Don't Quit Page 17
My truck started right up, but its hum was accompanied by a high-pitched whine. Not the fire, but the short period of driving with low oil, had doomed the fresh (and expensive) transmission rebuild.
I was days away from leaving my hometown of Charlotte for Florida, vowing to return only when I had finished the last two years of my college degree. 18 months earlier I had quit an unsuccessful attempt at college. I hadn’t been having fun, and I wasn’t succeeding professionally. My independent mindset did not appreciate dorm life, nor the overbearing supervision from my parents who controlled all of my tuition, meals, and flight training money. The attacks of 9/11 hit my aviation school especially hard, and the rift between me and my parents grew as they continued to exert control over my college and professional life. The cost of flight training was going up, and my parents’ financial plan had little tolerance for extra expense.
The well thought out roadmap to get my four-year degree and become a professional pilot had fallen apart. I returned home to where I felt comfortable. I intended to get a job, save money, and go back to college when I could. I can’t remember if the fire, being sued, getting kicked out of my house, or the $1000 transmission rebuild happened first, but they all waited until I had quit my job. From the $2000 I had saved, the unplanned repairs left only $80 in my pocket.
Not knowing if another calamity would occur in the middle of nowhere, and having no money (or credit) to fix it, I hit the road, because quitting was not an option. Determination and an unhealthy confidence in a 16-year-old, beat up truck with a self-installed engine and transmission would have to suffice. Some friends I had made during my first two years of college kept a room open for me at the beach house they moved into, and also kept asking (hounding!) me as to when I would return from my self-imposed hiatus.
When I finally pulled up, it felt like home as my friend Amanda came running out with a huge hug. My roommates took care of the rent while I picked up a couple odd jobs cutting grass and bartending. This was when I learned something about myself; the most important thing in my life is to be happy and have fun. I remember my parents telling me when I whined about not enjoying myself, “You’re not going to college to have fun.” I got their point, but I disagreed. Now, I had little money, no real job, and wasn’t in school, but I knew I was in the right place.
Compared to many kids, I was lucky. I always knew I wanted to be an airline pilot. Going to the airport to pick my dad up from his frequent business trips was always an adventure. I remember seeing pilots use hand signals to communicate with the ground personnel and thinking that was the coolest thing. We collected baggage carts to return for their quarter reward, and played “who can see the control tower first.” Pilots make a lot of money, they hardly work and even when they do, it’s fun! I was in for a rude awakening.
In spite of my singular career focus from a young age, my parents always insisted I be well rounded. If I heard that phrase once, I heard it a thousand times: well rounded. Boy Scouts, soccer, baseball, science fairs, basketball, lawn mowing business, reading books, school clubs and groups...the list of activities I did as a kid goes on and on. I was expected to know a lot about a lot of different things, and I soaked it up. I even took on more: amateur radio, EMT, volunteer firefighter, and mechanic.
This instilled in me the importance of doing things yourself. When you learn to do things yourself, you know they will be done the right way, not to mention saving money. Many people do this, but my family took it to another level. It was exceptional and rare to pay a professional to do anything to our cars or house. My father could fix anything and did. Electrical, mechanical, plumbing…it was all fixed in house. He even built us a go-cart from scratch. I took that mentality and made it my life. I replaced engines, transmissions, and axles and installed lift kits. I built custom rims and rebuilt air compressors and my college’s ski club boat that had been the victim of poor (no) maintenance, a collision, and an engine fire. At the beach house, I even installed a horn that played Dixie in Amanda’s car without her knowing. I decided I would do everything myself, and I wouldn’t need help. As I later discovered, that well-intentioned worldview prevents people from achieving their potential.
While I was on my hiatus, my friend and roommate, Pete had started a fraternity chapter, and our house had become their unofficial gathering spot. They were all great guys and included me (the non-student dropout nicknamed “Fireman” with the lifted Ford Bronco) as one of their own. Fun was never lacking, and in complete opposition to my first two years, I was having a blast. What I hadn’t figured out was how to get the tens of thousands of dollars I needed to finish my degree and flight training.
My friend’s sister, Lydia, came to the rescue when she sent me a job listing for a full-time position on campus that I was uniquely qualified for: safety department dispatcher. My 911 dispatcher, firefighter, and aviation experience were the perfect fit. I took home a sparse sum of $495 every two weeks, but I no longer had to worry about how I would pay the $3000 per class tuition fee; it was free for full-time employees! My roommates no longer needed to cover my $290 per month rent. I had beer money and a plan to finish my degree. Working five nights a week, and going to class during the day left little time for sleep (especially after I added in a healthy social calendar) but at least I was progressing toward my degree with the end in sight.
With less than a year to go, I lost my job and the $30,000 per year in free tuition that came with it. Now I REALLY didn’t know what to do. I was back at square one. My friend (and fellow Bronco enthusiast) Kris came to the rescue when he offered to be my flight instructor, not only for free, but on top of that, he would pay for half the cost of the last flight rating I needed to meet minimum entry-level airline requirements. It was a godsend, and I was able to finish training to apply to commuter airlines, which did not require a college degree. If I could only get one of these jobs, I could finish my degree later! But I had very little experience, only 300 hours of flight time, and I had never flown a multiengine airplane as pilot in command.
