In a perfect world, we all want to get more done in less time and with less stress. But how does one stay productive when there are so many responsibilities to tackle, goals to accomplish, deadlines to meet, and distractions to dodge? It can be overwhelming and frustrating sometimes for mere muggles like us. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though! Following are five productivity strategies that have changed my life. 80/20 Rule aka the Pareto Principle The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle. It is sometimes called “the law of the vital few” or “the principle of factor sparsity.” The man behind this principle is Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto, an Italian economist. Apparently, one day while gardening, he found out that only 20 percent of his pea plants produced 80 percent of the healthy pea pods. He then associated this discovery to uneven distribution—particularly about Italy’s overall wealth and population. He observed that 80 percent of the land in Italy belonged to just 20 percent of the population. He later examined various industries and discovered that 80 percent of production originated from only 20 percent of the companies. In a nutshell, the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle simply states that 80 percent of results will come from only 20 percent of the action. And that most things in life are not equally distributed—aka life is not fair. The 80/20 rule can translate to the following: 20% of the activity generates 80% of the result 20% of the employees produce 80% of the outcome 20% of the clients provide 80% of the income 20% of the features cause 80% of the benefits And so on… A little caveat: the percentage will not always be exact. Oftentimes, it will be 79/21 or 83/17 and so on. The point is that only a small amount of your tasks will bring great results. Related: The 80/20 Principle: How to Be More Efficient & Successful at Everything How to Apply the 80/20 Rule? The 80/20 concept is practically ever-present and applicable to almost any kind of situation and to all areas of your life.  This is a perfect way to reduce to-dos that make your day unproductive. Currently, only a few of your daily or weekly activities have the biggest impact on your life—whether in your professional or personal life. The takeaway of this rule is to be constantly aware of how and where you spend your time. Regardless of the responsibilities or tasks you need to accomplish, there will always be a few that will yield incredible results. Some methods will be effective, while the rest will just be time-wasters. The key is to determine these activities that work well and focus your attention and energy on them and forget about or minimize everything else that’s just sucking your time. The best thing about understanding the Pareto Principle is that you become more intentional with your time and you learn to concentrate on the 20 percent that offer the best outcome. In short, you do more of what really matters. Learn From The ONE Thing The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results is a book written by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller of Keller Williams Realty, the world’s biggest real estate company. Keller has previously written bestselling business books about succeeding in real estate. In The ONE Thing, he talks about what it takes to achieve your professional and personal goals to truly live a productive, enriching, and purposeful life. At its core, this book teaches you how to identify your ONE thing—the most important thing in your life and how to invest all your energy there. This isn’t a way to get more done in less time; being productive simply means focusing on the right tasks. How to Apply The ONE Thing Begin with the focusing question: “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” Jot that down. This book is based wholly around that one question and the efficiency of managing each aspect of your life around that one thing (per area). It doesn’t mean your one and only thing. It’s your one thing right now. Create a domino effect To be successful long-term, you want to determine your one most important thing in your career/business, relationships, health, etc. Visualize this as a “someday” goal. Once you’ve discovered that, you need to find out the steps to get there—the dominoes you have to line up—and then knock them down one by one. Your one thing is always connected to your destination or “someday” goal. Thus, your first domino is your most crucial action that gives you the most bang for your buck. Do one thing that matters most at any given moment. Time block As per Gary Keller, you must block out at least four hours per day to work on that one thing, one specific goal. Utilize these hours to tackle things that move you forward—steps that you need to perform for the day to get you closer to your ultimate goal. Ideally, block out time at the very start of your day when you’re freshest and most energetic. In short, prioritize and do the most important