6 Tips to Grow Your Real Estate Portfolio While Working 9-5

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 9 26. What’s going on everyone? This is David Green, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast, and I’ve got my good buddy, Rob Abba Solo here with

Rob:
Me. How you doing, man? Today I have so many real estate projects going very different paths all going well, but making me consider maybe should I transition back to my nine to five job and go back to that life? That’s how I feel sometimes. Oh,

David:
Real estate can definitely do that to you. That’d be a funny episode if I left real estate investing to go back to my nine to five and here’s why, but that

Rob:
Would be a good show. Well, we’re actually going to do the opposite of that today because a couple of weeks ago we brought you a show called The Best Real Estate Strategy to leave your nine to five job. But today we wanted to follow up on that episode and give you tips to balance your nine to five job while also growing your real estate side hustle. Look, we want you to be very successful here, so we’re going to give you some tips and some practical applications to hopefully set you up for that day where, hey, maybe you get to hand in your resignation and become a bonafide full-time real estate investor.

David:
That’s it. So we’re going to be talking about what you need to know if you want to be on that path. Let’s get into it. Alright, our tip number one, create office hours for your side hustle. This is all about getting something on the calendar because when you have a W2, your W2 typically provides you with direction, but when you start to work for yourself, whether it’s a side hustle learning, real estate investing, or even a real estate profession like being an agent, a property manager, a loan officer, you are not going to be given that direction in accountability from somebody else. Rob, was this a struggle for you?

Rob:
Yeah, I think what happens is a lot of people will have their nine to five job and they’re sort of doing the side hustle at the same time. They might be taking text messages, they may be taking meetings at their office in a nook or something like that, and then they’re just always kind of making small little steps in their side hustle business. But what happens is if you don’t actually set a dedicated time to work on that side hustle, whether it’s real estate or anything else, I think it’s very easy to have burnout. Whereas if you have a dedicated time, you can actually make progress set goals and just prioritize what you want to do in that set of time. Yeah,

David:
That’s a good way to put it. When you work for somebody else, they typically tell you what to do. Maybe it’s like cultivating a field that you’re growing and the field demands what you need to do, so you got to weed it, you got to water it, you got to plant the seeds. But once you start to get into a side hustle or you become a real estate investor, you almost have to think like a hunter, what do I need and how do I go get it? So you definitely want to set stuff aside in your calendar where you’re saying, from this time to this time, this is what I’ll be doing to help keep yourself on the path.

Rob:
Yeah. One thing that I want to say too is oftentimes in this world of nine to five jobs and side hustles, when people want to make more money in real estate, they’re like, well, I don’t have time. I don’t buy into the concept of I don’t have time. I think that people make time for the things that are important to them, and so if you’re the kind of person that is trying to do more real estate, but you say, I don’t have more time, well sure you do. You might just have to wake up 30 minutes earlier or stay up 30 minutes later working on your business. It’s not easy. You do have to carve out time and you do have to make sacrifices, but if it’s important to you, then you have to figure out how to carve out time so we can make advancement in your goals, and

David:
That might be a better way to look at it. Instead of saying, well, here’s what I need to go do, say, well, what am I willing to give up? I’m willing to give up 30 minutes, 60 minutes of Netflix time. I’m willing to give up time that I was scrolling on social media. I’m willing to give up video game time, whatever it is, and I’m going to replace it with making progress on my side hustle. So here’s a few things you can think about. Plan an evening, a lunch break or a weekend to work on your investing and stick with it. Keep that consistency going. So this might mean setting some time aside to analyze properties, setting some time aside to create lists that you’re going to call or even just setting aside time to find your loved ones. Let them know I’m looking to invest in real estate. If you hear about anybody that has something to sell, set goals for what you want to accomplish weekly and create that discipline because when you have a job, you just have to show up on time and they tell you what to do. It’s a little bit different when you get here, so be like Rob and I and make your calendar your boss, our calendars tell us what to do. Your calendar should be telling you what to do also. That way you make sure your priorities don’t get missed.

