What Can One Person Do?
At the age of 41, fresh after retiring from a 22-year career in the Air Force, I decided to go back to school and earn a graduate degree.
The main reason was that I had seen other people in executive positions who made it a point to tell everybody that they had one of these degrees and claimed that it was very important to make sure to have one myself so I had the best chances to advance.
I joined Antioch University because they offered programs after work hours and extended weekend seminars.
I ended up completing a Master’s Degree in Organizational Management and a Ph.D. in Leadership & Change. Talk about a slow learner. There is some truth to learning while your brain is fresh. It took me 7 years to get through this while having a full-time job and starting a business.
What does that have to do with Serving Humanity, you ask?
Besides many things from the courses I took, the mantra of the founder and first president of the university, Horace Mann always inspired me.
During my studies, our cohort was wearing t-shirts every time we came together that had the mantra printed on them, and I still wear them and live by the goal:
“Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity”
So how do you create some of those victories?
The short answer is: “…by serving”.
What my team and I are doing is serving humanity by providing high-quality housing. We invest in nice 3 bedrooms, 2 bathroom single-family houses, ideally with a garage, a garden, or yard in stable neighborhoods.
With this service, we are addressing the second tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
The need is Safety and one way to provide it is to have shelter/housing.
It is also a service because in our modern world it is very hard to reach any of the other levels of need if the cost for Safety is very high, as it is in places like San Francisco. So offering a nice, well-maintained house for an affordable price is one of our ways to win victories.
Another one that is not very different is to educate people who also want to provide these services on how to do it.
Sadly, financial literacy is massively lacking in the school system. This leads to graduates with challenging employment chances, credit card, and student loan debt and have no idea how to ever get out of the rat race and into a situation where they can actually fully apply their talents and live their passion.
To help close that gap and improve the opportunity to reach economic and financial independence, we work every day to educate people.
· How to fill out a personal balance sheet
· How to establish a disciplined approach to saving so the accumulation account keeps growing
· How to search for suitable investment properties that perform well and provide positive cash flow
· How to work with TK providers that fit the requirements in the virtuous triangle
· How to work best with insurance providers, nationwide lenders, title companies, and develop a warranty strategy that reduces the need for maintenance reserves in the first 1–2 years after purchase.
The result is a degree of understanding and knowledge that allows people to develop a portfolio of assets that will to esteem.
In the best cases, it will provide so much cash flow each month that our students can do what they really want, have a passion for, and love to do. That’s probably pretty close to what Maslow called “self-actualization”.
You can do what you love. You can apply your talents, you don’t need to worry about money or paying your bills. And in turn by being in that position:
You can also join us in winning victories for humanity.