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Thirty years ago, Steve Davis was thriving at his job in corporate America. In fact, his work performance earned him a national sales contest that included a trip to Hawaii as part of the prize. You can imagine his surprise when he returned to the office after his trip and learned that his company was cutting his pay by $20,000 per year.
The news was discouraging, to say the least. At that time, Davis was behind on his bills and suffering from bad credit. The stress from the situation kept him up at night, which was when he encountered the late night infomercials offering guidance on how to invest in real estate.
Davis was inspired by what he saw, so he bought all of the courses and launched into a new career.
“As I look back on the experience, I realize that the $20,000 pay cut was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Davis says. “It woke me up and showed me just how risky it was to be depending on my job as my sole source of income.”
Today, Davis is the CEO of Total Wealth Academy, an education and mentoring platform that teaches people how to avoid the hardships that result from pay cuts. The courses that Total Wealth Academy offers provide guidance on how to use active and passive real estate investing to build a second stream of income.
“I believe it is critical for people to realize that relying on your job as your sole source of income puts you in a very risky place,” Davis says. “Everyone needs a second stream of income to protect against the risk of taking a pay cut or losing your salary altogether.”
New and experienced investors alike benefit from the insights that Davis offers. Over the past 30 years, his courses and radio show have provided instruction to hundreds of thousands of people.
Launching a career in real estate investing
Within three months of receiving his pay cut, Davis had not only built a new career around real estate, he was thriving at it. To make matters even better, he found himself working fewer hours and making more money.
“As I began taking steps to increase my financial IQ, I learned that 90 percent of the millionaires in America used real estate to amass their wealth,” Davis says. “So I started investing in real estate and the business snowballed. When I got to the point where I was making more money from investing than I was from my job, I quit the corporate world and committed all of my energy to real estate. Eventually, I invested in over 4,000 apartment units.”
Davis’s new career got him back on track financially — but that wasn’t the only positive change that it brought to his life. “I had been working 70 hours a week in corporate America,” he shares. “With real estate investing, I was able to make more money while only working 15 hours a month. That allowed me to spend more time with my family, which ended up saving my marriage.”
Helping others to rethink risk
Part of the work that Davis does through Total Wealth Academy involves helping people to overcome their aversion to risk. He finds it ironic that those who resist real estate investing because of the risk fail to recognize just how risky it is to rely on one source of income. Davis’s approach is to help people see that it’s foolish to think that they can make it through life and be successful without facing some risks.
“Everything is risky,” he affirms. “It’s risky to ask out that beautiful girl. It’s even risky to leave your house and go to the grocery store. My advice is to take the risk, especially when it involves making investments that can help you to build a second stream of income.”
Davis believes it’s wise to think about when a pay cut will happen, rather than if it will happen. As 4 million workers in the US learned during the Covid pandemic, pay cuts can appear without warning.
“Be smarter than I was,” Davis implores, “and do something before the pay cut happens. A second stream of income will keep you from going under when the pay cut or layoff eventually appears.”
Much of the motivation for the work that Davis does to help others comes from seeing his parents struggle with money. “My parents suffered financially their entire lives,” he shares. “Watching them gave me a heart for those with similar problems. Through Total Wealth Academy, people learn that they can solve their financial problems by focusing on building that second stream of income.”
Davis and Total Wealth Academy are giving people around the world an opportunity to increase their financial literacy and build financial security. Those who follow him in investing in real estate are creating income streams that will serve them for the rest of their lives.