thing first of all. You can look at it like you’re going to the movies. You’re there for one thing: to watch the movie. And because you’re certain about that one goal and you want to avoid distractions, consequently, you turn off your phone or put it on silent/airplane mode, you get popcorn and drinks in case you get hungry, and you go to the restroom before going in. You do all these just so you can ensure an uninterrupted experience. Learn to say NO To stay more focused and productive, say “no” to people, places, and most other things unless they’re related to your one thing and/or you’ve already accomplished your one thing for the day. Sure, constantly focusing on that thing can sometimes be boring. And it’s tempting to distract yourself with doing other tasks or more fun activities—like grabbing brunch with friends. But keep in mind that once you’ve given your undivided attention on your one thing for the day, then sooner or later you’ll be available to do whatever else you’ve planned for the day. Use the 80/20 rule Gary Keller is a huge proponent of the Pareto Principle. In fact, he used it to take his real estate business to the top of the industry. Keller believes that we don’t need a to-do list. Instead, we need a success list, which is a list designed around your biggest result-generating tasks. You can determine this using the 80/20 rule. Theme Your days What Does It Mean to Theme Your Days? To theme your days is simply batching relevant types of tasks together and working on them on a single day to be more productive. For example: Mondays = Administrative Tuesdays = Marketing Wednesdays = Creative Thursdays = Meetings Having a theme gives you a guide or map for your week, so you can then easily create your task list every day, providing you more control over what you get done. Theming your days also adds consistency to your schedule, making things much more efficient than going back and forth between different and totally unrelated stuff. Plus, themed days eliminate unnecessary guesswork and reduce decision fatigue. You know precisely what needs to be taken care of depending on the day of the week. Related: Here Are 25 Productivity Hacks That Actually Work! How to Apply Themed Days Determine the tasks you regularly do Do you write blog posts? Deal with customer service? Social media management? Conduct meetings? Prepare meals? Write them all down. This also gives you a chance to jot down the tasks you’ve been meaning to do but haven’t had time for. Discover themes within your tasks Evaluate your list of tasks and group related ones together. Your themes will vary depending on your situation, so be sure to carefully assess the kinds of tasks you perform on a day-to-day basis. That way, you can come up with your themes. For example, you can group paying bills and grocery shopping under “Home Maintenance” or “Errands.” Or you can group content creation and product design under “Creative Work.” And so on. Assign a theme to a day of the week Dedicate a theme for all seven days of the week, or you can have lesser number of days and allot some rest days. Feel free to customize what works for your specific situation. You may also want to add your chosen themes to your calendar or planner to further help you manage your themes, therefore remaining productive. Outsource Tasks If you follow my three strategies above, you would’ve automatically eliminated a lot of unnecessary or unwanted tasks to save time, energy, and resources, thereby becoming more productive. For others that you can’t totally get rid of or automate (more on that later), well, you can outsource them—especially if you hate doing them or are not good at them in the first place. Or perhaps they’re just too time-consuming, laborious, boring, repetitive, or all of those things combined. Outsourcing will not only decrease your stress levels, but it will also give you more time to concentrate on much more crucial tasks or pressing issues in your business or personal life. And if you’re anything like me—a parent of two kids, as well as an entrepreneur—I really value my time. As a real estate entrepreneur, it is easy to get into the hustle mentality and get on a hamster wheel of never ending to-dos if one is not careful. Hence, I outsource some of my miscellaneous tasks to reduce the number of hours I work per day, so I can then dedicate attention to my family. Slashing your work hours doesn’t translate to being less productive, especially if you’re going to have someone else do it for you. It’s a win-win situation. You gain more time for yourself and other things that matter to you while also providing jobs for other people. How to Outsource Tasks Determine tasks that you deem too tedious or unexciting, and get them off your plate. If you’re procrastinating a specific task, chances are you have zero to limited resources, knowledge, or skill to handle it well. Or you’re just really not passionate about it. No worries. Have someone else do it. You can outsource a lot of tasks nowadays—from