The gloomy and drizzly Northern California night was a perfect match for the occasion. It was chilly, not cold, but my mood was somber. I just sat and watched the windshield wipers click back and forth. I don’t remember exactly what was playing on the radio, but I’m sure it seemed depressing.

I knew I had to get out of the car and just do it, but I couldn’t bring myself to.

“How had I fallen so far, so fast?” I kept asking myself. I shook my head to remove the feelings of guilt, shame, and blame that kept creeping in.

“It wasn’t my fault. It was out of my hands.” I repeated in my mind.

I was sitting in the parking lot of the car dealership, about to surrender my new Lexus and Yukon. I was a few months late on the payments. I was sure that the Repo man around El Dorado Hills was probably looking for me, so I decided to take responsibility for my situation and turn them in on my own.

The only condolence that I had was that I was not alone. My girlfriend, Tiffany, was sitting beside me. I could feel her care and concern, but I couldn’t bring myself to look in her direction. She had driven the Lexus to the dealership for me. Talk about a sting to the pride.

Never in a million years did I think that this could happen to me. I didn’t see it coming, until it happened. I was broke. Completely.

Growing up in my family, failure was not an option. Not because it was a strict or authoritarian household. I did not have the type of parents that berated me for coming in second place. Instead, they were loving. They were kind. They were supportive, but they were also very successful.

I was born and raised in Fair Oaks in the early 1970’s, and my father was a prolific Architect and Developer in the Sacramento region. At one time, my Dad had twenty plus designers and Architects working for him. He was also a General Contractor and Real Estate Agent. A true “one stop shop’ for anyone with property needs or interests.

My Dad worked with such notable clients as Ronald and Nancy Reagan. He also did work for the California Governor George Deukmejian.  One of my Dad’s biggest clients was the former co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers, George McCuen, who built thousands of his 4-plex designs across the Sacramento Valley. He built shopping centers and commercial tilt-up buildings. Over the years he designed several thousand homes, developed, and sold subdivisions in Rocklin and surrounding areas. I still love driving around town and seeing the physical legacy that my Dad left in the Capital City region.

And there I was about to turn in my only two vehicles to the dealership because I couldn’t afford the payments.

“How the mighty had fallen,” I managed a painful grin.

When I first started out on my own, there was no way that I could see this coming. In the early nineties, we moved to Kona, Hawaii when the U.S. economy took a dive during the first Gulf War. When we settled in to the island life, I started apprenticing under my Dad with drafting and designing homes, and as I got older, I put those skills to use.

On the Big Island, I did a remodel design for a lady who would soon become a close friend of the family. She liked it so much, she hired me to do the design and eventual build out on her new million dollar home, when I was just twenty-four years old. The project was a huge success, so she referred me to her friends in the area. I quickly found myself building million dollar homes in my early twenties, and my projects continued to improve and grow, in terms of size and cost, over the next fourteen years.

In 2004, I decided to move back to the Sacramento area. I had a new wife and a baby girl, so we chose to relocate to find a better school system for our child’s future. When we got back to the Mainland, I was thirty-two years old, with enough money to retire and live semi-comfortably for the rest of my life.

Sitting in that cold and wet parking lot, I thought back to those days. I had the world by the horns. I had been back in California just over four years, and I had watched everything slip away like sand through my fingers. Who would have thought it would have led here? The money. Gone. The Wife. Gone. I had lost everything.

When I got back to Sacramento, I decided to build upon my fortune, instead of just retiring and living off the modest dividends for the rest of my life. I started building large and expensive spec homes in the El Dorado Hills area, with the idea of turning a major profit. Then the recession of 2008 struck. The economy imploded. I got caught holding my assets, with no one left to buy them. The banks took my fortune.

I know a lot of agents and consumers struggled during the Great Recession, but my situation was extreme. I went from a very comfortable lifestyle with plenty of money, to living in a one bedroom apartment on an air mattress with my TV propped up on a home depot box, barely being able to afford food to eat.

When I say I lost everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Except Tiffany. I met her while I was at my lowest. Completely down and out. She was a hostess at a local Mexican restaurant downtown. I noticed her in passing the first time that I went there. The second time, about a year later, I asked her out. I had a week of money left. Literally. I managed to scrape enough cash together to take her to Tahoe. When I got back, I was flat out broke, but she stuck with me.

Tiffany was there no matter how bad it got. I limped along for a while, cutting expenses, but eventually, the cars had to go. That was it. Basically, my last two material possessions were lost, and she was there to help me along in the process. 

I took a breath, opened the door, and went into the dealership to hand in my keys and fill out the paperwork to officially turn over the vehicles. It was hard to even look the people on the other side of the desk in the face because I was so embarrassed. That was it. I had hit bottom. My lowest of the low.

After I turned in my vehicles, something happened that I wasn’t expecting. I let go. I stopped dwelling on the failure and decided to do something about it. I had nothing left to fear. What I did have was my girl and a chance to start my life over again, and that is an opportunity that I took full advantage of.

I had previously obtained my real estate license to assist me with my former career as a property developer, so in 2008, I earned my Broker’s License and started moving forward again. A few years later, Tiffany would also achieve her real estate license, and started working with purchases, sales, and renovations. Focusing on real estate was the best professional decision that we have ever made! It allowed me to find my mojo again!

In 2010, I had a banner year, as I was approached by several investors to represent them, which allowed me to get back on my feet, somewhat. I was able to purchase my own townhome in Folsom for cash. It was a wreck when we moved in, but I applied my design and construction knowledge towards upgrading it, and we were able to sell it two years later for triple the price! Since then, we have bought, renovated, and sold several more properties, which has nearly gotten me back to the place of comfort that I had before the recession. It has been such a rewarding experience!

As we flipped our own homes on the side, and worked full time in the real estate field, Tiffany was making things happen behind the scenes as a Transaction Coordinator, and I had worked the public side of our real estate and developing company. Now we have decided that she will join me in the front of the business and we will proceed as a Husband and Wife Team, which is a true honor for me. She was there when I had nothing, so to have her by my side as we move further and further into success, is one of my life’s greatest accomplishments!

Now that I have returned to my former position of success, I can look back and understand why things happened. I do not feel sorry for myself, nor have I ever. Starting at eighteen years old until I was thirty two, I worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. I earned every bit of the success that I had. I also made some mistakes, and I earned them, as well. I never rested on my laurels. I made my decisions and I accept full responsibility for them. In retrospect, those mistakes led me to an even better place than I was before, with a career that I am passionate about and a woman who loves me for who I am and not what I have.