Finish college or leave for REI?

[Ryan Winters]

Hello all,

I was recently presented with a unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a franchised wholesaling company that is arriving in my market for the first time. The company has a track record of success in other markets, and is being brought to my market by a multi-millionaire who has proven prior success in the REI space. REI has been the sole focus of my prospective career path and is what I want to be doing from early in my career until the end. I am still in college (will have 2.5 years completed by the end of this semester) and I essentially get paid to attend the business school of a top 25 university.

My predicament is as follows: The guy who is franchising the company plans to get it off the ground by Jan. 1, has office space leased, and is already bringing people onboard to fill up his team. He knows that I'm a driven individual and that I am knowledgable about real estate, and he's giving me the opportunity to take on a fairly central role within the company should I choose to accept it. But, for the position I would be filling, he wants someone who is able to commit to it 100% and work full-time and thus if I accepted it I would have to leave school. He is willing to give me a minimal base salary to cover basic living expenses and pay for all of my training (including a week-long out-of-state training at the company headquarters), but the job is mostly commission-based. I wouldn't want to work for the company forever, but in talking with the guy about his growth plan and the business model of the company, it pretty much checks all of the boxes for a job I would want for the purpose of gaining valuable fundamental experience with REI. Further, in the last six months I've been battling with feeling like I'm wasting my time in school since my current post-graduation plan was to start as a RE agent anyway (I'm in the process of getting my license while I'm in school) so the timing of this opportunity is strangely convenient.

Any thoughts regarding how I should go about making my decision? What would inform your decision if you were given an opportunity that had the potential to turn into something extremely valuable for your career but you were still in school and couldn't do both? I'm not taking this decision lightly. I obviously don't want to throw away a degree from a very good university, but I also believe that my time already spent in college should be considered a sunk cost when settling on a choice. I do have the ability to defer my enrollment for a semester and I can return to school after that time with my scholarship still intact if need be, but any time longer than that would be considered dropping out.

Thank you for any advice you may be able to provide. I greatly appreciate any and all of it!