I get a lot to share how I got started in real estate. So I share how it all began and what has inspired and motivated me to create this self made success.
Through all my experiences, I've come to realize that it has nothing to do with real estate, it has nothing to do with money, it had something to do with the desire to be a self made man. The road to real success might be the hardest thing but it's why you're in this planet.
Kris Krohn here, and some of you have asked me if I would actually talk more about how I got started on my journey in the land of real estate creating wealth, retiring at the age of 26. So in today's video, I really wanna back up and share with you some of the moments in my life that really help me create this self-made success.
And I hope it will help you on your journey too, to so many people asking and wanting to know, Kris, how did you do something so extraordinary financially in such a very short period of time? And I thought today I would try to give you really the, the full story behind how it happened, because I think there might be some nuggets there that can be useful for you. It started actually when I was eight years old.
If we're like going back to the beginning and I would witness my parents struggle with money and really fight about money, my mom being more Irish and my dad definitely being German, you mix those two together, you're gonna get kind of a little bit of a volatile scenario. And, um, my mom and dad would be pretty vocal about their fights. They'd try to keep it away from the kids, but there was no doubt in the fact that we knew that there was fighting over money.
My dad was an entrepreneur trying to make it in business. Nine kids. And I'm number four. And if you study child theory, order theory, I'm the glue, right? I'm the one in the middle that's trying to keep the family together. And so one time I overheard my mom and dad in the office at home arguing over money. And I had this strong feeling, I wanna make enough money someday for my parents.
Now that's a cute thought and feeling of an eight year old trying to be the glue to hold the family together. But something really touched my heart and felt very, very inspired that day. And so I just got it early on in my mind that I needed to have enough money growing up for my family and also for my parents. So basically two families. And if I fast forward, the next moment that really impacted who I am today happened when I was 15 years old.
I was in that awkward teen years where it was right before my, my big growth spurt. And, um, I was kind of chubby. I didn't have a lot of self-confidence and I really wasn't aware or awake to life. I felt kind of picked on and made fun of in school. I think most people probably did. But my dad got me a paper out. He tried to put me in different sports and try to, I know awaken something from within and nothing was doing it.
But my dad put me in front of the paper out and I was curious and I came to life and it, it awoke this inner entrepreneur, right? An entrepreneur who by the way, this summer, earlier during school, had actually sold mom and dad's. I basically had made my own fund dips outta mom's sugar packets with Kool-Aid and had kids buying that for the first half of the day.
Made like 40 something dollars. And I got pulled into the VP's office and she confiscated after she tried snorting some of it. I couldn't figure out why at the time she thought I was doing drugs. I figured out later. But anyway, I had this entrepreneurial thing going on. And being a paperboy I could make $400 a month delivering these papers after school on my bike. Loved it so much.
I picked up within six months, two more routes all next to each other. So I had this bag on the front and back and I was carrying 70 papers and um, I had to like line up the addresses and the people and then to boot, I was going for speed. Within six months, my body trimmed down. I hit this growth spurt. Girls started taking some notice. I went through that awkward puberty phase and um, really woke up with some confidence.
I remember there was this moment between my two bike routes where I just stopped and felt that I had woken up consciously to life, combine my desire to want to take care of my parents financially, combine that with this empowerment of I believe in me. And I was gonna carry that now till I got in college. And I remember the day I got married.
So third day of school, I met my wife. And nine months later we got married and we had flown out to the east coast from Utah to get married. 'cause that's where she's from. And all my family came out, all my siblings except for one. And, uh, on that wedding day, I remember I felt like we were starting fresh, something new. And I felt like I was ready to conquer the world. I was gonna take the world down. I was gonna win.
I was gonna claim everything that was in my mind. I had a plan. I was gonna be a doctor, and I was gonna take care of my family and my parents. And that's where I entered the real world. That's my history in a nutshell. That brought me to the point where, all right, I'm a married man now I gotta get serious. I gotta, I gotta take it down.
And you know how I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna excel in school. I'm gonna get good grades. 'cause anything I've ever wanted, I could effort day one of that chemistry class, I get there right in front of the professor. You know what the professor's saying, alright, to a class of 200 students, my job is to fail. 90% of you grade you on a curve because most of you should not go into medicine. I'm like, oh dude, you're speaking, you're speaking my language.