Rob:
Awesome. All right, well let’s head on to tip number two here, which is to lean on automations in services. And I know that this sounds kind of more complex than probably what it actually is, but I think we get into this world when you’re doing a side hustle, you tend to do everything right. We’re like the entrepreneur of our own business, and so that I think tends to create burnout a little faster, especially if you don’t do tip number one, create office hours where you can really dedicate yourself to that focused amount of time. And so I think it’s really important to automate what you can for your side hustle, but there’s a multitude of ways to do this in real estate. This could be paying for lead generation services or a lot of people might be surprised by this one, paying a property manager to help. If you’re working a nine to five job and you’re running a short-term rental or a long-term rental, as much as we want to make as much money as possible, it may just make more sense to have a property manager in place while you build that business until you’re ready to take it over full time.

David:
Here’s a dilemma for you, Rob. What if hiring a property manager caused me to lose $500 a month on a property, but with the time I got back I could make $2,000 on a side hustle? Is this a smart move or is this a foolish

Rob:
Move? I think the obvious answer is you do have to think about your time as a dollar amount as well, and if you can pay someone, let’s say $20 an hour so that you can then go out and make a hundred dollars an hour, then obviously that’s going to be worth it. And when you look at the situation that you just talked about, most people would say, well, that’s crazy. I would never want to lose $500. That’s a dumb decision. But if the delta on that is you’re making 1500 bucks, then you have to start kind of matting out your life that way, which gets really crazy in this world of entrepreneurship,

David:
And that’s one of the reasons we use this phrase portfolio architecture because if you look at every single property as its own subcategory, it is never okay to lose money on a deal. So you can’t afford property management because the property won’t cashflow. But if you look at the whole picture like, well, I could make a lot more money in a business or a side hustle or buying more property or flipping something else, then it actually makes logical sense to lose money on a deal to make more money somewhere else. And this is one of those things that you need to think about when you’re leaning on automation and services. You may have to spend some money for those things and it’s hard to spend money when you’re not used to it, but if that frees up your time to pursue a bigger net worth in the future, it could be a good investment

Rob:
For sure. And let’s even talk about not automation. Let’s talk about services here. These are some low hanging fruit things that people can do that are expensive as a service, but honestly end up probably saving you money in the long run if you are very good at making money. So a couple things would be paying a housekeeper. I have a housekeeper that comes to my house every two weeks and it’s not something that I proudly say because that always makes me feel lazy. However, it keeps the house clean and I don’t have to spend hours doing it. I hire a landscaper to come to my property two times a month as well. I don’t have that big of a yard. You would look at my yard and say, I can’t believe you pay someone to do this. However, that frees up my Saturday so that I can hang out with my kids. Third idea would be hiring a meal prep service, which I actually haven’t done, but everyone literally, all of my friends are like, dude, just pay the $7 per meal because you shouldn’t be cooking in your kitchen while you could be out there building your empire. So that’s a couple of ideas on that one,

David:
I’m in the same boat. I recently just hired a new person to cut the grass at my house and it’s not big at all. It’s a tiny little strip in the front of the house and then a small backyard. But the thing is my HOA finds me if I don’t cut the grass. It’s actually kind of a crazy HOA over there, so it saves me money to make sure that somebody is cutting the grass and it takes it out of my head. I like to be focusing on dollar productive activities. How do I get the next deal? How do I do the next podcast? How do I write the next book? How do I find the next lead when I’m thinking about did I mow my grass or did I do my laundry? It takes you out of the game. And I think a lot of people have a hard time working on their side hustle, progressing their career because they don’t want to let go of what they already have. They’ve got a routine that works for them in life. I cut the grass on Saturdays, I cook my meals, this is when I go shopping, and to get out of that, you’re going to drop some balls. You just have to be okay to drop some balls in order to be able to juggle the better ones that are going to help in your career. Rob, you look like you got a lot going on behind the eyes right now.