writing, cleaning, researching, designing, scheduling, etc. You name it, and it can probably be outsourced. You can hire a daily or weekly housekeeper or cleaner to tidy up your home regularly. You can order daily meal deliveries if you’re not much into meal prep and cooking, for example. Many of the administrative tasks like researching, data entry, social media marketing, scheduling, and other relevant tasks can be delegated to an all-around assistant, for instance. You may need to hire separately for others that need specific skills and knowledge, like accounting, graphic designing, writing, etc. Nonetheless, if you’re keen on designating some of your chores, you can hop on various outsourcing sites like Upwork, People Per Hour, and Freelancer to find workers who are experts in their fields. Check reviews from their previous clients and choose carefully to ensure you’re only getting quality work. Automate Tasks Progress and success come from prioritizing essential tasks—the 20 percent from the 80/20 rule or The ONE Thing. But that translates to letting go of several minor activities that you deal with on a daily basis. That’s where automating tasks comes in handy. Automating tasks means using an application, tool, or service to lighten your load. By utilizing a program or app that will automatically do specific tasks for you—like paying your bills, syncing your calendars, publishing social media content, or handling customer support—you can definitely save time and effort and use them instead on more important matters. With a bit of strategic thinking and planning, you can quickly automate those tasks that are burdening you, so you can then get right back to doing meaningful work—whether that is running your biz or taking care of your family. Related: 6 Financial Apps to Automate Bookkeeping, Tax Deductions, Savings & More How to Automate Tasks Depending on your particular needs, you can find countless apps and tools that allow you to automate many of your unwanted tasks. Let me share some of my favorites, including a few hacks that may also help improve your productivity and efficiency: Todoist It’s a to-do list application designed to help you do more. Todoist is teeming with productivity features, so you can organize tasks and set schedules and deadlines. It syncs on your phone and computer, so either can be updated in real-time. It also offers a ton of plugins and apps for your gadgets, emails, and browsers. And it does have a free version! Syncing calendars If you’re like me and have more than one calendar, it’s best to sync them so each one is updated and you can avoid overlapping schedules and appointments. I find Google Calendar the most useful. I sync it with my phone’s calendar and Outlook email. Filtering emails I get junk emails all the time. Instead of having them land in my inbox, they go automatically to a dedicated folder that I set a rule for. For example, if an email contains the word “unsubscribe,” it goes to a separate folder that I check two times a week to sort out any important emails and unsubscribe to those spammy ones. LastPass LastPass is a password manager that lets you store and encrypt all your usernames and passwords online. The best thing about this program is you only have to remember one master password to log in to all your online accounts. It also comes with many plugins for different browsers and apps for various smartphones. This feature is especially handy for all of those websites that do not offer an application on your smartphone. Auto-payment bank feature Most banks nowadays offer an auto-payment feature so you don’t forget paying your bills, utilities, subscriptions, and what not. I take advantage of this, so I don’t have to worry about bill payments ever. Check with your bank about how to enroll in auto-payment. QuickBooks Online QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based accounting software designed to minimize the time you spend sorting out your business finances. It lets you create estimates and custom online invoices, monitor sales and cash flow, manage suppliers and customers, etc. The best part is every week on my themed day for finances, my accountant and I log in and view the account together and update anything we need to in real-time. Tenant Turner As a real estate entrepreneur, I find Tenant Turner useful for scheduling showings. More than just a scheduling software, Tenant Turner helps property managers decrease vacancy by listing your rental properties on all major listing sites, pre-screening leads, and finally scheduling showings. Before using Tenant Turner, I was about to hire someone on a part-time basis to answer phone calls from leads, follow up email requests from various websites where my listings were posted, schedule showing requests, send showing reminders to reduce no-shows, and then follow up with an application once the showing was complete. Tenant Turner does all of this for a fraction of the cost. What are some of the productivity hacks that you have benefited from? Share in comments below.   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

