Earning part time income while learning the ropes

[Matt Atkins]

Good morning! My name is Matt and I'm a small business owner here in Denver. I am incredibly new to the idea of real estate investing but have spent the last 3 months immersing myself in anything and everything I can get my hands on. While I know it might change once or twice once I'm able to get involved myself, I know what my short and long term goals are and I'm realistic about my current situation. I started my business from scratch 3 years ago and have built it into a successful operation that is ready to expand into other cities. While business is good, the salary that I'm able to take out of the business isn't enough for my expenses, debt pay down, and saving to be able to invest. Over the past couple of months, I have been focusing on creating more efficient processes and delegating some of my busy work to employees so I can focus on bringing in some more income in the short term. I got involved in the sharing economy (Uber, Lyft, Postmates, etc) but I feel like I'm wasting my time, especially with my newfound love of the idea of real estate investing. Here's what I know: 1. As of now, my long term goal is to acquire enough buy and hold properties to be financially free. 2. My first short term goal is to purchase our first property by the end the year. My plan is to get a conventional loan and live in it for a year or so while we rehab it and then rent it out. 3. While I am making enough money with my side hussle to cover expenses and debt pay down, I feel like there has to be a more productive use of my time knowing that I want get involved with real estate investing as soon as possible. And now finally for my long winded question. I've read thousands of other pieces of advice to people in a similar spot and the answer is almost always to find a local investor and offer to do some grunt work while learning the ropes. How do you do this? I am not and never have been scared of hard work and I know that I can provide a ton of value, but I don't even know where to start looking for that. I've already found a few local Meetups that I'll be attending in the coming weeks. Is that the best place? Thanks for reading my long winded post. I love this community and can't wait to be able to call myself an investor.