Rob:
I was just thinking about that time that Brandon Turner was bragging about how he or he was really proud that he hung sheet rock on his ceiling. He was like, I did it, man. And you’re like, Brandon, you could have paid someone 150 bucks to do that and you could have gotten more rentals, but you chose to do it yourself. And I think there is something to be said about sometimes it’s therapeutic to do these things, so don’t feel like you have to delegate every single thing in your life. If you like mowing the yard, I know a lot of dudes that love mowing their yard, they’re obsessed with the grass. That’s totally fine. Do what makes you happy, but if something drains you, get it out of your life and focus on the things that matter.

David:
Great point. So if it drains you, get rid of it or if it is the reason that you’re not progressing on your next step, don’t let it be the excuse why you don’t move forward. But if you like doing it, it’s not holding you back. There’s nothing wrong with some of those tasks that we enjoy. Alright, we have to take a quick break, but stay tuned for more, including what I consider the most strategic tip right after this.

Rob:
Welcome back investors. We’re breaking down six tactics to balance your life while you’re investing and working a full-time job. So let’s jump back in

David:
Tip number three. This is called the Pareto principle. Figure out the 20% of your actions that will have 80% of the results. So Vilfredo Preto was an Italian economist and he had this interesting observation that he noticed that taxes that were being collected by Italy, 80% of them came from 20% of the population, and then he started to notice that 20% of the land that was used for farming was producing 80% of the food that they were eating. Then he noticed that 20% of the workforce was actually producing 80% of the results, and this thing went on forever. It became a fascinating point that 20% of the things you do will result in 80% of your actions. In fact, I would even posit that you probably wear 20% of your clothes in your closet 80% of the time. So the key for a business owner here is not to focus on doing everything perfect because you can’t. It’s to focus on finding the 20% that’s going to lead to getting the deal, building the net worth, starting the business, getting the lead, whatever’s really important that’s going to lead to 80% of your results.

Rob:
So this isn’t still like a delegation thing, this is more about focusing on what you’re good at and doubling down on that. And then do you then delegate that last little piece? How does that kind come into play as a real estate investor? Well,

David:
If you’re going to delegate, you definitely want to delegate the 80% that doesn’t move the needle, but it might be as simple as if things are going to slip between the cracks, make sure it’s the 80% that slips through the cracks. So Rob, I noticed you’re already doing this in your life. When you and I were at the bigger BiggerPockets summit in Denver, you said, Hey, I have to get a YouTube video out while I’m here. I have to make this content. You didn’t want to do it, but it needed to be done because Rob understands that for his entire business, those YouTube videos he puts out constitute the 20% that’s going to lead to the 80% of the wealth that he’s going to build. That’s a very important thing for him. Whereas answering emails or talking to your property manager or doing your taxes, that might not be as important as making sure that those YouTube videos get done. So things are always going to slip between the cracks. So when you’re working a full-time job and now you’re trying to add something else, you will never do it all. The point is it’s not all equally weighted. There’s certain things in the algorithm of success that are much more important and you got to get those right.

Rob:
That’s a band, you really cleared that up. That’s a really great thing. There are just some things that I know if I don’t do this, the machine stops, right? And that sort of I think is probably personified pretty well. In my text messages I’ve got, I think I’ll tell you right now, I’ve got 125 unread text messages. That’s that other piece that I don’t need to be doing right now, but the people that I need to answer, they get an answer immediately

David:
And we bring this up because your normal W2 mindset all works the same. This is my job responsibilities, I have to do them. That’s it. And my boss worries about what the 20% is that has to get done to make the company work. But when you become your own boss, you become a real estate investor, you start your own business, you have to shift into thinking this way in order to make something successful.

Rob:
Love it. Alright, well let’s move on to number four. Which man, that’s a big, I can already tell you this is a big one. So it’s be efficient and set boundaries at work and in your personal life. This is probably the hardest thing because when you have a W2 job, you have, it’s sort of like this really weird relationship where you get paid to do a job and you have to do everything or else you don’t get to keep the job. And so it’s very hard to say no when your boss asks you to do things. And so I think oftentimes, especially if you’re working a side hustle, there’s a little bit of guilt and fear that maybe you’ll get caught or maybe you have to overcompensate so that your nine to five boss doesn’t think that your performance is suffering. And so you tend to just do everything. And when you do everything, that again leads to the ultimate failure in all of this, which is burnout. And this is really what we’re trying to get you to not do is burnout. We want to figure out how to be efficient. And the best way you can be efficient is sometimes at work you got to say, Hey, this is outside of my scope of work or I can’t get to this now if you want me to perform my job correctly,