Enter my high school friend Steve. Already at a small airline for three years, he pushed my resume to the HR department and gave me a recommendation that led to an interview, and a job offer. I couldn’t believe it. I was an airline pilot, for an airline that was owned by one of the biggest major airlines in the industry, without a degree, and only seven years after I started college! You couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.
Looking back, it’s obvious that my friends were vital to my career success. Persistence, courage, and faith are necessary and will get you a long way to achieving your goals, but they’re not everything. I’ve only recently connected the dots on why successful people in business and real estate insist that if you want to be successful, you must first develop a team. This seven-year journey was more than accomplishing a goal and achieving a dream I had since a young age. I had done it without anybody controlling me or telling me what to do or how to do it. I had figured out how to do it without my parent’s financial support by unknowingly and unintentionally developing the best support network anyone could have: a trusted team. When I finally graduated 12 years after I began, I threw a weeklong beach party for my friends who flew in from all over the country, even as far as Hawaii, culminating in my graduation ceremony. Their help in opening doors when others closed was crucial to my success, but their unselfish commitment to celebrating my victory was just as important to me.
We can be mediocre at many things, a jack of all trades if you will. Combined with stubborn persistence, this will put us in life’s “successful” column. But the best and MOST successful leaders put quality people in positions where they are empowered with responsibility and are given the tools needed to outperform. As I transition my professional life into real estate, I’m applying the great lesson I learned from my aviation pursuit, which was to develop a team. We are only as good as the weakest person on our team, which should be us. It’s great to be determined, but without a great group of people to sup
port us and lift us higher, we can be that successful jack of all trades but never achieve our goals.
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TWEETABLE
Be true to yourself, no matter what the cost.
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Will Heybruck is a real estate investor and pilot for a major passenger airline. Born in South Florida, the son of a teacher and an electrical engineer, he grew up in Mint Hill, NC. After high school in Charlotte, he attended Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, finishing his BA in professional aeronautics 12 years after he began. He is also a fire captain at a volunteer fire department near Charlotte, NC which he joined at age 16. His hobbies include his Ford Bronco, ham radio, honkytonk music, and outdoor sports, but most of all, spending time with his friends and girlfriend Liz. He currently lives in Charlotte, NC with Liz and their beloved dog Tyson. He can be reached at willheybruck@gmail.com .
CHAPTER 26
How My Entrepreneurial Passion
Led Me to Belize
by David Kafka
M ost of us at the Mount Pleasant Fire Department outside of Charleston, SC had to have a part-time job. I was an engineer (I drove the fire truck), and my part-time job was as a firefighter at Ashley River Fire Department. But I wanted more. I wanted to start a business.
I decided to start a landscape company, and Supergreen Inc. was born. On my days off from the fire department, I was going door to door offering lawn services. I started out using home garden equipment, but before long, I was so busy, I needed commercial equipment. I specialized in offering services to affluent people with second and third houses and to larger property managers. It was exciting building something and making good money doing it. I had what I thought was the perfect life, or did I? Very important decisions were ahead.
I loved being a firefighter and LOVED my brothers and sisters I worked with. To this day, I keep in touch with many of them. However, the politics of the job were getting to me, and the amount of business I had was going to make me choose between my jobs and my business. How could I quit and lose that guaranteed salary and health insurance? My heart was in the job. My identity was a firefighter. But I wanted to be in control of my time and my future, and I knew I had the potential to make a lot more money. The American dream, right? I decided to leave and retire from the fire service. I was told I would be back, and I would not make it. That made me even more determined to make my company work.
A couple years later, I was making it and had a couple employees. We were expanding, and with multiple crews, we needed a place to keep our trucks and equipment and a meeting place for all to load up and get their job sheets. We wanted a professional image, so we got uniforms, new trucks, and better equipment.
A real estate agent showed me this awesome house on Johns Island, SC with a few acres. Yes, you can have a business there, he said. So, we did it. The property was perfect, and the house was cool but needed a lot of work. Fortunately, I liked to do this in the evenings and weekends. We lived in a 1960s single-wide mobile home. You know, the one with the orange shag carpet? It had a storage place, a meeting place, and country living at its best.
Then about six months to a year after we got the house done and moved in, I got a letter from the county that I couldn’t run a business there. I fought it and fought it, but the neighbors complained, and in the end, the road was a private road for residential use only. I was told to move or face daily fines. So, I had to scramble and find a place to keep my stuff. Just down from my house, I saw a property on Main Road and Belvedere Road that was a little over an acre and had a house. I refinanced my house and pulled equity out to buy this property.
At the time, we had 15 to 20 employees. I was not cutting grass anymore. I was running the landscaping and irrigation side of the business and was phasing out of that to just manage the company. We made the house our corporate office on the Belvedere side and the trucks and equipment on the Main Roadside.
I was so excited, but money was getting tight. I never counted the cost of the fence, remodel of the house, fuel tanks, and storage containers to house the equipment. The more money I made, the more we would spend. We made it work though. Sales solves all problems my mentors say now.
