How to Begin the Process of Replacing Your W2 Income

With less than three years in real estate investing I was able to replace my W2 income. Here’s how you can do the same.

Dreaming of leaving your day job behind? It can be done; I am mere months away from officially retiring from my W2. Although I never had the goal of leaving the world of banking behind it quickly became a reality.

To be totally honest I have made great money over the years, and to be even more honest it will be hard to walk away. The main reason I feel the need to leave my W2 behind now is that I need my time back to grow my multiple revenue streams. I feel like every minute I give to someone else is a minute that I can’t give to myself.

When I chose real estate and put together my first deal, I was honestly simply looking for a long-term wealth building strategy. I knew that I could not get wealthy on my day job alone, and that I couldn’t really rely on any sort of retirement strategy based on anything other than my company funded 401k. It felt a bit scary, and I knew there was a better way. Read on to see how you can follow in my path.

Formulate a strategy

Determine what you are ultimately passionate about. What gets you going in the morning? Kept up at night thinking about? The passion is where the short cut to your strategy lies. If your passion lies in real estate create a timeline and research the possibility of your first deal. ***(See previous article: The First Steps To Efficiently Grow Your Real Estate Portfolio.)

If your passion doesn’t lie in real estate, determine what your initial steps might need to look like. For example, you may want to start a monetized YouTube Channel. The first steps here are actually starting the channel and beginning to grow content, you may also want to invest in quality equipment. The point is to make the plan and start.

Stay the course

Once you’ve formulated your strategy and begun the steps you’ve laid out for yourself it is important to continue putting in work daily, weekly, monthly. If you put time in only periodically you will never really head anywhere, it will always be as if you’ve just begun. This is the principal of compounding time in action. Nothing grows overnight, all things take time to grow and require patience and effort.

I find it best to formulate a weekly strategy with short term goals for the week. Longer term goals can be tackled in bite size pieces. Use technology tools, even simple calendars, or smart phone apps to plan your efforts and remind yourself to execute upon them.

Review and repeat

Create milestones and stopping points for yourself along the way to determine what is working and what isn’t. Evaluate the noteworthy elements of your strategy to figure out if any pivots are necessary. It may be helpful at this point in your strategy to employ a coach or mentor to help guide you and foster more success.

Repeat things that are working and ditch the rest! Also, keep in mind, that Rome (as they say) was not built in a day. I will add to that quote with this – Rome can be built in three short years if you review and repeat your successful steps along the way.