BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 628: How Being a Quitter Will Make You a Millionaire

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Before you quit your job, you’ll need to do a few crucial things. If you haven’t done these yet, but are strongly considering leaving your job soon, Henry Washington and Rob Abasolo may advise you to wait it out a bit longer. Quitting your job is a big decision, especially if your family relies on the income that you’re bringing in. The good news is, that if you’re prepared, you can walk away making much more than you did at your W2. But, if you aren't, you could simply be taking a breather in between jobs, instead of building a life you love and ruling your schedule. Henry and Rob both have eerily similar quitting stories. They both quit during the same month of the same year, making the same salary all while building a real estate investment portfolio in the background. While Henry is more of a multifamily investing man, Rob has taken the short-term rental route to build his wealth. Both men have left the cushy healthcare-provided and retirement-matching lifestyles to build something much bigger not only for themselves but their families and employees. If you’ve wondered “when should I quit my job” or “is now the right time to go full-time into real estate investing?” then this episode is a prerequisite for you. Henry and Rob go over the four things you need to know BEFORE you quit, things to be aware of as a full-time entrepreneur, how to handle taxes and healthcare, and some actionable tips for when you’re finally ready to take the plunge into full-time investing. In This Episode We Cover: Why quitting a high-paying job is probably worth it in the long-run Spousal approval when quitting and why it’s mandatory before you start doing your own thing How much should you have in safety reserves when you quit The “work-life balance” myth and what a day in the life of an entrepreneur really looks like Changing how you invest after you say goodbye to consistent income Mapping out potential scenarios so you know what to expect on the other side of employment And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast Get Your Ticket for BPCon 2022 Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Hear Our Interview with Jason Drees on Exceeding Your Goals Should You Quit Your 9-5 Job to Become a Full-Time Real Estate Investor? 10 Challenges to Seriously Consider BEFORE Quitting Your Day Job Rob's Youtube Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Henry's Instagram Henry's BiggerPockets Profile Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-628 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Check out our sponsor page! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pocket show number 628. Just keep in mind that if you're on this path to quit your job, that you need to keep what you're doing in focus. And keep that scorecard, that running scorecard. Like people say, as an investor, you should keep your scorecard of your personal financial statement, right? So you track your net worth. I think you should also track your hourly rate. Like the more money you start to make from side hustles and things, you should continue to update that hourly rate and kind of keep that in front of you. So you can see where you might hit that threshold of like, all right, it might be time to start

thinking about transitioning over from one to the other. The Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast show is all about teaching you the art of investing in real estate and hopefully achieving financial freedom one day, whatever that means for you, whether that means quitting your 9 to 5 job or having an entire portfolio that sustains your lifestyle. We're here to show you how to do that. And I'm joined here by my good friend and co-host, Henry Washington. How you doing, man? Boom.

What's up, buddy? glad to be on the microphone with you again. You're like my like unofficial twin. Our stories are so similar. We're spirit animal. We basically look exactly the same. And so I don't know how people don't get us confused more often. I know, man. I know. Someone at the airport the other day was like, are you? Are you? And I was like, yeah, Rob Bill and they're like, no, Henry Washington. And I was like, no. Why do people keep saying that? What's new with you, man? Hey, man, life is fantastic. I am enjoying kind of growing and scaling my business. We kind of got to this kind of, you know,

poop or get off the pot moment with my business. And so we've been growing and scaling and kind of taking this entrepreneurship to the next level. So it was fun to kind of get to talk to you about that whole journey on this episode. I know, man. It's very eerie because you and I have very similar stories. You know, we both quit our job about a year ago, it sounds like.

And, yeah, a lot of things really lined up for us. So I'm excited to actually get into it because we're going to be talking a lot. I mean, we're going to be talking about our backstory, you know, four things that you need to know before you quit your job, things that you should be aware of like, you know, health insurance, people judging you, uh, taxes, all that kind of stuff. And then we really wanted to end this episode, I think, with actionable tips for people that that really are set on quitting their nine to five job, tangible things that they could do to, to kind of move towards that path. What were some of your favorite parts about today's show? Uh, so I really, really enjoyed talking about some of the, the unsexy things with quitting your job that people don't talk about, right? Everybody talks about all the fun stuff, right? Like, you get all this time, and then you can take that time, and you can make a bunch more money, and then you're going to be this multimillionaire, and it's super awesome. But people don't tell you about some of the ugly stuff, some of the expenses

stuff, like taxes suck, and so you need to be prepared for it. And yeah, health insurance is expensive, and you need to have that as well. That was a well-time cough. I like that. Health insurance. I keep muting myself every time I cough. I've got this cough, man. Yeah, but all these things are things people need to be aware of as they prepare for this part of their journey in their life. And so I love that we were able to touch on some of those things that, like, people don't talk about in 15-second videos on Instagram. Yeah, that's right.

We only talk about the good stuff in the 15 seconds, but not the bad. But, yeah, before we jump into it, let's jump into our quid dip, which is going to be brought to the audience by Sir Henry. Washington himself. Awesome. Yeah. So the quick tip for today is to go and check out the on the market podcast. On on the market, we focus on talking about actual current events happening in a real estate space and how it's affecting our businesses, what we're doing or what we're not doing because of things. So we talk about things like inflation, higher interest rates and how that's affecting the real estate space and what we may or may not be doing because of it. So go give us a listen, we've got myself, Kathy Fetke, James Daynard, and Jamil Damgey, and it's hosted by that.

We were gushing over him a little bit. I mean, there's a little bit of a man crush on Jamil. Look, the guy's got good ads, right? There's those people who just do everything well. And then, like, that guy's good at all the things, right? Yeah, he is. And then the Data Deli, man, the data guy himself, Dave Meyer is the host of the show, and it's a ton of fun.

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now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. And well, with that, let's dive, let's dive straight in. Hey man, you know what's really crazy? What's that? I have been a full-time real estate investor for just over a year for about a year in three months or so. Hey, Rob, you know what's really crazy? What? I have been a full-time real estate investor for just over a year, like a year in three months or so. That's right. I think we found this out not too long ago

that we both quit our full-time careers, our nine to fives in April of last year, right, of 2021. Absolutely, man. So I think what we want to really impart on the audience today, is sort of our thought process, like our evolution, things that we went through. And I don't know, maybe some actionable tips on, you know, what you can actually do to bring you closer to to actually quitting your 9 to 5 job. How does that sound? That sounds amazing. That is a question I've been getting since before I even quit my job is people asking me when they should quit. So let's do it. Yeah, man. I mean, this is a really big topic. And it's something that I've actually talked about on the YouTube channel many, many times because I just honestly,

I wish when I was quitting my job, there was content like this. Like, I don't think enough people really put stuff out there because a lot of people are very scared to, I don't know, A, be vulnerable about how scary it is. And, you know, there's like also the financial component, which is a little bit taboo. But I'll be really upfront and say, I had a really good career. I've always loved the career that I was in. I was a creative copywriter in the advertising industry. And I worked my way up and I was in the industry, you know, I would say seven or so years,

include like internships and stuff. And I was making $110,000 at my job. So it really, it wasn't a bad gig, right? And when you combine that with my wife's salary, I think she was a teacher in California. She was making like $75,000. So together, her and I were both making about $185,000, which, you know, in California, obviously there's some living expenses that go into it. But we were really comfortable. Like we didn't have any reason to actually quit. Yeah, man. It's super funny because I, I similarly was in a role that I truly enjoyed. I was actually working in the real estate industry. I was an asset manager for an apartment fund.

