28 years ago I started my career in real estate wanting a better life for myself and seeing other agents seemingly to live the life with their nice cars and houses. As a 20-year-old new agent I had a lot to learn and was very driven to succeed. I also decided to be a loan agent once I received my California real estate license to double my opportunities selling real estate as well as loans but I found out that life sometimes throws curveballs and it is how we respond to them that matters, with the market crash, I knew I had to try something different since the future looked pretty bleak. Wanting to live life on my own terms I decided to create my next venture where I could surpass the limits of what everyone ever told me I would be, and wanting to make my family proud. I started my real flipping business and this got me really hooked and my investing career took off.
With buying fixer-upper properties in the Los Angeles and Long Beach areas in the early 90’s and a really slow market, it was what you would call a buyers market and I knew that as an excellent negotiator, all the money I would make is how much I would get the property for but I couldn’t sell them in this slow market. I had to think of a way to try make them sell quicker where I would make a profit so I learnt the construction part of the real estate investing business which saved me more money but also allowed me to understand what the hard work that goes into this.
Through the years and years of lessons and successes I bought and sold well over 200 properties but I noticed one thing and like in life where one thing keeps popping up till we take advantage of it and often this is when our biggest breakthrough comes through. Another key thing, take advantage of the book the 4 hour workweek I knew I needed a team to help me expand so I can do a better job in my zone of genius yet buy more time too for my kids. Over time we made progress on becoming the best at fixing these issues and often as I expanded my network in the real estate investing world, they came to me asking for help for their foundation issues and when I showed them value with no hard sell they hired me to fix their issues unexpectedly.
Despite this I carried on with real estate till about 7 years ago when a friend of mine who was the agent, asked me to go check the foundation work that was completed by a prominent Los Angeles based repair company. When I saw how they skimped in one place and the lesson is how you do one thing is how you do everything, I took a very deep look at the entire job and I found that the quality of work wasn’t up to par. I knew that despite the market being competitive we would create a blue ocean from this so I formed my company Taylor Foundations to help people through this sensitive time where this could make or break a sale for them and their dreams, this gave me true fulfillment and purpose in life.
As every entrepreneur I had some goals in mind. One was to offer the highest quality of work so I could leave this as my legacy, create a very competitive price so I could help people live safe or move on in their lifes as help others get what they want, they will help you get what you want and third is to take massive action without dropping the standard of work so I made sure to always deliver that Human 2 Human interaction but move faster than the large firms.
I love our work because I get to be part of the change in the lives of my customers. I believe in the experience of word and mouth and if you delight 1 customer it may spread to 2 or 3 but upset 1 and you just lost 30 customers. The beauty of business is often reflected in the lessons of life.