Are you tired of working your job and ready to make the jump to full time real estate investing? Many can make a full time living off of their real estate investments within a few years; however, it’s definitely not easy. You feel like you can grow your business so much faster if you could take the vast amount of time and energy that’s being put into your job and compound that with the limited amount you are already putting into your business.
If you are fortunate enough that your spouse makes enough money to pay all of your bills, then quitting your job early on to focus on your business may work for you. For the rest of us, we are the primary breadwinners in our family and must continue to work a job to put food on the table while working on our businesses in our spare time.
This post is for the rest of us to look at the “half-full” side of keeping your job until your business is running well. Let’s get started:
Obtaining Loans from Banks
This is one of the most talked-about benefits of keeping your job while investing in real estate. Banks give the self-employed a difficult time in obtaining a mortgage, especially for the past couple years.
My recommendation is that you try to get as much as favorable financing with banks as you can while you are employed. After you have done several deals, the big banks may not want to make any more loans to you, but your portfolio of deals will give you credibility in the eyes of private money and other creative financing, allowing you to keep growing.
Learning New Skills on the Company Dime
In my case I work a blue-collar job that has required me to learn new tools and techniques. I am one of the least handy people I know so even these basic skills helped with making repairs on our first few homes.
The same could be said for other kinds of jobs. There is a popular saying that everybody is involved in sales in some way or another. Even a little bit of sales experience can help you interact better with both your tenants/buyers and your sellers. The art of negotiation is another skill.
Treating Employees/Assistants/Contractors -The Way You Wish You Had Been Treated
Working for somebody else can definitely be irritating, but if you can keep from repeating those same mistakes with the people who work for you (full time, part time, or as needed), this can go a long way with keeping these people happy and productive, hopefully resulting in more dollars in your pocket.
A few examples could be small bonuses/raises when work quality exceeds your expectations and/or is completed well before the deadline, timely payments, giving clear instructions, and showing appreciation for his/her work.
Managing Time Well
You know that your time is extremely limited when working a full time job, growing a side business, and spending time with your family. It feels like you are constantly juggling.
I try to keep to-do lists updated as often as I can either on sticky notes or in Gmail Tasks, depending on my location. This helps me prioritize and keeps me from forgetting important tasks.
If your job offers you flexibility to work on your side business for even a few minutes a day, this can really help in checking items off your list before heading home.
My commute is 4+ hours a day for the majority of the week so I try to use this time to catch up on the phone calls that I missed during the day from our business as well as other productive tasks.
Learning to Delegate
Even if you manage your time well, I’m sure that there are still things you would like to get to but simply run out of time. This in itself almost forces you to delegate.
For our first 3 properties, we did almost all of our own repairs, which took up several weekends. It didn’t take long for us to get tired of this so we have brought in a handyman and other contractors to perform all of the repairs since. Suddenly I had my weekends back to work on more important tasks.
Delegating, in my opinion, is an addictive phenomenon.
Since this point my dad/business partner has taken over more roles, such as managing the contractors and handling the company phone, and my wife will manage my emails from time to time and run errands when needed. I have even been paying my brother-in-law to do some repair work at my personal home, mainly because I don’t want to do it. See what I mean about the addiction…
BONUS TIP: Consume More Information With Commute
On my commute to work I typically turn off the radio and listen to a great business or real estate podcast. This has helped keep me inspired throughout the day as well as taught me new business skills that can be applied to real estate investing.
I’m stealing this tip from a couple of business podcasts who have recommended listening at 1.5x speed. It may take you a few podcasts to get used to it, but you typically retain just as much information while flying through more podcasts.
Do you have anything to add about positives with keeping your full-time job?
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