It’s 5:30 a.m. The kids are still asleep, and so is Patrisha. I am sitting in the backyard at my Arizona house hack, enjoying the reflection of the blue skies in my sparkling pool. It’s quiet. It’s blissful. And being that it’s the day after the Fourth of July, I am thinking about the sacrifices so many have made to protect my freedom. So, before I go any further, a big thank you to all of the veterans out there! Now, back to the purpose of this writing. How You Can Amass $40MM of Real Estate In the last 10 months, my company and I have closed $40 million worth of apartment acquisitions. We bought three apartment communities in Phoenix, and we are on the lookout for many more. Per our business plan, we strictly buy significant value-add assets, whereby we can project a $300 per unit increase in revenue within 24 months. If I am right about the re-positioned net operating income (NOI), the value of the three assets we currently own should capitalize to about $65 million when we are finished with repositioning. Here’s the thing. Unless you are independently wealthy and have $15MM just laying around, in order to be able to buy $40MM of real estate as we did, you will need to syndicate equity from partners. Therefore, in describing the steps to get there, what we are really talking about is what it would take for you to be able to mature as an investor to the point of syndicating large assets. Here we go. Step 1: Study You have to study. To get to this level, you have to become an intellectual. Even if your first purchase is a rental house or a duplex, try to understand the process on the deepest level you can. You must be able to see yourself in your mind’s eye as a person with $40 million of assets before you can actually be that person. Study is a critical component to give you the confidence to envision yourself larger than you currently are. Your intellectual worth has to always supersede your net worth. Step 2: Experience I’ve said this many times before. Underwriting numbers is nothing more than a process of describing the dynamics in a lifecycle of an investment. As such, we don’t start with the numbers; we back into them. Your job is to start with the dynamics (the “story”) and boil them down to the numbers. The more you can envision and predict the dynamics, the more accurately you’ll be able to express those with numbers. Guess what? You can’t internalize the story from a book. You have to experience it. Thus, start small, get smarter with every deal, and build upward. The more you can envision every little aspect of that story, the more dialed in your underwriting becomes. Related: To Syndicate or Not – This is The Question (What Would You Do?) Step 3: Network You just don’t know when and how a door will open. Be available to people. Connect with people. But be careful who you listen to… Step 4: Teach You don’t start learning until you begin to teach others! The reason for this is simple. A lot of what we do is subconscious. This is specifically the case for those of you who are truly talented, as talent can hide a lot of analytical deficiencies. This means that, in a lot of cases, we are not aware of the exact intellectual processes underpinning our decision-making and execution—they are intuitive. Things just work out. Well, you may be brilliant at doing something, but in order to teach it in a way that a student can internalize, you have to break the process down and bring it into the consciousness. This is the only way someone who is not you can retrace your steps. Bringing that which would otherwise be accomplished subconsciously into consciousness illuminates all kinds of elements and dynamics that the teacher themself may have been unaware of. It’s actually a really cool process for the teacher—one that provides perspective on how to hone your skills even more. This is why I’ve always taught. Every time I learned something new, I taught. At first, I taught students to play the violin. Then I taught students how to buy small multifamily with nothing down. Now I teach syndication. And somewhere in there, I managed to write a book on house hacking. Step 5: Learn More and Learn Differently Once you begin to teach, you start to learn all over again. This is where your knowledge transitions from mechanics (a lot of which may have been unconsciously executed by you in the past) to academia. You need to think deeper to grow! But… Step 6: Eventually You’ll Hit a Wall—Recognize It! Now that you really are a thinker—one who will continually learn, refine, and implement—I can guarantee that you will eventually hit a wall. At this point in your cycle, you’ll more than likely be the smartest guy in the room. You’ll know the answers to all of the questions anyone can ask. And yet, you’ll know that something is really off with you. Despite having achieved all of those things, something is missing. You won’t be able to put your finger on it, but you’ll know that something is wrong. I describe this condition in the following way: Imagine yourself standing