So I guess we're doing this?...

Holly and I have learned a lot of lessons in less than 2 years as real estate investors. One of the biggest is that progress and success can come much faster than you expect, but only when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

The comfort zone feels safe and easy. It is where I tended to stay until recently. It is easy to say "we can't afford that house", "we don't have time for any more projects", or "we can't scale that fast". You can have success in the comfort zone, but it generally corresponds with very slow growth and progress. That isn't a bad thing, it just doesn't allow you to reach your full potential.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the danger or risk zone. While very high rewards can be found here, there is also a chance of significant negative consequences by being reckless. In real estate, moving too quickly into new areas without the prerequisite knowledge, being overconfident, and becoming overleveraged can truly cost you everything.

In between the comfort zone and danger zone is a sweet spot that can supercharge your progress and success. I am talking about our real estate journey because that is the focus of this blog, but this can correspond to any aspect of your life. Instead we now ask "how can we afford that house?", "what would we need to do differently to finish this project along with our other responsibilities" and "others have scaled their portfolios quickly, why not us?" I will talk more about this sweet spot in a future post because I am already seeing the difference in results that come from getting outside of your comfort zone.

But the reason for this first blog post isn't really to talk about our real estate journey to this point, it is to talk about the beginning of our "Real Estate Zupecs" website, social media, and this blog. For those that know Holly and I well, we are not big social media users. For reference, my last Facebook post was 2.5 years ago, I joined Twitter 6 years ago and have 3 posts, and my personal Instagram account where I am most active averages about 1 post per month. I'm not naturally drawn to the spotlight and I don't have a need for public acknowledgement or recognition... in fact that tends to make me uncomfortable. But upon reflecting on the past 12 months and my personal and professional growth, I recognize that this is me sitting in my comfort zone.

The larger real estate community is highly active online and on social media. It is where people build networks across the country, find opportunities and deals, find employees for their businesses, market their properties and services, find partners and private investors, find coaches and mentors, showcase their projects for both the communities as well and friends and family, build credibility, and much more. For many, it is a critical piece of continued growth and success.

So this first installment of our blog is me stepping out of my comfort zone and getting started. Holly and I will both post here on different topics. Some of them will be educational. Afterall, I am a former college professor and still have a passion for teaching. Some will be inspirational. If we can inspire one person to do something that they have always wanted to do but never taken action on, that would be a success. Some of them may be funny stories or lessons that we learn in our journey. Holly will share different design ideas, renovation topics, and before-and-afters.

One thing that I promise is that I'm going to be very transparent. I'm not just going to share our wins and successes. Much more can be learned from sharing our struggles, challenges, and lessons learned. Not many people do this in a public forum, but if you can learn from a mistake that we made so you don't make the same one, that is much more valuable. I am also going to share real numbers from our deals and portfolio. Again, this is never to brag or promote ourselves. We want new and prospective investors to understand how to analyze deals, project returns, and make portfolio decisions, and there is no better way to talk about these concepts than to share the actual details of our portfolio, how we analyze these properties, and the decisions that we make. Much of this will also be elaborated on in our YouTube channel that will launch in the next couple weeks. Click the link and Subscribe if you would like to be notified when we post new content.

We hope you enjoy the content to come. Please be interactive. Post replies and ask questions. Let us know what you want to know more about. This is outside of my comfort zone, but I'm excited to see where it goes. Like we've said so many times the past 2 years, "yes, we're doing this".