To become a landlord at 17 years old

When I was 17 years old, I got my first full-time job working at an apartment complex in Secane, Delaware County. My best friend Glenn and I both worked there during the summers. We were lifeguards at the two pools, but we also did landscaping, housekeeping, maintenance…pretty much whatever needed to be done.

Looking back, it was one of the best summer jobs a couple of 17-year-old kids could have asked for. The pools were small, so there were plenty of days when the hardest part of the job was sitting in a chair making sure nobody drowned. We worked long hours—around 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week—and probably put in close to 80 hours some weeks. Back then, we didn’t think anything of it.

One day we were out trimming bushes and hedges all around the property. Our boss was the owner’s son, Donny Gaster. He was probably only 24 or 25 years old, but to Glenn and me he seemed like a real adult who knew everything.

As we worked, Donny explained all the different shrubs, how they should be trimmed, when they bloomed, why some grew the way they did, and even the proper way to load the big dump truck we drove around the complex. Every once in a while he’d stop, look at us, and say,

“I went to college for this stuff.”

Well, Glenn and I were impressed.

We figured Donny must have gone to some fancy horticultural college. We listened to every word he said. We thought we were getting an education from an expert.

It wasn’t until years later that it finally hit me.

That’s not what Donny meant at all.

What he was really saying was,

“And to think…I went to college for this.”

In other words, after spending all that time and money on a college education, he never imagined he’d end up teaching two teenagers how to trim hedges and load a dump truck.

Glenn and I still laugh every time we think about it.

Funny how it took me years to understand the joke.

What’s even funnier is that those summers probably had a bigger impact on my life than I realized at the time. Working around apartment buildings every day planted a seed in my head. It made me think, “I’d like to own places like this someday.”

That little summer job in Secane is probably where my interest in rental properties really began. By the time I was in my twenties, I had already set a goal of owning investment real estate.

It’s funny how life works.

Sometimes the lessons you remember aren’t the ones you were being taught.

And sometimes a guy who says, “I went to college for this,” ends up teaching you something he never even knew he was teaching.