Real Estate Investing With a Full Time Job

by The Investor Today

It’s funny that if given the realistic choice, most people would quit their job tomorrow. If you’re reading this, you may not hate your job or maybe you really do, but either way if given the realistic choice you’d probably considering moving on from it. One of the things people always look into is getting into part time real estate investing. But what do you do if you’re real estate investing with a full time job?

Does it surprise you to know that most “big time” investors start part time? What’s more surprising is that after many of them make it big, they often stay working part time. After all, who wants to work more when you don’t have to or you don’t need to? Isn’t the purpose of being financially free to have the time to do the things you really want?

So can you get into real estate investing with a full time job?

Here’s the big secret: That’s how most people start out at it. Hey you need to feed your family and you need to eat, right? Your full time job probably gives you the opportunity to do those things while still working on better opportunities. Since, for now, you’re probably not capable of sustaining the possibility of not earning a large pay check right away, part time is the only way to go. Regardless of what you do full time, if you devote your part time efforts to learning more and changing your life, it’s impossible for you not to get there.

Who is really wealthy?

I know it may sound like a silly question but most people see their upper middle class friends with a big house, two or three cars and they think are “wealthy” or “rich.” The truth is that most upper middle class individuals are the same 2 or 3 pay checks away from being completely broke that most of the poorer people are.

Here’s a simple litmus test to determine who is actually financially free. Is their expensive “stuff” purchased on credit? If the answer is “yes,” than they are typically not much further along than you may be towards being free of having to work than you are. If you honestly looked at their situation, you’d observe that the bank really owns their stuff, not them. If you don’t believe me, ask them to not make a couple payments on the house or the car just to prove it. If you continue to buy expensive stuff on credit to impress your neighbors and to try and look successful, you’ll never achieve freedom in this lifetime.

Here’s a simple way to get ahead faster. Take whatever extra money you have and learn to invest in assets that make money. As those assets produce money, use them to purchase more assets. In due time, your situation will change. You will have enough assets to buy whatever you want and do whatever you want. There’s something more valuable than expensive stuff. Do you know what that is? It’s the real freedom to do what you want when you want because your bank account grows without your involvement. Buy the big house and car after you have enough income producing passive assets to life off of.

If you don’t know yet how to intelligently invest in anything right now, don’t worry. Most people don’t. You can always learn. Do you know how many times you have to learn it in order to become rich? Once. In fact, you don’t even have to purchase a thing in the beginning. Do you know where you can learn how for free? Your local library has a ton of how to books on every subject that you’ll need to know from investing, to raising capital to marketing. The library was the only thing that fit my budget when I started and I still swear by it today.

Make investing automatic – Get ahead using your brain

Real estate investing is a business so treat it like one. You don’t slack off at your full time job, don’t slack off investing either. Not treating it like a business is the sure fire recipe to failure. After you obtain the knowledge from a course you’re probably going to leave with some know how and techniques. You’re also going to leave with a whole lot of hype and enthusiasm. What happens when your “high” wears off? That’s when your business model is really tested. That period of time will show you if you’re really committed to long term financial success in real estate investing. You can make this decision ahead of time to stick with it during that period.

Alright, so I guess I couldn’t avoid the overused cliché. “Begin with the end in mind.” There are only really two reasons people fail in real estate investing. Do you know why most part time investors don’t ever become full time investors? Do you know why they don’t retire early and retire rich?

1) Their real estate business doesn’t produce a steady stream of qualified leads.

Most new investors have the mental capacity to understand the techniques they have been taught. The biggest issue is that they don’t have enough qualified leads to regularly use their creative techniques with. Do you know what makes all the difference? I’ll tell you what the key is to every business. Marketing is 90% of every business. Do you what’s great about my marketing? I don’t look for business, business finds me. My phone rings off the hook with quality leads. In all honesty, I have lazy days where I don’t even call them back because I just don’t need the business. It’s sad but true.

Do you know what happens if you focus your efforts on using marketing to naturally and easily attract the right types of leads to you? Cha-ching. When you don’t have to actively pursue new business, you’ll actually be able to work less and make more money. So if you’re reading this and you decide that real estate investing isn’t for you, you’re still going to have to master marketing. The good news is that the skills are transferable so I still suggest that you learn them.

Think about this. Who do you know that swears from top to bottom that McDonald’s makes the best burger? Who do you know that has a better marketing system of hamburgers? Which of these do you think is really at cause for their 99+ billion customers, a fast food burger or a state of the art marketing machine? Hmmm…

Treat marketing for leads like the fundamental part of your business and you’ll make the great leap from “part time investor” to “full time work when I want to.” Don’t do it and you can look forward to more of the bossman. It’s just reality.

