Our place is/was a tiny motel in our chosen vacation area, I borrowed against our home and some rental property (from bank) to make a down payment, note (no payments on this one) to the person we purchased the business from that gave me two years to sell a piece of property and pay off the note in a lump sum, another note, larger, was financed by the original owner of the motel, on that note we had one large payment each year.
Income from rental properties paid the bank loan that was borrowed against those properties, managed to sell a property and pay off the fellow we purchased the business from within the two years, room rentals made the payments to the original motel owner, I also worked various outside jobs.
So much depends on your own vision, but there are different ways to make things work, of course I agree I was lucky or blessed and my "house of cards" held together for me.