That's right. We're gonna weed out 90% of these clowns and I'm gonna rise up, make this happen. Well, fast forward four months, get to the end of the semester, and I got a c and a C grade in and of itself is maybe not a bad grade, but if you wanna be a doctor, and this is the start of a long science career, I sat down with, um, my, my science person that I'm supposed to sit down with, my career specialist advisor.
And, and he looked at my grade and he said, Kris, this is not for you. Get out. And I said, Uhuh, Kris Krohn, don't quit. So I doubled down. I said, I'm gonna figure this out. So I took the same class again. I got a tutor, I worked my butt off and I get to the end of the term and guess what?
Got a C minus same material, did it again, worked Dexter hard and got a worse grade friends. I was pursuing a, a path that was not in my natural aptitude. And ultimately it was a crushing day because when I talked to my career counselor that time, I had to admit he was right. It was like the first time in my life I felt it was like the big, it was like the big balloon of excitement for life that day got popped.
And I'm like, oh, I'm stepping into this real world where life sometimes just sucks. I felt hammered. I remember walking home that day feeling like crap. And I went home and I told my wife and I was actually nervous. I was scared to tell her, I don't think I can be a doctor. It didn't even phase her. She didn't even blink. She's like, well, I believe in you, you'll figure it out.
I'm like, really? I kind of sold you on this premise. And I, you know, wasn't that kind of part of you falling in love with me? She's like, no. So I knew that at that point I had to figure something out. And the plans that I had had for years was not gonna happen. The problem was, is that as I researched all the different opportunities and ways of how I was gonna get where I wanted to go, I just remember feeling, I sat down with a different career counselor.
'cause now I wasn't going into the medical field and he started putting options in front of me, like psychology and, and, and this and that kind of thing. And be, become a teacher. And I, I started looking at all these options and I remember how I felt inside. It was like had that pit in my stomach, like, oh, what's, what's this major called?
And how much money can they make? Well, $60,000, what's this path and how much can they make? Well, $40,000. What about that one 80,000? I'm like, how am I actually, how am I gonna take care of my two families? Because it just doesn't sound like a lot of money to take care of one. I didn't have a whole lot of real world experience with money, but um, I knew that it wasn't gonna be enough.
And I remember how sickening that really felt. I dunno if you've ever felt that way before where you once had dreams and you were excited about life. And then that bubble got popped and then kind of deteriorated. But I'm so grateful for those moments because they are really what kickstarted my journey.
The moment that truly changed my life was when my wife and I ran outta money and we were going into debt and, uh, her, her checkbook had bounced, didn't have the ability to buy groceries that day. And when I found her in that state of tears from coming home from the grocery market, wasn't able to buy food. And in that moment, I felt like the crappiest human being alive. I was like, oh, I have never felt so low in my life. I'm empathetic. I'm a horrible friend. I've let my wife down. I'm a bad provider and I was working full time.
Again, so grateful because all of that is what led to my really big transformation might lead to your really big transformation. Because for me it was a moment and that's all it needed to be. It was a moment for me to decide I'm going in a direction that I don't like. It's debt. It's no money, it's no happiness. I need to find a new path.
And frankly, I don't need to be offensive to any of you young people watching this. But college was only going to, it wasn't going to give me everything that I wanted. It was going to give me a step in the direction of what I wanted. Sometimes we look at college like it's the last most important education of our life. It's kindergarten compared to the education that you need in life. The real world education that I would need could not be found within the halls of the university.
And university is great for people that if you wanna be a doctor, you better be going to college, right? Like no one wants you to figure that out in the back of the veterinary story. So, um, it all really came to a head with feeling really crappy, knowing that things needed to change and I decided that I would move heaven or hell and do anything in everything required not to live the next 40 years in financial lack in a manner I had seen my parents do it.
That decision was a really important moment because I had a lot of crappy feelings inside. But the only thing that I had was this tenacity that said, I'm gonna mount up. I'm gonna rise up and I'm gonna conquer. I'm gonna figure out how to do this. And four and a half years later, I was retired just after graduating college.
