Building Unbelievable Financial Freedom Brick by Brick with Jesse Walters
Key Takeaways
- Success in investing begins with taking the first step, not waiting for perfect timing.
- Local banking relationships can unlock faster, more creative funding options.
- True wealth is achieved by aligning business success with family and personal balance.
United States Real Estate Investor®
The REI Agent with Jesse Walters
https://youtu.be/x83FXKJsSQo
United States Real Estate Investor®
Value-rich, The REI Agent podcast takes a holistic approach to life through real estate.
Hosted by Mattias Clymer, an agent and investor, alongside his wife Erica Clymer, a licensed therapist, the show features guests who strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.
You are personally invited to witness inspiring conversations with agents and investors who share their journeys, strategies, and wisdom.
Ready to level up and build the life you truly want?
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The Spark That Started It All
When Jesse Walters first watched his wife thrive as a real estate agent, he had no idea that her success would ignite his own passion for investing.
What began as curiosity soon became a calling.
As he puts it, “I’m kind of an entrepreneur at heart. I’ve been in different industries, but real estate pulled me in.”
In 2021, the couple made their first investment purchase. It wasn’t part of a grand plan, and there were no hours of spreadsheets or mentors whispering advice.
It was instinct and a little bit of courage.
That first single-family rental property would become the seed of a growing real estate empire built on faith, risk, and relentless learning.
From Simple Steps to Smart Growth
Jesse and his wife didn’t wait for perfect timing or a perfect plan. They started where they were, with what they had.
As Jesse shared, “We saw the mortgage payment and what we could rent it for. There was a gap. We went for it.”
That first property became a gateway. They discovered cash flow, leverage, and the magic of equity.
Soon, they were flipping houses, buying rentals, and mastering creative financing.
“After that first deal, I was hooked,” Jesse said. “We put all our money into it, and then I had to figure out how to keep going.”
That drive led him to podcasts, books, and hands-on experience. Each renovation and refinance became another lesson in how to scale smarter, not harder.
The Power of Equity and the Local Bank Advantage
The couple quickly realized that real estate is not just about finding deals. It is about building relationships. Small local banks became their secret weapon.
“They’ve grown with me,” Jesse explained. “They’re willing to take risks with me because they know I’ll finish the job.”
By using equity from previous deals, they learned to roll profits forward and borrow strategically.
The approach was not flashy. It was steady, calculated, and effective.
As Mattias pointed out during the conversation, too many investors get caught chasing shiny new strategies instead of just taking that first base hit.
Jesse’s success proved that momentum matters more than perfection.
Family, Focus, and the Freedom Factor
What makes Jesse’s story so inspiring is not just the growing portfolio. It is the balance behind it.
With a one-year-old at home, he and his wife have learned to draw boundaries and prioritize family without sacrificing ambition.
“We were working 80 hours a week before our kid came,” Jesse admitted. “Now, I don’t work weekends. I want to be with my family, and surprisingly, we’ve had one of the most profitable years ever.”
It is proof that alignment, not overwork, is the true path to freedom.
The Walters family found that when you build a business that supports your life instead of consuming it, success follows naturally.
Mindset Over Money
The episode took a reflective turn when Mattias asked Jesse what advice he’d give to new investors.
His response was simple but powerful.
“If it kind of makes sense, just do it.”
Analysis paralysis stops more dreams than bad deals ever will. Jesse reminded listeners that fear and second-guessing are part of the process.
Even now, after multiple flips and rentals, he confesses, “Almost every deal I buy, the day after, I’m like, what am I doing? I second guess it every time. It doesn’t go away. You just have to embrace it.”
For Jesse, the key to building wealth is not eliminating fear. It is moving through it.
Lessons from The Dealmaker
When asked about books that shaped his journey, Jesse recommended Henry Washington’s The Dealmaker.
He described it as “a short, straight-to-the-point guide that gives you a game plan. Don’t overthink it. Just go do it.”
