Learn How To Quit Your Job Only After Your First Two Deals Build A One-Year Runway

We map a clear path to leave a 9–5 and go full-time in real estate using a simple salary system, strict discipline, and smart rentals. Close two deals, build a cash runway, avoid risky credit, and scale into permanent cash flow.

• framing the top question: how to go full-time
• Dwan’s story of hardship, resolve and early mistakes
• why credit card funded quitting is dangerous
• the two-deal runway and $1,000 weekly pay
• doubling pay after four deals and holding discipline
• targeted debt payoff from new profits
• buying cash-flow rentals in affordable markets
• keeping salary stable while assets grow
• out-of-state investing with managers and vendors
• resisting lifestyle creep and staying on budget
• case study of rapid freedom through focus
• simple, repeatable steps for the first two years

Subscribe to the podcast, give me a five-star review, watch these on YouTube, share them, take my webinars, take my workshops, get involved with me, take my real estate investing quiz at dwonderful.com. Let's do a strategy session. I will change your finances if you will just let me do it.

Transcript

Welcome And Big Question Framed

Dwan Bent-Twyford 0:47

Hey everybody. Welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Dwan Bent-Twyford. I'm America's most sought-after real estate investor, and I have got such a great show for you today. Uh, one of the biggest questions I get asked, and I mean I've been asked this question thousands of times, is how do I transition from a part-time investor into a full-time investor? Because everyone, most of the people, I can't say everyone, most of the people that start, they do a deal here and a deal there, and they're trying to work towards possibly making this a full-time career, and they've got to make that transition from that 40-hour a week job into being a full-time real estate investor. So we're gonna talk about that. So my name is Dwan, and I took Dwan and Wonderful and made Dwanderful, Dwanderful. So I want you to go to my website, Dwanderful, D-W-A-N-D-E-R-F-U-L, Duunderful.com. I want you to take my real estate investing quiz. And then after you take the real estate and questing biz, I want you to uh the quiz. I want you to click the button and make an appointment to do a 45-minute strategy call with me. And it will be me. I will pick up the phone, I will talk to you. We'll have a 45-minute strategy session and see if I can help get you rolling in the right direction. No strings attached, no pressure, no nothing. Just spend 45 minutes with me. I almost guarantee you, I guarantee, if you'll just listen, I can change your life that you have going on right now. So, how do you make the transition from maybe uh if you're a couple, you both work, you have kids, you're like uh the soccer mom, the baseball, the lily, you have all this stuff going on. You want to I don't, I barely have you know two hours a week to even start investing. Or maybe you're in a situation right now where you're like, hey, I just got laid up on my job. I don't have um, I've got all the time in the world. I can just jump right in 40, 50, 60 hours a week. You know, we're all in different situations. As you know, when I started, I was married, I had an eight-month-old baby. Her dad and I separated really unexpectedly. So now I'm a single mom with an eight-month-old child. I had my car repossessed, I lost my house and foreclosure. It was a very difficult and dark time for me, but I knew one thing. The thing I knew above all else is I wanted to raise my daughter myself. I wanted to be the Girl Scout mom, the cookie mom, the field trip mom. I wanted to do, I put a disco ball in my house. I wanted to have the friends and the family and bought a boat and you know, all those things. I mean, obviously, because of the investing. No, I didn't start off with any of that. I lost all my stuff and put on my big girl pants and decided, you know what? I gotta make this happen. If I want to live the dream I planned, I'm gonna have to do it for myself. I was not gonna be able to do it with my husband, ex, obviously. And so I started off being able to go in full-time just because I was living on credit cards, which I'm not gonna recommend that you do it that way, but that's how I had to start. I didn't really have any other choices. So I made it happen. But now let's just say you or you and your spouse, or you and a partner, or just you by yourself, you're like, hey, you know what? I really would like to be a full-time investor, but I work, I have this, I have that. I've only got Saturdays, or I've got a couple hours in the evening. How do I make that transition? How do I make that happen? Well, first of all, you have to get started. So you've got to find a deal and you've got to get that deal closed. Okay. So let's just say I'm gonna uh use some easy numbers here. Let's just say you've listened to all my podcasts, you were on my gold mine half a day workshop, you've listened to my trifecta, you've been listening and learning. You're like, okay, I'm ready, Juan. I'm ready to jump in and I'm gonna get this ball