Facing Fears & Finding Balance in Life: Entrepreneurship VLOG

You ever feel like no matter what you do, every time you start making progress, something happens and just knocks you backwards? That's exactly what my life has felt like lately. For the past four years, I've been trying my hand at entrepreneurship, trying to build a successful business of my own, and hopefully at some point, transition fully out of my corporate nine to five job. But this last year was by far the toughest one yet. I've been having so many ups and downs in my business and personal life, I'm feeling like I got a season pass to Six Flags. For starters, I've been seriously reconsidering if I'm gonna continue running my tour business. Not only have I been decreasing my fleet, but I've really been back and forth if this is something I want to continue doing or move on to something different. I've also been dealing with a bunch of challenges of managing my real estate portfolio all by myself. This includes constantly making sure that my current tenants are good and fixing up my vacant units so that I can rent them out again quickly. So just having to deal with all of that, still working my nine to five and dealing with all the things in my personal life as well can definitely be a challenge. And I know if you're watching this video, you're probably trying to take your life to the next level and start making more money as well. And it's tough, I know, but think about it. If it were easy, everybody would do it, right? So in this video, I'm gonna tell you and show you the realities of trying to run multiple businesses. You're gonna see the good and the bad and hopefully get some gems along the way that can help you shortcut your way to entrepreneurial success. As you can see, y'all, it is the holiday season, which means it's definitely busy, but you also kind of get in that mode of self-reflection and starting to look forward. And honestly, that's exactly where I am in my life right now, which is a big reason on why I wanted to share this vlog. Not only just being in the spirit, but just trying to get out more content that not only gives you the hacks and the gems, but just the real life insight as far as my main businesses, which is gonna be where I am with Toro, my real estate properties, as well as the business credit aspect of everything. And just a little glimpse at where I am personally, what I'm looking forward to, as well as some of the challenges. But first, even though you see the Christmas decorations everywhere, I do got a little bit up right now. We still need to level up a little bit there with the decor. We're gonna run the Hobby Lobby, grab a few things, and I also do gotta go to a hardware store to grab an appliance for my vacant unit as well. So let's rock out real quick, get some things done, and secure this bag. ♪ Baby I love to get away just to spend the right day ♪ Now, if you've seen any of my recent videos, I have mentioned a few times about where I am in my Toro business. Right now, I'm currently sitting at three vehicles in my fleet, and honestly, I'm still contemplating selling one of my two finance vehicles. But I am most likely gonna keep my cash car that's already paid off, just to keep that on the platform and supplement some of these car expenses. There's been a bunch of people in the comments thinking that I made this decision mostly due to the fact that a lot of my cars have got damaged and totaled over the last year. But honestly, it's not that. As I said, the real reason is because of all of the changes that Toro is making to the platform, and most importantly, the profit margins that you make on Toro just aren't there for me anymore, and they aren't big enough for where I wanna go with the next stage of my life. I've been doing Toro for over four years now. For me, it's pretty much run its course. I've done everything that I can. I've had up to 10 cars on it, and I can see where I would be if I was to keep scaling, but I also know where else I can go if I may shift my attention a little bit. Damn, these might be exactly what I need. Since I don't got no presents under the tree yet, this would be a good draw. See if I can maybe find these in platinum. I got more of a white and silver decor, so platinum would be good for me. And if you're a host on Toro, you already know that over the last few months, they have been making a bunch of changes to the platform as it relates to how you host the cars. In my opinion, it's become too heavily guest-focused and it's taken a lot of the support and any of the benefits away from being a host. Now, while guests are definitely the lifeblood of the business, so are hosts to the Toro platform because without any hosts in their cars, there's no cars to rent to the guests. You know, Hobby Lobby gotta come through with the Grinch theme stuff. I don't know. Some people have told me I'm a Grinch, but I don't agree though. Some of the biggest changes that they made that has really affected my decision to host on the platform is number one, the rating system. It's become a lot harder to get five-star ratings. And when you don't get the five-star ratings, it's become a bigger impact as a host on the platform. And a lot of people are getting kicked off or banned on the platform. Secondly is the guest discount because they're opening up the gig workers. They've come up with monthly