Who in the Heck is this Steve Guy?

Dear Friend. I want to thank you for giving me your valuable time so I can share with you my story.

You might have found my site purely through luck,

So you might be thinking, “Who is this Steve guy, and how can he help me?"

1st read my story:

I grew up in a small German town in southern Indiana (Haubstadt). Our house was surrounded by cornfields. My favorite past time growing up was riding my Honda 3-wheeler through Hirsch’s Woods since there was not much else to do where I grew up. I graduated from Purdue University (Big 10) in May of 1992 ready to pursue my new career in Landscape Architecture.

Where to go next?

After analyzing pros and cons of various southern cities such as DC, Orlando, Atlanta, and Charleston, I finally decided to take a job in my field in the “queen city” Charlotte, North Carolina. After working in the career path I had chosen in college for now 10 years, I became very bored with my current situation and contemplating- can I do this stuff for another 20 years of my life?

"Entrepreneur Spirit Grows"

In 2001, I decided I was sick of working for someone else. I was seriously looking at various businesses so I could be my own boss. I decided to go the real estate route, but how could I just jump in full-time. What to do when you do not have any extra money or time? I realized I needed to obtain knowledge on how become a real estate investor but where? Unfortunately I went to the wrong person for advice. I went to the president of a local landlord association and he told me he could get me started right away in my investing career with 10 properties.

He stated I needed no money out of my pocket since he was going to “take back a second mortgage on the house for repairs”. Great, I thought - 10 investment properties, no money from me, repairs done, tenant occupied- sounds good right?

This crook over inflated the house values, left me with houses that were only partially repaired, and occupied with tenants that paid the rent when they felt like it.

I struggled trying to make these bad investments work for a few years. I relentlessly battled keeping these houses rented that were all located in war-zone neighborhoods - broken windows, homeless people breaking into my vacant houses, roach infestation and dirty carpets from bad tenants - Would the nightmare ever end!

I decided I needed help from the real estate gurus. I bet I spent over $20,000.00 in my Real Estate education in a matter of a year.

Being a person that is persistent and takes immediate action, I purchased all the programs that included tons of reading materials, lots of CD'S, DVD'S, Conference Calls, Coaching, Mentoring, Field Training, and Live Seminars.

Unfortunately being a traditional small business owner is not what it’s all cracked up to be.

The 40 hour work week at the job along with trying to manage all those properties in my spare time and no time or freedom to get away for even a day started taking its toll on all of me and my family. Around this time is when I made the decision to be 100% focused on building my real estate business and not try to and multi-task different businesses.

While all this is going on in my life, my job continued to be frustrating for me. Sitting in my 7’x8’ cubicle for 8 hours a day staring at a computer screen, having very little social interaction with others, and no daylight (because my co-workers would rather work in the dark than open the blinds and see the uptown Charlotte skyline) felt more like I was sitting in a jail cell. By the way, a typical jail cell is about 6’x10’.

Change is Good

Even though I have had my share of trials in the past with real estate and life in general, I have learned from those failures and grown to be a better business owner and investor. Things are going much better now, I have a great mentor, John Burley who has completed over 1000 real estate transactions and has showed me the right way to run a successful real estate business and make win/win solutions for buyers, sellers, and investors.