I immediately stepped back from the day to day at work and handed charge to my number two at the time, Scott Trench in coordination with Brandon. There are few things worse than seeing your child suffer and this period was easily the worst of my life. For us, it manifested in my little girl becoming neck down paralized amongst other things. In November 2017 one of my daughters went through a terrible trauma that was initiated by a surgery - something called conversion disorder. This ultimately led to me having several panic attacks which really should have been a sign to step back.Īs always, I charged on despite my body and subconscious screaming as loud as possible to stop. My excitement for the company and brand never waned, but I really stopped loving going in to work, but didn’t know it. Instead of getting my hands dirty building product or testing some new landing page or campaign, I was overssing someone else that was. It was a blast, but by year 12, 13, 14 my job changed. I LOVED the first few years of hiring and scaling. The days of building product, building community, marketing, growth hacking and being creative were replaced with days managing people.Īlmost everyone that builds a business wants some kind of growth, but as much as I loved seeing my brainchild thrive and grow, I was having less and less fun doing it. There were personality clashes, bad hires, and everything else you could imagine. It was a lot to manage and with it came all the headaches that come with growth. The list of accomplishments goes on and on, but with this growth came the need to hire, and that we did.īy the time I exited, we had over 40 full time employees, and around a dozen contractors - close to sixty people working for the business. We build tools, our content, our social presence. Six years later and a full eight years after I founded the company, I hired my first full-time employee, Brandon Turner, who helped me create our podcast and was crucial in the next stage of growth of the business from lifestyle business to full fledged company. something that I used to think gave me hustle street cred, but today I realize was just a formula for burnout. ![]() Keep in mind that full time in this case means 80-100 hours a week, with no days off, no vacations, no respit. ![]() For two years I taught and in my free time I coded and built this budding hobby into something that trickled in tiny advertising checks.Īfter two years, I quit my teaching job, got married, moved to Colorado and began working full time on BiggerPockets. While teaching, I began to build a directory of resources and a forum which were the roots of today’s community and platform. I had purchased a few rental properties and needed some help dealing with all the questions I had, but couldn’t find a place where I could get answers without having to deal with solicitations and promotions of these self-proclaimed gurus who dominated the scene at the time. When I founded the company I was teaching full time at a special ed high school in the Los Angeles area. The Hobby that Turned into a Lifestyle Business The company is one that I founded almost 18 years ago and left back in November 2018 after undertaking a recapitalization via McCarthy Capital, a private equity shop out of Omaha. Why I left BiggerPockets is a little more complicated… In my case, the two things most searched are my net worth and why I left BiggerPockets. It is always interesting to see what kind of things come up when you search for yourself online.
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