WHO ARE YOU? What do you do besides real estate?

[Kyle Grimm]

Hello BP nation! 

My question for BP nation is what is your day job? Although we would love to be, most of us are not yet full time investors.  

As I grow older and try to figure out the direction of my career, I love hearing the stories of other successful real estate investors and how they got there.  I am currently...struggling... at my day job (100% commission insurance salesman) and dream of finding a job I can enjoy while I slowly grow my real estate portfolio. 

So BP... What is your day job and what does your life look like trying to work it while you grow your investing career? 

Ready...GO!

[Scott Trench]

I'm flattered you'd like my opinion! The short answer for me is that I presume a start from an office type job earning median income or greater for the journey toward early financial freedom. The reason for this is simple - it seems to be the silent majority of the BiggerPockets userbase, and it was my own path. Before BP my day job had nothing to do with real estate.

I'm not sorry that I started with a job in finance that paid a median wage. It allowed me to easily get a loan on my first property. That would not have been easy had I started with a sales gig. However, I did change careers and move into a Startup (BiggerPockets!) after about a year. The sales portion of my income did not help me qualify for financing until about 2 years in, nor did my rental income. That was definitely a challenge in getting financing, but luckily Josh paid me enough of a base salary to buy my first place haha.

I think that the key is to find a career that offers potential for scale, and once you find it, stay consistent as you accelerate toward early financial freedom. Lenders like consistency and getting great financing is to me, as a part-time, on the side real estate investor, very important.

Of course, that all fades away in the face of the prospects of exponential growth. If you think you can make half a million or more with a new gig, that could be a shot worth taking. 

So basically my path started with something steady to get the ball rolling, then I took a bit of a risk with part salary, part commissions. Then, I've been buying and creating assets with hard work and frugality for several years, which has produced more consistent income. 

Remember, BP users are often an exception to the rule in real estate. Many folks do not become wealthy because they invest in real estate, in fact, probably most of the landlords that I've met that are not on BiggerPockets are very wealthy because they worked hard in their careers and invested in real estate on the side for years. Another way of saying this is that many of the big landlords and real estate players that I meet have built awesome busiensses or had great careers and have a big pile of money to invest. THEN, they invest that intelligently in real estate. That, or they invest consistently over a career and have a huge portfolio -- this is what I am trying to achieve, with the caveat that I want to forever retain the option to leave any career and live off the real estate income happily should that be my preference.

I work at BiggerPockets and while I invest consistently in real estate, I believe that I will create most of my value professionally through my career here, as will be the case for most of the middle and upper-middle class employed users of BiggerPockets. Real Estate is not my full-time job and I will have failed if I am ever forced to turn to it full-time. Real Estate is a tool to help me produce income and build wealth capable of supporting a wonderful lifestyle on part-time efforts at most.