Specialist · Grand Rapids, MI · Member since 2012 · 583 posts · 353 votes
For those of you who are trying to build your real estate business while holding a full-time job, what would you say are the biggest challenges that you have to deal with on and ongoing basis?
Just off the top of my head, some of my biggest challenges are:
Finding the time needed to commit to both worlds (especially when the full-time job gets extraordinarily busy)
Trying to balance my work time with family time (aka - how to maintain a life that doesn't consist of pure work)
Keeping my working priorities straight (which tasks need to take precedence today? the full-time job, or the part-time job?)
Choosing the right tasks to spend my time and money on (similar to the 80/20 rule - which things on my "to do" list will give me the biggest bang for my buck? i.e. - In what areas will my time & money be best-spent?
For those of you in a similar position (and I suspect there are a lot of you) - what are your biggest challenges in balancing your full-time and part-time work?
Fatigue. Working a 60 hour professional job while building a real estate portfolio was exhausting.
Family time? No problem, let's go work on a house. Dinner out? No problem, we'll bring a picnic. Kid and friends home from college? Great. More hands to work on a house. Hands-on work done? Great. Let's go driving for dollars and find the next house.
This was our life for about 5 years, then we got big enough to hire some help. At about 8 years we were big enough for one of us to quit the j.o.b. Until then, the problem was fatigue. We strongly believed the time for balance would come but it wasn't while we were working full time and growing our business.
Sacrificing time for rest and play and spending it on something RE related instead. Like lunchbreaks, after work, late nights, weekends, holidays. These times better be spent on your RE efforts, reading books, courses, videos, audios, research, marketing, working on deals, networking...
Also, when you unintentionally have to do both at the same time i.e At work and you get a call/s from sellers or someone important.
And when you're doing one, it's hard to focus given your thoughts will wander on the other.
I can go on and on, lol. I used to go crazy. Good thing I have VA's now and I'm not anymore at that time where I knew nothing about the business.
#1 - Be organized. If you can't organize your time, you might wind up wasting time and your time is precious.
#2 - Be proactive. If you're a buy and hold person, ensure that your properties are kept well maintained. A simple 5 minute fix you can do on a weekend if left undone, can lead to an emergency call during the week while at your regular full time job.
#3 - Have good contacts. If something does go wrong, you need contacts you can call that will respond for you. You don't want to be scrambling to find someone as that will eat up your time.
I'm in a slightly different position, but yet not really. Let me explain. I currently don't hold any real estate investements, but I started my own handyman business 4 months ago on the side of my normal full time job in pursuit of capital for the purpose of investing in real estate. So yes I do have the same problems that I juggle daily.
-My wife and I have agreed that we both get 3 days a week to pursue things of interest such as the football team I play on and my business. So there are 3 days a week where I'm able to work 5 to 6 hours on my business without complaints. The other 4 days are family related.
-I find myself at working thinking more about my side business aspirations and writing on forums.
-Hearing negative comments from broke people on how you cannot get ahead and that you must come from wealthy family to get a head.
-To hear from friends that I'm cheap and should spend money on cars, bigger houses, etc... The problem is that I'm to wise for that and we put over 15% of our income into financial investments such as 401k's, Roth's and Mutual funds.
*What helps me get through all of this is my wife, she is very understanding and frugal which helps in us pursuing our goals to become financially independent and wealthy making our money work for us.
I like to keep my family involved in my real estate business as much as possible. my wife helps finding deals, running numbers and running the projects while I am at work. My kids love to walk the properties and see the transformations. This is the best way we have found to make our part-time business a part of family time.
As an entrepreneur, you have 2 thing to get you business off the ground. TIME and MONEY. If you don't have the time but have the money, pay people to do the stuff you don't have time for. Pay someone to market, pay bird dogs to find your properties, even consider partnering up if you have some money .
If you don't have money, then you need to leverage your time. Leveraging your time comes down to scheduling and sacrificing. As Mike said, sacrifice those nights hanging out after work, sacrifice sleep. If you want to become successful, there should be no excuses. If you only get a couple hours of sleep now, you will get a lot more when you reach your goals!@Mike Nelson
The biggest challenge for me was finding a good handyman. With one life is great; w/o a good one or with a bad one life in land-lording land is rough.
Yesterday got an email from a tenant asking me if he could email my handyman and have him replace a burned out wall heater. I said sure. Will wait for the bill and pay it online.
Fatigue. Working a 60 hour professional job while building a real estate portfolio was exhausting.
Family time? No problem, let's go work on a house. Dinner out? No problem, we'll bring a picnic. Kid and friends home from college? Great. More hands to work on a house. Hands-on work done? Great. Let's go driving for dollars and find the next house.
This was our life for about 5 years, then we got big enough to hire some help. At about 8 years we were big enough for one of us to quit the j.o.b. Until then, the problem was fatigue. We strongly believed the time for balance would come but it wasn't while we were working full time and growing our business.
