Building my Real Estate Business

[Quinten Jones]

I have been here on BiggerPockets for several months now, and I have learned so much about real estate investing.  The forums and Podcasts have been great and extremely educational.  However, I still find myself struggling to get started in the business.  A little background:  currently, I am an Enrolled Agent (EA), and I operate a small tax practice in addition to having the California Real Estate license.  I have closed a few real estate deals, but I am finding that I am more interested in working with Real Estate investors buy and sell properties - less emotional.  

The dilemma i'm in is that I don't know where to start in building my own successful real estate investment business.  I originally thought that I could continue to use my real estate license to help investors buy and sell properties, save my money and then start investing.  The problem is, I don't want to wait 10 years to start my investing career.  I don't have experience in flipping properties, and with that being the case, I am certain that there aren't any investors who would allow me to work with them to gain experience to jump out there and start flipping to build a nest egg to start investing in real estate full-time.  With that in mind, even if I was to acquire a hard-money loan to buy a property to flip and sell, joint venture/ partnership opportunities for a newbie would be in my guess minimal.  

Does anyone have any suggestions that could possibly point me in the right direction?  Should I continue to work and save enough money to fund my first deal entirely on my own, and then start my investing career?