Henry’s mindset resonated with Jesse.
Treat every transaction with respect, help sellers reach their goals, and operate with integrity.
Success, after all, is not just about profit. It is about purpose.
Turning Passion into Progress
From fixing faucets to flipping fourplexes, Jesse Walters embodies what happens when persistence meets purpose.
His journey is a reminder that you don’t need a perfect strategy. You need action, grit, and heart.
As the episode closed, Jesse summed it up best.
“Even if it all goes wrong, you’ll learn so much. Just start. You can’t grow if you never take that first step.”
Building Legacy Through Balance
Jesse’s story is more than an investing success. It is a roadmap to living well. He and his wife are not just creating financial freedom.
They are creating a life that reflects their values, family, purpose, and growth.
In a world obsessed with fast wins and flashy results, Jesse Walters reminds us that the real return on investment is peace of mind, personal growth, and time with the people you love most.
For more content and episodes, visit reiagent.com.
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Contact Jesse Walters
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Transcript
Welcome back to the REI Agent. I'm here with Jesse Walters. Jesse, thanks so much for joining us.
Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Jesse, tell us, give us like a bird's eye view of who you are and what you do in the real estate space.
Yeah, so I'm kind of an entrepreneur at heart. I've been in different industries and started up other businesses, things like that. I met my wife and she got into real estate as an agent and she got really good at it.
That was like in, started in like 2017 and I watched that career grow while I was doing my own thing. And 2021, that's when I started getting into it. We started talking about investments, things like that.
And we bought our first rental property and then I got hooked. I got my, I got licensed in 2022. And so I am an agent, but my wife is really the face of all that now.
I work on the rentals. We do flips. I help other investors buy properties, things like that.
But yeah, she is more the agent side of things in that. But yeah, we're kind of tag teaming.
Okay, cool. A real estate family. I love it.
Yeah. What was that first deal like? What were you looking for and what did you find?
Was it one that you would do again or did you learn some lessons from the first one?
Yeah, it was kind of a weird thing. It wasn't planned. We kind of had conversations about buying rentals.
As her career grew, it's like, man, real estate's really kind of where it is. Like if we're going to grow into retirement, things like that. It was 2021.
It's when the market was just insane, crazy. Rates were super low. It was a house, just a single family home on the market listed at like 165 or something.
It was a flip house. Another guy flipped it. It was like turnkey.
It didn't really have to do much to it. We're like, well, we have the cash. We literally just put 20% down.
It was nothing fancy. It was just we made an offer and we got a 30-year fix at like a 3% interest rate. It's cash flows like great.
Cash flow has been when we bought it. Now, as rent keeps going up, it's just awesome. I've had to do very, knock on wood, very little maintenance to that property too because it was all recently renovated.
I've had to do a little minor maintenance stuff, but yeah, it's one of our best cashflow properties we got. It's centrally located in town. We get a lot of people.
It's a desirable area, everything. Yeah, on a 30-year fix, we're just going to let that loan ride out.
Yeah, I wish we could get those again. Yeah. I think too many people, and I don't know if you did a ton of reading and podcasts and that kind of stuff leading up to that first investment, but I think a lot of people don't just get that first 20% down investment.
Not everybody has the means to do so, but if you do, I think there's a lot of analysis paralysis, people trying to be overly complicated with all these different fancy strategies, shiny object syndrome. I'm going to do midterm rentals. I'm going to rent by the room.
I'm going to do assisted living. Maybe this is the new token for the way that is the way. I think that's backwards.
I think really, if you could just start with maybe not a rental that you have to put 20% down on if you're also new in your career, but maybe something more like a house hack or just buying a place that you want to rent in the future and just kind of getting that base hit to get you rolling and then kind of getting into the more complicated stuff as you get experience and more equity, more capital, et cetera. Yeah, I agree.
