From Corporate Layoff to 4X Income: How to Build a Thriving Business | Jarek Chu

From unexpected layoff to 4X income in just 9 months - this is not your typical "corporate exit" story. At just 24, Jarek Chu turned what could have been a career setback into the catalyst for building a thriving real estate business.

In this episode, Jarek shares the raw reality of his journey: surviving 11 months without a paycheck, strategically building investor trust from scratch, and transforming his business model from pure survival to sustainable success. He breaks down exactly how he minimized expenses (think chicken and rice dinners), maximized opportunities, and built a business that now gives him the freedom to design life on his terms.

Whether you're facing career uncertainty or dreaming of entrepreneurship, Jarek's story proves that sometimes your biggest setback can become your greatest opportunity - if you're willing to take the leap.

Key Topics:
- The mindset shift that turned a layoff into motivation
- Building credibility with investors at a young age
- Evolving from survival mode to strategic growth
- Creating a business model focused on freedom and scalability
- The reality of starting from zero and scaling to success

Follow Jarek's journey and connect with us:
Jarek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarekchu/
Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfullyfunded/

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https://fullyfunded.capital

Transcript

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Those are kind of the questions I've changed from earlier the year, which is basically, can I see proof of concept? Can I see a level of income? Can I replace my W-2 job? Will I be able to survive in this business? Whereas now the question is more of, how far can this business go, and where do you want to take it? Welcome to the fully funded show. Whether you're a capital raiser, deal sponsor, fund manager, or LP investor, we've got the insights you need for investing success. Join Sam Silverman each week for expert interviews, insider tips, and strategies to fully fund your ventures. Let's go. Jarek, what's going on? Sam, it's been a while, man. Good to catch up, and I appreciate you having me on the show. Yeah, and I know for you, you got into the real estate space seemingly by accident, right? I think you have a story that's similar to some folks who leave their job for whatever reason, and they're like, OK, I have to go all in now and doing something. I think you have an awesome story to share. So let's hear it from your words. What's your journey been the last year or two? Yeah, I think so. I started learning about real estate in college actually in 2021. I think for most people starting out, when you're in bigger pockets or listening to the podcast, everyone wants to buy a rental because that's like passive income. So I went down that rabbit hole, and I figured out how to buy my first rental. By that point, I realized the issue really how many more do I have to buy, and then how much time do I have? So after doing that for the first two years, I picked up a few. I realized that I wasn't actually getting paid because when you buy these rentals, sure, if you have a great deal, you might be cashed for a couple hundred a month, but you quickly realize that once that roof goes out, once that HVAC goes out, you're in the hole. So at that point, I started thinking more about, how do I build some active income? Because you need that cash reserve in that pocket. Money set aside to be able to ride out the waves of the ebbs and flows of the market. So that really happened when I took my first job. I relocated out from California all the way to Alabama. I was another crazy story. But at that point, I was working in construction management in my corporate role. And that was my first job out of college. And Huntsville, Alabama was really taken off at that point in time. So I really started learning about the market, tried to do some burs. I did a couple. And the game changer really became when the corporate layoffs started. And that's when post COVID, a lot of the tech landscape has changed. I was part of the wave of layoffs, so to speak. So that really set the catalyst of thinking about, OK, if I get laid off, what am I going to do? So I did have a little experience. And the first round of layoffs, I remember I made it through. But I was really thinking in my head, hey, if I get laid off, what am I going to do? So I was running a game plan of Maybelle into real estate. But my job didn't actually end up being laid off. But the second round, I did. And at that point, I was like, man, this is probably a calling from somewhere higher above, where maybe this is a chance to get into something, and leaving that, and not applying for another job, and being unemployed, and trying to get into real estate. It started that journey of, how do I build this business to replace that income, and to create some income, first of all, to be able to even sustain it for the next 12 to 24 months. Sure. And it's a super important thing, too. When you first have that, OK, my corporate job, even though it's supposed to be a place of stability, when you realize-- and a round of layoffs will definitely do that for you as well-- when you realize that