We are excited to introduce you to Rachel from Adventures in Mobile Homes. She’s always had a spunky entrepreneurial spirit, eventually focusing her energy on mobile home investing. Here’s how she made her dream of working for herself a reality!
My Entrepreneurial Spirit
Looking back, my interest in making money for myself started in elementary school.
I noticed that during recess the swings were in high demand. I had the idea of having my friend run and guard a swing at recess time. We charged money (think nickels and dimes) for the use of the swing. This wasn’t my greatest idea and it didn’t last long. We eventually ended up in the principal’s office.
We also tried selling pencils from the fancy pencil machine at school by buying up all the pencils and charging our classmates double (or bartering). This venture also ended in the principal’s office. Luckily, I took my entrepreneurial spirit off the school campus, holding puppet shows for the kids in the neighborhood.
As I grew older, I had several other business ventures - a career oriented website, career consulting other students, and a resume writing service. At one time, I was even hired as an independent contractor by my university to take notes for various classes so they could sell these notes to other students.
My ventures never turned to gold and my entrepreneurial spirit dimmed a bit. I was told I needed more work experience and an MBA to be successful. I believed this advice and worked for various fortune 500 companies and looked into obtaining my MBA, but after a while I realized this wasn’t the path for me and abandoned my plans to go to graduate school.
My Entrepreneurial Path
I ended up reading Robert Kiyosaki’s book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad and found myself inspired to get into real estate investing. I had never thought of this as a career path and hadn’t heard of passive income before. This was a light bulb moment for me. I had wanted to spend my time being able to do the things I wanted and real estate investing seemed like it might be a good fit for me.
My path to mobile home investing wasn’t a straight line. I started with looking for deals for other real estate investors. From there, I switched to wholesaling where I actually put deals under contract and assigned them to other real estate investors for a fee.
Once I built up enough cash, I started buying and holding single-family homes, becoming a landlord. After awhile, I switched my focus to mobile home investing and ended up selling my entire real estate portfolio.
Switching to this niche, I had to learn the business from the ground up. There wasn’t a lot of information out there on investing in mobile homes. I found the book, Deals on Wheels, by Lonnie Scruggs and found a mentor. This helped tremendously.
Eventually, I got out on my own. I visited close to 200 mobile home parks in my area and learned the market. I found areas that I liked (and didn’t like), learned to estimate costs, and learned the fix up work involved in this market. It took me almost a full year to find my first mobile home deal and made mistakes along the way. Halfway through, I started doubting myself and almost gave up.
I’m glad I didn’t let my doubts hold me back.
With each deal it did, my knowledge grew. I learned certain neighborhoods attracted a specific clientele. The best prospects are folks who live, work and shop in the area already. I learned this the hard way and it took awhile before I found neighborhoods and clientele that worked well with my personality. Figuring this out helped me to become a successful real estate investor and eventually build an awesome team.
I now hire people to work in my business instead of doing it all on my own. My focus is on managing and hiring good people. I’ve learned that taking the time to hire reliable people is priceless. Having a good team can make or break your success as a real estate investor. I’ve also learned that my team is constantly evolving. I’ve had to force myself to keep looking for good and reliable people just in case the ones I work with can’t do the job. It happens when you least expect it.
I love what I do and sharing my experience with others so they can learn from my mistakes. I share my journey on my blog and have written a few books on mobile home investing! My next venture is to buy land and create my own mobile home park!
Find Your Entrepreneurial Niche
I love what that my entrepreneurial spirit never died. And I love the niche that I am in. If you have the same spirit, don’t give up on your dream. If you have a niche you are interested in:
- Learn as much as you can
- Network, find someone who is doing it - learn from them, offer to help them out.
- Take the plunge and do your first deal.
- Have Persistence - it’s frustrating and takes time, but you’ll eventually get there.
Thank you to Rachel for sharing her story! We love her creative childhood entrepreneurial ventures - even ending up in the principal’s office, haha! And we can’t wait to see her develop her own mobile home park!
Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!