I have 33 rentals that I manage and maintain myself with a full time job. This includes buying houses and rehabbing them as I go. I have no issues doing both.
What we did as investors (when burdened with 9-5 jobs) was all work on one property at a time. In the evenings we would prep our properties then the following w/end we would blitz the wiring/plumbing etc etc or in one case a 3 story 'beer soaked' deck. Then the following week we would blitz someone else's property.
We had a great system (each of us were engineers in differing fields) & the company we worked for would loan out heavy equipment on weekends.
We all owned our properties independently, with only a couple of the guys partnering on some.
Today I hear all sorts of complaints from kids wanting to rehab in what spare time they have. But trust me the sacrifice of youthful 'spare time' will allow for many years of free time later in life.
Family time? No problem, let's go work on a house. Dinner out? No problem, we'll bring a picnic. Kid and friends home from college? Great. More hands to work on a house. Hands-on work done? Great. Let's go driving for dollars and find the next house.
LOVE IT! I don't have any kids however. Although, it's probably bad when you consider hosting a foreign exchange student so that you have extra hands to work on houses. (What? They're learning a respectable American business!)
Fatigue. Working a 60 hour professional job while building a real estate portfolio was exhausting.
Family time? No problem, let's go work on a house. Dinner out? No problem, we'll bring a picnic. Kid and friends home from college? Great. More hands to work on a house. Hands-on work done? Great. Let's go driving for dollars and find the next house.
This was our life for about 5 years, then we got big enough to hire some help. At about 8 years we were big enough for one of us to quit the j.o.b. Until then, the problem was fatigue. We strongly believed the time for balance would come but it wasn't while we were working full time and growing our business.
Deborah,
I detect a Problem Solver.
You do not allow obstacles to cheat you from your goals. From what I have read and understand, this is a common characteristic of ALL highly successful individuals. I sense great success will continue to be in your future.
My biggest challenge is managing my day job commute and family time with trying to find deals (all while learning to find deals). My wife and I have 3 kids and she works two jobs while trying to finish her PhD. Now I could come home and work on RE stuff, but get my head completely ripped off my shoulders; or I could help out around the house, wait until ?everyone is in the bed, then work on RE stuff, ha ha ha. I am choosing the later and my wife agrees with that choice!
Someone earlier in the post mentioned Time and Money. At this point I probably have a little more money than time so I think I am going to start outsourcing more of the leg work of finding deals.
I've found that it helps to be intentional about setting up an infrastructure that is self-sustaining (as they say, "beginning with the end in mind"). A business can definitely grow to require less and less of our hands-on involvement, but it all has to start somewhere.
New investors will generally have to put a lot of hands-on attention to their business in the beginning (because something needs to be created - a business can't materialize and grow from nothing). That being said, I think if our ultimate intention is to create streams of income that don't require our constant attention - this can definitely be done by finding the right people to handle the most time-consuming tasks for us.
Seems like the initial battle is to build up those cash reserves through things like wholesaling, flipping, bird dogging, saving money from the day job, etc. Generating that start up cash doesn't happen without our hands-on involvement... but in time, we can redirect those resources towards setting up properties to throw off cash under the right management (outsourced to a property manager) - which allows us to focus on our jobs, businesses, families, lives, etc.
Getting over that initial hump is probably the hardest part. I think most people can only go so long before the need to see some tangible results.
@Seth Williams - I completely agree. From the very beginning we meant to be large enough to support ourselves independent of the 9-5. We set up systems and engaged support team members in the very beginning, always with the eye on the goal of independence. Because we began those systems 10 years ago, we can disappear off the grid and have a full team that will take care of the tenants and the properties while we are unavailable. Our team members, all contract or professionals, banker, accountant, etc, have provided us with extraordinary service on more than one occasion.
@Tom Goans - thank you. I have read enough of your posts to really respect your input and I appreciate that positive comment. I AM having fun. Every day.
@Dawn Anastasi - I have some really wonderful photos of some of my daughter's friends from those days. They can't resist wielding power drivers like they are weapons. I think the parents were half horrified, half intrigued and entirely confused... why were the kids working and thinking it was play, lol. The first time the boyfriend now husband came to visit... you guessed it. Here's the job, here are the tools. Do you want to paint or build X? They always pick the power tools...
My biggest challenge is during the big rehab when you don't have any hours in the day. You go from the day job (computing and phone ) to the physical labor or floor sanding and prep. Dinner is a lot of effort and when you put your head down the numbers start going.
The second biggest is my kids goals are not the same as mine. Unlike @Deborah B. my HS/college age boys say mom you buy too many houses. They don't get the same joy out of a transformation as my husband and I do (even when they work for us). Maybe that perception will change with time we'll see.
Lastly, and maybe it is just my pet peeve right now but balancing the contractors is a big one.. Ok so they never show up and then when they do when I work from home it is in the middle of a meeting....
That being said my challenges of the moment are very much today's issue and hopefully will fade.