Names have been changed in the following.
It’s not the end of the month yet. I can still work towards that 12,000+ goal! But I am at 8. I’m standing at 8!
Did Glenn Stearns earn the full million in season one of the Undercover Billionaire? Nope. Not at all. He fell short and only made $750,000. I don’t see that as a failure. If I don’t make it to the $12,000 I don’t see that as a personal failure either. But also, I said I would tell you everything, and the question is: did I really make $8000 in the month of September?
No.
I want to talk about one deal—a portion of the eight grand.
Let’s roll the clock back pre-covid 2019. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ve probably heard this story before, although not from this perspective. I was super frustrated with my job. I’d been teaching at Great Bay Community College for five years at that point. I really loved the work. I still love the work. Helping people succeed and reach their goals is my jam. I want to see people absolutely succeed in whatever their pursuits! I had been loosely promised a full-time gig, and at some point I’d also been told to consider food stamps and state heating assistance as a portion of my salary. I’d topped out at $3000 a class and asked for a raise. My boss told me I was talking to the wrong person, so I asked who I should speak to, and she said, “The Union.”
I wrote a letter. Then I received a phone call from Carrie, an internal organizer for the union.
Carrie said bargaining contract negotiations were coming up, asked if I’d like to be a part of the team, then asked if I’d like to be president of the chapter. I said yes to it all.
Turns out, Bill who headed the negotiation team, was the entire team. I brought in as many people as I could and I remember Bill saying, “Steve, we see a lot of potential in you, but you got to wake up.” We’re good friends now, so it’s okay to say I really hated the guy in the beginning.
Carrie and I planned to meet but of course Covid hit so we never met in person. A lot of phone calls, a lot of Zoom meetings, a lot of me going behind the scenes talking about how frustrated I was with the whole system. Even threatened to go the press. Boy howdy, that got the union’s president president on the phone with me real quick. That first year of contract negotiations completely stalled out. People yelled and screamed at each other. At one point I was in literal tears.
$3000 a class only paid for a month and a half of rent.
I think Carried was just as frustrated.
My wife Mary and I began researching how to make money on top of our regular jobs. We looked at Hustle Nation by Nick something or other, Pollywork, Upwork, Fivrr. Uber, which by the way, I applied to but at the time they weren’t hiring in the area. One day, we drove past a house that had a for sale sign. I made the off-hand comment that there was probably cash in real estate. I didn’t mean I’d make millions and millions of dollars. I didn’t even know that through all of Covid Realtors were making tons of money. I meant pay my bills, put groceries on the table money.
We did a bit of research, and discovered the mandatory training would cost about $400 and a month. That the licensing test was going to cost about $150 on top of that. And the first thing I was told was not to be a secret agent. To call everyone I knew and just tell them I was a Realtor.
I called Carrie. Among other people. Then I began inviting her for coffee, inviting to our annual soup and fire, asking her how she was doing.
In the meantime, because I’m good at speaking in front of people, I jumped into home seller and buyer seminars. I don’t know how it came up in conversation or how Carrie found out about this. She was still involved in the union—a different chapter—and asked if I’d speak at her chapter about the real estate market. Then she invited me back for a second time. This was 2022 and early summer of 2023.
I met one of her chapter members. We sent some funny memes back and forth via email. Then, seemingly, out of the blue, the chapter member called me with a lead. I called the lead. The lead signed me as her Realtor at the end of August and we began searching for homes. Then found one.
When did this transaction begin?
Did it begin when I asked for a raise? Did it begin when I started looking for other opportunities? Did it begin in the union contract negotiations when I first met Carrie? Did it begin with the seminars? Did it begin with calling Carrie?
I don’t know. A whole chain of events had to occur for this one deal to culminate in September.
When we first moved here from Wyoming way back in 2015, to help Mary through grad school, I took a weekend job at a t-shirt printing company. She wasn’t sure I could do the job. I walked around with a cane. Sometimes I still do. I had been telling my doctor about the constant pain in my left ankle. For the most part, he ignored me. Told me I was too young for that kind of pain. That the pain had to be just in my head.
The shifts at the t-shirt factory were 12 hours long on hard floors. And up three flights of stairs. I’d come home from a shift and self-medicate on cigarettes and wine coolers. One morning, I woke to go to work, and my entire left foot was in searing red hot pain. Even more disconcerting, the foot had turned a full sharp ninety degrees to the left. It took my ankle bent at the wrong ankle for my doctor to believe me. His medical advice was to quit the t-shirt factory.
“I can’t quit my job. What am I going to do for money?”
I remember him saying, and at the time I thought how crass, how much of a jerk he was being, he said, “You’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out.”