And so I was getting an education in large scale real estate and getting paid for it. I also was making $110,000 a year. And my wife is weird, man. This is like crazy. It's like everything lines up for both of us. My wife was making about $85,000 at the time. And so we were both very similar. both in careers that we liked. And so it was a making that decision was a struggle. And so I love

being transparent and I love sharing with people like the hows and wise that we did it. And hopefully there's some, there's some gems people get from it. Yeah, totally. So is your wife still working now? No, no. We retired her two or three months after I retired. Oh, wow. Okay, cool. Yeah. So my wife is also not working now as well. I mean, she wants to get back into it and we'll talk about this in a little bit. which is like, you know, as beautiful as quitting your nine to five job is, I do want to make it known that, you know, Henry and I, we're best case scenarios. Like, things have really, really worked out for us. So this is not us saying, today's the day you're going to quit your job. You have to actually work for it. You know, you have to earn your right of passage here. And I think you and I kind of did.

I mean, for me, I was making, again, $110,000 at my job. And I had always been developing my Airbnb portfolio. And just by the way, like, just small caveat. I'm going to toss out numbers. I'm very financially transparent. I talk about this a lot on the YouTube channel. I don't hold back on this just because I want people to really understand where I was coming from and I want to make it feel as approachable. I don't want to hide anything. So this is not a flex or anything like that. All right. So with that, I've been working on my Airbnb portfolio for about four years at that time. And I had really built it up to the point where I was making about $25,000 a month in net. After all my partnership, splits, after all bills and everything

like that, that was like my take home. And on top of that, I also had started developing all these other sides of income, like all these income streams, like side hustles, if you will. And when I started to add everything together, I just started to sort of realize that I was actually making a lot more money with the other stuff. I don't know about you, but for me, I was like, oh, at the very least, that was breaking even. Yeah, no, it was very similar for me. And so I kept my job as long as humanly possible. A, not only because I enjoyed it, but you know, you do the Airbnb strategy. I'm more of a long-term buying hold guy. And I love using small local banks. And one thing banks love is a good old nine to five. They want to see that nine to five, right. They want to see that nine to five

income. And so I knew keeping my job was going to help me continue to be bankable. And so that was always on the back of my mind. And so there was some strategy, if you will, around around how long I kept the job because the strategy there was I wanted my LLC to have been profitable for at least two years so that I could at least show that I've had the profitable income in that LLC business so that if and when I did decide to leave my job that I had that track record and provide them that level of comfortability. Oh, that's actually, that's a really, hey, you're supposed to save that to the very end when we get into the actionable tips, but that's a very good one. So I guess I'll tell you a little bit about my story and maybe, you know,

you can tell me about yours, but I was making really good income and I calculated it out and I was just realized that, you know, while I was making, I guess 110 divided by 12, about $9,000 a month in that job. I was making like $35,000, when you added up all of my side hustles. And I just realized I was like, oh my gosh, like I can't possibly make more money with all of my side hustles in my real estate business until I get my time back in my 40 hours a week. And so I was just so scared. And the one thing that was really holding me back was, well, I guess like, all right, let me backtrack. So I had been told my wife for a bit. And she was like, just do it, dude. I'm like, I can't. And so I remember I set up a Zoom meeting with my bosses,

because this was during the pandemic. And I was going to quit. And so, like, as soon as they both got on, like, one boss was trying to make small talk, and he was like, he could just tell that something was wrong. And then the other boss finally joined. And then I was like, okay, um, uh, I brought you here. And they're like, oh my God, are you okay? And I was like, I'm sorry. I need a second. And so I'm sorry. I need a second. And so I'm just. I was like crying. And by the way, every time I've ever quit a job, I always cry. But this cry was special because I was so scared. And they were like, oh my God, is everything okay? And I was like, yeah. And they're like, okay, well, what's up? And I was like, I got to quit. And they're like,

oh, oh, thank God. You're fine. You're just quitting. And I was like, yeah. And they're like, Are you going to be okay, like financially? Because, you know, obviously I was like crying. And I was like, yeah, I make way more money doing everything else. And they're like, you're going to be fine. Obviously, you were going to quit. We don't even know why you're still here. Should have quit a long time ago.

We've been watching your channel. We know you make more money doing this. You know, like they're very reassuring. And so I remember, you know, after I wiped all the tears away and I said, thank you guys. You all were the best bosses I ever had. I closed my laptop. and I was like, this is the greatest relief I've ever had. And I was a new man.

I really was. Like, it was a crazy feeling, you know? Yeah. Dude, our stories are so similar. It is uncanny because I had a, I had a similar experience by, so I knew it was time to go. And, well, I thought, I figured I should start figuring out if it was time to go because I had my, my boss who, again, we're talking full transparency, right? And so my boss reached out to me and was like, hey, bud, I think you need to be putting in a little more effort than you are. You know, I had

dropped a ball on something. And so I kind of got called out. And then like, I kind of took it personal. I was like, because I do a good job at my job. Like, I felt like, and so I took it personal. And then when I took a step back and I like took my emotions out of it and looked at what he was saying, I'm like, yeah, well, that's probably fair, right? But him saying, hey, I need you to put in more effort, triggered me to start thinking now that I had all this other income coming in, does it make sense for me to give you that effort? Or should I give it to myself? And that's when I started to do the math. And before I even started to do the math, I similarly went to my wife, and she was like, yeah, just quit. I was like, uh, that's what they always say. They're like,

How are you so cool with that decision? I know. And so, yeah, and so I did the math. And after doing the math, I basically just broke it down to like, what is my time on my own? What am I making an hour, essentially, versus what am I making an hour giving my, my company more time that I was working for? And it wasn't even close, Rob. Like, like, and that's when I knew. I was like, I hear that you want more of my time, but it's literally going to cost me money.

So I had the same meeting with my two bosses. And I told them that, hey, I'm going to go go out on my own and continue this real estate path. And they were like, well, yeah, yeah, you should, yeah, you should do that. Right. It's so obvious. I mean, if you're to the point where you're quitting to be, like they, if you're working in real estate, like you, for example, they know that you're making, like, they know that you're doing multifamily. They're probably watching the journey. It's like, I have a YouTube channel. I talk about finances, like very in depth.

And I know everyone at my job was like, I don't understand why you're here. And I'm like, neither do I, honestly. Like, it was my goal to exactly what you're saying, which is like, be a terrible employee. And I say that in a very, say that in like, with perspective now because it's like, it was a solid income, you know. And I was like, well, if I get fired, I'll get severance. But I'm just going to hold on to this security while I build all this other stuff. And the one thing I had going for me is I had a good rapport with my bosses. You know, liked all my team and all that stuff.

So even when I was sucking at my job, they were like, well, we still like it. It's all good. So I'm very thankful for that. But, you know, I think for us to have gotten here, and for anyone who wants to quit their nine to five job, I think that there are really like four things that are needed to quit your job. And obviously, like, I'm sure we could spit out like 10 different things. But I wanted to talk about a few of these things because for me, first and foremost, and I

think we're on the same page here, spousal approval, right? Like, we need to, the wives need to be on board. Would you agree with that? 100%. This is not a marriage counseling episode, but I promise you your life will be exponentially better if you get that spousal approval. 100%. Now, and I get it, right? Like some people, it's going to be more of a challenge in others, right? Some people's spouses are already bought in and some aren't. I was fortunate enough that my wife was all in from day one. And so that eased the entire investing journey for me. And so I, you know, I literally wouldn't be, you know, sitting here talking to you if she hadn't been on board. And I've had people say, well, you know, how do I get my wife

on board, right? How, like, what's the, what's the practical application for that? And I, you know, And no one can tell you how best to talk to your spouse. But it's your spouse. So you probably know the best way to communicate to them, right? You probably know everybody wants in any conversation where you're talking about needs. There's always an element of what's in it for me. Right. And so think about how your spouse likes to be best communicated with and the what's in it for me.

