From 9-5 to Financial Freedom

Why I'm finally sharing my story...

While I stayed quiet for a long time because I was concerned about what people would think, I've decided to share because I learned from those who shared ahead of me. So, here's the recap. I worked a full time career for 5 years, built a $4M real estate portfolio, built a successful construction business, hit a net worth of $1M at 25 years old, and a $2M net worth at 28. It’s been a journey of hard work, learning, perseverance, and more. I feel incredibly fortunate and I’m excited to share what I’ve learned.

When I left my day job I had active client renovation projects, but took two weeks to explore Banff, AB with my sisters and cousin. I finalized my last refinance and land severance deal a couple days into that trip while walking a trail with mountains in the background and a rabbit foraging nearby (I haven’t forgotten this view and feeling of being free). Felt so good.

I spent the following 16 months further systematizing my business and living far more stress-reduced by automating, eliminating, or delegating many tasks. It wasn’t on autopilot, but it was and is super sustainable – I enjoy this work. I also worked on this while semi-remote traveling 143 days of 2023 visiting Utah, California, Chicago, Muskoka, Toronto, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Rome, Milan, Munich, Dublin, Amsterdam, and Barcelona.

I’ve always dreamt of time freedom, location freedom, and financial freedom. Then I pretty well reached it. How? I learned from everyone and everything I could. I consumed articles, podcasts, websites, and books. Spoke to realtors, investors, and people with more experience than me. But knowledge without action is like having no knowledge at all. It took lots of work and focus. I managed my risks, worked efficiently, and did my best to be of value.

As a caveat, I saw people online talking about being out of their business or automating everything and thought that was freedom. It can be, but then they have nothing to do, which for me is unfulfilling. Freedom is a scale, not an absolute value so having more freedom than I ever imagined is wonderful. 

I was balancing a full time, fully commissioned job (an actual office job too, none of that remote work from home life we’re all jealous of!), a newly growing construction company, multiple projects for myself and other investors, completing the Ontario Real Estate Salesperson Program and exams, analyzing and buying real estate, plus all the other responsibilities of life. The only way I could do this was by being efficient and organized while building systems to execute my vision. 

I didn’t even realize how crazy life was because I was so in the trenches. People would ask me how I was doing it all and, to be transparent, I wasn’t often thinking about how I was doing it because I didn’t have time to think – just time to execute. I did what I thought made sense, which was influenced by the compilation of tiny wisdom nuggets I gathered from continuous learning. Looking back I can see how little I knew in the beginning, but to me that’s a good thing because it means I made progress. A terrible feeling for someone like myself is feeling like I haven’t learned anything or made progress. 

Though I’ve reached some level of financial independence, I’m not “retiring” and I won’t stop working. I don’t think $2M is enough to live the way I’d like to forever, but it provides an incredibly comfortable safety blanket knowing I don’t have to grind for 40 years at a job or do things I don’t want to. I get to choose more often who I want to work with, what I want to work on, where I want to be, and how I want to live. That’s freedom and I’m really grateful for that. 

I’ve been able to think about how I should invest my time given the additional time freedom. I’ve always loved connecting with ambitious people working hard on interesting things. I haven’t really shared my story with many people in detail and have been fairly private. However, in order to connect with interesting people doing interesting things, build a community, and offer inspiration/insights into building financial freedom I’ve decided it’s time to start sharing. 

My first thought is that I’ll share about finances, investing, entrepreneurship, and travel, but who knows if that’s the right choice or if my interests change. I’m starting something new-to-me just like my investing, entrepreneurship, and real estate journey once was. 

I’m only an expert on my life and what I’ve done so I don’t want to tell you what you should do, but I can talk about what I did and am doing. I hope to share thought provoking questions to improve your mindset and gain clarity on what you want out of life. Another goal with this is to generate engagement and share useful information, stories, experiences, case studies, and insights. Feel free to tell me what you want to see/know/learn. I’ll do what I can. 

I’m excited for this new endeavor and the impact I hope it can have. Trying new things increases the surface area for serendipity or landing pad for luck. 

My ask of you is that you share, engage, and like this content so more people can see it. Follow on Instagram @financeswithian. Talk to me in the comments or DM directly.

*fears and disclosures my brain feels the need to express…

• I’m excited for this new endeavour and the impact I hope it can have (Aug 2024).

• I’ve stayed quiet about my experiences primarily because I didn’t want to be perceived as boastful. I don’t like those kinds of people so I feared being labeled as such. It’s not in my nature so I don’t know why I had this issue (besides seeing online content that felt this way).

• Additionally I told myself I wasn’t “successful” enough (not everything has to be 10X or multi gajillion dollar ventures to be a success despite what the internet will have us believe).

• While I didn’t feel “successful enough”, conversely, I did because I was happy and achieved a huge dream of mine. I only needed to shift my perspective to view success by my definition, not what anyone else has defined it as.

• I hope to convey my experiences in a manner that is modest, positive, helpful, and insightful.

• I didn’t do this alone and have many people to thank for their contributions. I’ve been fortunate and done my best to make the most of opportunities. I do not come from money and that likely made me want financial freedom even more.

• I can overthink things and try to cover every edge case, but that’s not feasible. I’m taking the approach that sharing something is better than nothing so this is pushing me outside my comfort zone to share and get started.