this job isn't stable, right? Yes, the paycheck you get every two weeks is stable. The commission you make it every year, the bonus you get every year is stable if you keep your job. But really, it's someone else's size if you keep that job. So in turn, a lot of it's out of your control in terms of your tenure there, your longevity, right? How much you make is dictated by someone else, too. So I think for you, you saw it quickly. Hey, if this first round of layoffs, we barely made it. We survived. But then beyond that, you're like, OK, this comes at some point based on the company, the industry, whatever it was. I think it just kind of helps me think bigger, too, as, hey, if this happens, what do I go do? And you were talking before the show, too. And so you left your job officially when? I believe it was April of 2023. So if math does that around 18 months ago-- OK, so you're 18 months in. I know you're talking before the show. In the last 12 months, what multiple of your income have you made in your current business relative to your last 12 months of your corporate job? Yeah, I think I was probably-- I think it's somewhere around 3 to 4x. So it's been-- and the crazy part about that is that I actually didn't see any paycheck hit until March of 2024, right? So to provide context, right now we're recording this in December of 2024. That's just nine months ago, right? So to be able to-- I mean, that's almost a whole year of just not getting paid, right, and still seeing the ability to do it, right? So I think I've been pretty fortunate to be able to-- It's awesome. Right, like understand that taking the time of just doing it day after day, but once that first check hit, right? Right then and there, it's like, all right, this is real. We're just going to double down. And that's when everything-- we're off the races from there, right? So on your end, I know you're impacted by layoffs. And now you've seen the potential of, hey, I can make 4x in the last nine months relative to what I was making on a yearly basis, likely in a more controlled way as to how you live your life. And I'm hoping more tax efficient there, too, in the business that you're in. And I think for you now, when you think about it, if you had to go do it over again and you could have kept your corporate job, would you have tried to go hang on to your corporate job and build while you had it? That way that transition period can be easier. Because what you're saying is you likely didn't get paid for 11 months, give or take, right? I think you've done some things in your end to go prepare for that, which I want to hear about as well. But if you can go do it in retrospect and you've had the option of hanging on to your job, would you have hung on that period of time to go help make that transition easier? Honestly, I think it came at the perfect timing because the way that it happened was that when that first layoff came out, we had a notice. We knew that layoff was coming, right? And we knew that there were multiple rounds, right? So when that first one came in, I already had a month or two to think about like, oh man, if I get cut, what do I start doing, right? So at the time I was already doing real estate, I was doing burs at that point, right? So buying properties, renovating them, refinancing out of them, right? So I've seen the process go from cradle to grave, but based off of that, I didn't actually sell a property or get any income right back into my account, right? So I think that round of layoffs, right? I think really just thinking about it and then it happened on the second time really made the difference. So in retrospect, I would probably not have changed it because I honestly feel that if I kept on to that job, but let's say if it didn't get laid off, I would have probably taken it a little bit safer and not taken as much risk, which was necessary. And I think someone told me this when I started off and I was asking them for advice, they said, once you burn the bridges, right? You're gonna move a little bit faster, right? So unfortunately I've been burned the bridges, right? And it's more so like, it just happened for me. Your bridges are for you, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, so I think that just lit a fire under my ass to basically get to work and then figure it out, right? Because in six months, if I can figure it out, right? Or nine months or in 12 months, right? And I didn't see that light at the end of the tunnel, likely I probably would have gave up at some point, right? Because I didn't have that safety net. I think that really pushed me to push myself and to get after it to make something work, right? Or else I'm gonna have to go apply for jobs. And that thought in my head of like, oh man, I do not wanna go on LinkedIn and start talking to interviewers and all that. And that was really the catalyst there. And it's the important too, right? Like when you got laid off, correct me if I'm wrong, you were 24 years old, right? Right, I mean, that was my first job out of college. I relocated from California, right? I already bought at my own primary house, right? So, it's like, I was rooted here, right? And I could have definitely just sold the house, moved back to California, back on my parents, whatever, right? But I think in the back of my head, and