Having a vision is one thing.
Realizing it is another.
When I started my recruiting career in 2015, I had a picture in my head of what my future life would look like.
Above anything else, I wanted comfort for myself and my family. Financial security. The ability to give my daughter, Kiwi, whatever she needed without having to worry about whether I could afford it.
But there were some material things I wanted, too.
A house with a boat and a BMW parked out front.
That was the vision.
The boat came in 2018.
The house house in 2019.
And the BMW completed the vision in 2020.
Ironically, none of them were exactly what I pictured.
But I feel like that's life.
Whether it's getting to the top, winning a championship, earning a certain amount of money, or buying something you've always wanted, the reality rarely looks or feels exactly like you imagined.
Don't get me wrong. I'm incredibly proud to have earned each one.
My cousin Rad (rest in peace) would always say, "Money isn't everything...but it sure helps."
I couldn't agree more.
I think it's important to have both monetary and non-monetary goals. They're both critical in motivating you to keep learning, progressing, pushing, and reinventing yourself.
But something interesting happens when you actually achieve those goals.
Sometimes you don't even notice……..
I didn't realize I'd achieved my original vision until five years after setting it.
And the realization was completely accidental.
It was a beautiful late-summer/early-fall afternoon in 2020. The sun was out, the trees looked beautiful, and I took a picture of the front of my house.
As I looked at the photo, something caught my attention.
There it was.......
My house.
My boat.
My BMW.
All sitting out front.
Exactly what I'd pictured five years earlier.
"Huh...there it is……." I thought
And then I moved on.
Seriously.
Five years of working toward a vision, and the realization lasted about five seconds.
Funny how that works.
In 2020, I was experiencing success unlike anything I'd previously achieved as a recruiter.
That success gave me some extra cash and prompted a wish I'd had for a while.
A sexy lil summer car.
Two seats.
Convertible
Something I could put the top down in and go fast. Take to dinner. Go for an afternoon cruise. Enjoy the North Idaho summers.
That's when I found the BMW Z3.
Seemed perfect.
Green. Two-seater. Convertible. Almost exactly like the model from the James Bond movie GoldenEye.
A 1998 with fewer than 100,000 miles, located about an hour away in Davenport, Washington.
So I drove over and bought it for $8,000 cash.
Just like that.
The car had a manual transmission, and it had been a LONG time since I'd driven anything but an automatic.
Took a little getting used to.
Including some embarrassing moments stalling the damn thing in intersections around downtown Coeur d'Alene.
Nothing quite like buying yourself a sports car to look like a successful businessman...only to stall it at a stoplight.
I even got a custom license plate.
HSTLHRD.
Hustle Hard.
Because that's what the car represented to me.
Hard work.
An earned toy.
And toys typically aren't my thing. But for whatever reason, a sports car always seemed like something a real "businessman" would have.
I suppose there was a little ego involved.
And that's okay.
I'd worked hard to get to that point, and I wanted to enjoy some of the rewards.
Of course, owning an older sports car in North Idaho comes with its own set of challenges.
Namely, where the hell do you store the thing for six months of the year?
I tried for two winters, in 2020 and 2021, to buy and build makeshift shelters.
The first was a carport that blew away in a windstorm.
Luckily, it landed in my backyard rather than somebody else's house.
The second was an enclosed shell, that I called “the Armadillo.”
That one collapsed under the weight of the snow.
So much for that idea.
And, naturally, the maintenance expenses came with the territory.
I spent time replacing the clutch and addressing leaks and other mechanical issues over the years.
An older BMW is still a BMW.
Eventually, I bit the bullet and rented a storage unit in Post Falls, ID for the winters of 2022 and 2023.
It wasn't THAT far away.
But it was far enough to be inconvenient.
Still, I'd rather deal with the inconvenience of storage than watch another homemade shelter get destroyed by Mother Nature.
The car was fun.
But it was also becoming a bit of a pain in the ass.
For all the headaches, though, the BMW gave me some incredible memories.
Especially with Kiwi.
Those first couple of summers were full of cruises together.
She loved driving from downtown Coeur d'Alene out toward Higgins Point and back.
Top down.
