Note investing can be a powerful tool for building wealth. But can you reap the most rewards if you are busy with a full-time job? Chris Seveney is here to share practical and actionable tips on pulling this off. He talks about the right approach to time management, how to properly leverage technology to your advantage, and why you should build a balanced portfolio. He also explains how to give your all in note investing without sacrificing well-being and becoming burned out.

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Note Investing Success: How To Balance Real Estate With Full-Time Work

Introduction

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the show. I’m going to talk about a topic near and dear to my heart, which is balancing note investing or real estate investing with a full-time job. For those that don’t know, I’ll share a little story about me. I have always been in real estate. I started my career in the late ‘90s, working for a large commercial contractor as a project manager. When people ask, “What did you do?” I always would joke, “I’m the guy in the white shirt and tie on a construction site with that goofy hard hat that looks like they do nothing.” That was furthest from the case because we did all the behind-the-scenes management of that project. I did that for fifteen years.

I worked for real estate developers for about another ten years. I ran a multifamily division. I ran a family office portfolio. Always being in real estate is my full-time job. When I started my side hustle in real estate, I had that experience. I look at it from the perspective of I had the tools, the contacts, and everything in between to be able to succinctly and easily move into having my own portfolio.

I want to start by acknowledging that there are a lot of challenges when managing your investments alongside not only a demanding career, but also family, like being a good spouse, being a good parent, and being a good friend. It’s hard. I’ll also say that people probably spend a lot of time relaxing or resting their brain on things like the TV or the internet and death scrolling. If you took some of that time and transferred it over to education, it’s amazing how life-changing it can be.

 

For me, that’s what happened. Up until I was in my late 30s when I started getting involved in real estate, I worked my butt off 60-plus hours a week. I’d come home and spend time with the kids, the wife, and so forth. I was exhausted, so what I’d do is lie down, turn on something on the TV, maybe a movie that I probably saw 700 times, and veg out.

I wasn’t reading books. I wasn’t educating myself. I wasn’t doing myself any better. I was falling into the area of, “I’m going to be a full-time job guy and not have a side career.” I’m a Gen Xer. A lot of Gen Xers follow that. Gen Zs, Millennials, and I don’t even know what the other ones are called are learning that people have side hustles because working from 9:00 to 5:00 or what I say the 40/40/40 rule, which is 40 hours a week for 40 years for 40% of your income, is not going to get you very far.

Why Real Estate And Note Investing Offer Flexibility

When you’re doing this dual commitment, you have to acknowledge the time and the mental energy required for both. The three-legged stool is work, family, and your side hustle. It’s interesting because when people say, “Why real estate?” or, “Why note investing for yourself?” For me, especially note investing, has potential for income and wealth-building and it’s active but it’s also manageable where many of the things in note investing don’t have strict time restrictions on them. There are deadlines but there are not typically deadlines where all hell can break loose.

The most important feature for me and for most people is flexibility in managing investments remotely. You can do note investing anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection, which is pretty much everywhere, compared to traditional real estate. You can still do real estate but it’s a little harder, and here’s why. People ask, “How can you do it anywhere?” When you’re a lender, you can’t knock on someone’s door and say, “Let me come see the inside of your house.” Based on that, you send somebody by the property to take photos of the property. When you’re bidding on assets, there’s typically a deadline. It’s not a first come, first serve. That’s why for me, the flexibility for note investing made that dual commitment easier.

You can do note investing anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. Share on X

You’re like, “That’s great, but what are some of the challenges? You make it sound too easy.” Trust me, I am not. There are a ton of common pain points for investors who have full-time jobs. One is time management, finding the hours for the research, and the due diligence to follow up. It’s like anything when you’re trying to educate yourself. You can’t do it for 1 week, take 2 months off, and kick back into it. You need to be consistent. It’s like working out. You can’t work out for a week, come back a month later, and think, “I’m going to be back where I was.” You’re probably starting over again. That’s probably the best analogy I can think of. It’s the consistency of getting up every day and setting time to do those things.

Life happens. There’s the stress of managing unexpected issues in every facet of life. In work, somebody leaves and you have to take over someone else’s role. Issues arise at work where project deadlines or things happen with family. We get sick, vacation, kids’ new sports, time changes, and all of those things. In note investing, let’s say you’re doing performing loans. They go non-performing. You have dual-income borrowers. You got property repairs. There are many different things where life happens in every situation or scenario.

