New to investing and curious which direction would be good for my situation

[Daniel Patterson]

Hello everyone! 

My name is Daniel Patterson, and I'm currently living in Massapequa, Long Island NY. I'm turning 21 in a month and i'm looking to get into real estate and investing as early as I can. My mother is a well established broker that sells many homes on the south shore of long island. Shes the top agent in Massapequa and does extremely well. As I grew up I would always see my mom working furiously and on the phone 24-7. I loved her drive for work and her freedom in the business. Also after seeing her split she makes because of how well she does in the agency, I've decided to go under her wing and team up with her. I'm currently in a program to get my real estate license. Shes taught me so much about real estate already, but I'm ready to learn more. I'm setting high goals for myself financially, so in addition to being an agent full time I would like to incorporate investing to maximize my growth. I would like to do lots of rentals that will eventually pay themselves off.

So my question is; How long should I wait once I start to be pretty successful with selling homes. Such as, should I wait until I have a constant income of 100k yearly? Or should I start with a small investment earlier on so that it will grow over time? Homes or apartments?

Since selling homes is going to be my primary income and focus, I'd like to make secure investments that I wont need to really think about. But after 40 years I'd have a nice portfolio of property that I could live off of.

My biggest question is just how long I should wait until I should make that first investment. 

Thank you for your time if you read this, and thank you for any input you have!

Daniel Patterson