Full Time Investors

[Account Closed]

Hi everyone,

I was thinking of something today so I thought I would ask the great people of BP.

For those of you who are full time investors, what does a typical day of yours look like? I mean do you work from home or do you have an actual office outside of your home? What type of hours do you put in and what do you do to fill the hours? I'm just curious as to what the life of a full time investor looks like in a typical day.

I'm sure everyone is a little different but I would love to hear!

[Brian Burke]

When I first went full-time, I worked out of a home office. Then I hired my first employee. Still the home office. Then I hired my second employee. Needless to say, the home office thing didn't last very long at that point. I had to get a real office. I still have the home office for times when I just want to work from home, like evenings and weekends.

Now with 25 employees, I have two offices in two different counties, and a part-time satellite office in another state. My employees day starts as early as 7:30AM, but I'm more of a night owl so I get to the office around 9:30. Before going to the office, I catch up on the news and scan the night's email from home, and once at the office it's game time.

My day is about a third "problem solving". This might be making decisions on acquisitions, sales, or rehab strategy, tenant issues presented by property management, employee concerns or guidance, etc.

Another third is acquisitions research and raising capital. This may include review of comps on some properties to establish a strike price, researching a complex title issue, and bidding on properties. On the capital side, it's talking with investors, the press, giving presentations, etc.

Finally, about a third is responding to emails and phone calls, which really boils down to the above two-thirds, I'm just not sure how it's really divided among those categories because I don't track it that closely, and it's different every day.

I typically leave the office by 6:00 PM, then go home and check in with BP and some emails on the trusty iPad, and even some occasional work projects. Some nights I'll work until close to midnight, other nights, hardly at all.

Weekends are a bit of a mix, work some, don't work some, but never work from the office on weekends!

No wonder I need a vacation.