David:
And it’s okay to do that, it’s just learning the right way to do it. This is actually an odd thing in my companies that I am constantly telling my staff it is okay to tell me no, I want you to say, David, I can’t do it, or David, I’m not good at that. Or if I do it, I won’t be able to do this. Instead, I need as the business owner to make the decisions on where the 20% needs to happen. So if some of my best talent are not getting to the 20% that’s going to make the machine move forward. I don’t want them doing the 80% that’s wasting their time. But people have a hard time saying no. What if he doesn’t like me? What if he thinks I’m lazy? What if he thinks I’m not trying? It really doesn’t matter. And when you become a real estate investor, you are your own business owner.

David:
You got to be able to tell yourself no. You got to be able to say, Hey, I could do that, but I shouldn’t do that because it’s going to take away from what needs to get done. And if you’re a person that struggles with boundaries, struggles with speaking directly, sometimes people can’t say no and sometimes they don’t know how to say no politely, so they just get frozen and they don’t do anything. You’re going to find yourself just getting buried in all the tasks that are done. Rob, I’m sure you could acknowledge I see what it’s like with you. You never stop going. There’s stuff that isn’t going to get done and you have to be able to say to people, Hey, that’s not what’s important right now.

Rob:
Yeah, I think the most, well first of all, I think the most important skill that you can learn is how to say no and how to know what you’re saying yes to and when to say yes, but also communicating yes and no. I’ve got a lot of friends that I make fun of that are non-committal because they’re just like, yeah, I mean maybe I can go, maybe I can’t. And I would rather them just say, Hey, I can’t. And I’m like, great, no questions here. So that whenever I’m alone at the theater by myself, I at least know that they said no in advance. Right David? Like the time that you’re like, maybe I invited you to see Barbie and you were like, no, maybe. And I was like, okay. And then you never showed up. Did

David:
I actually say maybe to Barbie? I feel like I said the one thing that would probably could have been a hard no, you should have shot with something else like GI Joe. Maybe I ought have had a hard time committing to that one, but yes, that’s exactly right. Boundaries help create efficiency. There’s things that you have to be able to say no. So work on the right way to tell your boss no or the right way to tell your friends no. Or one of the things I’ll do as a real estate agent is people will ask me to say, Hey, can we go to lunch so I can pick your brain? Well, that is not a good idea. I don’t even leave my office. I eat lunch here while I’m doing work often in between podcasts, so I don’t want to just say no like a jerk, but what I’ll say is, no, I can’t do that, but why don’t you come to the next meetup that I’m doing? Here’s the date, here’s where it’s going to be. I’d like to see you there. Now I don’t feel like I hurt their feelings. They don’t feel like they got dismissed or rejected. They still, they’re probably going to learn more at the meetup than they would’ve learned if we had just gone to lunch together and I can keep my nose buried where it needs to be to move things forward.

Rob:
Yeah, totally. Honestly, I think this is such an important one. I think people tend to just be yes men, yes woman. And you say, yes, I’ll get to it. And then when you start taking everything on, everything starts to fail. So I think be very clear at saying no, and I think people will respect you more. I think your boss will be like, all right, great. I now know I’ve pushed this employee to the max and honestly it’s a good boundary to set just for that reason alone. So

David:
One of the things I love about capitalism and the pursuit of wealth is when you do it in a capitalistic environment, it forces you to improve yourself. You can’t get more, just like you can’t get stronger unless you can get a body that can lift more weight, you can’t get more wealth unless you build up the skills that will lead to that happening. So if you’re a person that struggles with conflict or you don’t know how to have difficult conversations, well you’re just going to struggle until you learn how to have ’em. And then after you learn that new skill life is easier, there’s less stress on you. So fall in love with the process of becoming great. That’s what I talk about in pillars of wealth, and that’s my advice to everybody here. Alright, tip number five, avoid burnout at work and in your side hustle.