It was one of those things we did not ... I did not do any research. It was just one of those things.
We saw the mortgage payment and what we knew we could rent it for. We were like, there's a pretty big gap there. I'm like, this is a good place to put some money.
I'm like, well, we could just ... Yeah, we kind of went into it backwards compared to most investors and stuff like that, but I will say after we did that, I was instantly hooked. I'm like, I want to buy another one.
I was like, now we don't have any money though, so I got to figure it out. We put all our money into that thing and I'm like, now we got to keep going. Yeah, that's when we started getting creative with financing, finding fixing books and things like that.
So at that point, were you starting to read the books and listen to all the podcasts and stuff? Exactly.
That was the trigger. Yeah, I went through all that stuff. Yeah, just constantly on podcasts and audio books, everything, just learning as much as I could, yeah.
Absolutely. Okay, so now you've done flips and all that kind of stuff too. Are you doing the BRRRR method as well?
I know for us personally, whenever we come across a property that could be flipped, it's kind of a decision of whether do we want to keep this one or do we want to just sell it and offload it? Is that where you all are at with those as well? It is, yeah.
So I really like to find those ones that need some love, like ones we can go in and fix up. Either we flip it or keep as a rental. It kind of depends on every house is circumstantial.
I've even changed my mind halfway through the project at times. Yeah, typically, so now we bought that first one. We had an equity in it because we put 20% down.
The next two we bought after that were ones that needed some love. So we would put some sweat and equity in. We built them up inside.
So the first three properties, we got a decent equity from appraised values on them and then we started using that equity to buy more. We would borrow against it so we could buy houses no money down. After we would do the renovations, get rents up, whatever that project was that we were going to keep it, we would get it reappraised and untie the other property from it so we could pull that, free up that equity again and rents repeat, do it again.
Yeah, and that's another reason for just kind of taking base hits before you go for the grand slam. I mean, you have so much more opportunity once you have some equity to do things. That's how we got started with flipping is from equity lines.
Yep. I completely agree.
Having that equity, it has catapulted us much further and faster than I thought we could have gone. Yeah, just having that for sure.
Yeah, that's awesome. So walk me through some more of how you started building up your portfolio.
Yeah, so that was in 2021. In 2022, we bought the second one, another single family home. It was a light renovation, like 15, 20 grand.
We did bring some money into that deal on a down payment, but it was on a construction loan, so we financed the whole construction part of it. We bought it roughly like 120, I think, and we put 20 grand into it, 140 in it. It appraised it like 180 when we were done.
So we were able to pull off, go again, things like that. And then the next one we bought was actually a fourplex. That one, we used the equity from other properties to buy it, so no money down, but we used our own money to do the renovations because we had four tenants and we didn't know when they were leaving or anything.
So it's like putting on a construction loan. I have no idea when I'm going to do this renovation because if the tenant stays, it might be a year from now before you do anything. So that was a little bit risky.
We had to save up some cash to do that, but it totally paid off. One, we actually sold it earlier this year. We're 1030 wanting it, but we came out with over $100,000 profit on that thing.
We turned all four units, got rents up to market rate. It was just a building that needed a lot of love, and it took us about two years to do it. I mean, it took a while, but it was a six-figure flip in a way.
Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Yeah, man, we don't have a ton of multi-family, especially around my area, but I love the idea of being able to just work on one property. So you have only 25% vacant. If you're lucky, the other rents might cover all the expenses while you renovate the one, and then just go around the circle and slowly build the rents up.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. We got lucky on that one too. Not all tenants left at the same time, so we could do one, wait a little bit.
And then also, we really underestimated what the rents would be. When I was underwriting this thing, when we bought it, because it's in a small town, I was like, well, we get $600 per unit or something. It ended up being $800 per unit, and that just threw the cash flow way through the roof and made the property worth way more money.