this was how I was rationalizing it at the beginning was that, would I regret that decision 20 years from now, 30 years from now, of being like, hey, you are a 24 year old kid, you moved out to Alabama, you didn't have any liabilities, you didn't have any big, big responsibilities, so to speak, at that young age, right? Did you try at least to take that risk? And I think I just couldn't feel like, you know what, let's just pack it up and go home, right? So I think it was a time where I just was okay to take that risk and to fail. And I did fail for quite a number of times throughout that process, from the beginning to the end, right? Yeah, and it's something too that, like if you're listening to this and you fall into camp like Jarek, right? Where you are younger and you have likely a very low cost of living, right? So if you are in your mid-career at 40 years old, you've got a wife, you've got three kids, you've got a big house and a high spend, leaving your job, you may need far bigger capital to have in savings and buffer room than someone like Jarek, right? Where if your burn was, you know, what was your burn on a monthly basis between your whole cost of life every single month when you had to leave your job, what was that? Oh man, my burn was, I mean, it's pretty low. It was probably less than a thousand a month, so to speak. I mean, when I was, right when I got laid off, I started renting out my rooms in my house and then, you know, my mortgage was basically paying care of, right? So it was like, you know, I wasn't paying anything. I mean, I had like groceries and insurance, things like that. But, you know, I think what I came to realize was that when you don't have anything coming in, you're gonna find a way to make some income or reduce your expenses. Like there was no other option, right? I was eating chicken and rice. So, you know, it was the bare bottom for me. Yeah, but it's also important to think about too, right? So like your end, if your burn is even, call it two grand a month, you can buy a year of runway for $24,000. Someone who is later in their career and has had the lifestyle creep and has had dependents that come into their life, that amount of cash you need to go survive for that year like you did grows and grows and grows. So if you're listening to this and you're something like Jarek, right? You're coming out of college, you are early in your career, you don't have those liabilities just yet. And your lifestyles are crept up to a point where you can't say, "Hey, screw it, I wanna go all in." Think about doing it earlier in your life where you have that runway where the worst thing that happens is you go back to the job you already had, right? To find a similar job to what you were doing, right? I think the scenario is different where if you're that, you know, VP of sales making a half million dollars a year, if you're a doctor making a half million dollars a year, you're spending like you're making a half million dollars a year, right? That transition period, you may want to go walk before you run, right? For you, it's easier to go all in because you had to. And when you look at someone who has that success already in a certain field, taking those steps necessary to go build a little bit in the side, once that's stable, then make the transition and go jump in. Right, and I think, I mean, for being like 24, right? I mean, at that point, I didn't really have any, you know, brand at the company, like normally knew me for my work, right? I could barely even contribute within the eight months I was at the company, right? So I really didn't have much to lose. And I knew that, you know, at that point, I can easily supply for a job. If I needed income, I can always get something, right? Being that, you know, it wasn't really that big of a loss. I mean, as long as I had some wrong way of, you know, six months to 12 months, right? I think the bet was more so that if I do something and I see some level of success, you know, long-term that could pay off. And at that point in time, I didn't really know what I didn't know, right? But certainly, you know, for others listening, I mean, that sense of risk, you know, not having as much liabilities and, you know, I don't have a lot of custom to 500K, you know, a salary and with commission and all that. I mean, it didn't, you know, it just made more sense for me in my position, right? So in your business now, I know we're talking before the show and you're asking the questions that show you've gotten out of that first phase of financial independence, right? When you look at what you're building today, you're being more intentional about how you think about it. You're like, do I want a team? What do I want my life to look like? I think it's a really cool place to get to is that most people when they go make a transition or they go full-time on something, especially work for themselves, their biggest first question is, can I survive, right? Once you get past that, once you get past that first phase of survival, you may start shifting your focus in what you're doing because you had that stability. Now that you have that stability, you have income coming in, right? You have a level of track record in what you're doing. How are you thinking about what's next, right? How are you being more intentional