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Writer's picturebingamanjoshua5

My Journey from Entrepreneurship to Real Estate

Updated: Jun 14




The most important thing I learned while running my first business, a sneaker store in
San Francisco’s Mission District, was how much I loved connecting with people. I loved being
the nexus of an intimate network of meaningful relationships and connecting those relationships
so that everyone had the support they needed. I thrived on being a conduit between diverse
people who might otherwise not get to know each other.

When my wife and I moved to Austin in 2002, I saw a city that shared my values and
sense of possibility. The business community was open-minded and forward-thinking, dedicated
to the growth and betterment of the community at large. Here was a city where a creative people
person could progress as a creative businessperson.

Because getting to know people and relationships is what animates my entrepreneurial
spirit, I christened my first Austin venture Progress Coffee, a café converted from a loading dock 
and derelict storage warehouse on East 5th Street. Charged with original energy and freshness, the
place resonated sympathetically throughout East Austin, becoming a thrumming cultural hub
within the local community that I was relishing working, communing, and living life with every
day.

In 2009, the shoe bug bit me again and I started to work on a side business. HELM Boots
was conceived simply out of my long-standing love for shoes, and it grew into a sense of pride for America and America’s tradition of quality manufacturing. This was admittedly unintended.
It was a pure business move that brought HELM production from offshores. After a visit to a
footwear production facility in Maine, I was moved to connect past with present, to be a small
part of the rebirth of American manufacturing. Each pair of boots carried an echo of history,
including a quote inside from Teddy Roosevelt that read: “Far and away the best prize that life
offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” That resonated with me then and still
does now. Work worth doing.

Though I’m the first to say how incredible those 20 years of working Progress Coffee
and HELM Boots were, my most cherished memories are of the art shows and concerts and
community engagements that filled the locations with the joyful noise of human interaction. I
relished nothing more than people hanging out, conversing, having fun. This was my prize.

Despite the growth, I made a difficult personal decision to step down from the company. 
It was simply time for a change. My heart shifted. I felt the need to get back to the one-on-one
relationships that had first kindled my entrepreneurial fire and felt the most personally
rewarding. I had to re-balance the need to make a living with the business of living. During this
transition I was business consulting and had the opportunity to manage some deals that included 
real estate. I realized that buying and selling real estate was a more streamlined form of
consulting where I could have direct involvement at every point of the process. With every
business, I had created havens, public sanctuaries where people could congregate and make
contact. Now it was time to help people find their own personal refuges where they could
connect, interact, and reside with their friends, families, and communities.

At this point I had moved my family from Austin to Bastrop where we purchased a
historic home built in 1835. The boom that Bastrop has seen since our re-location has been
extraordinary and wholly unexpected. We had no idea when we moved to Bastrop in 2016, that
it would explode like it has/is. Helping people in Bastrop buy and sell commercial and
residential properties is so rewarding. Because of so many years of having my small businesses
in Austin, I’ve been able to assist in finding properties for businesses expanding or relocating in 
the area, as well as people moving to Bastrop not only from Austin but from across the country. 
Tesla building in East Austin, SpaceX just East of that, two large film studios in Bastrop,
Samsung in Taylor, are all contributing factors, but that’s not all. People are moving here for
other reasons as well. They want what we wanted. To slow down a touch. To know all your
neighbors. To sidestep some traffic. To have a bigger yard for the kids. To hopefully purchase a 
home.

Combining my vision, experience, and passion, my mission is to help sellers and buyers
get not just what they need, but what they want. George Eliot wrote, “What do we live for if not
to make the world less difficult for each other?” What unites my disparate endeavors, from
selling shoes in San Francisco to real estate in Bastrop, is a fearless, adventurous,
entrepreneurial spirit combined with a true passion for enriching the lives of those in my
community. Hopefully, making their worlds a little less difficult, their lives a little easier. Isn’t
that what we should all work for?

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