We were lucky to catch up with JD Kumala recently and have shared our conversation below.

JD, appreciate you joining us today. Please tell us about starting your own firm and if you’d do anything different knowing what you know now.

Growing up, I always said I wanted to be a lawyer, doctor, or banker… because that’s what my dad told me I should be. “It’s safe. It’s easy. You have prestige. You work hard and you are set for life.”, he would tell me repeatedly over long car rides or weekday dinners. I believed him. I thought that listening to him was my ticket to success, my life roadmap. I never considered what I wanted or what I thought I would like to do with my life. I listened blindly. To my dad’s credit, he was right. I studied hard, maintained discipline, and ended up with a highly coveted (and ridiculously lucrative) job out of college. At 20 years old, I was an Investment Banker for J.P. Morgan’s Technology Mergers & Acquisitions group in San Francisco. By 21, my annual earnings were nearly $200,000 and I had been the lead analyst for The Walt Disney Company’s industry-shaking acquisition of 21st Century Fox. I was on conference calls with the legendary CEO Bob Iger himself. In my dad’s eyes and in the world’s eyes, I “made it” and I was “set for life.” There was one problem though; one big big problem. I was not happy, nowhere near happy. I felt numb. I had my first ever panic attack. I would roll the four windows of my car all the way down while driving 75mph on the freeway, just so I could “feel something.” Working 100+ hour weeks, for other people, to make rich folk richer, and at the cost of my sanity did not feel like “making it.” It felt the complete opposite. So I quit, much to the chagrin of my father.

I joined a financial technology startup in Irvine, CA called Acorns. I worked alongside the executive team to forecast our future growth, rationalize our pathway to profitability, and consider the potential of product expansions, bolt-on acquisitions, and strategic partnerships. I felt happier. I felt I was making a bigger impact on the world. I felt my voice was heard in the room. I felt this was as good as a job could get. Then, I started feeling comfortable and stagnant. I felt I wasn’t learning or growing anymore. At the same time, my parents were going through a divorce, after 20+ years of marriage. I felt like I couldn’t be there for my family when they needed me. I felt in the passenger’s seat of my own life. That’s when I realized that “making it” had a whole new definition. I needed agency over my own life, my own success / failures, and most importantly, my own time. Entrepreneurship felt like the right path.

I am not a natural entrepreneur. I wasn’t born with the personality for leadership nor the comfortability to take the necessary risks. I always took the safe route, like my dad taught me. I had to learn everything, educate myself, and stick my neck out. With time, consistent effort, and several failures, Padua Partners was born in April 2020 during the wild COVID-19 epidemic. Overall, here is my lesson: there is no “right path” in life; you have to trust yourself to blaze your own trail. Then, educate and get to work.

JD, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Padua Partners is a boutique (and bootstrapped) real estate investment company. We source undervalued property in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas, Texas to renovate / sell or to refinance / add to our portfolio. Our goal is to add value across the entire real estate spectrum, from the homeowners we catalyze into a dream retirement, to the contractors for which we provide income stability, to the properties and communities we help revitalize. We’ve learned that adding value to others is the best way to build a successful business.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

My dad always told me, “you only have one reputation in life; you always have to do things the right way.” That approach to business has helped Padua Partners accelerate its growth in our Texas markets. We do what we say we’re going to do. We treat everyone with respect. We listen to problems and try our best to provide solutions. We communicate professionally and proactively. We learn from our mistakes. And most importantly, we check our egos at the door.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I get asked this question a lot. People seem to think starting a real estate business takes deep pockets of six-figures plus. In many cases, that is true. In our case, though, my business partner Carlos and I started this business with about $70,000 of our own money that we saved from our years working in the corporate world. We were radically lucky with the timing of our entry (historically low interest rates). That luck combined with hustle, financial modeling, and a hint of lunacy transformed that $70,000 into our first 3 single family home renovations projects (we bought all of them within 1 week). After 4 months of real-time learning how to flip a house (I had never done this in my entire life), we made $3,757 on our first project. We were wildly pumped! We had gotten paid to learn how to flip a house! Armed with this newfound confidence and skill set, we learned the recipe. And we cooked over and over again, adding in new acquisitions / dispositions strategies and recycling our capital tenfold. After 3 years and dozens of projects, that initial $70,000 has transformed into a healthy real estate portfolio.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://paduahomes.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jd-kumala/