Her hand hanging out the window, flowing in the wind.
We'd talk. Sing. Dance. Sometimes we didn't have anywhere in particular to go. We just drove.
Those are my fondest memories of that car.
Not the horsepower.
Not the badge on the hood.
Not the fact that I'd finally purchased something I'd dreamed about.
Just me and my little girl cruising around Coeur d’Alene on a beautiful summer afternoon.
Simple stuff.
But memorable.
My girlfriend, Erin and I had our share of those afternoons in 2023 and 2024, too.
Beautiful views.
The heat of the summer mixed with the cool breeze created by the car as we whipped around corners.
Dinner dates. Afternoon cruises. Enjoying the sunshine.
That's what I loved about the Z3.
It wasn't particularly practical. It didn't need to be. It was an experience. And for a while, it was exactly the experience I wanted.
By 2023, though, I started thinking it might be time to move on.
I wasn't driving the car nearly as much.
Between maintenance, insurance, and winter storage, I was spending more money keeping it than I felt I was getting out of it.
Erin convinced me to keep it one more summer.
And I'm glad she did.
But by 2024, things were changing.
Kiwi was old enough to drive, so I bought her a new Ford Bronco, with some additional help from my brother Eric.
I also upgraded my boat to a 2008 Cobalt S220 and gave my old 1979 General Marine Ranger to one of the homies, Josh.
Suddenly, I had three cars and two boats in the picture. Too much stuff.
And just as a toy's newness wears off, so does its use. The BMW was no exception.
I'd gotten what I wanted out of it. I didn't need to keep paying for the privilege of having it sit around. It was time to simplify.
Of course, selling an older BMW wasn't quite as easy as buying one.
I stopped by a couple of dealerships to see what they'd offer. One wasn't interested. The other offered me $500.
For a car I'd paid $8,000 for four years earlier, I felt like I need to sell it myself. I initially listed it for $6,000, eventually dropping the price to $4,000.
In December 2024, a guy named Michael came over from Liberty Lake with his wife to look at it. He wanted a summer car to drive between Liberty Lake and Priest River.
He and his 18-year-old son enjoyed tinkering with cars, and he seemed genuinely excited about the BMW. Michael inspected it, took it for a test drive, and eventually bought it for $4,000 cash.
End of a chapter
I was happy it went to a good home….and a garage. The Beemer finally got the winter storage it deserved.
The BMW was a symbol of success.
At least that's what it started as.
Something I could point to and say, "I earned that."
And I did.
But like an old trophy, it eventually became a dust collector.
That doesn't make those four years any less special.
Because they were.
I checked something off my list of experiences.
I enjoyed the hell out of it.
And then I moved on.
One thing I've learned is that when you have the means to purchase something, the item itself can become less important. At least for me.
The anticipation of achieving something is often more powerful than the achievement itself. You spend years picturing what it'll feel like.
And then one day, there it is……sitting in your driveway.
And life goes on.
That's not a bad thing.
It's just an interesting part of success.
It also reinforced something about myself: if I'm going to spend money on something, I really need to be passionate about using it. Otherwise, the ownership eventually becomes more of an obligation than a reward.
And sometimes the right decision is to recognize when an experience has run its course.
I think back to that picture I took in 2020.
The house.
The boat.
The BMW.
Five years earlier, that was what success looked like in my head.
By 2024, I was perfectly happy having a truck and a boat.
Functional.
Paid for.
Practical.
And considerably less shit to maintain.
I don't regret buying the BMW.
I don't regret selling it, either.
Maybe someday I'll buy another sports car. Maybe I won't.
But what I find interesting is that when I think about the Z3 today, I don't picture that photograph of my house with the BMW parked out front.
I picture Kiwi sitting in the passenger seat.
Her hand out the window.
The wind blowing.
The two of us singing and laughing as we drove around the lake.
I bought the car because of what I thought it would say about my success.
I remember it because of the experiences it gave me.
And I think there's a lesson in that.
The things we work so hard to acquire don't always end up being valuable for the reasons we originally wanted them.
Sometimes the real reward isn't the thing itself.
It's what you get to do with it.
Keep Building.
Alex de Golia