How did I get to this point? - a little background

I'm going to make this quick...

Out of college, I got a job with the Minnesota DOT in their railroad group.  After enjoying my time there and loving my coworkers, I decided it was time to see what else was out there.  I had job offers from the County or the civil engineering consulting firm, TKDA.  I chose to work for TKDA despite a lower starting salary.  I felt it was the right decision due to the opportunity to work in private industry where you had to find or develop your next opportunity.  There I got a taste for how to market and how to develop relationships with clients.  While working for them, a few clients asked me to run railroad construction projects for them.  This was not in TKDA's bag of tricks at the time.  While this wasn't the first time in history this was done, it was the first time this was done at TKDA.  This experience led me to start my own construction company in the railroad industry.  I had a ton of trials and tribulations which I won't get into now, but know it was fun, tiring, hard, and life-changing.  After 3 years (2011-2014), I was approached to have my business acquired to act as a satellite office for another railroad construction company out of Duluth, North Shore Track.  I sold the company and worked for them full-time over the next 4 years (2014-2018).  With the proceeds of the sale we started investing in real estate as a way to NOT fritter away the fruits of our labor over the prior 3 years.  In April, 2018, I decided to quit my job to be able to spend 8 hours per day (in addition to the rest of the time I spend on this stuff) to concentrate on real estate investing, development, and other business opportunities. 

This isn't necessarily a business blog, a real estate blog, a motivational blog, or a personal finance blog.  It's what we're doing and hopefully others can learn something (good or bad) from our experiences.