HERO STORY

[Ed Benson]

Growing up on a dairy farm in a very rural area, with the closest neighbor being a mile away, and the nearest town of any size being 30 miles away, I learned to make decisions on my own being an only child and only my parents to consult. In a way I learned the value of hard work if you wanted to get anywhere.

My Dad had to quit school when he was in the 6th grade as his father got sick and he had to take over running the Farm. So, all the lessons were learned the hard way by trial and error for him. It also gave him a very narrow focus on life and the dairy and Farm was all he ever did. He never had time to relax and enjoy life as with a dairy it is 7 days a week sometimes 18 to 20 hours a day.

As I grew up, I saw a world out there that I wanted to have more than a full time dairy and farmer. One of the things that really bothered me was because of my Dad’s lack of interest in anything, he had a hard time relating to the things I felt were important. I was very active in sports in school and played most all of them as we were in a small school and I was good. But because of my Dad’s lack of interest he attended very few of my games. In fact, I played on the varsity football team for 4 years, 3 of them I was a starter. During those 4 years my dad never attended one game. To say I was disappointed would not be a stretch. But I learned that I needed to do what I wanted to do, even though I did not have the support of my Dad.

So, I went away to school and fell in love and got married. I was starting my life to move forward, then Uncle Sam got in the way and the Draft Board said they wanted me, even though they knew I had a bad back. Well 28 days later, they decided they did not want me, but now to return where I left off was not happening. After several jobs it became necessary to return to the farm and dairy as now, I had a family to support. I even acquired more land so with dad and I working together we could support both families. But to make a long story short, I found out I could make more money playing golf, and I am not that good, than continuing to do this.

So, I moved on, which meant selling my new home I had just built 4 years earlier. This was my first experience in dealing with Real Estate. When putting my house on the market, I was told I would never get the price I was asking, as all the local experts said it was way too much. Again, feeling the house could not be replaced for anything less I stayed steady and within 90 days we got our full asking price. So, my Real Estate experience began

We moved to the West Coast and began my journey in an industry I would have never imagined, but it gave me the chance to develop my skills in Sales and Marketing. I worked for the manufacturer of consumer goods and over the next 30 years as I worked for 5 different manufactures and worked my way up to being Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

During this time, we of course had to make several moves so again the necessary selling and buying of homes. I even sold one of the homes myself which was a very big learning experience. If it had not been for my other experiences in my jobs, I probably would have ended up Homeless. Can you imagine, everything has been loaded on the moving van and they have left, and we are starting to drive to our new city, and we get a message from the lender that they cannot fund the loan. I have never had a heart attack, but it sure felt like I was having one. Fortunately, with exhausting effort and many phone calls and jumping through hoops, we got the funding. I later learned that if I had been using a Realtor this would have been taken care of long before the moving day, saving me from the near heart attack.

Over the years and many moves, I continued to learn lessons of trying to do things myself. On one move we bought a beautiful home in a great area that we were very excited about in being able to get it in our price range. Again, trying to do things myself and having a Realtor that did not give me proper guidance we did not have the home inspected. Everything looked great as we previewed the home and looked through everything. Big mistake. Thirty days after moving in the home I came home in a rain storm to find water running down the wall inside my garage over the electrical panel. I then went inside to find water coming through the ceiling. Another painful lesson learned as we found out it had major roof problems and we had to put on a new roof. We then found problems with the floor where the water had built up long before we moved in.

So, everybody said I needed to sue the previous owner because they had to have known about these problems and did not disclose them during the sale. Again, a very difficult lesson. The previous owner was an older lady who had not lived in the house for a few years but had let her son live there and claimed they had no knowledge of this. When they say sometimes the law is not just, I can agree as the judge said she could not believe this lady would lie so again another lesson with the judge siding with the little old lady!

After learning more lessons in Real Estate, I now continued to make moves from one home to another with the help of professional Realtors that knew the business and could provide all the information to make my moves. Now with the help and guidance, the buying and selling of homes went along smoothly.

I had now wanted to enter this business as I saw Realtors being able to provide all the help that made selling and buying a home so helpful.  But that was not to happen as I had a family that I had to support so leaving a good job to enter a new profession that has no salary was a very scary thing to my wife. So, I continued along until my family was raised and my last child married. By then it became time to move on and I was not happy with my life, so I left my wife of 32 years without knowing where or how I was going to go forward.

