Today is my greatest mentor's birthday: My Dad.

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Almost exactly twenty years ago, at 24 years old, I made my first real investment: 

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A 17-unit apartment building.

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Four years prior, I was in almost all freshman-level high school classes as a senior with a 1.7 GPA.

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Two years before that, I dropped out of college, became a telemarketer for a start-up mortgage brokerage, and worked my face off 6 days a week.

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I would pray for it to rain on Saturday mornings so more people would pick up the phone.

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I would dial two phones manually on speaker (this was before autodialers) to 2x the output, and the second someone answered on one line, I’d hang up the other and go all-in on my P:30 (the perfect 30-second script).

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Those phones singing… and me "singing" sales… was a rush.

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Growing up in my parents’ small business near Wrigley Field in Chicago, I watched my Dad’s high EQ as he greeted customers in their native languages.

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People would come from all across the Midwest to do business with him.

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I used that same rapid-rapport skill by learning how to say “hi, how are you” and “thank you” in 20+ languages with perfect enunciation (typically in those first 30 seconds). 

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When I came home one night with my biggest paycheck (I lived at home until the age of 27, because that’s what good Middle Eastern boys do), I also had a brochure for a new Mercedes-Benz CL550.

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I asked my Dad if he’d be okay with me buying that car, and I’ll never forget what he said:

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“Making money is easy. Keeping it and growing it is hard. Give every single paycheck moving forward to your mom… and go put that Mercedes brochure in the trash. Your first investment will be in an apartment building.”

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That was the day I learned that being a great Loan Officer meant being a great entrepreneur.  

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Turning active income into passive income.

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And that’s how we ended up here…

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This exact corner. 

This exact entrance. 

This exact spot.

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Seventeen units… and zero clue what I was really doing.

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But I did have one thing:

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A father who taught me that if you stay hungry, stay humble, and stay close to God, you will stay winning. 

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Today we stood here again, two decades later (I still own this building). 

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For my fellow Loan Officers reading this:

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I talk a lot about scripts, systems, leadership, etc, but at the end of the day, the real foundation of your business is built long before you ever take an application.

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It’s built by the people who raised you, shaped you, and continue to believe in you. 

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GO! get a mentor like my Dad!