And you have the conversation. And sometimes you'll have to have more than one, right? In different ways. But don't get discouraged, you know, if you have the very, very first conversation and it gets shot down, that happens for a lot of people. It doesn't mean that you can't continue to work that. Several times, too. You know, like it's not just, yeah, and I think that's okay. I mean, I think here's a good and bad thing about any marriage, which is like, if you have a good partner, they should be keeping you accountable and they shouldn't just be a yes man or yes

woman, right? Like, if you give them an idea, if they're supportive, most of the time they're going to say yes. But if it's a crazy idea, it's their job to be like, hey, that's a little crazy. We should talk about this. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think there's a really pivotal moment for my wife and I. We were on the couch during the pandemic. And I was like, what if we quit our jobs and moved to Tennessee and built a tiny house village? And she was like, that's crazy. And I was like, I know. But like at that moment, it was, it was nighttime. We were sitting on the couch and we had just had my daughter and she was asleep in like my wife's arms. And I was like, but isn't it crazier to work a nine to five job and not see our kid every single day

for as much as humanly possible? And she was like, yeah, I guess if you put it that way, it kind of is. And again, if you're working a nine to five job, there's nothing wrong with that. But for our situation, I think it was just like, for me, I was like, we can do this. And we had that talk many times. So we got to the point, this kind of move into like the next, the second thing that you need, which is side hustle income. But it got to the point with my side hustle, I was really developing stuff outside of real estate too, right? I think if you're looking to get out of your 9 to 5, you're not just trying to match your salary. You're actually trying to make more. You're trying to make more because now you're 1099, effectively, you're self-employed. You no longer have

your health insurance. You no longer have your 401k match. You know, it's expensive to just match what you were getting at your company. And so I was really growing all these side hustles. For me, that was content creation. For me, that was, you know, I think, oh, I started consulting as a result of my YouTube channel. And I started charging $150 an hour. And it turned out that, you know, got booked a couple times a week. And then the next week, I was fully booked out into the point where I was booked out a month in advance. And I kept raising rates to the point where it was like many hundred dollars. I don't remember. I think like $500 an hour. And I was doing that four times a day on top of my full-time job. And I was just

macking it out. And I was like, I can't consult more unless I quit my job. And so it was so obvious because my wife was watching me work 80, 90 hour weeks. And she was like, you can't keep doing this to yourself. And you make way more money doing the thing that you love. I think it's time. And so I think side hustle income, whatever that means for you, for me, again, that we'll get into that a little bit later too. But I think developing a financial system around making money that's not your W-2 because at the end of the day, if you, if your goal is to become a millionaire, for example, most millionaires have seven or eight streams of income, then I took that to heart. So I was always chipping away about that. What about you? Do you have any side hustles that you don't

talk about often? Yeah, absolutely, man. Again, very similar. I think you did something with furniture at some point, right? And so for me, I used to buy stuff at auctions, like pennies on the dollar, like Amazon returns and, you know, Target Walmart returns. So, and, you know, I mean, So I would go bid on these things at auction, get them for pennies on the dollar, and then I would sell them on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist to make some extra money. And so, like, that was kind of how this side hustle thing became a reality for me. Like, oh, wait, like, you can actually generate some legitimate money just by spending a few extra hours doing something. So that was my proof of concept that side hustles work. And then that transformed as I got into real estate into consulting.

So very similarly, I was charging, you know, 100 to 150. bucks an hour and I was getting booked up. And as I was doing that, I was enjoying the calls, man. And my wife, she, uh, she saw me one time after a call and I looked bummed. And she was like, Hey man, why are you? Why are you bummed? And I was like, well, I just keep answering the same questions over and over again. And, uh, and she was like, well, why don't you just like make something that you can put out there that people can just check out, right? And so that's what got me started on the path to creating courses. of some kind. Like I didn't, didn't know there were courses at the time. Like, I just wanted to save

myself some time and allow myself to help more people because you mentioned it. Your calendar would get booked up, right? You can only help as many people as hours you have in the day. Right. And so once I got on bigger pockets as a guest, it obviously, you know, drew more eyeballs to my page. And the amount of people that I could help, it was harder. It was harder to help more people. When you only have a thousand followers, if, you know, 10 people want to have a call over the course of a few months, you can figure that out. But as that grows, it gets harder. And so I put this content out there and it started to make, uh, make a little bit of money. And it, that's, that's when I started to really look at, um, at, hey, this is something that if I can

provide value in the right way for people at, and, and then provide the scalability, I can have the income potentially to quit my job. And so that's how the side hustle thing kind of evolved for me. And then once that income grew to a point where hourly, I was going to be able to make more for myself than my company, that's how I knew I was going to be able to quit. So 100%, it was like this side hustle evolution for me. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I, man, dude, I used to answer the same question every single day. And, you know, I love doing it because I genuinely helped people. But It is hard. And I think it was sort of a trap too. With real estate, you know, if you read rich dad and poor dad, we start to, you know, the thing is you can't sell your time for money.

So I was quit my job because I was like, oh, well, I'll get my time back. And I'll be able to consult for four hours a day and make way more than I was at my job. But then I realized I was just selling time. Yep. Like I was just selling my time. And so even at $500 an hour or whatever, even if I was booked out, you know, a year in advance at 40 hours a week, which I would never recommend to anybody's vocal cords. Like, that's, I don't know, I think a million dollars a year, which is a lot of money, but that is it. That is the most I can make. And so I quickly realize that too. And so it's like it ignited this fire to keep chipping away at this real estate fire that I had. So that kind of actually brings us two step, like the third thing that you need to quit your

9-to-5, which is proof of concept. You know, we had our side hustles. We had the spousal approval, but proof of concept just means I'd done it. I had done the Airbnb thing. I was good at it. I was really, really, really good at it. And people saw that I was good at it. And they were offering to partner with me and they were offering to give me their money to go and buy a property and split it 50-50. Like I was doing that with several partners. And for me, it's like, okay, if I could do this on the side, then certainly I could probably do it full time too. I mean, is that kind of was that your trajectory too?

I assume it's like, you know, based on the rest of the conversation, it's probably the same exact thought. Right. Absolutely. Yeah, man. It 100% was like that for me because as I was starting to think through, all right, what's it look like if I quit? Because there's obviously a fear factor, right? Even though you've got a proof of concept, I knew I could always find undermarket value properties, add value to them and rent them out for profits or sell them for profit. Like I had that down. And still when it came time to actually, you know, pull the trigger and quit, like there was some apprehension. and what helped me kind of one of the things that helped me get over that apprehension was to think

about like, hey, I've been able to build this this real estate portfolio part time on the side while working a full-time day job and doing side hustles. And I've still been able to build this portfolio. If I just take the same amount of effort that I've put in, but now I give myself 40 hours, hours a week to continue to put that effort in, I'm naturally going to be able to scale that at a higher rate without putting in any more effort. The level of effort stays the same. You just have more hours to focus that effort on. And so like when I thought about it from that perspective, I was like, oh, well, of course, I'll be just fine, right? And so 100% I felt the same way.

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, last one here, we'll touch on this. And, you know, this is really going just depend on really your financial situation. But last thing you need out of the four things before you quit, again, there's probably a lot more than four, but for the sake of a nice, concise little crunchy podcast here, reserves, you know, you want to have some money set aside because, you know, I think it's not necessarily advisable to say, hey, I was making $110, but why not? I'll quit. I'll figure it out. If you don't have your systems in your income stream set, you know, like it's going to probably be a bad decision. So, I can't really advise you on that. Again, Henry and I aren't, well, this is the first time I'm saying it.