in a cornfield. The corn is tall and you can barely see above it. It’s dusk. All of a sudden you hear church bells. You strain your eyes, spinning 360 degrees looking for the church, but you can’t see it. It’s infuriating—you can clearly hear the bells. You know the church is near, but you can’t see it… It is this feeling of so close and yet so far away that I describe as hitting a wall. And believe me, if you are as smart as you think you are, you will eventually hit that wall… This is going to be your greatest test! Related: 5 Ways to Jump Up to Large-Scale Multifamily Investing Step 7: Forget Everything You Knew and Learn the New Way I know this sounds a bit on the liberal arts side, but such is life. Figuratively speaking, the cup that you were yesterday is overfull. There is no more room for anymore knowledge—at least not such as you’ve always known it. So, this is the time to empty out the cup and fill it with something new. You must be reborn as an investor and as a thinker to move forward. You have to question and reimagine everything. It’s a painful process. You will eventually accept that almost everything you know is wrong, but you will not know a better way. This is indeed painful, but in order to be the big investor you want to be, you’ll have to go through this. Then when it’s your time, you will find your path and be ready to operate on another dimension. The Bottom Line This cycle will repeat more than once in your career. Every time you hit that wall, you’ll have a choice: either take the off-ramp and call it a day or forget everything you knew and start over. Each time that wall will be thicker and taller. And each time the process of reimagining everything will be more brutal. At some point, you’ll be done—with all of it—having accomplished everything you are meant to. Until then, this is the life of a thinker. Good luck to all! What do you think about the steps I’ve outlined above? Where are you in the cycle?  Let’s talk in the comment section below.   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

In the past two years, I have read a lot of books—118 to be exact. Almost all of them have been on the subjects of personal finance, real estate, business, and self-help. Needless to say, I feel like I have earned my MBA in many of these subjects (personal finance, in particular). Despite having read so much, I am always thirsty to learn more and gain more wisdom. If a book has one nugget in it, I think it’s worth every penny. However, after reading so many books, I find that it is getting harder and harder to learn things that I did not already know. The Best Book I’ve Read in a Long Time Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung from Millennial Revolution is different. This book was a groundbreaking read for me. Before I get too far though, I should clarify that the content is NOT about real estate. It is about attaining financial independence by getting down to the nitty gritty—increasing your income, reducing your spending, and investing the difference in index funds. Once the balance of your index funds reaches a certain level (say… $1 million), you can retire and live off the capital gains and interest from your investments. The problems and questions everyone has are, “How do I retire in seven years? How do I sustain my portfolio after retirement? What about health insurance? What about kids?” This book answers all of these questions and more. Not only is it super insightful, but it is also a super easy read. Kristy and Bryce are very relatable. By the end of the book, you will feel like they are your best friends. Who Is This Book For? Again, if you are looking for a book on real estate investing, this is not for you. However, are you interested in achieving financial independence in the next seven to 10 years (or fewer) and perpetually sustaining it? Then this book is for you. All About Author Kristy Shen Although the book is written by both Kristy and Bryce, you will quickly realize that Kristy is the main voice. Why is this? Well, no offense, Bryce, but her story is much better than yours. Living in China Kristy grew up in mainland China in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Her family was poor. In China, there aren’t any homeless shelters, so they lived in a dilapidated home. The winters were cold, the summers were hot, and the clothes they wore were poorly made by her mother. They simply did not have enough money to purchase clothes from the store. As a family, they lived on the equivalent of $0.44 per day. Needless to say, it was a rough few years of Kristy’s life. But at the time, that’s all she knew. Related: BiggerPockets Money Podcast 59—Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) with Scott Rieckens Living in Canada When Kristy was seven years old, her father was fortunate enough to get accepted into college at the University of Waterloo in Canada, studying to be an engineer. One year later, Kristy and her family were able to leave China and start a new, first-world country life in the Toronto