But what really happened that made the difference that I would submit to all of you is the one thing that we really need that we're not really trained that we need. In fact, we don't even know what we don't know. We don't even know what we don't know. That we don't even know that we don't need to, that we need to know. If you follow me. There is this idea that the higher education, sometimes school gets in the way of the higher education.
The higher education ultimately for me came through mentors. You want something in life and you gotta find the men and women that have it. And you gotta find a way to get into a relationship with them where they can show you how to do it. You gotta find a way to, uh, uh, make an arrangement with them somehow, somewhere where they can take you under the wing and whether they can actually spoonfeed you the critical knowledge that will make the difference.
'cause in the end, it's not always what you know. More often than not, it's actually who you know. And people are the ones. Life is a business of people. People are the ones that are gonna take you where you want to go in life. It's, it, it, it translates and transcends systems and, and business formulas and, and things that have proven worked. Who are the people that are gonna get you where you want to go?
I found some people in my life that when I found them, they didn't know that I was looking for them. And they certainly did not wanna work with me. The first man that I found, my wife and I were, um, you know, financially struggling and our in church, we decided to take this kind of church evening class for marriage improvement. And on the fifth week it was on finances.
And they had this guest speaker come in that spoke very sophisticatedly and there was something different about him. And so I, I wanted to approach him after the class. It's like, what is it about you or what's your career? What do you do for work?
And he hadn't worked the last 10 years of his life, he actually just got back from international traveling with this young family. And I found out that he had done it through real estate investing. And moment he said that I caught the bug. It just, I knew my path. I knew what I needed to do, I just didn't know what that really meant, . So I started tracking him down, literally even drove out to the dude's house and knocked on his door. And he was frustrated like, you don't have an appointment. You haven't, like, what are you doing here?
And I was begging for him to teach me. And in that same manner, I found two more mentors that year that just rode on their coattails. And I was hungry for anything that I could get. I would go where I needed to boat. I'd get on any plane that I needed. Again, I would do anything required to figure it out at the end, four and a half years later, retiring the first time and then creating this wealth and doing all these great things in my life.
I think if I had to chalk up what made it all possible, it has nothing to do with real estate. It has nothing to do with money. It had to do with the desire to be a self-made man. It had to do with this knowledge that no one else is gonna figure this out for me. No one else is in charge of my life the way I'm in charge of my life.
No one else is gonna author my future. The pen's in my hand and the book is blank and it's up to me. And so my whole story, yeah, I created wealth in real estate and I've created wealth in a number of other industries. And yes, real estate is my major backbone. And yes, you can, you know, go to my website, click the link and learn from me and let me, let me teach you how to replicate what I've done.
And I've done that for thousands of people. But the one thing that you're really gonna need beyond any of that is do you really have a reason inside of you big enough to motivate you to move? 'cause if you do day in and day out and move on your own unmotivated by anyone else, then you have what it takes to achieve, frankly, just about anything that's inside of your bandwidth, of your potential.
None of us really knows how long life is. Don't really know if it's gonna be a long one, whether we're gonna get old. If it's short, but you're alive today and that's a gift, what are you gonna do with it? So many of us are living beneath our potential because we're waiting for it to be handed out to us for someone to reveal it to us.
For someone to make it easy enough to make it three simple steps. Listen, the road to real success in getting where you want to go might be the hardest thing you've ever done, but it's actually why you're on this planet. And that's your journey of being here.
So my invitation for you is to figure out how to get connected inside with that motivation that says, you know what? This is my life and I'm gonna make this happen. Sure, I might use Kris's system or somebody else's system, but that drive has got to come from within. And if you wanna know how to get it, it's just a choice.
Are you ready to start your journey of being your own self-made success? Then I wanna invite you to click the link up here and get in touch with me and my team. I've laid out a number of different ways that we can play together, ways that I can mentor with you, way that you can work with me and my team, ways that I can get you extra deals.
Listen, real estate has its tough parts. It can be hard, but that's why I've brought the team and the supplies and the properties to make it a whole lot easier for you. If you're ready and committed to getting started on your journey, then come learn what those options are and let's play and create wealth together.