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Part I
Building a Solid Wealth Foundation
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1
My Story
The highest reward for a personā s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
āJohn Ruskin
With fists clinched in frustration, I wanted nothing more than to get out.
It was the second day of my marketing class at the University of Texas and I was doing my best to focus on the drone of my marketing teacher, Dr. Nguyen. He was a new professor at the university who had spent his entire life in academia. Apparently he flew through the business school with flying colors, but he obviously cheated his way through English.
When he called out his version of my name, āMa-chew Mowis,ā he quickly pointed out that I wasnāt sitting in my assigned seat, established in the previous class. A seating chart in collegeāreally?
Not only that, he told us we couldnāt even go to the bathroom during class or weād be considered absent. Suddenly, I was in grade school all over again.
To my astonishment, he insisted I get up and move to the empty seat next to me.
Biting my tongue, I moved seats while I thought to myself, āDr. Nguyen must surely be the biggest moron in the room.ā The fact that he was going to teach us how to be successful in the business world, even though he had never stepped foot in it, was a scary proposition. That was the first time the little voice urged me to āget out.ā
After roll call, he went into this long discourse on the importance of education and how those of us who wanted to get a good job in the business sector absolutely had to have a college degree.
āStrike one,ā said the little voice.
Then he told us how the job market had become so competitive that if you wanted to get a great job, we should get a masterās degree.
āStrike two.ā
Finally, he told us that if we really wanted to climb the corporate ladder, we should do what he did and get a PhD.
āStrike three.ā
My knuckles were turning white and my whole body tensed up. Have you ever been in a place where a negative feeling takes over your body and you just have to get out?
You see, I had spent the last two years immersed in books about entrepreneurialism, going to every business seminar I could find, and listening to motivational and business programs in my car. I was also almost $10,000 in debt trying to launch my first business while āpretendingā to focus on college.
Despite my initial failure, I was hooked. I was convinced I was going to be a hugely successful entrepreneur.
As I listened to this professor talk about how to climb the corporate ladder, I knew that I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to have a job and certainly no desire to climb any corporate ladder. The last thing on my priority list was working my way up to a corner office.
The frustration was so bad I couldnāt concentrate. The professorās words started sounding like the teacher from Charlie Brown: āWah wah wah wah ...ā
I wanted to scream.
āThatās it!ā the little voice said. āMatt, you can do it. College is costing you your real world education. You just started a new business and you need to focus on it. You donāt belong here with all the other kids who are going to spend their entire adult lives being confined to a miserable life of 9 to 5, taking measly two-week vacations a year and trading their life away for a job. GET OUT!ā
I was done.
I took a deep breath, grabbed my books, stood up, and walked out. I still remember the room going silent as Dr. Nguyen stopped his lecture, Iām sure wanting to remind me of the rule about no bathroom breaks. But he never said a word. It was a march of silence as I exited the room.
Maybe he knew I wasnāt going to the bathroom.
As I stepped out of the classroom, I exhaled and a sense of freedom swept over my body. My college days were over.
After a straight shot to the administration office to cancel all my classes, it finally hit me.
What the hell was I doing?
I hadnāt made a nickel yet in the business I just started, which was selling tax reduction educational courses. I had failed in the last business venture I started. I was about to turn 21 years old, had no marketing budget for my business, was $10,000 in debt, and had promised my mom, after moving back into her house rent free, that I would finish college.
I hadnāt even left campus and the seeds of doubt were already creeping in. Would I make it? Could I really do it? Was I making the biggest mistake of my life?
But it was too late to go back. I had already crossed the line. It was millionaire or bust.
And bust I did.
The Bust
With what little I had left on my credit cards, I took out a cash advance to open a tiny 120-square-foot office since Mom wasnāt exactly crazy about me running my business out of her house.
I had a desk, a phone, office supplies, and absolutely no one to sell my educational courses to. It was time to start advertising, so it was back to the bank for another cash advance.
Iāll spare you the gory details, but after six months in business, my debt had tripled to nearly $30,000. I pawned basically everything I owned, spent 10 hours a day on the phone making cold calls, and still couldnāt afford to pay rent in my office or at home, where Mom decided that since I was adult enough to be in business, I was adult enough to pay rent.
With all five of my credit cards maxed out, I was totally busted. It was time to get what I dreaded mostāa JOB.
After scouring through the newspaper, I found an ad in the sales section that said, āEarn up to $10,000-$20,000 per month!ā That was, by far, more than I had ever earned in a month. I thought to myself that if I had to get a job, Iād at least get one that gave me the opportunity to make a lot of money.