discounts and they turned them on automatically. And this has caused a lot of people, including me, to get booked for trips with longer durations with huge discounts. I'm talking discounts of 30, 40, even 50%, which economically, a lot of times just doesn't make sense. Honestly, I don't even know why Toro would do this, make it an automatic feature. I see no benefit to that as a host. But let me know in the comments if you feel any different. Lastly is the overall host support or the customer service. You know, even in the glory days of Toro, customer service was never their calling card. It was always some room for improvement when it came to calling into Toro and getting help. But now, in my experience, it's been way worse. I've had a lot of different situations, whether it be my car getting towed, damaged, even police involved in situations with guests. And I just feel like Toro didn't provide me the support that I needed. That definitely gave me a sour taste in my mouth. Like I said, I'm gonna keep a few cars on the fleet, but I'm really focusing on my next endeavor. See, now this is the evil part about coming to Hobby Lobby. Why am I in the mirror section, knowing I'm only here for Christmas decorations? But how can you pass up 40%? Overall, as far as if I think Toro is still a viable side hustle for people to start, I do, once again, like I always say, if you're a smaller or just a new entrepreneur who don't have any other side hustles going on and you have a car available, I do think it's viable and you can make money off of it. But I'm definitely not the biggest fan of going out and financing a bunch of cars for this specific business model anymore. It's something that even I did myself a few years ago, buying four or five cars at one time. As far as the profit margins, everything that's going on with the platform, it's just too risky to do that right now. And I wouldn't really suggest jumping off the gate with a whole bunch of debt jumping into Toro. I definitely know Toro is nothing without the guests, but hosts are important too. And I just feel like the platform needs a lot more balance in between. It just seems like Toro was trying to phase out the small hosts. And personally, I'm just not feeling that, being as though I started off on Toro with just one car myself. And I know that a lot of you watching this video are smaller Toro hosts as well. I just think it makes more financial sense to shift my focus to bigger endeavors like real estate and building up parts of my online business and making more bangers for y'all. Came out to a crazy sunset. In Hobby Lobby buying mirrors on top of the Christmas decorations. I have no idea. And that's why I stays away from Hobby Lobby. As you can see, we looking at dishwashers today. I actually need to grab this for my vacant unit. And this is one of the units in my duplex. Now I do have multiple properties now. I've been lucky enough to be able to use not only the income from my nine to five, but definitely a lot of the income from my Toro business to be able to invest in these real estate properties. So I'm definitely happy that I was able to leverage one business into something bigger. Now, even though these real estate properties have definitely changed my life for the better, I'm not gonna lie, managing them all myself has definitely been tough. Now, admittedly, when it comes to flipping these vacant units in between tenants, I definitely haven't been the best. I finally got one of my other units rented out after a long process of just renovation and going back and forth. So I definitely wasn't looking forward to a month after that, this tenant saying that he wasn't renewing his lease and doing the process all over again. Overall, it's really just come down to my indecisiveness and procrastination when it's come to these projects. So this is me being self-aware and accountable and telling y'all that I'm trying to do better. But I'm feeling good about myself as far as this project. I'm only about a month and a half in and I got pretty much everything ready to go besides this dishwasher. So I definitely can't wait to finish this job up, get this thing rented out and have it cash flowing again. Now, the dishwasher that I seen on the app, it was a Amana brand dishwasher. It was only about $300 and it was stainless steel, simple, clean, easy to get in. I'm hoping it's here, but honestly I'm not seeing that brand here. And I'm looking at a few other ones. Like this one is a Frigidaire and it's 329 and they got a few other ones that's 379. I'm definitely trying to get this tonight because my contractor is coming tomorrow to finish up this last bit of painting and that'll be a perfect time to just get this dishwasher and get it put in and be finished. The delivery they said is not gonna come for another eight days. So I'm definitely not trying to push this project back any longer. Now I get it, real estate has definitely become popular in the culture and for good reason. It's a great way to start building additional income. But the thing that I don't think people realize is how challenging it could be once you actually own the properties and having to start dealing with tenants. Now with interest rates and overall expenses increasing, it's definitely become a bit tougher managing all this real estate. It's like I don't have enough units right now to hire a full-time