Chapter 1

Tom Dunn walked out of his attorney’s office with the check in his hand and a huge smile on his face. The joy he had kept in check over the last six weeks threatened to spill out all at once in a triumphant shout, and it took a superhuman effort to hold it in. Tom forced himself to walk to his car and flip open his cell phone.

“I’m holding the check in my hand!” he said when his wife answered.

“How much is it for?” she asked breathlessly.

Hands shaking with excitement, Tom glanced again at the check. “$24,898.50” he replied.

“How long before you’re home?”

“Ten minutes- be ready!” he replied, and clicked the phone closed. Tom knew they would be celebrating their first deal tonight!

That evening after enjoying an excellent dinner out with his wife Denise and their three teenage children, Zachary, Stephanie, and Courtney, Tom allowed his thoughts to drift into the past almost a quarter century.

That’s how far back you would have to look to see the start of Tom and Denise’s Real Estate career. It was then the couple first remembers choosing Real Estate as the path they would follow to make their dreams come true.

Just A Couple Of Kids

“It was 1982, and we were taking a drive through a beautiful section of the city,” Tom recalls, thinking of that long ago day. “We were with some friends of ours, another couple, and I remember very clearly looking at those big, expensive homes. We laughed and joked about someday living in one. We were all just sort of dreaming together.”

Tom remembers the other couple talking about how they were going to make money buying small houses, fixing them up, and renting them out. The four dreamers became excited about investing in fixer-uppers and making enormous sums of cash. Denise and Tom were 22 years old at the time.

“We went home that night and talked for hours about building a real estate empire,” Tom laughs. “We really thought we would just go out and tame the world. Then, we went to work the next day and forgot all about it. It took us more than two decades to buy our first investment property. If we had dreamed less, and acted more...” Tom’s voice trails off.

What took them so long to make their dreams a reality? Let's hear them tell it in their own words.

“The simple fact is, we were just a couple of kids when we got married, and we were scared,” Denise allows, with her typical candor and honesty. “We went through some really tough years financially in the 1980’s and 90’s, and Tom had some awful jobs that didn’t pay him much money at all, even though he worked hard.”

According to the couple, Tom tried just about everything he could think of to bring in a steady income. A salesman since graduating from college, he sold cars for a few years, managed a sports photography company, landscaped, built houses, sold printing services, cookies, long-term care insurance, and even energy efficient lighting.

“I guess I tried it all," he laughs, "but I was never able to get ahead financially until I found my current job as a finance manager at a car dealership. Once I started that in 1998, things took a definite turn for the better. We even had a little money left over at the end of the month.”

That “little” is what eventually put them on the road to their first deal.

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Don't forget... it only takes one!

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