Wow, your story is a simmering hot duplicate of mine, apart from abandoning the family business.
I was heading for a different career direction myself, and then realized I was going the wrong direction. However, that diversion helped me define which direction I actually wanted to go, which was back into real estate.
My family was willing to advise me, and I did borrow money from them, but…
I can say with some authority that you just did what you had to do, and figured out that wasn’t actually what you wanted for yourself, and so you adjusted. No problem. Life is all about new directions and choices. Just look at Donald Trump. I mean talk about abrupt changes in the course of ones life…
Meantime, you’re not in trouble, and the world hasn’t passed you by.
Most investors don’t understand the importance, or appreciate the value, of investing in real estate until their forties, if they ever do invest.
And statistically speaking most people don’t reach their stride until their fifties…
This happens for a variety of reasons including indulging chasing women, raising kids, grinding away at jobs for security purposes, and just not being familiar with real estate investing itself, and not being motivated enough, or having enough energy enough to learn.
All that said, my first advice is to keep your day job. Very few people have the ability or willingness to dedicate themselves to full time investing. Frankly, strict real estate investing is RARELY a full-time effort.
Merchandising, however, can be. And that’s what you’re talking about, if I understand your post. That’s fine.
I still say, keep your day job, until you’re able to transition reasonably into your new career.
Merchandising real estate can be done successfully part time, and later scaled up …rather quickly, once you’ve overcome inertia and developed momentum. And quite frankly, once you’ve scaled up to where you can delegate the processes to a team, then you’re on your way to being an owner of a business, not just a business operator.
Let me say, too that this business can be as simple or complicated as you decide to make it. Some investors get extraordinarily anal retentive about details, while others operate so loosely you wonder how in the world they tie their shoes without help, and remain successful.
Meantime, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to how to make the transition, except that you’ve got to treat this like a business, not a hobby (regardless of how fast you move forward).
Meantime again, you want a ‘win’ as fast as you can, to build momentum, and overcome inertia.
The fastest way I know is to first establish an income goal, a time-table to reach that goal, and allowing for no alternatives other than to reach that goal.
It makes no difference what the goal is, or how ‘reasonable’ it is, or not. Your mind can’t tell the difference anyway, and will immediately start working to give you ideas, inspiration, and insights on how to accomplish whatever you tell yourself you want to accomplish. Test this.
So what you aimed for the moon, and only got half-way? How many others are around you, half-way to the moon? Not many, I’ll guess.
Assuming you have your basic paperwork together, define what is a marketable deal to merchandise. Then find 2500 absentee suspects with lots of equity; send them a fugly postcard every two months; and never stop. It makes no difference what you send. The suspect is either motivated, or not, and you’re looking to catch them when they become motivated.
The suspects will become familiar with your fugly postcards, and stack them in the kitchen drawer, so by the time they call you, you’re the only one they can think to call. And when the suspect gets another high-grass fine from the city/county, suddenly your interest in buying their house is ‘interesting’ to them.
Yay for being the early bird that catches the worm, just in time, with a fugly postcard. Prepare to answer the suspect’s calls live.
Gotta go.
P.S. Treat the first nine months worth of your actions as training practice, rather than setting yourself up for failure with a do-or-die mentality. Otherwise, plan on blowing five-thousand dollars making mistakes during the training. Or consider buying some of the education courses offered here, that promise to mitigate some of your initial training losses.
P.S.S. Have courage to buy wholesaling training. Cultivate a prosperity mentality, unlike the average schmuck whom agonizes over whether to spend $1,000 learning how to do something, or not. I’ve spent $3000 on one course, that was mainly review for me, but came away with one tid-bit I haven’t found anywhere else that had made me multiple times what that course costs. Never mind the thousand of dollars I already spent learning the basics. Education is an investment, not an expense.
Really gotta go.