By Murphy’s Law, they all happen at the same time and then you feel overwhelmed. You’re like, “I can’t do this.” When people get overwhelmed and can’t do this, what do they do? A lot of times, they crawl up into a ball, get analysis paralysis, and do nothing. That is the worst thing you can do because you’ve got your family to take care of, your job, and your investments.

How did I do it? At a point in time, I was managing a full-time job plus 200 assets, so I was really rocking and rolling. With our company, we have fewer assets and I have more staff. I realized I couldn’t do it all and I wasn’t the best at everything I did. I have investor relations people who are much better at that than me. I have capital-raising people who are much better than me. I have people who can manage the day-to-day aspect of the assets who can do it better than me. Let me focus on what I’m really good at, which is growing the business and the vision.

Importance Of Time Management And Organization

When you’re doing all three without any help, it’s very difficult to do that but it can be done. How is that done? We talked about consistency. You have to be consistent, but really, it boils down to time management. Fortunately, or unfortunately, being an engineer, we plan everything. We schedule everything. Many times, we’re very good at time management. I block dedicated times for investment tasks.

I used to joke that I was a midnight investor. My wife is somebody who likes to go to bed a little earlier. I would stay up after that and work on investments. I would bid on assets at night when it’s nice and quiet. I would reach out to the servicers and schedule emails to go off the next day. Use task management tools and prioritize tasks. There’s so much software out there. Maybe you’re using Gmail with things like Yanado. Outlook has a To Do, Planner, and Loop. There are all of these task management tools that easily allow you to customize, prioritize, and track progress.

Besides time management, one of the other most important features is being organized. One of the things that I am is an inbox zero person. I go to my inbox zero every single day. When I let people know that, the other thing I let people know, “If you messaged me something on Facebook Message, if you messaged me on WhatsApp, if you text messaged me, if you used Slack, if you used Signal, or if you messaged me on LinkedIn or any other way, there is a highly likely chance it’s going to be a while before I respond.” I tell people that. I’m like, “If you want a response from me, you email me.”

Email, for me, has very strict rules that I get to everything every day. That’s my focus. When I get ten text messages, I forget about them and don’t check text messages every day. I might read it and I might forget about it because I’m like, “I got to get back to that person. My main focus has been on email, calendar, time blocking, and time management. I also let people know that.

If someone texts me, I’ll message them back. There’s one note investor who sends me assets all the time and he texts them to me. I said, “If you want a response from me, I’m not trying to be a jerk, but email me this information because I’m going to forget about this in about 20 minutes and find it 3 weeks later the next time you text me.” That’s 1/2 of it.

We talk a little bit about embracing technology as well as part of any business. For note investors, there’s Propstream and DataTree. There are note calculators. There are other real estate apps for property valuation, cashflow tracking, and automating recurring tasks like bill payments and expense tracking. Technology can really be helpful. The issue with technology is there’s so much of it. Which ones do you use? Which ones work and which ones don’t work?

The reality is they all work. What works for me may not work for you. I switched from Gmail over to Microsoft because that’s what I was used to in my W-2 career. I found it more accustomed to what I wanted. I am a creature of habit. My schedule is pretty consistent every single day. When that gets thrown out of kilter,  my brain starts going off. It’s important to use technology and embrace it.

There is so much technology today. What works for you may not work for other people. Share on X

Another is leveraging your professional services in regard to the teams you work with. For note investing as an example, you want to work with servicers to handle day-to-day borrow issues and payment processing. I see some people try and service their own loans. Some people will try and sell a property to take back all by themselves. Get an agent. Have somebody else handle that. Outsource your legal. Outsource your title reviews, especially when you’re acquiring notes. For people who own real estate, hire a reliable property manager for your rental properties. Trust me, you’ll be amazed at how much time it saves you. That’s another factor as well.

Some other ways I see people do is some people do focus on passive strategies. People realize that they don’t have the time to make a full commitment. For example, there are note investing funds that reduce hands-on involvement. I recorded an episode about passive versus active investing in real estate. People are better off focusing on turnkey properties or partnering with an experienced investor buying Class A areas versus Class C because they’re probably going to have better luck from that standpoint.