area. Kristy went from being afraid of tapeworms and playing in trash heaps to living a semi-normal childhood. The move was not easy though. She spoke hardly any English, so it took a few years for her to be able to make good friends. (You know how mean middle and high school-aged kids can be.) Kristy followed in her father’s footsteps and attended the University of Waterloo, studying engineering, as well. This is where she met Bryce. After four years of studying, they graduated with high marks and were able to get jobs as engineers. They worked hard and saved a ton over a seven-year span and retired with $1 million at the age of 31. Living Everywhere and Nowhere Now, they are retired, travel the world, write a blog, and pretty much just do whatever the heck they want. They have been doing so for three years. In that time, their net worth has increased to $1.3 million. Not a bad deal. So, how can you do what they did? This is exactly what the book is about and what I will touch on briefly in the next few sections. What I Learned From Quit Like a Millionaire Regardless of where you are in your education journey, Quit Like a Millionaire has a lot to teach—from choosing the right college to attend, to making more money and spending less, to investing the difference wisely. This book has all of the tips. However, as a person who considered themselves very knowledgeable on this subject already, I want to share with you my key takeaways. How to Access Retirement Accounts Early The first groundbreaking thing that I learned was how to access your retirement accounts early through what is called the Roth conversion ladder. Popularized by the Mad Fientist, Kristy and Bryce explain this concept very clearly and concisely in this book. The idea is that you are able to obtain funds from your retirement accounts penalty- and tax-free before you hit the ripe age of 65. How? I’ll give you the three to four sentence overview here, then you can read the book for further details. In essence, you invest money into your 401(k), which is a pre-tax account. When you become financially independent and do not work for an entire year, your income is effectively $0. Since the standard deduction in the United States is $12,000, you are able to move $12,000 from your 401(k) (pre-tax account) to your Roth IRA (post-tax account). The IRS does consider that $12,000 you move from the pre-tax to post-tax account as taxable. However, since the standard deduction is also $12,000, the IRS sees the taxable income as zero. $12,000 income – $12,000 standard deduction = $0 taxable income Voila. There is now $12,000 in your Roth IRA that has not been penalized OR taxed. After five years, you are able to take that $12,000 out of your Roth penalty-free. Now you have $12,000 in your bank account that has neither been taxed nor penalized (although you will still be taxed on any capital gains from your Roth IRA). “Whoa! Is this legal?” That was my initial thought. The answer? As of 2019, it is 100 percent legal. This is one of the differences between the rich and the middle-class or poor. The rich seek loopholes and ways around government regulations, whereas the middle-class and poor give in to them. Related: How Two 30-Something Twins Achieved FIRE in 5 Years on Rental Income The Concept of the Yield Shield In 1998, a bunch of finance nerds (aka professors) at Trinity University performed a study where they determined how much one needs to save in order to live off the returns from their portfolio for the next 30 years—including the cost of inflation. They determined that if an individual withdraws 4 percent of their entire portfolio each year, there is a 95 percent chance that the portfolio will last for the next 30 years. The only problem here is that many of us are striving to retire in our 20s and 30s, so we need our portfolios to last much longer than that—perhaps even 50 to 60 years! In order to get that 95 percent chance up to 100, Kristy and Bryce introduce a concept called “the yield shield.” The basic idea is that you allocate a certain percentage of your portfolio to higher-yielding assets, such as preferred shares, real estate investment trusts, corporate bonds, etc., so that your return is almost guaranteed. How much of your portfolio do you allocate? That is up to you and your risk tolerance. However, if you determine you need $1 million to retire—or $40,000 per year—I would recommend putting the entire $1 million in these types of assets and anything in excess into higher-risk assets. That way, you can generate what is likely to be a high return on anything over what you need to live. I think of it like a responsible person going to a casino. If you go to a casino with $1,000 and you make $1,000 in the first hour, I would keep $1,000 and only play with the winnings. Once the winnings run out, I am done. Then there is no way I could possibly lose money; the worst-case scenario is that I got a fun and virtually free trip to the casino. Make sense? Final Thoughts The helpful concepts discussed in this book do not stop there. Kristy and Bryce are incredibly smart individuals and spend much of their lives researching and learning ways to save and invest wisely, using unique strategies and techniques. The book is littered with saving tips, as well as different ways to invest, that you can implement to expedite your timeframe to retirement—and increase your odds of remaining retired once you’re there. It’s not every day you stumble across a book that is fun to read AND packed with good information. But Quit Like a Millionaire is just that. Enjoy the read! Are you striving to achieve early retirement? What are you doing to get there?  Share in a comment below!   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