I say again, as if I've mentioned this before. But I always do that. I'm always like, again. And it's like, well, what do you mean again? You never even said it the first time. We're not financial advisors. All right. So none of this is financial advice. But I think the good rule of thumb here is if you can have like six months of reserves to kind of cover you and your bills, that's always going to be a safe way to go. Yep. I totally agree. And, you know, we thought a little non-traditionally about the reserves because, again, that fear factor. was setting in as it got closer and closer for me to actually have the conversation to quit. I was like, well, how are we going to find this money? And so what we decided to do was just take the profits of a flip that we had coming up that we were going to close.

And instead of putting that money in our business account, which we would normally do. And the other benefit we're not talking about is Rob and I also developed the side hustles so that we wouldn't have to touch our real estate business money. so that we could keep reinvesting that, right? And so because we made that smart decision of not using that money, when I got to a point where I was ready to quit, I just said, you know what, I'll take the income from this flip that I'm going to make. And that happened to be about what my wife's yearly salary was. And I threw that in an account just away from everything else. Just as a safety cushion for me to know, like, hey, I have 12 months of my wife's income right here.

And so if things don't work out, I know I've got this cushion. And we've been living off that cushion for years now. So it's there. It made me feel safer. It made it easier to take the leap. We actually didn't have to end up touching any of it. But just having that reserve there and knowing that it's there gave me the confidence to really put my all into entrepreneurship.

Yeah, for sure. And there's something that you sort of touched on, which is really great. Because I want to talk about the things that you need to be aware of, before you quit. And you were sort of talking about that 40-hour work week, and now you could focus on that full-time. But I sort of want to talk about the, I don't want to say the not-so-glamorous part of the 9-to-5, because it's a net positive, I will say that. But things that you should be aware of it. I think we think, oh, okay, we're going to give away, or we're going to get back 40 hours of our week, and it's going to be great. We're going to have so much time. But the idea

of work-life balance is, I'm not going to say a myth, but it's basically, it's non-existent, right? Like, there's that old adage that's like entrepreneurs will not work 40 hours for someone else so that they can work 80 hours for themselves. That's really true, you know? I mean, I work a lot more than I did because, you know, at my 9 to 5 job, as I said, I was a terrible employee. I was like, you know, trying to milk that cow for as long as I could. And what I really quickly realize is I was really giving about 10, maybe 15 hours of my actual time and effort to my job, which I think most people realize during the pandemic, they're like, oh, I don't need to work 40 hours. And so I thought, oh, I was going to get 40 hours back. Really, I got 10 or 15 back.

Right. And it just turned into this whole thing where now I'm working 70, 80, 90 hour weeks often. Not as much now. Thank goodness. I'm figuring that out. But for the very first year, you know, quitting my job. My focus was to make money and I succeeded. I was able to more than 10 exit. And, you know, it was a really crazy time for me. It's because I was just going so, so freaking like fast and furious. And yeah, I mean, I think the nine to five job, like I kind of miss it, you know, in a sense, because it kept me to 40 hours. And now I work a lot more. I don't know about you. Oh, dude. Yeah, absolutely. That smacked us in the face when we quit because there's also this thing that we don't think about this added pressure now of like you've got to go produce because that

you don't have that salaried income coming in every month no matter if you produce in your real estate business or not. And so there's this pressure to go produce. Plus you're an entrepreneur and you enjoy what you do. And so you just end up cranking extra hours. And I really had to have a sit down with my wife to talk about like how do we establish some like boundaries. and what expectations do you have for me in entrepreneurship, right, versus, you know, when I was working a salaried position, right? And I wanted to have those conversations. So I knew on the front side kind of what she wanted for me and how she wanted me to spend the time and we could have that kind of a conversation. Because now you've got this added layer of entrepreneurship and,

you know, pandemic life. And so there was a ton of time at home. And so you really had to draw that that hard line in the sand of when you call it quits. go focus on, you know, family and kids and those kinds of things. And so it was, it was, it was a lot in that first month or so. But luckily, you know, again, I have an amazing wife and we had that sit down and we're able to draw some boundaries. And, and I'm not perfect with them. But we're getting better. And so now I, I, I come to an office. Like, I moved everything from home to an office so that I give myself those boundaries physically. Like I have to get up, get ready, physically go to work, physically take my laptop, physically take my laptop home.

And so, like, you're mentally saying, like, I am taking my laptop home, right? Which means you are planning to go do some work versus leaving it at work. And so that physical office has also provided us some boundaries. Yeah, it's hard. It's really tough. I mean, because, like, especially in our first, like, in our house in L.A. when we were doing this, because my wife was like, you're right there. Like, why can't you help me?

The kid is crying or, you know, like, why do you got to change the? diaper and I'm like, I am sorry. Like, I know that I'm here, but I'm also like, I'm drowning, you know, and there was a lot of those, you know, those moments where we had to have heart to hearts, where it's like, look, it's not that I don't want to be around, but it's like, at my work, I could mess around and still get paid. And if I don't work, we don't make money, you know? And I was like, way to just in my head about it. And I think, you know, other things that were really tough for me was like health care. Like part of the story I didn't talk about was when I was like crying and they're like, are you going to be okay?

financially. And I was like, yeah, I make way more money. And my bosses were like, then what's the deal? And I was like, healthcare, it's expensive. And I was over here getting in my head about $2,000 a month of health care when I was making, I don't know, at that point, like $35,000 a month with everything together. And so healthcare is expensive. And that's something that you have to think about. And there are a bunch of different options. You're no longer getting your 401k match. You know, qualifying for a mortgage is really tough when you're self-employed, like you said. I make significantly more money than I've ever made, and a bank still won't give me a loan because I look for on paper, and it's really annoying. Now, after I get my taxes season,

this is my second year of making income like this, I'll finally be able to count it and finally buy a house without having to jump through so many hoops. But it's really tough. So I think, you know, if you're in this world where you want to become a real estate investor, close on those houses first. I close on a house. And literally as soon as I close on that house, I quit the next week because I was like, all right, that was it. I did it. So yeah, qualifying. I think, I don't know if you had any judgment in your life when you told people that you were quitting, but I did. I had people that, you know, as supportive as most people were, I had some people that were like, that's crazy. And I'm like, I think you're the crazy one.

You rely on one income at your job, you know? I was like, that, that's crazy to me. And I would just get in defensive because I was like, why, why not just support me? Like that, it hurts, you know? And so, it was like family, you know, at first, because it's just, no one in my family has ever done this before. And so it's so weird to them that I would leave a six-figure job. And what they didn't understand was that, you know, yeah, like kind of what I was working on in the background. So yeah, did you have any judgment in your life or was it relatively smooth sailing for you? Dude, absolutely. It's been throughout the whole journey. And yes, absolutely. A lot of the judgment, for lack of a better term, will come from your friends and family,

the people closest to you. Because they know you before. They know you as the guy that didn't do any of that, right? Like you just, if you're just getting started on this entrepreneurial journey, right, they don't know that you, that part of you. They see the old you. And so as you start doing these things that seem crazy, right, you get some judgment. And sometimes that judgment comes from a good place. Sometimes it's, hey, this is risky.

