Is Your Real Estate Investing Business Just Another Job?

Many real estate investors get into the investing game because they want to quit their job and end the tedious 9-5 grind of the rat race.

They see investing as a way to replace their wage with cash-flowing rental income so they can quit their job and walk away from the 9-5 corporate grind. They hear the “be your own boss” and “achieve financial freedom” benefits of investing and it sounds so much better than what they’re enduring buried in a beige “cubicle farm” on the fifteenth floor of some big corporation.

Unfortunately, even if an investor is able to quit their job, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have instantly achieved the freedom they want. Quitting your job for real estate investing does not instantly solve all the problems you faced in your job: Many investors make this critical error when building their portfolio – they simply trade one job (their corporate one) for another (running their investment business).

If you’re a real estate investor, take this simple test to find out if you’ve traded one job for another: Ask yourself what would happen if you took a week off from investing. If your business would grind to a halt and nothing would get done then you have a job. However, if it keeps going without you, you have a business.

These can be harsh words for an investor to hear. After all, they took a big leap out of the rat race and suddenly they discover that they still have a job… just a different one.

Of course, it might be enough that you’re working for yourself instead of someone else. The freedom to be your own boss is a reward in itself, even if you are still putting in regular “working hours” just to keep your new “investing job” moving forward.

But it should only be the beginning.

Think of this “investing job” as the first step toward greater things – a walk-before-you-can-run approach to investing. If you’re frustrated with the realization that you’re still grinding it out in a 9-5 “job”, that’s okay because it can change. Just like when you learned to walk, you quickly gained your balance and (thankfully) you don’t walk today like you did when you took your first unsteady steps.

You will continue to evolve: Chances are, you’ve been stuck in the 9-5 mentality for so long that it seems natural to just do the same thing as an investor. So you need to realize that you can invest without it being a job.

Later, you start to realize that many of the actions you’re doing can be done by someone else while you focus on the higher value (and more fun!) aspects of investing.

So if you’re investing in real estate right now and realize that you’ve just traded one job for another, don’t worry. You’ve taken the first few steps into the investing world. Strive to evolve out of this “investing job” and into an investing business.

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