A Landlord at 20

I was 20 and became a landlord for the first time, mostly because I couldn't yet afford furniture of my own.

My dad bought a three-house property near Cal Poly. His money, my labor, was the deal. I lived in one house, rented out the other two, collected rent, fixed what broke, mowed what grew. "Sweat equity" is a nice way of saying free labor from someone whose only other asset was time.

The plan worked exactly like we drew it up. Rent covered the mortgage every month, on time, for years. I ran it like a real business, because at 20 it felt like the most real thing I'd ever done.

Then we went to sell. Bad market timing. My dad didn't make money on the deal. All that operational discipline, and the outcome still came down to a housing cycle neither of us controlled.

I don't know if there's a clean way to protect against that. I just try to remember now: running something well is necessary. It was never going to be sufficient on its own.

What's something in your business that's operating exactly as designed, and still at the mercy of a cycle you can't control?