Then, ONCE AGAIN, I got a letter from the county. I needed to landscape the new property, pave the parking lot, and put in handicap parking. Are you serious? NONE of my neighbors had those things. I felt like I was being picked on. After getting a hard knocks education, I was jaded but did what I was told to do. It took a lot out of us, but I worked harder and made more money.
But I spent more money too. We were living the American dream: nice house on some acreage, sports car, Harley Davidson, other nice cars, and private school for our daughter. We traveled, went out when we wanted, bought what we wanted, had parties, and enjoyed our hot tub. We had nice, newer equipment for the business, a new tractor, a Bobcat, and trucks. I was one of the first companies in Charleston, SC that had Isuzu NPR box trucks with hydraulic lift gates to keep all the equipment in. We had three of those. I had started a 100% organic fertilizer and pest management program, the first in the area. We were close to 30 employees including all office staff now. We were still servicing east of the Cooper area, but we branched out to some nice commercial projects and surrounding affluent areas called Kiawah and Seabrook Islands. Wow, those were sexy properties surrounded by beach, wetlands, tributaries to the intercoastal waterway, and like four or five golf courses. One of those courses held the Ryder Cup and was the set for the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance.
Since I had crews to do all work and great management staff, on some days, I worked with a buddy of mine named Ty who did electrical work to make some extra money. He and I always talked about property and traveling. Inspired by our conversations, I bought a couple lots on Johns Island for investment, and I wanted to look elsewhere. He bought property on Wadmalaw Island.
On weekends, we always hung out with friends. One day, we were all sitting around a fire pit outside after fishing at my buddy Ty’s house, talking about how all we were doing was working to pay bills, pay employees, pay taxes, pay insurance, and on and on and on. We had been reading a couple awesome books by Irwin Schiff: The Federal Mafia and How Not to Pay Income Tax. My mind was racing. We all talked about getting the heck out of the USA. I said jokingly, “I’m moving.” We didn’t like what was going on and how small businesses were being treated.
I started looking at Costa Rica, Mexico, and a small country called Belize. Everyone I talked to about Belize didn’t know where it was or hadn’t even heard of it. What I was reading about Belize I liked! I picked Belize first since it was English-speaking, safe, a tax haven, part of the British Commonwealth, and pretty easy to get to, with all the fishing and diving I could do. I could work from anywhere with QuickBooks, emails, and my managers running everything. We booked a trip for one month to Belize.
When I walked off that plane in 2005, I felt something that I can’t describe other than an inner calm. We started in Ladyville in Black Orchid Resort and made immediate friends with Doug and his wife and daughter, then moved on to Placencia Village in the Stann Creek area and San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. We went to the zoo and Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave, a Mayan archaeological site. The time flew, and before we knew it, the month was over. I was sad to leave. When we got back, everything had run well, but I was sad I was not in Belize. Six months later, we booked a trip again, another month. We went back to Placencia Village again, and we went to Hopkins Village and San Ignacio. When we went back to Placencia, people remembered our names. I felt at home. Back and forth, we went to Belize every six months for about a month every time. I noticed when I left, I got depressed. On the fourth or fifth trip, I was saying, “I could move here.”
I had met the guys from RE/MAX in Belize, and they needed help. So, every visit I would listen to them, go home, and do research. I was learning the product and what it took to move there, including what it took to buy property with its laws and rules, and at the same
time, I was experiencing it firsthand. I saw there were no laws regarding real estate agents and classes, and I saw crooked people selling real estate. I thought if the crooks could make a living, I, being an honest person, could do well here. I love real estate, and I love Belize, so it seemed like a perfect fit.
I sat down with the family and asked them if they would move to Belize. My wife said she would try it for six months. I told her six months is nothing in Belize. I thought we’d need to give it a year. My wife said yes, she would do it. I think she said yes because she knew how much I loved Supergreen, Inc., my BMW and Harley, and our friends, and she thought I would never sell the company.
By this time, it was 2008, and landscape companies were closing due to the recession. Fortunately for us, we were working for the wealthy taking care of their second, third, and fourth homes. But it did drop, and we did have a lot of debt. I hired a business consultant, and he helped us lower costs and put us on a plan to help bring us out of the recession. This consultant was also a business broker. So, I told him I was thinking of selling the business and all my properties, paying off all my debt, and living on a 40-foot yacht in Belize.
The plan was launched, and it seemed like everything was falling right into place. The business sold in less than six months, the business property sold right after that, my BMW sold, and my consultant took over the payments on the Harley. I was selling stuff in the worst time of financial recession the world had ever seen. We took another trip to Belize and secured a place to live and enrolled Serena, my daughter, into a private home school out of California. We picked Placencia to live. The village was so cool, laid back, and friendly, and it had some of the nicest beaches in the country, a lot of wonderful restaurants, and friends we had made. Coming from Charleston and Johns Island, I knew we wanted to be close to the beach, any water, so I could fish, dive, and enjoy the outdoors. Everyone in Belize and especially Placencia made us feel welcome and at home.