David:
This is a problem that I had in the past. I hired a performance coach and it’s one of the things that I found was leading to depression. I could get so overwhelmed that I just didn’t want to get out of bed. I would there in the dark and just think my phone feels like it weighs 500 pounds. I don’t even want to think about picking it up. Now, this was typically Rob when I was in the throes of being a real estate agent, and I’d have somewhere between for myself like 10 to 15 houses in escrow. So the minute I opened my eyes, I was coming into a stream of text messages from people that were worried, upset, anxious, curious about something, a whole bunch of agents that were talking to me. It was exhausting trying to live that lifestyle, but I never wanted to say no to business and I was also afraid of trying to build a business and hire agents to do this for me.

David:
So I would just give it everything I had until I burned out and then I would spend two weeks barely able to get any work done at all because I just didn’t want to know that the whole thing was worth it. Having an existential crisis a couple times a year, my coach helped me to understand if you don’t stop and pit the car, the tires are going to go bad and you’re going to lose the race. You just won’t be able to race at all. You need pit stops. It’s smarter to strategically plan for them than to wait until the car breaks down and the whole thing comes to a grinding halt as you get rebuilt. I think a lot of other people go through the same thing, especially when it comes to entrepreneurialism. We go through these crazy highs and lows. You have an idea, it’s brilliant.

David:
You’re excited, you’re listening to every podcast, you’re talking to all your friends about real estate, you’re analyzing properties, you love it. Then you go out there and you start the work and you’re like, it goes wrong. People quit things, go over budget, you lose some money. The city tells you no when you thought you’re going to be able to do it. You hear about someone that got a better deal than yours and you sink to the low and then you stay down there thinking it’s worthless until the next thing comes in. It comes high again. Have you noticed that as well? Big

Rob:
Time. Big time. One thing I was going to say, this makes me really think of this idea that I think with the way everything is presented to, I think we just have too much mental stimulation sometimes and there’s just too much noise. And so I got to this point where I’m just always on the go. I’m on podcasts, I’m doing content, I’m doing real estate, I’m on phone calls. So now I would say almost a hundred percent of the time that I’m in my vehicle, I used to listen to podcasts only in music. Now I’m just quiet. I think sitting in silence sometimes is really important, but even more important than that, I think it’s really important to have r and r rest and relaxation. One of my employees recently reached out and was like, Hey, how would you feel about maybe spending two to $400 a month on the team for us to do something where we can just break away from work? And I really love that idea. I find that I think we cut ourselves short a little bit because even whenever I’m supposed to be having my RR time, I’m still working. When I’m out with friends, I still have my phone on me. I’ll give you a really good example of something that happened recently. I was getting a massage and I did not turn my phone on do not disturb, and man, I am not kidding. Everything went wrong in this hour. It was just like

Rob:
My phone was going crazy and I had a horrible time at that because I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t be like, excuse me, can you stop massaging me? I need to see my phone. And so it’s like if you’re going to relax, actually relax, actually turn off your phone, actually put on Do Not disturb because if you’re just kind of halfway relaxing, you’re not relaxing at all and it will just add to your stress levels.

David:
Something that I did a couple years ago is I literally turned my message notifications to off. So I do not get notified when I get a text message and I had to do it because when I was trying to get in some kind of focus, when you hear that buzz, it does pull you away from what you were just doing and it requires a little bit of mental energy to focus on even a tiny bit. But what if you’re getting 2000 of those a day? That’s how bad it was getting at one point. It was never stopping. I was getting several at a time and it just didn’t go off. I mentally felt like I was burned out, but I wasn’t getting anything done. There wasn’t anything productive that was actually taking my energy. It was this thought that your brain never turns off like an engine that just stays revving at 10,000 RPM, but it’s not in gear.

