CA: Passed the Broker Exam - Good Idea for Side Business?

[Austin Mudd]

So I'm in my mid-20's and have spent time working in commercial real estate since college. I started at a large national bank originating and underwriting loans for large institutional clients, $10M - $300M type deals. Today, I now work for a small boutique real estate investment firm where we buy $10-$40M commercial/multifamily deals in a few key markets. My main role is on the asset management side (handling the day-to-day) but I assist on new acquisitions as well. I've bird dogged for a SFR investor before and done direct mail marketing before on my own, but I have not worked as an agent before. I qualified for the exam due to the education requirements.

If I could write my own personal career path, I would like to be my own investor, where the money I generate off my own investments satisfies by means of living and professional goals. While my current job has solid  "street cred" as we're affiliated with a very-respected capital partner, I certainly make an average wage for the position. If my current firm gains a TON of success over the next 5-years, then this job will be a great move in hindsight. However, I'm not sure that's going to be the case.

Second, my company doesn't have a lot of man-hours to spend chasing smaller deals (even though that's our pitch to our investors) for a whole host of reasons. Mainly, most of the deals we see are marketed and we spend a lot of hours doing our homework and can't hit the returns we need unless the deal is off-market. But on the flip side, because we do a lot of heavy value-add projects, we don't have a lot of time building out a "marketing" process. I've been tasked, sort of, to help build out marketing to off-market sellers, but I haven't been given the resources or the attention from the senior team members on slightly warm opportunities.

So over the course of the last year I now have passed my Broker Exam. I live in Los Angeles and want to spend my free time hunting for small off-market multifamily and commercial deals. My thought is I can do two of the following things to meet my goals:

1. Primary Goal: Earn some more cash in order to more quickly get to the point where I can branch off on my own and do my own deals (now in SoCal, this is a substantial amount of money I need to get start without outside investors, but not afraid of raising money). I would focus here on smaller properties (i.e. 2-10 multifamily units in a few areas I know well & live/work close to)

2. Secondary Goal: Market to commercial property owners that I know their properties "fit the bucket" for my firm, which I hope I can charge a fee to my own company for those efforts, since I'm paying for everything for now. Since I'm not being given (at the moment) the resources/time/role change to go full-time into acquisitions and spend real time on smaller off-market deals, this means with deals that don't "fit the bucket" (which I know is going to be most deals), I can still make money off by being the broker

So in a long winded way, this is my rationale for opening up a Brokerage shop on my own. A few questions for the community here:

1. Do you agree with my path and think it's a good idea to open up on my own? (Budget is $10-20k over the next year or two). I intend to work my current job still until (a) the money is really good as a broker or (b) I burn out. I also assume most brokerage firms don't allow working a full-time job in addition to being a broker?
   
2. Where can I find resources on actually being a broker/agent (e.g. signing/writing contracts, marketing, etc.) since I have not been an agent before?
3. I work 40-50 hours/week and during the day it can get pretty hectic with the day-to-day stuff that happens in my job. How do I best set up systems or find an assistant/agent to help with marketing or in-bounding information? 

I think at this point I'm rambling, but I just wanted to do a sanity check here to see if I'm thinking through this right. Let me know what you guys think!