about how you're actually going about designing your life for what you want it to look like going forward? Right, I mean, this is the perfect time because, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot more than it was as the year kind of ends and 2025 is coming up. I think eventually, you know, the goal of this is more so, it's not to make like a lot of income and cash, right? It's more so to design, you know, a business that I would want to operate for, you know, long-term, right? And then if I want to pivot into another business, right? You know, what does that look like, right? So this business is more so just creating active income and high active income to allow me to have a little bit more optionality, right? So my angle really is, you know, I don't want to be, you know, tied down to a specific location. I don't want to be, you know, looking at these properties every single day and fixing the flip and managing contractors, right? Like if my goal is to be, you know, fairly remote and have that ability to travel as I need to, right? And I think if I want to go back into the market and, you know, to have higher profit margins and to be active in the market local, you know, that's obviously a decision I'll have to make, right? But by design, I would say that, like right now I'm running the business and I'm basically the operator, right? So I do everything in the business. I wear multiple hats. I have a couple of team members. So they're slowly relieving me of kind of the day-to-day grind on acquisitions. And it's not gonna be like perfectly hands off. I think the question I'm asking myself now is just, you know, how many people do I want on my team, right? Do I want to be doing these tasks, right? What does my goal look like in the end of the year? How much income do I want to be making then? Like what type of a brand presence do I want for my investors, for the people I work with, right? And then, so those are kind of the questions I've changed from earlier the year, which is basically, can I see proof of concept? Can I see a level of income? Can I replace my W2 job? Will I be able to survive in this business? Whereas now the question is more of how far can this business go and where do you want to take it? Yeah, and that's a great way of thinking about it too, because what you start realizing as you scale is that you start taking on more and more and more, and it hits that point where you're working fully in your business versus being someone who actually owns the company and is working on the business, right? So if you do it right, your time starts shifting from being 100% in the business every single day to less and less and less and less and more and more and more on the business, right? You become the owner of that company. So on your end now, you've hit a little bit of a stride, right, you have some deals in your belts, right? Some investors that you've worked with and you're hiring on some team members, what are those first things that you're looking at delegating off your plate to allow yourself to be less in the weeds of the day-to-day operation yourself? And also, like you mentioned, to give yourself more of that location freedom. I think that's a huge thing for a lot of people right now is that not going to office five days a week, having the optionality of where you live. I know for myself, I travel 100 plus days a year out of my hometown, right, and get to go see a ton of cool places and go work wherever I want to. On your end, what are those steps you're taking right now to start pivoting those tasks off your plate? Right, so earlier this year, we were very, I mean, so the business really shifted at the, I guess, mid-year 2024 where I reframed the business from a real estate investing business to more of a marketing sales business, right? So now it's not so much about the asset that we purchase and being, I need to renovate this, right? Or need to run the play on a fixing flip, right? But now it becomes more of, you know, can we buy this property, right, market it well, and then let it go, right? Whether it's, you know, a fixing flip, whether it's we're gonna sell it off to another investor. So the exit strategy has really changed where the majority of what we purchase nowadays, we don't even touch it, like we'll clean it out. There's not a lot of hours spent, so I don't need to go personally, you know, look through the property and figure out what we're gonna do with the property, right? So what that has done is really, you know, reduce the cash conversion cycle. And then of that, when you think about it, if I'm the only person in that business doing everything, right, my dollar per hour on any specific project is so much lower when I'm, you know, walking into the property and doing all that type of stuff, right, versus where I can just run it as a marketing sales company where I'm just, here's this product, I'm gonna sell it off for this. I only spend maybe 10 hours versus the 100 hours. And that's a big difference, right? And then that can, you know, get my mind thinking of, hey, if I spend those extra 90 hours finding more new business, right, running that same model, right, will that give me more time, freedom, and more optionality into some of my day to day? So that's really been the shift over and having a team that