I love you. I want you to be able to pay your bills. And I want you to take a safe path. And sometimes that judgment is, hey, I don't want you to be doing better than I am, right? And so, like, you can piece together who's being judgy for what reasons, but absolutely. And just remember, folks, like, this journey that you're on, this vision that you've been given is for you. It's for you to act on. It's been given to you. It's that nobody else has to understand it for you to be successful in your journey. And so don't let that. that hold you back, there's a reason that being a trailblazer is painful. You're the one going down the path first. You're cutting down all of the obstacles and barriers that are in the way. And so you're going to get the nicks and the cuts and the things that come with being the leader, going down a path. Maybe people in your family haven't gone down before. And so, yeah,

that judgment is just part of those nicks and cuts and things that you're going to have to endure as you start to blaze a new trail for people in your family behind you. It's a blessing that that that that's something that you get to do. And so don't, don't see it as a negative, see it as like, I am creating this new path of wealth that other people in my family behind me get to go down. And I'm okay taking the brunt of the judgment and the nicks and the bruises so that I can make the lives of people behind me and my family better. I love it. Yeah, let me just be clear. You are crazy, too. Like, you know, when people say, you're crazy, it's like, yeah, you're right. I am. You know, Embrace it. Embrace the craziness because I think that's what's going to set you apart.

I really actually liking this. I used to have like, when I bought my house in L.A. in 2016, I actually had family members that were like, you're crazy. Not like indirect family members. They're like, you're crazy. You're buying at the top of the market. We're in a housing bubble. And I was like, well, I'm still going to do it because I want to buy a house and no one's going to stop me. And fast forward to, you know, five years later, and my house has doubled in value from $624,000 to $1.4,000 to $1.4,000. to $5 million, they still don't own a house. And funny enough, they're looking to buy a house now. You know, like if it wasn't the top of the market then, you could probably argue that you're pretty close now. So I think you just got to take action and not worry about what other people think.

You know what I mean? And I think that's kind of how the nine to five thing is like, quit your job. Don't worry what they have to say. Just do it and figure it out. Because at the end of the day, if you're the one that's right, that's all that matters. Absolutely. So I'm kind of curious. man, like what changes actually happened when you became a full-time real estate investor? Like, did your investment strategy change or are you doing the exact same thing? Yeah. So from an investment standpoint, we're pretty much doing the exact same thing. The difference is I have more room to grow and scale that because of the time I got back. And then I can also, the one thing that is changing now is we're adding people to the team so that I can start to grow and scale the

business without me having to put in all the actual work myself. And so that was more difficult before because there was so much focus on me having to do my nine to five and do that the proper way to be able to think about hiring people and making enough income to hire people in my business was was a challenge. And so now that we are, producing the income that we need, I'm realizing that I quit my job. That bought me some hours. What if I could pay somebody to buy their eight hours a day, right? And so the more people you bring on, the more hours you're adding to your business. And you can get an exponential return. And so we've just hired our first person, which is actually my content manager. And we're actually looking to bring on an

acquisitions manager next to help with the, you know, acquiring properties. Yeah, so I'm curious because I'm sort of at that point now. I have my team consists of my assistant who's effectively like my property manager and everything, social media manager and community manager. And then I've got my business partner who he basically executes the whole real estate side of my business. I mean, obviously I'm still involved from a higher up level, but the day to day he's doing that. And I'm at this point now where it is time to build a team. So I don't know. Like is it is what's your thought process on on?

Because obviously like I'm cheap and I think most real estate investors are. Same bro. What are your what are your thoughts on like sacrifices of payroll versus, you know, getting your time back? Because obviously like paying people is expensive unless you're not paying them and you're giving them equity, which is a lot more pay in the future. A lot more expensive too. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly for sure. Yeah. So for me, my thought process around hiring people has been in around two areas. So high dollar activities, right, that take a lot of time. And so if something produces me a lot of income and takes a lot of time, I'm going to look at it as, is this something that makes sense for me to hire someone to do? Um, the other thing that I'm looking at is, um, uh, essentially marketing, right? Like what is driving more business for me? And so my content manager is essentially part of my marketing budget because we all know social media is less about social media and more about marketing. It's, it's, it's getting eyeballs to you. And so I wanted to take the things that

going to be the highest impact to the bottom line and take the most amount of time and see if it makes sense for me to bring somebody in to do those activities, what I call relentlessly consistent because I think relentless consistency is what truly builds businesses, right? It's the ones who are consistent no matter what's happening. And so for right now, those two activities, like I said, for me, are content and keeping the content flowing as well as keeping the marketing for deals and the acquiring of those deals going, because those two things are going to generate the most amount of income. And if I can have somebody else's time to do those things, then I can use the time that I have in my brain

to think of more income generating activities and get involved in more things than we're involved in now. Yeah. So quick, quick tip, mid-episode quick tip here. Mid-episode quick tip. We just released an episode with Brandon Turner. And we talked about all the all things personal brand and building content and everything like that. So if you want to learn more about content creation and, you know, how you can utilize that in your real estate business, definitely be sure to tune in on that. But yeah, man, that makes a lot of sense. I think, you know, you're a much better influencer than me.

I really, I hate saying that. But I just like, I can really do one YouTube video every single week and that's it. You know, like, I'm like, it takes so much of my time and effort to do one YouTube video, right? if anyone's ever seen it. There's a lot that goes into it. There's a lot of editing. I don't even do the editing. My editor does who is like the foundation of my marriage because he saves me so much time.

But like I really, it's hard. And so like I try to put stuff out on Instagram too and everything. But I just can't do it every day. And I know that you're right. Like putting yourself out there, getting those eyeballs out there. It's really important, you know. I know that like Pineda and guys like that. I think he spends like, I don't know, I want to say like 40.

grand a month on content creation. I believe it. And I spend about, I don't know, five, six thousand dollars on content creation. So I'm actually in that phase now where it's like, okay, if I want a 10x, do I 10x? Do I go and spend 50K a month doing this? And it's, it's really hard because it's like such a vain, a seemingly vain thing to spend my money on. But I know that it's like, I don't want to get into content creator like conundrums. But like, you know, I know that it can help people more. First world problems. Yeah, exactly.

So on the acquisition side, though, moving back to that, how do you even figure out how to compensate someone like that? That's a phenomenal question because we're looking at all of those strategies right now. And so some of the things I'm thinking about are, right, do you just pay somebody a flat salary, right? And flat salaries are awesome because it's stability. But is it motivating enough for someone to continually go out there, offers, talk to sellers and kind of grow and scale from that level. We're also toying with

the idea of leveraging the eyeballs on social media to bring in somebody who already maybe like knows and trustee from your brand and may be good at sales and talking to people and then maybe bring them on as an intern to see how they do and then pay them per deal that they bring down. And so there's tons of different strategies. And I, you know, I honestly, I'd be Lindy if I told you I knew which one was the right way to go. I mean, they're all right. Like, it's whatever's right for you. But my gut is telling me that, like, I want to pay somebody based on the deals that they

close. And there's, so there's probably some level of both where you get some kind of a base, but that pay can increase drastically the more deals that you close. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I'm really in line with that. This is where I'm at in my business because things are going really. well as is. And right now I'm at, I think, 15 or 16 short-term rentals.

We're currently negotiating a hotel deal with just 20 doors. That'll double my portfolio effectively overnight. I'm raising a couple of things. I'm raising a fund where I'm building 20 houses in Joshua Tree with Tony Robinson, real estate rookie. If you guys haven't listened to that, awesome podcast as well, all in the family. And then I have another fund with Superhost Labs where you know, the goal is to start raising like a lot of money to go and acquire 100 properties. And I've got another investor that we're working with who wants us to help him scale up to 100 homes. So we're moving, you know, and I'm like, okay, we have faked it for a long time in that. Like, faked it till you make it, right? And what I mean is like, obviously we're really good at this and

we're doing it. But it's like we were good at doing the single family acquisitions one at a time. But now to go from one acquisition to acquisition is becoming a really big drain on our time. So we're quickly realizing we got to go for like 20, 30, 40 door deals or like syndications where we can have a lot more money. The returns don't have to be 50%. They can be 10%. And then we can just start buying a bunch of short-term rentals around the country. So for me, as I scale, I understand how to get there.

