Meet Neal Engstrom

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Neal Engstrom. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Neal below.

Neal, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

Great question – I prefer the word mission to purpose! Here’s how I figured out my life mission. After I graduated from college I spent a year teaching English in Japan, and then had adventures traveling throughout Asia for several months. I saw ancient temples in Kamakura, the gigantic Great Wall of China, towering skyscrapers in Hong Kong, and the glittering Taj Mahal in India. I was amazed by these beautiful and enduring structures. I returned to Japan and had learned enough Japanese to work for Hitachi’s international division for three years in technology licensing and mergers/acquisitions. I spent a lot of time in Hitachi prefecture at the factories and started to realize I was more interested in these massive state-of-the-art factories in and of themselves than in the products they manufactured. At that point I realized my mission was to build a real estate company that could acquire, maintain, and manage many types of buildings – from hotels, to office, to industrial, to apartments. I am the founder and CEO of Engstrom Realty Fund, a real estate private equity fund based in Los Angeles.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

As an entrepreneur, dad, youth sports coach, and mentor I’ve had many opportunities over the past 20 years to see firsthand how talented Generation Z is! Earlier this year I launched a book, YOUR LIFEPATH: How to Make Each Stage of Your Life Exceptional, for new adults and their parents and for anyone feeling stuck. We can experience tremendous continuous fulfillment throughout our lives by carrying out a deeply personal life mission, and then eventually converting that mission into a lasting legacy that will benefit future generations. The book encourages recent graduates to take some time to pursue adventures—before committing to a career, marriage and mortgage—in order to develop self-knowledge that can illuminate one’s calling and life mission. In looking at the biographies of those persons throughout history who have made an outsized impact on the world, a great many of them followed this Adventures-Mission-Legacy progression throughout their lives and experienced enormous fulfillment as a result.

I have created a series of “Reader Q&A” videos on Instagram and have received thoughtful questions from new adults who are in the adventure stage of life, and from older adults asking for guidance on how to amplify their missions and how to shape their legacies. YOUR LIFEPATH is the winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Best Inspirational Non-Fiction Book of 2025. It is available online via Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Anyone interested can also subscribe to the free LIFEPATH Newsletter, which showcases the adventures, missions, and legacies of remarkable individuals at: NealEngstrom.com.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

There’s an urban legend that in the early days of Oracle Software its employees dreaded ending up in an elevator with founder, Larry Ellison, because he’d often say: “Do you make our products? Do you service our products? Do you sell our products? If not, tell me very slowly what you do because we are going to do everything we can to make your job go away.” I’m sure that’s an embellished story, but I think it is a useful one for new adults. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s—before there was Amazon and before there was as much outsourcing as there is now—pretty much every kid had some skills for making things with their hands, fixing things that broke, and a good line of patter to barter or trade what they had for what they wanted or sell things to make money. I highly recommend that Gen Z kids think about this, and learn and practice the abilities to make, service, and sell all kinds of things—both in the virtual computer world and in the real world too. This set of skills will give you supreme confidence in yourself that you can handle anything that comes your way—as you pursue your adventures, mission, and legacy!

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

I just got back from visiting with my uncle—my mom’s brother—so this story is fresh in my mind. When I was half way through college I decided I wanted to take a gap year, which was not very common at that time, and travel around the world. My mom said, “That’s great you want to travel, but you don’t go from never having traveled on your own to spending a year visiting a 100 countries! You have to take some smaller trips first and figure out what works.” So, that’s what I did! I stayed in school, and had adventures by taking junior semester abroad in Australia. Then I worked for four years in Japan after college and saved money to obtain my commercial pilot’s license. I then informed my parents I was going to travel to Kenya and look for a job as a bush pilot. I tried to explain to my mom how well thought out my plan was so she wouldn’t worry like she had before. But this time she said, “I’m not worried about you at all. I think its going to be a great adventure.” Mom was right! I’d built up knowledge through my solo travel and adventuring. I’d figured out what works!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.NealEngstrom.com
• Instagram: @NealEngstrom
• Facebook: NealEngstrom.Lifepath
• Linkedin: Neal Engstrom
• Twitter: @NealEngstrom