David:
Now I get into a rhythm where I focus on something for 15 to 20 minutes like writing or talking or a phone call or a meeting, and then I look at my phone and I see what messages need to be addressed, and then I go back to whatever the next thing was. Burnout can be literally taking a day off, but it can also be creating efficiencies in the way your brain is used. Okay? Certain things will stress you out, certain things won’t. Getting rid of the stuff that stresses you out can be massive. So just one little thing. If somebody says, Hey, David, can we jump on a call and talk? If I say yes, there’s going to be like eight minutes of pleasantries and then probably four minutes of how they get around to the thing they actually want to talk about. We’ve now spent 12 minutes.

David:
Now they pose the problem and I have to listen to how they feel about the problem before I actually get the problem. And what really needed to be done was I had to solve a problem, but it took 30 minutes of time before we did it, versus I just have my assistant field that call, that person absorbs everything. They come to me with a problem. I can make a decision in seven seconds. Everybody’s happy and I don’t get burned out. So that was just a little adjustment that I had to make in my life, but it kept me being much more productive. So don’t think that burnout is weakness. Don’t think that if you’re like, man, I should be able to work for 18 hours a day, and that’s what it takes to get there. No, you can work 18 hours a day if it’s something that you like that’s a light load that you enjoy doing and that you’re charged up about, but nobody’s working 18 hour days on stuff that they hate.

Rob:
Okay, time for one last short break. Stay with us. We’re going to talk about the tip that made the biggest difference for me when we come back

David:
And welcome back to the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast. Let’s pick up where we left off.

Rob:
Well, awesome man. Well, let’s move on to the last tip, which I think this is the most. This to me was the breaking point for my transition. And tip number six here is going to be don’t leave your job until it is actually costing you money to stay at your job. Meaning for me, I had so many side hustles and a lot of different things that I was working on on the side that I had actually grown them to a point where they could very easily surpass the income that I was making at my nine to five job, but I was unable to grow them anymore until I got the 40 hours back in my week and when I quit my job, all of those things really, really took off and it was costing me money to stay in this job for as long as I did. My wife was just like, quit already. Just do it. You talk about it every day. And I’m like, all right, fine. And then I finally did. I was like, oh yeah, I guess I would’ve made a lot more money had I quit a couple months ago. Yeah, this

David:
Is all about when you make the jump, okay, you don’t make the jump for emotional reasons. My boss pissed me off. I’m frustrated. I don’t like it. That’s not why you do it. You make the jump when objectively it is holding you back for being productive. So I remember having that same struggle. I was working in law enforcement. I was also a real estate agent. I was outperforming all the other real estate agents in my office, but I was working probably 50 to 60 hours a week as a police officer while I was doing it. And to be frank, it wasn’t really that bad. The conversations were tricky, but I just learned how to schedule conversations with people. I would say, Hey, could we talk about this tomorrow at 1130? I’d put it in my calendar. So then between the hours of 10 and noon, I would be talking to people, and that was often during my commute to work.

David:
So what else was I going to be doing? It didn’t really slow me down to do it. Well, I did hit a point where I had a person, his name was Chris, and I was selling his house. Chris, if you’re listening to this, don’t worry, we still got your house sold for a lot of money. But I couldn’t get his house on the MLS for like three days. I was so busy. I kept thinking, I need to get this thing on there, and I could not find time to sit down uninterrupted at a computer and actually get it uploaded. And that was my wake up call. It was like, all right, I can’t do both anymore. I have to commit to one or the other. But I had so much momentum built up in what was a side hustle that it made sense to let go of the main job.

Rob:
Yeah, totally. I mean, I guess maybe to first and foremost, I think the idea here is you probably shouldn’t plan to quit your job the first year that you start investing. And we probably should have said that at the beginning of this, but some people do and it is possible, but this is going to be like a multi-year thing for most people and in some cases many, many years before it actually happens. But I think if your goal is to eventually leave your nine to five job for real estate investing, you should really work to build that up. And if you’re trying to put numbers to it, I mean, I think the best way to maybe contextualize this would be to say, let’s say you’re making, I dunno, $50,000 a year at your nine to five job and you have done kind of a flipping side hustle where you’ve flipped a house or two and that house or two has made maybe 50 to a hundred thousand dollars, and that’s really good income. Of course, that’s more than what you’re making at your job. But for you to go to a hundred or 200 or $300,000 if it would be impossible for you to do that working your nine to five job, that’s when you can start having that conversation because you literally can’t advance that side hustle and make more money at the same time. This