The other secret sauce that I hinted at but I want to talk more about is prioritizing education and using downtime to listen to things like podcasts, attending webinars, and reading articles. There was a football game on. I had it on but I also was on YouTube watching a webinar on something that I found intriguing. I love football and I love watching football, but it was two teams that I was not highly rooting for one or the other.

 

It was on in the background and you can see what’s going on, but I could still pay attention to the webinar and learn things. If something cool happened in football, I could pause it, look up, and see what happens or there’s always going to be a replay. Multitask and use that time to lie down. Listen to a podcast before you go to sleep instead of scrolling in front of a blue light that won’t land you in your sleep.  Others engage in communities of like-minded investors. BiggerPockets is an example. Many people are on Reddit. There’s ORRA. There are places where you can find communities for people to get more education and learning.

You’ve decided to jump in like I did. You’ve got all this stuff and you’re working all of this. One of the mistakes that I see people make once they make this leap is they don’t create a balanced portfolio to diversify spread risk among the tasks. For example, I’d always recommend in notes a balance between performing and non-performing notes. Diversify across. If you’re real estate, maybe that could be different asset types or locations. It could be single-family in different locations. That diversification also typically means more work.

Common Mistakes In Scaling Investments

The biggest mistake I see people make is they scale too quickly. I remember in college in our fraternity, somebody made a comment like, “Start small, think big.” You want to start small but have that big mindset, but understand you can’t get to that top of the mountain immediately. I see people either leave their job too early, which is a common theme because they think they got it, or they might have some early success, especially when somebody is looking to raise money to bring in some additional capital.

The biggest mistake people make in note investing is scaling too quickly. Share on X

What I mean by that is they’re doing their notes and it’s going well. They go and start a fund and raise $1 million. I had this and raised $1 million. I was like, “That was pretty easy.” It’s because of people who knew you, friends and family. All of a sudden, you try to raise $5 million and you realize, “I can’t do it. It’s not working. I’m stuck. I hit a glass ceiling of $1 million.”

I know one investor on the West Coast who did that. All of a sudden, he was like, “Uh-oh,” because they left their job. They ended up having to find another job. They probably really liked the job they were in but were like, “I want to take a risk on this,” and went for something else. You have to be careful about that. Start small. Scale gradually. Ignore all of the noise around of, “It’s easy. You should get into multifamily right off the bat. You should do this.” You don’t know what you don’t know. Keep your balanced portfolio, manage your risk, and grow at a pace you’re comfortable with.

We’ll wrap up this episode. The thing that I wanted to highlight overall is what caused the most stress and challenges would be, at times, lack of time. You’d still time block but there is a stress of unexpected borrower and property issues. Things come up and you feel rushed. Feeling rushed puts additional stress. Even though I could solve it by time blocking and using servicers, legal teams, property managers, and all the automation, it’s a solution but it still doesn’t take away that stress. You need to make sure you manage all those consultants.

The mindset for success that people need, and if this is the one takeaway for people from this episode, is to acknowledge that time is your most valuable asset. It’s not money. You can always get more money. If somebody finds a way to get more time, then that’s awesome. Remember that. Time is your most valuable asset.

I recommend people be proactive about learning not only about the trades or what they want to be involved in, but the systems that can save them time and reduce stress as well. At the end of the day, it boils down to time management and outsourcing technology to allow you to focus. If you can do it and do it right, it will end up relieving stress and relieve some of that financial strain and set you up in the future to be better off. Balancing a full-time job and investing is challenging, but with the right tools and the right mindset, you can build wealth without burnout. For those tuning in, I’d love to know if you’re going down this path.

Share Your Journey And Tools With The Community

Share your journey with us, the community on our Facebook group and on LinkedIn. Also, if somebody has got any tool or something they use that they’ve implemented that has helped them greatly in their business, leave it in the comments. Thanks for tuning in to the show. As always, leave us a review, follow us on YouTube, and follow us on your favorite station. Take care, everyone. I’ll catch you on the next one.

 

Important Links

• Active Investing Vs. Passive Investing: Understanding The Pros And Cons
• Christopher Seveney’s LinkedIn Page
• 7E Investments – YouTube
• Creating Wealth Simplified through Note Investing – Facebook Group