I went in for the interview and after a five-minute conversation, I was told that training started the next day. I was hired to sell above ground swimming pools. While I was nowhere close to being excited about the new job, I needed money bad so I figured I would make the best of it.
After the second day of training, I still hadnāt seen one of the pools, which I thought was a bit strange, but they gave me a notebook with the sales presentation and I was set to go. Basically how the process worked was that the company would run a commercial on television showing a big happy family swimming in a pool and how you could get a pool for $400. When prospects called in, the operator would set an appointment for a sales rep to come out and show them a $400 pool, along with an āeliteā version, which would be a bit more expensive. Of course, my job was to sell them on the elite version.
After training was over, they said they had leads all over the country and asked us if weād rather stay near Dallas or go elsewhere. Because I was hungry to make money I told them to send me wherever I could earn the most income. They said the most leads were in southern Louisiana and asked if I could be there the following day.
So that was it. I packed up my car that day and drove to Lafayette, Louisiana the same night. They gave me a $200 per week salary plus commissions, which were to be paid after the pool was installed six to eight weeks later. Between my credit card bills and paying for gas and food, I had enough to stay in a motel one or maybe two nights a week, if I was lucky.
The rest of the time I slept in my beaten-up little red Honda Civic that had been wrecked twice. In fact, I had been rear-ended a few months earlier and was hit so hard by a big truck that my seat bent back. Even when it was in the upright position, I was leaned back a few inches. The hatchback window in the back miraculously didnāt break, but the door it shut on was caved in and there was about a three-inch gap from the window. When I drove, it was like the window was down because you could hear the wind rushing in.
At the time, I actually remember feeling lucky for being rear-ended because the driver had insurance and I could use the $1,500 to pay bills rather than having my car fixed. That was my version of a lucky break back then.
Journal EntryāFriday, June 5, 1998
Itās been a while since my last journal entry but with my new job I have a feeling Iāll be able to keep it up more regularly since I seem to have a LOT of time on my hands doing nothing. Iām now working with a company selling above ground swimming pools. Basically, people call in to the company to buy a $395 pool and the company sends me out to try and sell them a more expensive $7,000 pool. I just started Wednesday evening so Iāve been in Louisiana now for a couple days.
My financial situation has gone from bad to worse and Iām in dire straits right now. I have about $200 to last me on the road till next week (Thursday). Between gas, food, and staying in a motel a couple nights, Iāll be running on fumes by Thursday. Iāve calculated that I can (continued) afford to get a cheap motel room one or two nights a week and have enough to survive with my $200 a week draw on commissions. (Commissions arenāt paid until the pool gets installed which is about 6-8 weeks out.)
I slept in my car in a Wal-Mart parking lot last night. Tried sleeping in a cornfield first because Iām so cramped in my car but the mosquitoes were terrible and it was too hot in my sleeping bag. I woke up at about 9am feeling like I was being cooked from the sun beating down into the car. Note to selfāfind a shade tree to park under!
For two months I lived out of my car and learned a few valuable lessons from being homeless. First, it was not a good thing to sleep late in the sweltering heat of July and August. Around 10:00 A.M., the inside of the car would heat up to about 150 degrees and Iād wake up feeling like my blood was about to boil and that I was going to die of heat exhaustion.
Another revelation was that by staying in a motel only one or two nights a week, one develops quite a bathing problem. After a couple days of 100 degree heat, I started to smell pretty rotten ... not a good thing when youāre going into peopleās homes trying to sell them something.
I learned to find gas station bathrooms that locked from the inside where I could bring my bar of soap and a towel, take off all my clothes, and bathe by splashing water on myself from the bathroom sink. The bathroom floor would be sopping wet when I was done so I always prayed no one would be waiting at the door to see the mess I had left them in the bathroom.
Such was my life.
Journal EntryāWednesday, June 10, 1998
Slept in the car again last night since I only had about $30. Get paid my $200 today so maybe Iāll splurge on another cockroach-infested motel tonight....Ahh, the joys of my miserable life. I parked the car behind a Kroger building w/ plenty of shade from the morning sun. Itās gotten so hot that I canāt sleep so Iāve been turning the car on every 30-45 minutes to cool off. I was doing okay until I got woken up by someone tapping on my window. Scared the hell out of me until I saw that it was actually a police officer. Evidently itās illegal to sleep behind a grocery store since itās private property. Not sure what theyāre worried about but I just apologized and drove to a hospital parking lot to sleep the rest of the night. Found a nice big tree to park under so I woke up without being cooked alive.
Hitting Rock Bottom
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
Each night after my last appointment I would use a ...