rolling. So the thing that most people want to do is when they close their first deal, they want to pay off a bunch of bills. They want to pay off credit cards, they want to pay off their car, they want to pay stuff off. So I'm here to tell you do not do that. In fact, I've been to a bunch of workshops with people who I won't name, but they're a lot of HGTV type people, and they'll tell you right there, you'll go to like a live workshop at a hotel or something, and they'll they'll help you get like $200,000 in credit cards, and they'll say, quit your job right now, take this money off these credit cards, and become a full-time investor. That is the worst advice anybody could ever give you. Please, I am begging you for the love of God, do not do that. I've seen so many people get all these credit cards that they somehow get them all pre-approved. Next thing you know, you walk out with $200,000 in credit cards, you quit your job, and in a few months, you're filing bankruptcy. So don't do that. Okay? It's the very worst thing that you could do. So here's how I'm gonna have you do it. Let's say you wholesale a property, you found a property using the methods I gave you, you wholesaled it to a rehabber and you made $25,000. Put that money in the bank. Yes. Don't spend any of it, put it in the bank, and then let's say you close a second deal and you make $25,000 again. Put it in the bank. Okay, so now you have $50,000 in the bank. And we're just again, I'm just gonna use basic math. You may need more to live on, you may need less, but let's just say you have $50,000 cash and you can live on a thousand dollars a week. That's what you get right now. You you take home a thousand dollars a week. So you call your boss, you put in your two-hour notice. No, I'm just kidding, put in your two-week notice, leave with integrity, because it'll follow you down the road. And you put in your two-week notice, and you're like, okay, I have $50,000 in the bank. I take home $1,000 every Friday. So you're gonna put yourself on a budget. And listen, I've done this with thousands of people. This is honestly one of my superpowers is to get you out of your job and into investing full-time. So let's just say right now you're spending uh 10 hours a week. I'm writing all this down to make sure I come back to the same numbers, and you're putting in 10 hours a week or five. You close a deal, you close the second deal, but now you've got you've got $50,000 in the bank and you make $1,000 a week. So you've got 50 weeks of income. You have 50 weeks of income. So now you put in your two-hour your see, I made a joke. You put in your two-week notice, and then that first week that you're home, you get up and you start working the same 40 hours a week that you work right now. So you're putting in 40 hours a week as a real estate investor. Well, it won't be any time before you'll close another deal. Don't spend it, put it in the bank. And then a few weeks go by and you close another deal. Now you've closed four deals, you have $100,000. You're thinking, Dwan, that's impossible. I have too many bills. I can't sit with $100,000 in the bank. Yes, you can. Listen to me. Listen to me. You've taken $1,000 the first week, the second week. Maybe now you're three months in. You've been taking $1,000 a week for the last 90 days. So how much have you spent? You still got plenty left over, okay? During that first 90 days, you closed two more deals. So now I want you to double your payment to yourself on Fridays. Take $2,000 a week. Don't pay off any bills. Now you're making $2,000 a week, but you got $100,000, so you still have 50 weeks of double what you were making before because you're not spending any money. So you've got a full 50 weeks ahead of you with double the money you're making today. Now, say we're 90 days in. In that fourth month, you close the deal, make 25 grand. You know what? Pay off your credit cards. Then in your fifth month, you close another deal or two, pay off your car. Again, you're still taking $2,000 a week. $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000, $2,000. You paid off your credit cards, $2,000, $2,000. You paid off your car. You still have six months left of $2,000 a week. So now, so the first six months, you made uh you had $50 in the bank, then you made $50 more, so you have $100. You're paying yourself $2,000 a week. Are you with me? $2,000 a week. You paid off credit cards with the next wholesale. You paid off your car with the next wholesale. Maybe you paid off your spouse's car with the next wholesale. You still have six months left, but you have 40 hours a week now of time to invest. And in that next six months, let's just say that every month you do a $25,000 deal. So you're making hundreds of thousands of more dollars. So now you think, okay, I've closed two more $25,000 houses. Uh, let me buy a rental. Okay, now really do some research, like work with me if you want to do that, but let's get you a rental so you have some passive income. And even pay cash for it if it's possible. You might think, oh, where am I going to get a house for $50,000? Well, in Clinton, Iowa, we own a gob of them. So you