But the building the team is like very, very crucial because one thing that has changed for me in a very significant way, obviously, I assume this is for you too, but my time is a lot more valuable. You know what I mean? Like, I hate even saying my hourly rate, so I'm not going to say it, but it's very expensive, you know? And when you start to scale and when you start to understand that your hourly rate is very high, then it doesn't make sense for you to go out and buy a two-bedroom, one-bath, Airbnb. You got to go buy 20 of them or build 20 of them. You know what I mean? So for me, I think scaling in my business means I'm now evaluating deals based on if they are seven-figure deals or not. So if something is not a seven-figure opportunity for me, I just, it costs me money to pursue it.

Yep. It's the same. It's like the same analysis you put into quitting your job, right? Like, you have to sit back and think about what's the best use of the time that I have available. What's the best return on that? And if it's not going to provide me what I feel like is what I need for my time, then it doesn't make sense. Right. And so I totally understand that. Yeah, we're at, we're at a place where our normal operations as far as acquiring properties is the same. But we've been focusing a whole lot more on holding multifamily. And so, and for the, and for a very similar reason, because I can find single family homes all day, but they don't provide the return on investment that the multis do. And so our strategy shifted from, you know, buying and holding everything. to we're going to dispo the singles, build the capital, and we're keeping multis and heavily looking for more multis. So I, 100% I get it. Yeah, man, and I think obviously the big benefit here of scaling like a big, big benefit, like if you're doing this right and you're

actually making money doing this, even if it's 25, 35, like, you know, kind of where we were at, or let's say that you're to the level where I am where I've like 10 X to my income and um taxes taxes. Right. You know, so scaling, you know, is so important because you're going to be able to lock down a lot more real estate and wipe out those taxes. I've really gone down a huge rabbit hole on taxes because I, I hate paying them now. Before I was like, to pay Caesar unto Caesar what is his? And now I'm like, oh, I got to pay. like hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, dude. I met with my accountant yesterday and it was a very, very painful meeting. Oh, boy. Boy, yes, taxes. Think about that before you go down this path

because boy, making money is expensive. Yeah, but you know, someone told me this and I like try to, yeah, it was cheesy when he said it, but it's so true. He said like, you know, paying taxes is a good thing. if you're paying taxes, that means you made money. So as much as I want to complain about pending, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on taxes, I'm like, okay. You know, but the plus side is I made the money that is getting me to pay that tax bill. So with that said, though, I've figured out basically how to wipe out taxes. And it said, yeah, it's acquiring luxury real estate. Me and David Green just did a deal. We bought a $3.25 million house in Scottsdale. I'm doing these syndications. I'm, you know, hopefully really going to buy millions of dollars of real

estate this year. And when we do cost aggregation and bonus depreciation and all that stuff, it should not my tax bill down. I'm not going to say 100%, because, you know, I actually do want to show an income on my taxes so I can buy a house like we talked about. But it'll be significant, you know? Yeah, man, 100%. I was, I was recently recording an episode of On the Market and where we were all doing some deal analysis. And you'll be proud of me, Rob, the deal I brought to the table was the first property that I'm buying specifically as an Airbnb. Oh, man. Proud dad over here.

I've never bought one with the purpose of me buying it to be an Airbnb. Now, I have two Airbnbs, but it's a duplex that I had, a long term that I converted. And so this is my first actual Airbnb purchase. So that's the deal I brought to the table. But Jamil brought a deal to the table where he talked about an apartment building that he got a great deal on and Jamil by nature is a is a he's a he's a deal maker he likes to he likes to flip stuff he likes to buy it low sell it high right like it's in everything guy man he's like a rock star freaking hilarious guy he's his ads are i mean i'm an ad guy and i my ad should be good and like

his ads are like insane he does like funny parodies of like lawyer commercials and oh my gosh that guy yeah if you guys haven't listened to the on the market podcast go do yourself a favor because Yeah, that guy, well, you guys both, but, you know, Jamil, we're talking about him right now. And he'll be selfish. Jamil's awesome. Yeah, man. And so he was talking about buying this apartment complex and he could get, he could make $1.2 million on an assignment fee if he assigned that contract. But he also talked about he just had to pay $800,000 in taxes.

And so the benefit to him buying this property wasn't the cash flow. it was going to produce, right? It wasn't the appreciation. It was the, I need a tax shelter. I need something that's going to help me to reduce that tax bill. And so real estate, yes, making money is expensive, but the awesome part about real estate is if you buy the right assets, right, if you use the skills that you've developed to grow and scale your business to where it is now, and then strategically buy the right assets, you can use those assets to kind of help offset that tax bill, just like you instead with acquiring the millions of dollars of Airbnb properties because it's going to do that for you. Yeah. I mean, so this, look, if you want to quit your nine to five job, obviously, like, there's a lot that

we've covered here. But I think one of the biggest watchouts is you have to understand how taxes are going to work and how they change because you've been making, you know, money passively in real estate. And, you know, if you can qualify as a real estate professional, I believe that changes to active. I'm not a, I'm not a CPA. But it changes things for you. and the benefits are astounding if you just nerd out about it. So many people always say that taxes are boring. They're like, oh, yeah, they're boring. And I'm like, no, they're not.

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nine to five job. All right. So for me, this was a really big thing for me. It was very impactful. I call this talking to other quitters. You know, the term quitter is always a bad thing, but it's actually a great thing when you're in this position. Right.

I remember I zoomed with a lot of founders of companies, people who had like seven, eight, nine figure exits, CEOs, you know, just I've met a lot of cool people in my real estate career. And because of YouTube, it's just, it's opened up the door for me. But one thing was in common when I spoke to all of these guys. And they were all like, why are you still working your job? You know, they were like, I see, watch your YouTube channel. You talk about how much you make. You know, you're charging me this much for a consultation. I don't understand why you're still working. You're still working. You know, I don't understand why you're still working. You know, working. And they just, after hearing that so many times in the span of a couple months, I was just like, okay, you know, these guys obviously have figured it out. And, you know, they obviously believe in me more than I believe in myself. Maybe this is something that I have to do. So I think talking to someone else that's been through this, talk to someone else that's quit their nine to five job. Chances are, and I don't know, Henry, if you've met anyone that this didn't work out for, but for me, the quitting your nine to five and going full time at this field or like the thing you love, it usually works out for people usually yeah absolutely i don't know anyone who has who was in this

industry who has left their nine to five and then ended up having to go back um i don't know anybody not not a single person and i did the exact same thing like my wife was like yeah quit and i was like let me go talk to somebody else right so i went and i talked to my buddy my buddy zach he's a he's a he owns storage facility he's a rock star in the storage facility game And he, he's been an entrepreneur as long as I've known him, like full time. And so, uh, I went to him and I was like, like, like, how do you, how do you make this work? I'm thinking about doing it. And he was like, honestly, I thought you should have done this a year ago. Is it everyone said. Right. Right. And I said, you know, I, but it gave me a place to take my fears.

Because what happens a lot with stuff like this, it was the same way when I was getting started in real estate. Like, we have these fears. And a lot of the times they're, they're not really rooted in anything real, right? And so he gave me a place to be able to ask those, those whys, right? Like, and those what ifs. Like, hey, I'm thinking about quitting. I know you did it. Here's a big fear.