David:
Is one of the reasons that people like Rob and I are staunchly opposed to the influencers that tell you, do you hate your job? Get into real estate investing. They’re usually doing that to make their content more interesting or to get you to become dependent on them so that you have to take their courses or follow them because you’re not dependent on the job anymore. It’s just a poor motivation for quitting your job because you’d rather do real estate investing. I would rather see people that real estate investing be the carrot that causes them to work harder, learn new things, get out of their comfort zone, throw themselves into working basically to jobs until you’ve earned the right to leave your job, which is exactly what Rob did, which is exactly what I did. That’s the right reason to do this. The wrong reason is I hate my job.

David:
How quickly can I get out of it? Well, I was told if I take this class on flipping homes, I could make $200,000 a year. So I’m going to quit my job in faith and burn the boats because that’s what everybody says I’m supposed to do. And jump into this new thing before, if you’re even someone who should be investing in real estate, the person who burned the boats in that story had an army full of soldiers that knew that they wanted to fight and they were committed to a mission. You need some time and a side hustle to make sure that this is the right move for you, and it’s what you want to be committed to when you hit the point that you know this is the right move for you. Yeah, burn the boats, quit the job, move forward.

Rob:
Totally. You mentioned you knew when it was time for you to quit was when you couldn’t list this house on the MLS for the three days. Yeah. So for me, it was kind of like I started matting out how much money I would need make to quit my job. And so I started to create the path, and I had already worked on so many income streams that I had realized. I was like, oh, I think that time is now. And that’s honestly, it’s an ideal scenario to be in because I had just made it such a goal to keep the nine to five. But I think the idea is you want to sort of math out the bad, better, good scenario, good, better, best, maybe no bad. You want to map out the apocalyptic, right? And then the okay scenario and then the best case scenario. And I did that all three times and I was like, all right, worst case scenario, all of these income streams will make this much money. And obviously it played out. It ended up working out for me, but I had already preemptively started mapping out how things needed to work out so that whenever I quit, it was just such an obvious decision. I feel like it should almost be an obvious decision at some point if you’ve really been chipping away and diligent at building your income streams. Yeah,

David:
That’s exactly right. Don’t hear us saying not to do it. Just hear us saying, earn the right to do it. If you’re not working super hard at your side hustle, you’re not really trying to leave your job. Real estate’s not a magic pill that’s going to get you out of it, but real estate can be a magic carrot that gives you the incentive to work really hard to build the skill so that you can leave the job. And that’s where we want you, Rob and I want you here with us full-time in real estate on this crazy high and low train that we all have become accustomed to and love to form the community that we have at BiggerPockets. So we hope you’ve enjoyed show, and we hope we did help you get a little clarity on what that direction looks like. Any last minute words of encouragement you want to leave our audience with Rob? It’s

Rob:
Possible anything is possible, but I would say don’t compare yourself to other people instead, just learn from them. Learn how they did it and talk to five to 10 people that have done it and figure out you’ll quickly start to see it was very different for all of them. So I think we get in this, you go to the real estate meetups and people are like, oh, I’m a full-time real estate person. And you’re just like, it becomes this keeping up with the Joneses like, oh man, now I have to do that. Or else if I don’t quit within two years, I’m a failure. And that’s not everyone. Some people just have different circumstances that made them successful, but it’s okay if this is a three to 10 year, 15 year journey for you. Don’t expect it to happen overnight.

David:
That’s beautiful. If you are somebody who has left your full-time job and you are now full-time in real estate, let us know when the comments on YouTube, when you knew it was time to make that jump. And if you like today’s episode, please go and give us a review wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure you subscribe to this so you get notified when new shows come out. We love you, we appreciate you and it’s been our pleasure talking about this with everybody. So make sure you tune in for the next episode. We rob and I’ll be breaking down how you can build wealth through real estate so you can build the life of your dreams. This is David Green for Rob Real Estate, Ken Abba Solo signing up.