Cybersecurity, Recruiting, or Real Estate?

[Chris Magistrado]

Hey BP,

I'll be quick since I don't want to waste anyone's time. I've read many of the BiggerPockets books like 

- House Hacking
- Flipping
- Estimating Rehabs
- Multifamily Millionaire Book I and II
- How to Invest in Real Estate with Low or No Money Down
- Investing from a Distance
and even some outside of them

and have been wanting to do something in Real Estate for awhile. I've settled on wanting to do Commercial Real Estate Multifamily 20+ units, Class B, C in Texas or California. 

After reading Brandon and Brian's book, The Multifamily Millionaire, Volume II: Create Generational Wealth by Investing in Large Multifamily Real Estate, I'm a bit puzzled as to if the GP's must have real estate experience, or if someone can connect enough professionals/companies on their team to execute successful investments. Without a doubt, having more experience in the field is valuable. My questions is about opportunity cost. I own my own cybersecurity recruiting agency, and we made about $25k this month, (OpEx for recruiting agencies are low. Ours is like $100/month). Expectations are we hit at least $150k+ this year in revenue. Alternatively, I have spent the last decade doing technical work in cybersecurity, and can land a job between $140k-$190k (depending on where in the US). 

Is it better to have a job or business that is doing well, then funnel the money into larger projects, if my desire is to be one of the main GP for like 33-100 unit multifamily projects? I like the idea of getting a great deal, so should I take a pay cut, invest in getting my real estate's license, go the CCIM route, and find a broker to sponsor me until I'm a CRE broker and earn of the commission and get into bigger deals as a GP? (Will I even have time to do GP work if I'm at a brokerage?)

What's your experience? What have you seen done? What would you do if you could do it all over again? I'm 33, still young, and willing to do the hard work, cold calling, emails, etc. 

[Jonathan Greene]

I like the way you are thinking, but it's a little apple before the cart although you seem to get that you need experienced partners to make this work. Right now, you may be looking at it as scalable, but assembling a team without a track record is hard because some may end up being leeches. If you are accredited, the best thing to do would be to invest 50k into a syndication and soak up all the knowledge of how it works from an experienced operator before you make the decision whether it's your plan. Lastly, always keep your job and build your employment foundation because that keeps you income relevant and lendable.