A 29-year-old built a cash-flowing real estate portfolio that gave him the option to leave his day job. He explains how he got started and scaled to 14 units.

“I think all of those things have been really helpful, but mainly when people go there, they really like it,” he said, which leads to excellent reviews from guests.

While Heilbron still works about as much as a real-estate agent and managing his properties as he did when he had a 9-to-5, “it doesn’t really feel like anything I’m doing is that much work or hard work at all,” he said. He works for a real estate agency, but “it feels like I’m doing my own thing. There’s not really any structure, so you’re sort of figuring out how you want to build the business yourself.”

Setting his own schedule has its perks, too. He enjoys golfing during the middle of the day and taking more vacation days.

“This year alone, if you did it from a corporate world perspective with PTO days, I’ll have by the end of the year, with holidays, 50 days off from work,” he said. As an agent, “sometimes on vacation, people have questions or have written a few offers so you are still available at any point, but it just doesn’t really feel like work because I like doing it.”