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From Basement to 7 Figures: How One Couple Built a Business God's Way

Blair and JP went from living in her parents' basement to a 7-figure business in under a decade. Here's the real, unfiltered timeline - not the highlight reel.

I want to show you that you don't need a business background, startup capital, or industry connections to build a seven-figure family business. I know this because JP and I had none of those things. What we had was a decision, a willingness to learn, and a God who kept every promise He ever made to us.

This is the full timeline - not a highlight reel. Because what you need to see isn't just where we landed. It's where we started from.

The Early Years (2007–2013)

JP and I moved to the suburbs of Detroit in 2007 and 2008 and both started teaching. We were married in 2010 and bought our first house in 2012. In 2013, I left teaching - this was a few years after the Great Financial Crisis, and my teaching position kept getting cut. I was told I'd need to go back for a masters degree, which would have cost more than my salary.

It was a hard decision. My identity was deeply tied to being a teacher. I waited tables and started experimenting with entrepreneurship - after-school tutoring, network marketing for a fitness company, a handful of things I saw other stay-at-home moms doing on social media. I call it “playing around” because I spent real time and effort on it, but nothing ever took off.

The Lowest Point (2015–2016)

In 2015 our first baby, Jack, was born. Three weeks later, we had to sell our house - we couldn't afford it anymore. We moved into my parents' basement. Very humbling.

But selling that house was also an “aha” moment. We got a check at the closing table for more money than I'd made in an entire year of teaching. So we thought: let's try to do that again.

In 2016 we bought a very junky little fixer-upper as an intentional live-in flip. We worked on it with our one-year-old, while I was pregnant with Ben. We weren't quite sure what we'd do next, but JP's cousin told us about his duplex.

I said, ‘I don't know how. But I know we can learn. And then JP did something pivotal: he said, OK - let's learn how.’

The Turning Point (2018)

In 2018 we bought that duplex, and I told JP I wanted to flip more houses and buy more rental property - without having to live in them. He said that sounded awesome, but asked how we'd actually do that. I didn't know. But I knew we could learn.

So we watched hours of free content on YouTube, then paid for a weekend seminar across the state that taught us more about real estate investing. At that seminar we realized we needed coaching. We found a coach who told us if we just listened and did what he said, we'd have success like he did.

So we spent all the money we didn't have, and hired him. And we listened. And we did what he said.

The Compounding Years (2019–2022)

Our goal for 2019 was to flip one house without having to live in it. We didn't flip one. We flipped two. In 2020 we flipped two more and bought a five-unit apartment building. We just kept going, following the systems and processes.

In 2022 we had our first seven-figure year. That was the year I told JP we needed to go all in - that I thought he needed to leave teaching. He wasn't so sure at first. But we kept going, and we kept growing. It got to the point where JP staying in his career didn't really make sense anymore. He'd begun identifying more as a business owner than a teacher, and our business was making more money than his salary while he controlled his own hours.

In 2025, JP said goodbye to his classroom and his students, and hello to full-time entrepreneurship.

The Number That Changed Everything

Here's what stands out to me most when I look back at this timeline: from 2013 to 2018, I spent over five years trying to pull off entrepreneurship on my own. I spun my tires and made barely any money. JP was my biggest cheerleader, but he wasn't directly involved - he was focused on his career. We were following the world's divide-and-conquer system, and we were broke and frustrated and exhausted.

From 2019 to 2022 - just three years - building together, we went from spinning our tires to owning assets and building a business that brought in seven figures in revenue.

Instead of divide and conquer, we joined forces, and our growth exploded. Other areas of our life began to improve too: our marriage, our conversations, our ability to give generously. The stress, the financial pressure, and the uncertainty of being dependent on someone else for our income disappeared. It was all up to us now - and because we're the ones who care most about our stability, we were willing to fight hard for it.

What Your Lowest Point Might Actually Mean

What decisions have you made - even the scary ones, even the ones that felt like they were going backward - that turned out to be exactly what God used to move you forward?

Because here's what I know from our timeline: the lowest point, moving into my parents' basement, was the turning point. The most humbling moment was the setup for everything that followed. What if the season you're in right now isn't a setback? What if it's the setup?

⤿ SAVE MY SEAT