Escaping Ordinary | How One Decision Gave Lee Yoder a 5-Year Runway (and a $55M Business)

In this episode of Escaping Ordinary, Lee Yoder lays out the full arc of how he walked away from a stable career as a physical therapist and built a $55M real-estate business from scratch.

Lee started inside a demanding healthcare startup, working early mornings and late nights with zero control over his own time. A mentor pushed him to step back into a simpler PT role — not to retreat, but to free up mental bandwidth and reclaim evenings and weekends so he could build something of his own.

From early house flips (which he admits were just another job), to his first duplex cash-flowing $200 a door, Lee shares the exact moment he realized small multifamily wouldn’t get him where he wanted to go. What changed everything was discovering syndication, leverage, and the ability to scale beyond trading hours for dollars.

The pivotal moment?
Lee sold his entire small portfolio — roughly $300,000 of equity — and used it to buy five years of runway so he could go full-time in real estate. That decision unlocked the compounding curve he talks about throughout the interview: years of flat progress while building systems, followed by acceleration that employees never experience.

We cover:

Why "loving the work" wasn’t enough when he didn’t own his time

How a conservative spouse shaped his risk discipline

Why small wins can become traps if they stop you from scaling

How long the compounding curve actually takes

What it feels like to finally own your calendar, your projects, and your life

His long-term goal of building a billion-dollar company — not for the money, but for the challenge

This conversation is a roadmap for anyone who feels stuck in a W-2, knows they’re capable of more, and wants a sovereign life with upside that compounds for decades.

Escaping Ordinary — Episode 3