may have to go outside of where you live. I live between them and Florida right now. I live between here and Colorado. We have all of our rentals and buildings and everything in Iowa because it's the Midwest. And you can buy a super nice house to rent for 50 grand that rents for about $1,100. So you may have to go outside of your circle, which is what we personally do. Because in Denver, if I'm going to buy a rental in a decent neighborhood, it's going to cost me 400 grand. I'm going to get 2,000 for rent. Where's the money in that? I could take that same 400 grand. I could go buy eight rentals in Iowa and be bringing in $8,000 a month instead of two. Okay? So you're going to have to get outside of your box. If you're worried about working outside of your city, come work with us in Clinton, Iowa. We've got property managers and we know all the um AC people and the electrical and the um business property manager. We have it, we know everybody. We'll be happy to give you the phone numbers of everybody that we know in the area. So now, say you're six months in and you paid off your car, you paid off your credit card, uh, you bought a rental, and you close another couple of deals, pay yourself $3,000 a week. And you're still working off the same money. You're still working off the same hundred grand because you did $50 or $25, and then you did another $25, and you quit your job, then you made another $25, doubled your salary, you made another $25, you're at $2,000 a week. Maybe now you're six or seven or eight months in, pay yourself $3,000 a week. Okay. And then now you're seven months in, but you still have money. You keep making money, so you can keep paying yourself two or three thousand dollars a week, and you have enough income to do that for like an additional six or eight months. Okay, you follow me? I know it sounds I'm going through it really fast. Might sound too simple, but it's really not that. It's it really is actually that simple. And then now you pulled another $25,000 deal, and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna put money down and get myself another rental. And just as you keep closing deals, keep giving yourself a pay increase. So now maybe you're at $3,000 a week. When you were at $1,000, then you were at $2,000, now you're at $3,000 a week. Well, now you're $3,000, you're making $12,000 a month. Probably enough for everybody to live on. I'm sure 99% of you could live on that amount of money. So now, as you keep making more money, you just keep that salary. You never change that salary. You keep that salary, you start using this money to pay off. I don't know, maybe you want to start working on paying off your house or something. But I would keep taking the paycheck and I would start buying long-term things: storage units, rentals, single-family homes, a duplex. Nothing big. You don't need to buy a hundred-unit apartment building. Stick to things you can do by yourself. Okay, stick to things you can do by yourself. And at the end of that first year, if you'll get those first two deals closed and have 50 grand in the bank, pay yourself a thousand a week, no extra. You don't get it raised yet. Close two more deals, you have a hundred thousand in the bank, you double your weekly pay to two grand. Then everything after that, you pay off car, pay off credit cards, pay off debt. You get a couple more deals closed, you buy a rental, you're still taking this paycheck. You get a couple more deals, you buy another rental, you're still getting this paycheck. You get a couple more deals, you pay off your rental, so you own them free and clear. Now you've got two or three rentals bringing you in a couple thousand dollars a month, paid for free and clear, and you're still taking your salary. And when you get to the point, it might take you two years to do it, where you can keep the salary, okay? Keep the salary, take the extra money, buy rental, buy rental, buy rental, buy rental until you have enough rentals to completely replace this altogether. Now you have 10 rentals, they're bringing in a thousand dollars a month, uh, you're making 10 grand a month, and you are financially free. Like it's that simple. You are completely and totally financially free. Now you might be thinking like, Dwan, that sounds too simple. No, it does not sound simple. It takes discipline. Because everyone I know is like, hey, I closed the deal, I paid off all my credit cards. It's like, okay, that's good you paid off all your credit cards. I'm happy to hear that. But you save any money back so that you can transition. And they say, no, everyone always is about paying off this, paying off that. Want to pay off everything and be free and clear. But during that process of paying everything off and trying to get yourself free and clear, you're not setting yourself up to transition. The transition is the key. So you have to, and this we're saying close two deals, $25,000 each, you got $50,000 in the bank, you start taking a thousand dollars a week. If you can pay, and it's it's of the whole thousand, it's not taxes down stuff, it's the whole thousand, and you can pay all your bills with that. You