So, you want to be an entrepreneur—a successful real estate investor. My advice to you: get a job. Huh? There are certain people for whom (and even certain seasons for which) it makes the most sense to start down the path toward real estate world domination by—yes—getting a job. Yep, I’m talking about earning a good old W-2 paycheck. This is a path that most of the baby boomer and prior generations saw as the only option. However, it’s a path that seems like an increasingly scorned option for many today. Successful Real Estate Investors Who Once Held Regular 9 to 5 Jobs Before you mock and sneer at my opinion, consider that many of the great real estate investors of our day started off on the traditional path. I recently met Rick Graf, who owns a lot of large apartment complexes and is CEO of Pinnacle, one of America’s largest property management firms. Rick is one of the leading voices in commercial real estate. Rick started out as a porter at a local apartment complex. He worked his way up from there. Gary Keller, the world’s most famous real estate broker, went to college for real estate and took a role as a Realtor before starting Keller Williams. Or consider my friend Andrew. Andrew worked as an asset manager for years at Equity Residential, Sam Zell’s company. He managed about half a billion in commercial real estate assets for Sam. In time, he got the attention of an awesome entrepreneurial commercial real estate syndicator in Virginia. They brought him on board in a similar role with one important difference: Andrew has an equity stake in everything he manages. Related: 6 Ways to Gain Experience in Real Estate as a College Student Ideal Jobs on the Path to Full-Time Real Estate Investor I’ve struggled a bit with those who ask what the best jobs are to have on the path toward becoming a full-time investor. I haven’t seen a lot of people work this out successfully. But I’ve narrowed it down to five ideal positions, and I’ll be glad to elaborate on each if you reach out to me. The five potential jobs include: Property Manager Asset Manager Financial Analyst Commercial Real Estate Broker Commercial Real Estate Lender Though there may be other occupations that will get you on the path, I think these five cover most of the bases. This post will focus heavily on path No. 1. I’m going to share a real-life story about Joe, a friend of mine who took a pay cut to learn the self-storage business from the ground up. How Working a 9 to 5 in Real Estate Could Help Your Investing Business Many multifamily and self-storage syndication firms manage their own facilities. Others use third-party management firms. These firms employ a variety of staff, including frontline managers, regional managers, accountants, and more. By taking a job as a property manager, you will learn the detailed ins and outs of this business. You will learn all about: Marketing Sales Customer service Pricing Maintenance and repair Capital projects Grounds Inventory (point of sale items, etc.) Bookkeeping Legal (evictions, auctions, etc.) There are other benefits to this path, as well: You will get to know and prove yourself to middle and senior management. You will get to know competitors and others in the business. You may get to attend industry tradeshows and business events in your community. You may get significant training and education. You may have a chance to work your way up to regional or senior management over time. Real estate investing has become very popular, and there are many entrepreneurs in this space. There are surprisingly few in commercial real estate who did the hard work to learn their business from the ground up. But this path to becoming a successful investor could give you an advantage over many. Living Example of a Property Manager Turned Commercial RE Investor Last year while I was attending one of Scott Meyers’s self-storage academies, I met a young guy who really impressed me. And he made me laugh hysterically. His name is Joe Mascow, and he lives north of Dallas. Joe is part of Scott’s mastermind, and he has taken bold and costly steps to succeed in the self-storage arena. Before Joe discovered self-storage, he was a successful residential mortgage broker. He was making over $100,000 annually, but he was trading hours for dollars. He realized that being a self-storage owner would create true