From when I was young, I wanted to have economic freedom. My first job, at 14, was bussing tables at an Italian Restaurant. Serving water, clearing plates, making salads. At 16 I moved on to bagging groceries at Safeway. I knew from early on I liked getting paid, it felt good.
I also knew I did not want to sell my time. I wanted to build something that paid me while I slept. That paid me exponentially more than the hourly time I invested. Initially, I wanted to have this very quickly. I joined an MLM company in my junior year of college. Our group's motto was Arrive by 25! We would all be retired at 25. As you can imagine, it did not work out that way.
After college, I worked in finance in San Francisco logging 12 to 14 hour days before moving to Panama at 25 years old. I continued in finance for a couple more years before starting AH with my partner. Over the course of that experience, I learned two important things:
I still wanted my financial and time independence.
It was not going to be easy, and it was not going to be fast.
Of course, we all read of the overnight success story. The guy who nailed the market call and got rich. But how many failed along the way? I am building something for the long term. Something that will endure. Just like the house, it needs its foundation. It needs to be done diligently. With care. With quality.
Yes, it leads to my end goal of economic freedom. But along the way I have had to adjust to perspective. It was not going to happen fast, and that is Ok. I have learned to love the process.
I have seen plenty of people appear to run faster than us. We tried to run fast ourselves. The results have been mixed at best. Running fast and breaking things looks really cool at the end IF it is successful. But the process is painful, and the results many times are disastrous.
Building wealth takes time, we are patient.