keep paying the bills, get another deal, double your salary to two thousand a week. So now you've got a hundred grand. You think that sounds like a lot of money. It's not really if you'll just stop spending it. That's what everybody does. They pay off the car, they buy a new car, they take a big vacation, they pay off credit cards, and then if you stop investing, I mean, yeah, you have stuff paid off, but you didn't set yourself up for any success. So setting yourself up for success takes discipline. Now, if you are not a disciplined person, I'm gonna tell you, you need to really, you need to wait till you've got a whole entire full year or two of salary in the bank before you start not working because it's easy to transition yourself and then go, I'm gonna take some week off. Oh, it's hot out. I don't want to go out today. I don't feel like meeting homes today. It's snowed, it's cold, and next thing you know, excuses start building up. Next thing you know, you ran through all the savings and you got to go back and get a job. And I've seen it happen hundreds of times. So this is where you have to have major discipline, you be like a ninja. You listen to what I'm telling you, and you have to transition yourself. There's no reason that you cannot become a full-time investor in the next six months. There's no reason. I have helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people transition within six months. The key is discipline. So again, close two deals, putting in two-week notice, pay yourself every Friday a thousand bucks, just like you do. No extra. Close a couple more deals, pay yourself two thousand dollars a week. No extra. Close a couple more deals, pay off a car. A couple more deals, pay off the credit cards. Couple more deals, buy a rental, couple more deals, pay the rental off. Couple more deals, buy another rental. Paycheck. Paycheck. Couple more deals, buy a rental, couple more deals, pay them all off. In say a two-year span, you got 10 rentals, they're all paid for. They're bringing you in $1,000 a month. You got $10,000 a month, whether you get out of bed or not. Now you can really look at like, what do I really want to do? Do I want to buy a new house for myself? Do I want to start paying off my house? Do I want to buy another car? Do I want to buy a boat? Do I want to invest? Do I want to buy crypto? What do I want to do? But none of those things are gonna happen until you learn how to discipline and budget yourself. I'm telling you, it's not that easy. I mean, like I said in my uh first deal, I lived on credit cards and I was lucky to make $22,000 on my first deal because I was able to, and I did pay some I paid my Home Depot credit card off. I had nine grand on that. So I paid my Home Depot credit card off. Um, but I had money, but still not enough to live here and work here. So I just kept moving in, moving in, moving in, moving in, moving in until I had the money to live rehab too. Live rehab to live wholesale 75. Now I have so much money I can buy rentals, I can wholesale, I can rehab, I can, I bought some commercial, little um light commercial. I was able to do a lot of stuff because I didn't spend all my money. Now, you know, six, eight months in, I paid off all my credit card and bought myself a new car because my car had been repo'd and had to buy the biggest POS car. I had to drive such a piece of shit. I had to drive such a piece of shit. I went and bought myself a convertible because I wanted a convertible. And by the second year in, I bought a boat because I'm in Florida and wanted to have a boat so bad. So I did buy things, but um, I was still living in a rehab, so it's not like I didn't buy a house or anything like that. In fact, before I bought my first house house um from rehabbing, I was already rehabbing like eight years, and I had a house built from scratch, which is the house I'm in right now. So I've had this house for 25 years, longer than 25 years. But I I had a house built from scratch. I'd lived in rehabs and apartments in my 20s, rehabs in my 30s. I bought a house, I had it built from scratch. I love it, I still have it. It's like my happy place, the happiest place on earth is in my house. And but I have had so many people, like one guy made $52,000 on his first deal. I said, How much do you make a uh a year? He goes, like $45,000. I said, Okay, you have a year's salary in the bank day. A year's salary. Take the same amount of money, don't spend it on anything else but your monthly expenses, and get out and put in 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week for the first couple years, get a bunch of money, do a bunch of stuff, and then pay off your house, pay off your car, pay off the he did. He followed every little thing to the letter, and within six months, he was completely financially free. He was putting in 60, 70, 80 hours a week. His wholesaling house was like crazy. He was able to pay off his car, his credit cards, his house. He bought another house. He bought a car for his mom. He was able to do all kinds of stuff, but he put himself on a budget. Now, putting yourself on a budget is a little bit difficult to do because