Here's my big what if. Like, what if I quit and I can't produce the income that I need to live monthly? What if I quit and, you know, XYZ? And he was able to put some like real life to it because he's lived it. like, what if I quit and, you know, we struggle with the health care. So he was able to help us figure out, like, give me some actionable advice on like, yeah, this is how much it caused. This is what we do for it, right? Here are some other options you might think about. And so talking to quitters was the best thing I could have done as far as getting advice on if this is a good move

or not, because it helped me realize which fears of mine were actual legit fears that I needed to go create a mitigation plan for. And then which fears of mine were just my brain overworking itself for no reason. You know what's really funny. is that it's so easy to see what they saw now that I'm doing it, you know, because to them, they're like, just quit. And I'm like, what do you mean? Just quit. That's so dumb. Why would you say that? And like, now I'm like, whenever people approach me, I'm just like, yeah, just quit. Right. And they're like, what do you mean? It's so dumb. I'm like, look, you're going to figure it out. I actually just had a conversation with a friend who wanted to go full time in photography.

And, you know, he called me, he's like, man, I'm just, I'm thinking about doing it. And I'm at the point where, like, I can't make more money with photography unless I quit my job. And I was like, look, if it's costing you money from photography and that's the only way you can scale, then quit. And even if you make half, like, as long as you can pay your bills with your wife's salary, you know, like they both make pretty good money. I was like, you're going to be fine. And he's like, all right, well, I appreciate it. Like, this was really meaningful. And I was like, yeah, no worries. And then I like, this was two weeks ago. And I met with them like two or three days ago. I was like, yeah, man. So would you end up landing on? He's like, oh, I quit. And I was like, what do you mean you quit? You didn't tell me? You didn't text me? I could talk to you for two hours about this. And, you know, I'm just really happy. for him because I can see it. I think this is a whole mindset thing that you just don't see it in the moment. Actually, a very mind-opening, is that the phrase? Eye-opening. Eye-opening. I open. It opened my mind,

too. You know, an episode of Bigger Pockets that I did that was very eye-opening was the one that we did with Jason Drees. I believe it was episode 601. And that's how eye-opening it was for me. It talked about mindset and just imagining who you were 10 years from now, like thinking of the version of you 10 years from now. And if you can imagine you know, that person, you can just, you know, effectively manifest them in your life. And so, you know, I talk to a lot of people who they make 50,000 or 75 or 100,000. And I'm like, if I ask them, can you make a million dollars this year? They're like, well, what? No. What are you talking about? That's such a dumb question. Where if they ask me, I'm like, heck yeah, I can.

Because, you know, like, I understand that it's all mindset. And like really just believing in yourself goes a long way. So this is a very long tangent to just say, talk to other people that have done it, because I think it's going to be more eye-opening than you think. Absolutely. Second actionable tip here, which we've already sort of covered, but I think it's just develop your multiple streams of income. I really don't want people to dip into the real estate income personally. Like, I want you to grind on that for as long as you can.

That's what you're going to retire on. But you should really be, you know, working on it. Like planting those seeds, watering those seeds. And for me, my side income now is, you know, I do mentorship. I do coaching, content creation. I've got affiliates. This is a very easy one. You can go make a YouTube channel and you can say,

hey, I'm going to review this item right here. And if people click that link, you'll get a 3% commission on it if it's like an Amazon product. Like, it's crazy. Like, you can make six figures doing this. You can make six figures just promoting other products. A lot of people just don't want to do it because it's like hard work, but you can do that.

Airbnb was my side hustle for a long time. Now it's my front hustle, if you will. For you, I know that's probably like it's like multifamily. You did that for a long time. And then the like a side income, I think that's like very actionable because a lot of people like, well, what if I don't have money? Partnerships. Partner with people. OPM.

Other people's money. They will pay for your portfolio if you can pitch yourself and if you have a track record of doing this, the proof of concept that we talked about. Yeah, 100%. You can go get a side hustle within the real estate space. right? You can go be a bird dog find deals and partner with somebody. You can go out and and dude, there's so many ways to make money right now with just your phone that it's insane. And so you don't have to know exactly what that side hustle is right now. And so like a little mindset for everybody, just tell yourself, I'm going to find a side hustle that produces X amount of income for

me per month. And just write that down. Like say that to yourself three times in the morning. And I promise you as you're browsing Instagram, as you're listening to this podcast, as you're listening to some other podcast, you will overhear someone say, this thing is cool or this technology is cool. And then you'll be like, that's it. That's the side hustle that I can do. Because Rob's 100% right. There's YouTube channels. There's people that have YouTube channels that just upload like calming sounds and make six figures a month. Like it's it's crazy. Is that the path you should take? I have no idea, right? There's there's opportunities for you to just do affiliate sales for products that already exist. There's literally the websites you can go to right now, pick some products and start promoting it as an

affiliate and you'll get 50% of the sales from it. Like you just have to figure out as you start to research side hustle, something's going to stand out to you and then dive into it. Yeah, actually this gets into my next tip here, which is I think this is a big one. And it's, it just helps you visualize it. You know, we think about all these side hustles and they're always in the ether of our head. I think you actually need to put pen to paper and literally map out three financial scenarios. Good, better, best. Hey, here's what I make from side hustles or here's what I make for my job. If I want to keep doing that and sort of wean myself off and here's what I make from real estate. And actually, I just searched for this on my computer. And again, in the name of transparency,

I sort of just want to read you what I mapped out. My good, better, and best case scenario. All right. So conservatively, I was like, all right, if I just kind of just do what I'm doing, if I just quit my job, I can get to $23,000 a month or $276,000 a year. That was like, if I really just mail it in, that's what I'm going to make. My medium case scenario, I really, you know, I put time into this and I foster all of these different things and I really just put time and effort into it. I can go. up to $35,700 a month, which is a yearly salary of $428,000. And then in my best case scenario, I was like, all right, if I just totally crushed this, I'll make $38,500 a month, which is $462,000 a year.

But the big difference on that best case scenario is that $462,000 paycheck that I was working towards actually was if I quit my job, what I could make. And, you know, I obliterated it. Like, I just totally, like, I met those goals by far. And just putting them on paper and mapping out how I was going to make that helped me out so much, man. It was just like seeing it and being like, wow. And it really helped me believe in myself because that was really going off of money that I was already making. So it wasn't really that crazy. So I was just like, all right.

So now let me just do like a little growth plan. And fast forward to today, I just did that last week. And it's really crazy. It is really, it's like so crazy to just map out what's possible next year. And I would never have seen that. I would never have a number to work towards had I not just jotted it out. It's very unofficial. It's just literally income stream one, two, three.

If I open up this Airbnb, if I grow my channel by 20%, if I grow my affiliates by this, if I, you know, just those simple steps really were eye opening for me. And I was really motivated to just beat the numbers that I set forth for myself. What about you? Did you map out anything like that? or like, were you just kind of like, ah, I'm good. So I've always been a ready, fire, aim kind of guy,

wrong, or indifferent. But I did want to make sure that I highlight for people, how amazing of a tip that is. Because as you were saying it, I was like, that's brilliant. I should have done something like that. And then as you continued to talk, my next thought was like, do it now.

You're looking to hire somebody. Do your good, better, and best scenario for hiring that person. What kind of volume do we think it can do? your business to get deals closed if you don't hire the person, like stay the course, right? How much do you think you can grow deals per month? Right. If you hire the person, how much you think you can grow deals per month and then you subtract whatever that income is from what you're currently making, right? And then give a base case scenario. If you hire a rock star,

right, and you pay them more, how many deals do you think they can do per month? And that might help open my eyes and ease that pain of having to figure out how to, you know, should you go out and hire this person to do that thing. So I'm about, I'm about to steal it and use it right now. Great advice. Yeah, I mean, I think even with just hiring someone, like, just like what you're talking about, the worst case scenario is maybe you lose a little bit of money and they didn't perform, but you got your time back. So that's not really that bad of a scenario. A pretty good, like a medium case would be, you just break even, which is still awesome because they're doing the work and you get your time back. And then best case scenario is they make you money. You know what I mean?