property manager, but I got just enough to make it a little bit more challenging when my tenants have things that they need or I gotta get back to the properties, especially considering I still work a nine to five. But with that being said, I am focusing on trying to build a small team, a list of resources that I can call on when it's time to do certain things in my properties. That includes contractors and maintenance workers, as well as people to handle the seasonal things like lawn care, extermination, and sometimes some seasonal cleaning. Having a team like this to call on and leverage would not only give me back some of my time, but it would also give my tenants a better experience as well. But safe to say, with all of these unforeseen expenses coming up, I've definitely been kicking out a lot more money than normal. Luckily, I've built up a big safety net of business credit that I've been able to utilize in times like this. Now making these purchases using my business credit has not only increased my utilization, but it's also increased my anxiety as well. Not only will interest start to creep up on you, but overall, you really gotta be mindful that you're not overspending and that you can pay these lenders back because it can start affecting not only your credit limits, but your overall business credit report. And I feel kind of bad y'all because I asked one of the workers in here to go check and see if the dishwasher was here. And I think he brought it out. He literally been waiting for me for like 20 minutes as I'm recording the vlog. Hey man, gotta get this content off. Oh, it's got the numbers on it. In total, this is the cheapest stainless steel we got in here right now. Nah, I'm gonna rock with the stainless. Have a good night. Happy holidays, my guy. But even with all that being said, when it comes to real estate, you just gotta know those things come with the game. My main focus right now is getting a tenant in this unit and getting this thing cash flowing again because I need that. So if you take anything as far as my real estate project, just understand it's not for everybody. It's definitely a great tool to start leveling up your income, but understand where you are in your life and what resources you have before you kind of just jump into it. It's gonna require time and it's gonna require money, but it's just something about owning, income producing and an appreciation asset that's just liberating. Knowing that I own actual buildings, knowing that I'm putting a roof over people's head, provide for families. You know, it's just, like I said, it's just something about that that you can't replace. So it's definitely a challenge, but it's a challenge worth taking. And overall, the goal is still to scale. Moving away from kind of these single properties into those 10, 20 unit buildings, even like the big apartment complexes. Although I'm not there yet, I'm still working boots on the ground, working my way up. Trust me, just making this little momentum, I definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. Taking all that into consideration, I'm just out here trying to find a balance between managing my businesses, as well as my personal life. I feel like that's probably the biggest reason for my lack of consistency. And if I'm being honest, that's really what I enjoy the most, creating, helping y'all out by sharing my experiences and overall just documenting my journey. Take this right now, right now, bag chasers, I'm locked in and I promise I'm staying consistent on this content grind. I don't know if I'm ever really gonna find balance, but what I do know, that's exactly when discipline and resilience has got to kick in. And that's just really the stage that I'm in right now. No more excuses, just locking in and taking action, getting shit done no matter how I feel or what's going on around me. As I embrace this season of life I'm in, it's really all about planning, understanding where I am with my current businesses and figuring out what my next endeavor is to start hitting seven and eight figures and not just focusing on the next stage of business, but also my personal life as well. As you see, managing these businesses every day, still working my corporate nine to five, at this point it's definitely time to start thinking about taking the steps to start building a family of my own. But I don't know y'all, I'm gonna report back soon on that one. This year has shown me that growth really comes from the mistakes and embracing the unknown, regardless of how scary it feels. And taking bigger risks is definitely something that feels a bit scary to me. But I also know it's really the only way that I'm gonna elevate my businesses and my overall life. Stay focused, stay locked in and trust that success is gonna come as a byproduct of the work that you put in. There's no perfect moment, day or year to start. The time is now. And if you're still watching this video, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for coming along on this journey and not just today, but this journey as a whole on this channel. Just seeing the comments, seeing the feedback and the responses that I get from dropping these videos, knowing that sharing my experiences and sharing my journey is inspiring and helping you guys. There's really no feeling like it. So one thing for sure, you got this bag chaser, let's get it.