you're like, oh, I got all that money. I could take a trip, I could go to wherever, I take a cruise, I can go wherever I want to go. And it's easy to want to do that. But that will not benefit you in the long run because you're gonna have to keep trying to get yourself to where you can transition. So, transition, if this is what you want to do for your job. Like if you're just like, oh, I just want to do a couple deals a year, I'm not interested in being a full time investor, don't even listen to what I'm saying. But if you're like, hey, I want to be a full time investor, I want to control my hours, I want to control my time, I want to control my income, I want to control everything, you must look. Learn how to transition. And it's really easy. You have to be good on a budget. You have to stick to the budget. If you feel like spending a bunch of money that you shouldn't spend, call me and I'll talk you out of it. And let's get you some rentals. And I know people are like, oh, I don't want rentals. You know what? Get get yourself 10 single family rentals. Pay them off. Have that. That's your mailbox money. You're waiting to get out of bed or not. You got money coming in. And then really sit back and go, okay, what do I want to do in the big picture? I want to own an apartment money. I want to own storage units. I want, I have people that bought air hangers. They're renting out air hangers. What do you want to do in the big, big, big picture? But for the tiny picture, for like the next one to two years, get yourself free. Get yourself free of the job, free of the boss, free of the hours, free of all those other things, and just keep budgeting yourself until you're free. That's how my kids all did it. They were like, hey, we're ready to start buying houses. Can we borrow money? And we're like, no, we can't give you money. We're not going to give you money. Go get a hard money lender like everybody else does. Go use, go to the reader group like everybody else does. Do it just like everybody else does. Otherwise, you can't really call yourself successful because you're our kids. So you know who everybody is. Go find them, go do it. They built all of their own wealth and they're still obviously building it. It's all in their 30s. They're still building it, but they did it on their own. I mean, yeah, they came to workshops. They used to help work the back table at all the boot camps that we were doing. And they learned, they listened. We help them every now and then with a little paperwork if they need, which is the same thing I would do for you, the exact same thing I would do for you. And they did it and they made it happen. And we didn't give them any money. We didn't give them any special favors. We didn't tell anyone, hey, work with them, they're my kids. They went out just like I'm telling you. Put themselves on a budget, closed a couple deals, did exactly what I'm telling you. And they're basically financially free in their 30s. Okay. Now I was not totally financially free until that point because I was still a little bit into the I want to buy stuff, which is fine. Because, you know, I had never had extra money to do all that. I was like, oh, I got a Jeep and I got a boat, I got a house in the water, and I got this, this, and this, I did it by myself. And so, yeah, God's help, obviously. So, uh, but listen to me now because if I would have had to transition, uh, I don't know how I would have done that. Living in the rentals the way I was forced to, and trying to work a job and all that, it would have been really difficult for me. And again, I didn't have anyone to train me. I didn't have anyone to tell me about wholesaling. I didn't have anyone to show me these easier ways to make money so I could put myself in a full-time position. So I was kind of full-time straight up out of the gate because of all my credit cards. But I was, I paid them all off. I paid off a total of $65,000 on credit card debt without filing bankruptcy. So I may have lost a house, I may have lost the car, but did not file bankruptcy. And if you have, no shame. No shame. I just really wanted to work myself up out of this uh pit of hell that I was in. So I would have a story to tell. And heck yeah, that's a good story. Fire from Denny's working third shift, left alone with an eight-month-old baby, no house, no car. That's a story. And it's the true story of my life. So let me help you transition into being a full-time investor. You do that strategy call with me, we can talk about it, we can go through the numbers, I can help you figure it out. But none of that's gonna happen if you don't take the first step. So I want you to subscribe to the podcast, give me a five-star review, watch these on YouTube, share them, take my webinars, take my workshops, get involved with me, take my real estate investing quiz at dwonderful.com. Let's do a strategy session. I will change your finances if you will just let me do it. Okay, promise you. I'll take care of you. All right, thanks for this call today. We'll be back next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And you remember that the truth is in the red letters. Ciao.