It’s relatively easy to wake up in the morning, go to a job where your day is mostly planned out for you, then go home, and collect a pay check every two weeks. It’s not so easy when you have to create your own plan for every day, face rejection on a regular basis from prospects, friends and family, not necessarily get paid anything for all of it at the end of the week, and still have the gumption to press on the next week.
Therefore, I think the ideal way for people to start in real estate who lack a substantial financial “safety net” is starting part-time. Working part-time allows someone to take as much time as necessary to test the real estate waters, learn how to swim and find out if it’s really for them. They can take all the time they need to work their way up to a consistent income level approaching or matching their day job where they can feel confident about quitting their job and doing real estate full time successfully for the long term. They can also take as much time as necessary to learn the real estate business. Above all, during this time they can afford to make far more mistakes and recover than if they dove into real estate full-time right off the bat. We all know we learn the most from our mistakes. How much better it is to make mistakes and change our ways accordingly rather than have our mistakes discourage us enough psychologically or cost us enough money to drive us out of business and into unemployment.
How much better it is for someone to find out real estate is not the business for them while having maintained their day job throughout. Imagine how much disruption quitting your day job could cause in your life if real estate didn’t work out for you. You’d be unemployed and facing one of the worst employment markets we’ve seen in decades. Imagine how much strife this would cause for people with families and bills to pay.
The nay sayers to part-timers are often among the people who blame everyone but themselves for their problems. It’s not as if being a full time professional indicates you are necessarily a model of real estate professionalism and expertise! It’s certainly a myth to think anyone who is a full-timer is necessarily the opposite of a part-timer: highly active, expert in real estate, and sweating blood to get every new deal.
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