After graduating from university, I found employment with a major travel agency. After working there for around eight years as a salesperson, I gradually began to feel that I wanted to test my abilities further, and to obtain remuneration that matched the work that I was doing. I made the choice to change jobs and go to work for a foreign-owned insurance company which had contacted me repeatedly with job offers. Around that time was also a turning point in my life, as I got married and had a child. Thinking not only of the immediate future but of my life in the long term, I thought that it was a time when I could make moves because our child was still small.
But even after I changed jobs, in spite of all the objections of those around me, things did not go as I had envisaged. Doing things the way I had been taught by the company, I was not able to produce results. It was then that I began searching for my own way of doing things, and turned my eyes outside of the company. By listening to people from other companies in the same business, and people from agencies handling various types of insurance, I learned that each company had its own strengths and weaknesses. Thinking about it now, it’s an obvious fact that goes without saying, but at the time I learned it I was actually stunned. Based on this knowledge, I began to collaborate with agencies, recommending our company’s products in areas where our company was strong, and recommending the products of other companies who were strong in areas where our company was weak. When I did this, I gradually began to produce results.
It was also around that time that I had my first encounter with real estate investment. The impetus came from a pension seminar for members of the general public to prepare for old age, which was held as a joint event with our partner agency in association with a real estate company run by an acquaintance of mine. As I learned that there were various ways of thinking about and approaching asset management, I began to think for myself that real estate investment made the most sense. Before introducing to others, I thought that I lacked credibility if I wasn’t doing it myself, and so I had my friend introduce me to some properties, and purchased two units in a condominium-style apartment complex.
One of the major reasons why I decided to try real estate investment was that my salary at the company that I was working at was 100% commission based. My monthly income fluctuated heavily based on my performance, and I wanted to obtain another stable source of income aside from my salary in order to protect my family and our quality of life. However, after actually trying my hand at operating the two units of divided real estate for one year, I found that they generated virtually no profit. Almost 100% of people generating profits from real estate investment are those who own an entire apartment (or condominium) building. Although the mechanism and theory is the same, the bigger the scale of the building is and the more tenants it has, the greater the revenue generated.
I thought to myself that I somehow had to gain ownership of a whole building. I joined a real estate seminar run by a certain company in Tokyo and learned some of the necessary knowhow, but it was difficult to communicate with them over long distance. So, I began searching randomly to see if there was a company doing the same thing in Fukuoka. It was only one in ten companies I visited, but I was eventually able to find a company that understood my thinking and values. After that I looked for a bank that would give me the necessary funding, and three months later I was finally able to gain ownership of my own building.
Even after I became able to generate stable income, I still continued to make real estate investments. When I had managed to increase my assets to three buildings, I realized that if I carried on doing the same thing and kept building up my profits, then there was no longer any need for me to continue my job at the insurance company. And so, when I reached a level where I had become able to live and support my family with just that income, I began working for myself. I stopped working using my own body, and began to generate money using the mechanism of real estate properties.
I think the reason why I could manage to achieve one of my goal is that I am putting the business management knowledge and motivation that I learned during my time as a salaryman, or company employee, to good use. My way of thinking with regard to life has been gradually shaped, not by systemizing my values and knowhow using simply my own ideas, but by chewing on the things that I have learned and creating my own original guidelines to follow.
Time, money, family, hobbies, friends and health. I felt that I wanted to build a life where all of these six aspects were sufficiently fulfilled. I formulated this wish into a concrete strategy, and acted in order to achieve the successful realization of that strategy. If you asked me now, though, if I feel that I have succeeded in my current state, I would say no. I feel that I am still only halfway along the road. I don’t regard success as the act of reaching a certain state, but the state of setting a certain goal and heading towards it.
My goal moving forward is to increase my number of fellow real estate investors. Originally, at the same time as attempting the challenges of real estate investment and leased property management myself, I was also teaching my knowhow to a friend who was interested in real estate investment himself. Currently, in addition to offering consulting services as a new business, I also run a school where students can learn real estate investment knowledge in a systematic way.
The school has already produced 22 “graduates,” all of whom now own real estate properties of their own, and manage them as leased properties. Because I felt that it was a waste for their graduation to be the end of our relationship, we formed a “Landlords Association” through which we exchange fresh, up-to-date information on a daily basis, and offer each other good stimulating influences. This association also has a great significance in terms of creating new friends and fellow real estate owners, and offers advantages of scale as an organization.
I would like to be able to offer some kind of impetus for providing some hints to people who want to live a happy life, but are kept too busy with their day to day routines. Based on that sentiment, I also published a book on real estate investment this April. It will make me really happy if the lives of people who read my book, people who have participated in my seminars or school courses, members of the Landlords Association, or other people who have been involved with me in some way take a positive turn. I would really like to see the heartfelt smiles of those people, if even just a little.