Three months after filing for divorce I was to meet this wonderful lady who had moved across the country to get out of a bad marriage. We immediately found we had many things in common and started a bond. We both wanted to move forward, and it became a costly battle but in the end with us both walking way with nothing, it became time to start in a new direction. But how would we survive, we had to return to jobs for now but with a greater purpose in mind.

As time moved forward even though we were still working regular jobs to make ends meet, we were always investigating how we could get into real estate. We read everything we could get our hands on and watch anything that we thought might provide a way for us to get things going. It was not a fast process, or as fast as we wanted as we dug thorough information and talked to anyone with any knowledge in this area.

We started paying to go to seminars and even traveling to different areas to attend them while spending money we really didn’t have available, but we found if we would cut back on other spending, we could pull enough together so we could continue our education in learning all the different areas of Real Estate. We were sure with all this wonderful knowledge we would be able to invest in real estate and reach our goals.

In looking back during this time of our educational process we found several people that were always giving us great advice. This advice was anyone could become successful and invest in real estate. It was supposed to be an easy process anyone could do, or so they said. There was still this bearer of not being able to make enough money to survive. My wife said we can do it, they said we could so we certainly can do it.

We still need some assurance that our plan would work as we had no other income and would be dependent on the real estate creating a living for us. We were assured this would work and by having a partner who had done this before with a plan that would work. So, we bought real estate on the east coast in an area where prices were low, and we would be able to gain equity quickly. During this time, we would move to the east coast and manage the property to create an income while we were building our real estate empire.

We made the move and became managers of the real estate, easier said than done. We soon found out there wasn’t going to be enough to pay the bills so it became necessary for me to find a job again so we could make ends meet. At about 1 year into this process my partner disappeared along with all his so-called expertise. To add to our problem this was the time the real estate market crashed and the value of everything went out the window. We continued to go forward with every day the noose around our neck getting tighter and tighter.

We approached all the issues that kept cropping up, our hole became deeper and deeper. We found the maintenance of the properties to be several times more than we ever forecasted. We found that during the sale process our partner did not check out all the issues with the buildings being in an advanced age. To complicate things even more the bills continued to increase, and the demands became beyond hope of every turning this around. My lawyer said there becomes a time to cut bait. All was lost and time to move forward.

Here was the end of our great investing career in real estate it seemed. We continued to try to find ways to make things work by trying several different avenues in trying to make changes and saving the bleeding that was happening. We knew it could be done, but the crash of the real estate market made it impossible to recover with all the damage and bills increasing every week. We knew now that we had to go forward. We had started with nothing when we got together, so it was time again to start over and move on.

So, move forward was the only direction now. We decided we did not like living on the east coast and since we were moving forward why not move. We both wanted to move to a warm climate, so Arizona was the choice and without knowing a soul we moved. The move completed, the real estate bug was still the way I wanted to go. So, my wonderful wife said why don’t you get your Real Estate License and help people as we certainly have learned how to avoid the major pit falls. I got my Real Estate License and started my new career helping people.

The more I got involved in helping people in their real estate transactions, the happier I became. It is such a pleasure to help guide them through the process and help them achieve their goals. We found that we could gain such pleasure in meeting and getting know all our clients. It soon became evident that they were not just clients in a business transaction, but we were creating a group of friends that have become very close and dear.

This growth in the business has not come without some major challenges. The challenges have not been with any of the real estate transaction, they have with some health challenges that have occurred. The biggest problem was a major back surgery I had to have that resulted with some complications. During rehab, I tweaked a nerve in my hip and could no longer stand or walk without severe pain. 4 months later it was decided the only way was to kill the nerve. Now getting back to work and putting the recovery behind me I continued to help my clients obtain their goals while I moved forward to my goals.

Now I am enjoying life and helping anyone that I can. The last year was another challenge with my health, as it became apparent it was a fix Ed year. In February I had to have a tumor removed from my pituitary gland, brain surgery, and in August I had to have minor back surgery. But guess what I am back to normal and charging forward. I look forward to everyday and being able to help my friends achieve their goals, while continuing to achieve mine in helping everyone I can.

[n d]

Hi @ed-benson! Good work on taking action.

Make sure you’ve put your BEST DRAFT forward – Halle will only review it once.

Please email this as an ATTACHMENT to Halle’s email:

Halle@coredm.com

In the meantime, keep making amazing strides through the program! Great work!

[Author]

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