kind of helps me out on the acquisitions front, because that takes a lot of time to generate that business, which, you know, decreases the amount of time per project, which means I can run through more projects, right? So that switch from being boots on the ground to more so, I guess, at this point, it's more of a, I mean, keep this type of thing, a paperwork thing, has really reduced my hourly spend on the day to day operations, like on the ground, right? Yeah, and for people too, that'll solve for one of two areas, likely both, either your hourly rate shoots up, right, so you can go earn more overall, right, by re-allocating those hours to net new work, or it becomes a lifestyle play, where like, hey, if I was making X, and I can now make X working one third of the time, you can go do all the other things you actually wanna go do with how you spend your time too, right, so I think it's a really cool place to get to is when you start moving things off your plate, and I think you nailed it too, like the hourly rate measure is a great way of tracking how good you are at what you do and how much you can go leverage people, leverage your, leverage capital, whether you're someone else's, or leverage a system's technology and process to get you out of the weeds as well, so really important thing to go look at. Now, as you make that shift, right, I know you mentioned you started bringing on investors, right, you were, you know, novice experience, right, going out and hustling, what was that like getting investors to trust you with what they were doing, right, like what was that first, you know, yeah. Yeah, it was difficult, I mean, I think, yeah, when we had spoken back in, I think February of 2020, I remember, to 24 maybe, that was when, you know, I didn't really know how to raise capital, I knew I needed the capital to do, to run business, right, and that was gonna be a big change, so I knew that it's at the end of the day for this type of a business, you need deals and money, right, so I knew that, you know, boots on the ground, in the trenches, I can get the deals, right, but the capital, I needed to leverage from other people, right, so what really helped was, you know, understanding that investor avatar of like, you know, that's the person I should be speaking to, right, so building a brand behind that, and then also understanding from the top of the front and to the bottom, right, like, what do they wanna see, what do they need to look at, how does that call work, and you know, giving them and understanding their questions as well, you know, time and time again, on these call, they get the same questions, and I eventually wrote them down, and I figured out that, hey, if I made a packet or some type of an ebook that can answer a lot of the questions, people are gonna be a lot more comfortable when they jump on a call with me, right, and at that point, we're just kind of figuring out like, hey, this is a great fit, which projects do you want to invest in, so taking the time and really just understanding who I wanna talk to, and that might not be everyone, right, but getting that crystal clear, and then understanding what they want to see, some top and fronts at the bottom, and serving that made a pretty big difference, and just doing it consistently, like posting on LinkedIn, on Facebook, telling people what you do eventually, and now I'm seeing it a lot more, right, like six months, 12 months after I started doing this, where people are, you know, I get messages on LinkedIn of like, hey, I've been following you on LinkedIn for some time, right, would love to see, you know, your investor packet, or would love to see your investor portal, right, and you know, they're curious, right, and I've never talked to these people ever, right, I don't know them, right, we might have one mutual connection, or even zero, right, but that's just, it's crazy to me, because at the beginning, right, I could ask one of my close friends, and I'd be like scared, right, of like, hey, you know, I don't wanna lose your money, and all that, right, but you know, from that, that personal brand, people are just willing to learn more about you, because they've seen you, you know, post and go through creative degree of projects, and so that compounding effect of investing in that relationship, even though if it's not a Zoom call, or you know, a phone call, that brand and that social capital is being built with that audience, right, and it may or may not convert, and if it does, that's great, right, and if it doesn't, doesn't, that's perfectly fine, but that has been completely organic, so to speak. Yeah, and that's super important, because the more you get yourself out there, and if you look at like the know, like, and trust, like one, they can't like or trust you if they don't know who you are, so you can get yourself out there more, and being associated as, hey, Jarek is the person who does, you know, single family fix and flip, wholesaling, like whatever that business may be, right, and alternatively, all the content you're putting out there is that when someone actually says, hey, I know Jarek, but I, you know, not the only have a point of view just yet, the more content that you put out there, the more someone can go get to that placement point of view, right, because then you can