wealth for him that would supersede his current occupation. The question was how to get there. Joe took a leap of faith by taking a significant pay cut (over 60 percent) to become a self-storage property manager. His goal was to learn the business from the inside out. Joe told me, “I got this idea from the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker. In it, Eker told a story about wanting to buy a property and start his own restaurant business. So, he got a job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant in order to be able to get an understanding of how everything worked on a day-to-day basis.” Joe saw a parallel in taking the property manager job. He said there are three major factors to keep in mind if you decide to follow his approach: Understand that this is not a glamorous job. You may not feel as valuable or affirmed as you could in other roles, but that is not your goal. Your goal is to learn how to run a commercial real estate property from the ground up. Have your financial ducks in a row. You need to be sure you can live off this relatively low-paying job. Realize that this is your education, and you are setting yourself up for a future of success as an owner yourself. As a property manager, you are doing the vast majority of functions you will need to someday do as an owner. Start with a smaller property. Joe started out with a property of 1,000 units with a wide variety of customer and unit types. Though he learned a lot and was very successful, he was pushed to the limit daily just to keep up. He had little time to reflect and learn all he could. He feels it would have been smarter for him to manage a facility with about 500 units. Then he would’ve had time to implement new marketing strategies and test new ideas, rather than just run hard all day, every day, just to keep up. Joe said it is important to keep a journal and reflect on your thoughts, strategies, successes, and failures. He said that it is easy to disagree with the owner on strategy and tactics. Therefore, it’s good to sit down and reflect on why the owner might be doing things a certain way and why your opinion differs from his. This journal could be very valuable in your next role, potentially as an owner. Joe said it is also important to keep track of tangible ways that you have increased the income and the value of the property. For example, he said you should be able to tell the owners something like this. “In the first four months of my employment as the property manager, I took the physical occupancy of this property from 68% to 79% by personally introducing myself to as many of the current tenants as I could and notifying those tenants that I would lower their monthly rent rate by 10% for each new tenant referral that they could give me!”   Joe said it was important for tenants to see him carefully taking notes about their suggestions to improve the property. Equally as important was letting them know if and when he did what they suggested. Related: Young, No Money, No Credit? Work for Experience The Bottom Line By taking a job as a property manager, you could be well positioned to be an owner of a facility yourself someday. You’ll build your credibility in the industry, make a variety of contacts, and be in a better position to convince lenders and brokers to take you seriously. Plus, you’ll know answers to questions like these firsthand: How do you find and/or know if you have a good property manager? Do you want to run your property yourself or pay someone else to do it? How large of a property do you want? How do you keep the property manager happy and motivated? How do you keep your customers happy? What type of unit mix, marketing strategies, operations policies, and so on will be best for your facility? As I consider what Joe did, I must say I’m a bit jealous. I’ve never had this experience, and I don’t see how I can get it without walking in his shoes. It’s another benefit of taking risks while you’re young, single (Hey, ladies!), and flexible. Are you in a position to take a job as a property manager? Or an asset manager? Or a financial analyst? Or a loan broker? Or a real estate broker? If so, you may be positioning yourself for decades of future success. I’ll let Joe close this post in his own words. “Remember, the first thing I said was that being a property manager isn’t the most glorious job you will ever have. Oftentimes, I started my days by picking up other people’s trash or trying to kill rats with a broomstick or a spray bottle of Pine-Sol. “I stuck with it because I was determined to have a well-rounded understanding of the investment that I was going to be putting my capital into. Ultimately, even though I took a pay cut, the firsthand knowledge I obtained helped me gain the credibility and familiarity I needed to be considered an expert in the self-storage investing niche in the market.” What sacrifices are you willing to make to get where you want to go? Share in the comment section below.    Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you