The leap from hobby to professional is a scary one, especially if you have an existing job that pays well. That was the case for me as I began my virtual wholesaling business and eventually quit my $150k+ job to go full time.

This post is for those people that have been wholesaling a couple deals a month and are on the edge of committing to full time. “Burning the boats” or cutting off the consistent paycheck was F-ing scary! But in the end SO worth it.

WHEN I MADE THE LEAP: I had about $30k saved from deals I had done over the past couple years. I had one employee in place that was doing acquisitions for me at $15/hr plus 7% commission on all deals. I lived in CA so I was JVing everything with my boots on the ground that was also splitting marketing costs with me.

When I started seriously considering quitting my comfy corporate job, one of my buddies, who has been an entrepreneur his whole life, asked me “worst case scenario, if you quit, could you get your old job back or get a similar job relatively quickly?” I was 50% confident that I could. So he said “well then you really have nothing to lose. Worst case scenario you give your true desires a shot and end up where you are currently.” That was the deciding moment. I quit the next day.

HOW IT LOOKED: At the moment I'm writing this, I have a team of 5 and don't JV anything anymore but it wasn't always that way. After quitting my corporate job, I continued virtual wholesaling and splitting all my deals 50/50 with my JV partner. The problem was that we were both visionaries (read TRACTION by Gino Wickman) and if you have two dreamers without a highly organized Integrator, it just causes chaos. We made it work but it was extremely stressful. Because neither of us were detail oriented, the little things fell through the cracks which led to finger pointing and resentment.

After six more months of that, I made the decision to break it off with him which was tough because he had become like a brother to me. In my mind breaking off this relationship could ruin my business but it did the exact opposite....

Now that I didn’t have a boots on the ground to sell deals to our investors in Indianapolis (remember I was living in California), I had to use my property inspector/photographer to show properties to investors and I did all the dispositions work myself from afar. I paid my photographer to go to showings, $50 for each one, and he simply acted as a barrier between the investor and seller at showings.

Obviously this was not even remotely scaleable so I had to hire someone ASAP to do dispositions. I posted on ZipRecruiter and set up an interview with a promising candidate. Since we still had no dispositions agent, I flew to Indianapolis in the interim to act as boots on the ground until we hired the right person.

While I was there, I was struggling to keep everything on track. I was needing to manage and coach my acquisitions agent, interview/train candidates for dispositions and still manage all of the administrative stuff to keep the business running i.e. payroll, ordering marketing, tracking KPIs, paying bills etc.

My sister called me who has been HYPER organized since she was a kid. I had shared Rich Dad Poor Dad with her a month before and she was stoked. “I get it” she said “and I’m ready to take the leap. I wanna come work with you.”

This was a golden opportunity but because we had struggled over the last few months since I had left my JV partner, I only had about $25k left in the bank AND I was about to hire a dispositions agent. Not good "timing" but I knew my current business model was unsustainable unless I added the RIGHT PEOPLE in the RIGHT SEATS.

I bit the bullet and hired my sister to be our integrator and hired an older guy with 40 years real estate experience as my dispositions manager.

Now that we had the right pieces in place we were ready to pour gas on the fire. I hadn’t REALLY dove into my marketing KPIs so my sister and I did that first. We found what mail was working and what wasn’t and planned out the next few mailings.

Next we read and implemented TRACTION from top to bottom. I can not emphasize this enough. TRACTION WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR BUSINESS FOR THE BETTER. It truly helped us get a grip on all aspects of our business including our 1) Vision 2) Data 3) People 4) Process 5) Traction 6) and Issues. I could write a novel about how much this helped but for now I’ll say, if you have a business with anyone else involved you must read and implement Traction and the EOS model.

WHERE WE ENDED UP: Since we got everyone in place correctly, we went from 10-20k a month to $50k/mo consistently and we’re set to do $70k a month in 2021. We still have a lot of room to grow but the biggest moments along the way involved taking a calculated risk, a leap of faith and ultimately putting my money where my mouth is and hiring great people at the right price.

I hope you make the tough choice and follow your dream instead of playing it safe. It’s more fun on the other side, trust me :)

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