get on a phone call, and they feel as though they know you, right, so dialing it in is to who it is you're speaking to, right, who's that end investor or buyer, of your good or service that you can go speak to in all the content that you share, that way when they start seeing it, it resonates really well with them, so things need to be done a good job on, it's just telling that story and show it really quickly, right, and for you, whether intentional or not, it was a really good place to go start in terms of the fix and flip or wholesaling business, because what you have there is velocity, so you can go do full cycle deals in what, three, 12, six months, right, on your end, so a lot of people get into these syndication type deals where maybe five years, so it's really tough to go build a big track record quickly without having those exits, so for you, I like the model of going the fix and flip route to start out with, because you can go see the progress really quickly, right, you can go get investors' confidence really fast, so I like that side of it. Right, and that was another thought process of like, hey, if I want to get into single family, this is gonna be a very easy way to build a track record, as long as I'm doing it, right, so like, I think halfway into the year, I couldn't figure out a way to show people that track record, because I wasn't gonna make a case study for every single project, right, so that's when I realized, I need a landing page where people can just log in and see everything, here are these upcoming deals, here are these active deals, and here are all the ones that we've closed, right, and you can just scroll through once you log in on that dashboard and see like, oh man, this guy's done like 30 plus deals, closed, they're all exited, and you have this figure of like, hey, this guy has raised X million in capital, has returned all that money, right, X amount of interest, right, zero defaults, zero late payments, like that speaks a lot, versus not being able to speak to that, right, so I think the single family space was more so, I want to build a brand quickly, and then also build a track record, and those investors that can see that Cradle to Grave process more and more, some people that have been following me and been on my email list, and they've seen these projects go, they have eventually realized, hey, this guy's exiting all these projects, and I see every single investment opportunity, right, and now they're reaching out like, hey, maybe I can invest in this future one, so it's been spot on, the velocity has been huge in developing that trust, and that's what the single family space has been really good, which has been the end goal, to just build that trust and that track record for investors. Dude, I love it, well hey, really cool story for you, right, getting laid off from your job, forexing your income in the last nine months, you're making it corporate, right, now getting much more intentional about how you want to go live, and I think you've done a great job too of sharing your story with your audience, right, so you've built trust, credibility, picking an asset class for you, then you can go show a track record of success really quickly. So before we hop off here, what advice do you have for someone who may be in their corporate job still and is looking to say, I want to go work myself in some way, whether a real estate buying a company, right, see my family fixed and flipped, right, whatever it may be, what advice do you have for that person who's looking to go from the corporate employee to doing their own thing through equity ownership? Right, I think, man, yeah, there's so much that you could say, I think what it would be is that, at the beginning, you really don't know what you don't know, right, so I think while you could plan it out and spend all your time on YouTube University and just try to overanalyze things and gather facts and watch all these playlists, right, and join like a thousand masterminds, I think what it comes down is actually acknowledge, like executing knowledge, right, knowledge is actually put into place in the real world and then executed on, that's power, right, it's not just the knowledge itself, so I think actually doing something and taking action, that's where you're gonna see that growth and to be able to see those small wins and then to be able to see that proof of concept, because once you see that, right, you're kind of hooked, and once you're hooked, right, that's when you really start believing, and when you start believing, right, that's when the results start happening, so I think taking that action and understand that you don't need to have a perfect process to start, sometimes just getting kicked out of your job usually can, you can figure it out from there, right, so it's, it by no means needs to be perfect, but understand that the action taken is really where you're gonna see that proof of concept and those results ultimately. Done, not perfect, yeah, totally great. Jarek, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in to The Fully Funded Show. If you enjoyed today's insights, hit follow. Share with your investing pals and drop us a review. Connect with us on social media for bonus content. Your success is our mission. Keep those funds flowing. See you next time.