me see that real estate was my most impactful action.

And I’m absolutely convinced that the traditional way of buying a home is evolving. In our “Your First 3 Properties in 5 Years” seminar, we will discuss a new-ish strategy for purchasing your dream home. This method requires a mindset shift, and absolutely seems like what an investor would do as opposed to regular-joe homeowner. The process does takes longer, but not only gets you into the home you want but produces long-term passive wealth.