Right. You know, for the most part, I think you can, you know, if you're a good manager and you know how to train people and you can mentor them, you know, someone told me, because I was like talking about hiring people and I was like, yeah, I need to delegate. And actually, I think it was David Green. I'll give him the credit on this because he's awesome. He was like, no, no, it's not about delegating. It's about developing. Develop people and develop loyal people. And, you know, they're more than likely going to produce for you.

Absolutely. 100%. Yeah. So basically, you know, hit me up if you need a job. No, I'm just kidding. DMs are about to get alone. Okay, so last couple of tips here. I'm going to just breeze over this one because I already said it, but buy real estate before you quit your nine to five job.

Like, if you got a house that you're thinking about or a second home, like my dad was about to retire and I was like, all right, let's buy the Airbnb. And then you can quit. He's like, great. And he's like, hey, I ended up retiring. So let's just buy the Airbnb anyways. I'm like, we can't. You don't have an income anymore, dad.

So I think it's very important. Yeah, try to close on that house or that Airbnb or that multifamily or whatever. whatever, because your journey to financing is about to be a little tough. And then last one here, give yourself an end date for your career. This is effectively why I didn't quit for so long. I had meant to quit in October of 2020. I didn't quit until April 2021, which I think is about six months. And it's just because I kept putting it off.

I was just like, I can't, I can't. I don't know. And then I think, you know, eventually I was like, all right, April 7th, I'm quitting. You know, that's it. That's going to be the day. I'm going to give it two weeks from now and I'm going to do it. And my wife was like, great, finally. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do it. You can't stop me. Yeah, I don't want to stop you. And I'm like, just try, bud. Just try. She's like, dude, just quit. And so I gave myself that end date. And guess what? I quit on that end date. And my life has changed in a really positive way ever since. Yeah. And it's, it's almost like a mindset thing, right? Because if you set that date in the future and you now have that date planted in your head. head, you're going to start preparing for that date. And by the time it comes, you should be more prepared, right, to make that transition. And then if you're not, you mean, you can move the date. Like, you're not like it's not the end of the world. But just from a preparation standpoint,

like if you listen to this, you take down these, these tips and these things and you start to, you give yourself a date. Now you've given yourself essentially a timeline to start to prepare yourself and implement these things. And then by the time you get there, you've just. made your transition into full-time entrepreneurship that much easier. Yeah, yeah. And you know what? Just a little bonus onto that. Tell if you're serious about it, tell other people.

You know, like not, you probably don't want to tell your coworker, but, you know, tell your best friend, tell your mom, tell your dad. Don't tell your boss. Don't tell your boss. But tell people your close friends, hey, I'm quitting on April 7th, you know, just say that because guess what? They're probably going to check in on you on April 7th. Right.

And so it's on you to really kind of, you know, if you want that extra bit of accountability if you're like, dang it, I shouldn't have, you know, said that. And that, you know, like on my YouTube channel, I do that all the time. I just put out huge lofty goals because I'm like, dude, if I tell 180,000 people that I'm going to like make this much or I'm going to buy this. I'm going to do that. I kind of have to because I don't want to let them down. So I'm always just like throwing goals. I think there's a big argument to be made that you shouldn't tell people your goals. But, you know, like that's a whole other episode probably. But I think if you put it out there, then you, it's up there. You know, you don't want to go back on your work.

I know. I thought it was totally crazy when you were like Henry on July 17th. I'm going to give you a million dollars. And I was crazy. I was like, I got to do it though. I got to say that. I'm going to do it on that day. You just wait. You just watch that Venmo, pal. Here's a problem, though. Venmo is like it only gives you $2,000 at a time. So it's going to take a little while to actually get it to you. I'll live with that. But that's it, man. I think I don't know. Do you? You have anything else, any other prolific thoughts that you want to leave with? Yeah. So I just want to tell people like, we're not saying nine to fives are terrible, quit your nine to five right now. What we're saying is that if you're on this path because you want to get out of your nine to five, we want to help you strategically do that by sharing our experience with you. Like we're literally living this right now, like almost in the same weird time. Yeah, I know.

And so yeah, we're not, we're not, we're not bashing nine to fives in any way. Mine, I tell people that my nine to five was my first investor in my real estate business. I wouldn't have been able to grow and scale to the point that I got to as quickly as I did. If I didn't have that nine to five there helping to, to keep me bankable, helping to keep me liquid enough to be able to go by properties, helping to fund my emergency fund for if things broke on properties. And so like my job was my investor in my real estate business and helped me get to where I needed to be. Just keep in mind that if you're on this path to quit your job, that you need to keep what you're doing in focus. And keep that scorecard, that running scorecard. Like people say as an investor, you should keep your scorecard of your personal financial statement.

Right. So you track your net worth. I think you should also track your hourly rate. Like the more money you start to make from sidehustle, the things you should continue to update that hourly rate and kind of keep that in front of you so you can see where you might hit that threshold of like, all right, it might be time to start thinking about transitioning over from one to the other. Yeah. Yeah. That is all. Dude, I mean, that's that's gold right there, man. I don't really have much to add to that. I think you're exactly right. Like, we're not saying

nine to five is bad. Please don't, don't take anything we say that. I actually loved my job. I genuinely loved advertising. The only reason I left was because, well, a couple. I wasn't really that good at it, if I'm being honest. I was good, but I wasn't ever going to be great. And I'm okay with that. I mean, I quit for a reason, right? But I was really, I had the opportunity to be great at Airbnb. I had the opportunity to be great at real estate, to be a great content creator. I knew that I could get there and that I can get there still. I'm still working towards that because I'm good at this stuff and I love this stuff. And because I was actually having success here, it just made me realize that I couldn't do it for other people because I wanted to do it for myself so that I could, you know, help people in my

network, help my mom, my dad, like pay for their retirement, my brother-in-law, my sisters, like, my kids, like, I really started to understand that if I could do this for myself and I could do it well, everyone in my family, in my direct influence, like I could change lives and help everyone, you know, live a better life. So nothing wrong with nine to five. Do it for as long as you possibly can be into terrible employee. Get fired. No, just kidding. Don't do that. Like, do it for as long as you need to. I always say that, like, there is no right or wrong. There's just what's right for you. So that might mean that you're going to quit in five years. And that is okay. It doesn't have to be today. In fact, it shouldn't be today if you haven't been working on it. But it could be next year.

It could be in two years or three years. It's like whatever just, it just, it just, depends on your personal situation. So I've got nothing against the nine to five. Do it for as long as you need to. And I promise you like, if your goal is to become a full-time real estate investor, it's going to happen. Amen. And you're going to be so glad you did. When I had that conversation with my buddy who was a full-time entrepreneur, he told me, essentially what he told me who was like, you should have already done it. You should do it today. And if you do it today, when we talk a year from now, you're going to tell me it's the best decision you ever made. Yeah. And you probably told him that the day you quit for me. He's not wrong. Well, awesome, man. Well, I think that's it for today.

You know, I would typically do like the try to do a David Green ending call sign here, but I butchered it the last time we did this. So I'm just going to say goodbye. Oh, actually, before we go, where can people find you online, man? Yeah, best place to reach me is Instagram at the Henry Washington. Same thing on TikTok. And you can check me out at Henry Washington.com. Cool. You can find me at Raw Built on Instagram, Rob built on YouTube. I don't know. I said Instagram first. YouTube is my main love. Find me on YouTube, Rob Built, R-O-B-U-I-L-T, or TikTok at Rob Bilto. But with that, we will catch you guys on the next episode of BiggerPock.

Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. copywriting is by Calicoe Content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter,

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or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast. I'm going to be the next.