The first part of my childhood was based out of a single parent household. When I was born my mom and I lived in a small town in CA called Avenal. At the time there was nothing there but a prison and a hospital where my mom worked. We shared a room in some lady’s house that my mom rented out. The lady was supposed to take care of me while my mom was at work; the flat spot on my skull says otherwise.

We bounced around a bit until my mom brought us back to the Bay Area (yay) and then my brother showed up. My mom was the definition of hustler life. She was busting her ass, working three jobs at a time to support me and my brother, her family in the Philippines, and still managed to save enough to buy a multiplex that we would eventually live in.

By the time we were in a more structured living situation, I was already conditioned. Growing up like that makes you scrappy, resourceful, and fast. I somehow managed to get into the best college in the world, but where I come from, debt is a scary four-letter word. In the long run you pay more with loans, and I was young and full of energy, so two degrees and the three jobs I needed to pay for them seemed like a normal thing at the time. (Shoutout to Pell Grants and financial aid, whew!) I graduated with no loans.

One of the scary things they taught me in college was that by the time I hit retirement age, Social Security was probably going the way of the dodo. So I aggressively threw all my money into real estate. Even though I had a regular tech job, I still did tiny side hustles like tech recruiting, working part time at a restaurant, and making these crazy diaper motorcycles, because why show up to a baby shower with a diaper cake when you can show up with an entire diaper motorcycle?

After I graduated, I’d been researching college towns in terms of real estate growth, and UC Merced had just opened up. I threw all my hard-earned college savings into it, along with my boyfriend at the time, right before the great recession of 07–09.

In the past 20 years I’ve learned a lot. Met some amazing people and some not-so-amazing ones. I did research, saw patterns, made a lot of mistakes, watched my business collapse, rise, collapse, rebuild, and now we’re here. It’s scary to make mistakes in your own business, because one wrong move and you could lose everything. But in all honesty, if you can pivot from those mistakes, that’s where real growth occurs.

By the time I hit my last 1031 exchange, I wasn’t learning anymore, just executing. Once you know how to restructure an entire financial strategy across multiple properties and entities, the magic fades. It becomes a game of scale, not curiosity.

I had already built a strong team and was planning to leverage them more. And I did. Now that I’m no longer deep in the trenches of daily real estate management, I get to dive into something new!

In the past couple weeks this is what I’ve done:

• Refresher crash course in website design (still hate it, from my first site to my fifth)
• Learned GIMP (refreshingly easier than the website)
• Flipped a GTM strategy in under 24 hours
• Got blocked and reported for trying to help 🙃
• Discovered someone is using my copy (kind of flattering, but you could’ve just said thank you, bro)
• Had dinner with some incredible people in the GTM world
• Helped build a LEGO airplane (important)
• Threw a toddler party and made 72 empanadas for said toddler’s request (YES, THIS WAS AN ACTUAL REQUEST)
• Got food poisoning from old roast beef I knew was bad but tried to eat anyway because I didn’t want to waste it (eldest daughter logic strikes again)
• Stayed up all night working and got caught by my son, who asked “did you stay up all night working?” Yeah baby, I did lol
• Heard from old friends and folks in my network who reached out to say hi and ask about the new project, that’s been lovely (and a little surreal)

And you know what? I’m in love. With the chaos. With the learning. With the mistakes. With the possibility of building something that matters.

Here’s to more growth, more learning, more challenges and more magic.

Thanks for joining me on this part of the journey.

Strategy matters.
But trust moves markets.

With heart,
— Rhea Lynn Mascarinas
GTM Strategist | QuietConversion
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