2) They know how to do it, they just don’t use it

If you don’t get off your ass and do something, you leave it to the world to make plans for you. Do you know what they’ve got planned for you? Nothing. You can’t pay someone else to do your push ups for you and you can’t be successful doing nothing (at least not right away). Do you have a 90 to 180 day plan to leave the full time job? Make one with detail. You’ll need to know just how much money is “enough” to move on. If you’re serious about achieving your goal, then it will happen for you. Just by writing it down, you’ll give yourself something called “major definite purpose” which will dominate your subconscious mind into finding ways to get there. If you’re not yet committed to being your own boss in that short of a time frame that’s okay too. It’s all about what you want for yourself in life. You decide what is successful enough and how to get there. What you should at least do is take your time and gather more knowledge that will only help you create a better future. Extra skills at the job will only make you all the more valuable which can still land you more money.

Do you know causes both of these issues?

It’s only the fear of failure that holds all of us back. Think about this for a second. If you were completely sure that you knew the right techniques to profit from deals and that you could produce a steady stream of leads, you’d probably go out and see as many clients as humanly possible. You’d almost be beating down doors to cash your pay checks. The truth is that the fear that this outcome isn’t possible holds you back. Just picture it for a second. If you were given a list of people to see that had already agreed to do your investment technique but you only had 24 hours to use that list, how many of them would you see? If the answer is “a whole lot,” then you get my drift.

Own your fears and they become laughable

It’s important to understand that the negative outcome itself isn’t what’s stopping you. So what are you actually afraid of? You’re only afraid of the fear of the negative outcome. You’re actually more afraid of the anticipation of the negative outcome then it actually happening in reality. You’ve probably had all kinds of negative outcomes in your life. There have been loads of teachers who had no problem putting an “x” next to your test’s negative outcome. But you probably didn’t get all that worked up about it, did you? You actually feel much worse fearing outcomes and probabilities that haven’t yet come into existence yet. Here’s what you need to get about your fears.

Nothing has actually happened in reality yet.

The only place your fear of a negative outcome actually exists is in your own head. Nothing has happened in the real world yet and no teacher has given you the dreaded “x”. Pretend that you want to ask out that member of the opposite sex. Pretend you’re really into them but you’re afraid they’ll say no. What do most people do? They just never ask and so they let this anticipation of a negative outcome own them. Has this person in reality actually said no? Even if they gave you the dreaded teacher’s “x,” you could probably handle it anyways. Own your fear by realizing it is not anything to do with the other person that you fear. What you actually fear is the anticipation of a negative outcome in your own head which does not exist in reality. The good news is that you can easily reprogram your imagination to anticipate positive outcomes. When it’s properly configured to anticipate success, you’ll easily attract positive outcomes. If you were sure your financial success was waiting with the next lead, you’d make sure to both generate that lead and then you’d make sure to go see them. The scary truth is that all you have ever been afraid of is your own imagination. Just how strange is that?

A Funny Story – Do you hate your job as much as my friend?

I am just not creative enough to make this story up. This is a true story that still gives me a giggle. At one of the local real estate investor club meetings I met a good friend of mine named Tom. When I met Tom he was already a well established and successful investor. As we got to know each other more, he told me this story from only about 2 years back when he first began. He took computer science in University and he was working in a job in his field for 6 months. Like a lot of people, he quickly started to hate his job. Just out of curiosity, do you hate your job that much yet? Well let me tell you that he sure did.

In his spare time, Tom had invested $5000 in one of the real estate guru’s weekend seminars. From there, he wanted to invest in real estate but the course was totally incomplete. Let’s call the course an “R. Allen” course. No wait that’s too obvious. Let’s call it a “Robert A.” course. The course just wasn’t very practical but it was very useful in giving Tom the itch to get started. He just knew that real estate investing offered him unequalled opportunity.

The problem was simply that like everyone else, he needed his job’s pay check. Do you feel like Tom sometimes? I know that when I started out, I sure did. This next part is just as sneaky as it gets. Tom stayed up all on a Sunday drinking coffee after coffee. He didn’t go to sleep that night. He went to see his doctor the very next morning. He told the doctor that he was so stressed out about his job that he was having headaches, he couldn’t sleep and a whole bunch of things about how it was ruining his health. The doctor measured his vitals and looked at his bloodshot eyes for all of 5 minutes and decided he was obviously “too stressed” to work at his job. He granted him six month’s paid stress leave. Now isn’t that something else?!

Tom read some more books and pulled off his first deal about 2 weeks later. Just how is he doing now? Tom now has purchased over $2.5 million in equity in over 100 properties and he enjoys over $15,000/month in positive cash flow every month. He now spends about 6 to 9 months of the year travelling and more importantly he went from full time job to no job. It really doesn’t take that long with a focused mind. Tom has done all this in less than five years.

So, what’s the moral of the story here? I’m not saying that you should cheat the system like Tom did. Just make sure you have a plan to ditch the J.O.B. Know exactly how much money it will take to get there and take steps so that you can see that in the next 6 month’s time.

Real estate investing with a full time job is really the only way to get started. If your full time job sucks, don’t sweat it. Know where you’re going and how to get there and it will be easier than you think.

For a free quality investing course, sign up using the form below. You’ll also get a complimentary report showing you the insider secrets on how to repair and maintain healthy credit.

To learn more, please visit The Investor Today.

Matthew David

"The Investor Today"