The Biggest Challenge of Part-Time Investing (While Holding a Full-Time Job)

[Seth Williams]

For those of you who are trying to build your real estate business while holding a full-time job, what would you say are the biggest challenges that you have to deal with on and ongoing basis?

Just off the top of my head, some of my biggest challenges are:

• Finding the time needed to commit to both worlds (especially when the full-time job gets extraordinarily busy)
• Trying to balance my work time with family time (aka - how to maintain a life that doesn't consist of pure work)
• Keeping my working priorities straight (which tasks need to take precedence today? the full-time job, or the part-time job?)
• Choosing the right tasks to spend my time and money on (similar to the 80/20 rule - which things on my "to do" list will give me the biggest bang for my buck? i.e. - In what areas will my time & money be best-spent?

For those of you in a similar position (and I suspect there are a lot of you) - what are your biggest challenges in balancing your full-time and part-time work?

[Deborah Burian]

Fatigue. Working a 60 hour professional job while building a real estate portfolio was exhausting.

Family time? No problem, let's go work on a house. Dinner out? No problem, we'll bring a picnic. Kid and friends home from college? Great. More hands to work on a house. Hands-on work done? Great. Let's go driving for dollars and find the next house.

This was our life for about 5 years, then we got big enough to hire some help. At about 8 years we were big enough for one of us to quit the j.o.b. Until then, the problem was fatigue. We strongly believed the time for balance would come but it wasn't while we were working full time and growing our business.