Hello, dear friend,
After I left my job at Amazon, which was the only role I ever had as an employee, I was both sure of certain things and confused about others. I knew for certain that the life of being an employee was not for me, and I wanted to return to entrepreneurial endeavors. After a few years of hard work, I also knew that I was exhausted from completing my MBA, launching a start-up in ed-tech, holding a job in a highly competitive environment in London, and managing a retail business in Romania.
In order for me to make a proper decision about my next steps, I decided to leave London and come back to Romania for a year—that was the initial plan, surprisingly. I wanted to explore new ideas, travel leisurely, and recover from the chaos. To wrap this break all up into a package to help me relax, I called it “my sabbatical year.”
The sequence of choices leading up to the decision is another story, but two months into my sabbatical, as I was preparing for a long trip to South America, I decided to start constructing a small building with six flats. My plan was to rent out the flats to earn passive income so that, regardless of where my next endeavors took me, I would have backup income.
Four years later, I am still asked many questions about this story, so I’ve decided to recall it and share some of my lessons with you all.
How did I come to this decision?
As someone who has always been passionate about numbers and finances, I was very young when I learned about passive income. My goal was to work hard to be able to have some passive income by the age of 35. I was not focused on estimating the ideal amount of passive income I would need, but nonetheless, I wanted a safety net. With this in mind, I saved most of the money I earned since starting my entrepreneurial journal at age 20. Living in a developing country, the main focus for investing my savings went into real estate. This is how I became the owner of a plot of land on the same street as my own house.
How did it start?
While still living in London and working at Amazon, I was planning to buy a flat that I could rent out in case I moved countries. The challenge was that, with the money paid for a one-bedroom flat in London, I would get a low return on the rental cost. In contrast, with almost the same amount of money, I was able to build an 800 sqm building with six flats in Romania. The math was simple—I didn’t need advanced knowledge to know which decision would be better.
Did I have any previous experience in building development?
No, I didn’t. And, in all seriousness, it ended up helping a lot. If I knew what it would take to go through all the stages of construction and manage workers from different teams, I most definitely wouldn’t have ventured into this territory. However, when I faced all the challenges, the only way out was to move forward, and I had to find a way to persevere. I’ll provide a disclaimer, though: I did have people around me who had experience in building development, such as close friends and my father, so I had good access to contacts who could give advice. But this did not mean it was not still very difficult and far above my competency.
Why did I do it by myself?
Initially, I had a project manager who was in charge of coordinating the first stage of construction. I was involved in making decisions, as he could not decide on his own which concrete offer to accept or which type of brick we should purchase. Three months into the project, he received an offer from a bigger developer and accepted it. While I looked for someone to replace him, I could not stop the process of building, so I visited the site a few times per day to make needed decisions together with the builder.
I realized then that even if I had a project manager, I still had to be involved, given that this was my vision and my money. I could not ignore how it was used. This is how I took the job and my sabbatical year turned into an adventure. In Romanian, the words for “sabbatical” and “wild” sound similar—”sabatic” and ”salbatic”—and this is not far from reality, as it was indeed a wild year.
What were the main challenges?
- Planning and coordinating
One or more teams were on site for the development of each stage. They had to be coordinated to optimize the duration of work and the planning of purchasing materials. The concrete provider was the one and almost only person who arrived on time and had to be carefully planned in advance. The concrete was in a liquid form and had to be used immediately. In case we were not ready to use it, I had to pay for it anyway and then place a new order again with a few days’ delay. Even with all my planning and project management skills, I have to admit this happened once.
When a meeting is set in the business world, all aspects are respected concerning time and place, and any changes are announced in advance. This was the biggest challenge with the construction teams I worked alongside. Once we agreed on meeting details, it was not rare for me to be the only one showing up at 7 AM on the job site, eventually calling them with no answer. When they finally answered me, they often casually said they could not come, which obviously, I had already noticed. With these delays, it was difficult to have visibility and plan thoroughly. I felt as though people in the construction industry had a different relationship to time than what I had.
- Decision making
During this process, I was surrounded by professionals I had never interacted with. On top of being the only woman around, I was also the one in charge of all the decisions. Every morning, I showed up on-site to make sure we were on track with development, make lists of what I had to order, or figure out which teams I had to contract for the next phase.
I usually got all kinds of specific questions that I could not understand. Something like: “What waterproof system do you prefer?” or “Will the inner walls have load-bearing brick?” Sorry…what?!
In order not to lose their respect—which you can imagine would have been difficult to keep in these conditions—I never answered that I did not know. The answer I used for moments when I was puzzled was: “I will get back to you on this topic by the end of the day.” This was one of the valuable lessons I learned from corporate experience. I would write down the term I was hearing for the first time in my life, and: Long live the internet. By the end of the day, I was as good as a specialist and could make a sound decision.
The only caveat with these decisions is that by the time I came to understand if they were the right ones, it was too late to change them. This was another great challenge for me.
- The looks and the costs
It’s needless to say that I wanted to build a beautiful building. You know those pamphlets with the weakest player who wears the most shiny costume? Although I hoped I was not close to this ridiculous situation, I felt like this many times.
I was traveling across South America while I was working with my architect. I was sending him several photos of interesting buildings I could see in faraway places. Usually, his responses were something like, “Alexandra, we cannot build something like this in Romania.” We finally came to a compromise, building something that I still consider beautiful and modern and almost well-adapted to Romanian weather.
I have to admit that the architect warned me that my outlandish requests would increase the price, but I was so enthusiastic at that stage that I said yes to almost everything. What I learned later was that not only had I overspent my budget, but the complexity of beauty also costed me. Everything that was not standard or simple was both expensive and complicated. This meant a lot of possible errors in executions or later on during usage.
Imagine that I wanted to hide all the rainwater or air conditioning drainage pipes from all sides of the building. It really looks beautiful and modern, but don’t ask me what happens if and when they need to be replaced or repaired.
Well, as you can see, I can easily write about my experience with constructing a building without previous experience, and this is only a small sliver of it. I will continue with my lessons and share other aspects of my project, but I would love to continue the story based on your questions and curiosities.
I invite you to send me your inquiries about what the second part of this story should address so that you find it useful.
I will highly appreciate it if you share this story to people who might find it valuable or at least funny.
Many thanks,
Alexandra