We had a little bit of luck on our side on that one, but the plan was the same for the whole thing. Just get rents up, get it up to par again, clean everything up, not slumlord it. We prided a good place to live for this small town, and we made some money in the process too.
That's great. When you're looking at renovating a property, and well, I guess this is kind of a three-part question here. If you're looking to renovate a property and you're looking to resell it, do you have a plan from when you're looking to rent it, and what do you do if you're not sure?
Make decisions to improve the property.
Yeah, for sure. I'm still kind of learning that as we go, but I will say it depends on the price range of the home. In our area, average price of a house is in the 300s.
We buy a lot of homes under 200 grand. They're usually fixed rubbers, things like that. If the after repair value on them is under 250, I kind of put a rental and a flip in the same category.
I kind of do rental grade through the whole thing whether I'm going to keep it or flip it because I'm trying to make an affordable home for someone if we're going to sell it. If I don't sell it, it's just a good rental afterwards. Above that, we've flipped some other homes in the 400s, things like that.
We're floor to ceiling tile showers, glass doors, glass handrails, things like that. We'll put a lot more money into it. There are some, it's bluntly obvious just on price range whether we're going to flip it or keep it, but I will say there's also that transition of there were two properties this year.
They were just three bed, two bath homes. We bought them in the 200s and they're probably worth in the 300s when we're all done. Halfway through the project, I was like, we're keeping it.
It's the perfect rental because they're not that old either. They're built in the 2010s. They're 10, 15-year-old properties.
They have a lot of life in them. They're really low maintenance. I'm like, they're not going to cash flow that well right now, but we're going to be so happy we kept these 10 years from now if we keep them.
We probably have 30, 40 grand equity in each one of them right now. Even though I'm on 8% interest rates on these construction loans with them right now, I'm just holding out because eventually either we'll refinance doing something else and the rents will keep going up in our area too. It's just a hold my breath on those, but I know they're good properties.
Fortunately, when we were doing the flips on them, they were just cosmetic. It was just paint floors, light fixtures, maybe a new sink, things like that. It didn't matter whether I put a $500 sink in it or a $100 sink in it, I could still rent the thing out.
It worked out pretty well. My banker, he was not annoyed with me, but he just had to roll his eyes out. He's like, hey, I'm not flipping this now.
I'm keeping it. Sorry. It changed the whole structure of the loan.
He's like, I got to extend everything now. I'm like, yeah, sorry, but I'm keeping it. Sorry.
Yeah. Talk to us a little bit about the lenders you've worked with, the banking things you've done because what you're talking about is definitely different than your traditional 30 year hold to live in or to rent. These are construction type loans sometimes.
Tell us about what you typically do there.
Yeah. I work solely, well, not solely anymore, but mostly all minor finance through a small local bank. They work really, really well with me.
They're willing to take on those risks with me. They've grown with me too. In the beginning, I'd bring them one property, small $20,000, $30,000 renovation.
They worked me on that. Then I brought them one last year. It was a $120,000 renovation on a $450,000 house.
We kind of stair-stepped together through it. We're to a point where we trust each other. We can close quickly.
They're willing to risk more on me because they know I'll finish the job, things like that. That's been huge. It's all construction loans.
Typically, what we're doing, it's 15% down is what I need to bring to the deal. Nine times out of 10, that is the equities. I have my other properties.
I'm just rolling over as collateral. I don't have to bring any money to the deal. Also, more recently, I've been using some family, friends, private lenders for the down payment.
There's some properties I bought for $50,000, $60,000. I have to bring $10,000 to the table. They'll lend me $10,000.
It's a quick flip. I pay them $12,000 at the end of it. They make a couple thousand dollars.
Everyone wins at the thing too. It's still a construction loan with that small local bank at the end of the day because they're just funding the down payment. Sure.
From there, we're getting to the point now where rates are starting to creep down a little bit. I've got these properties with some equity in them. I'm looking at maybe refinancing them into some 30-year DSCR loans to get the cash flow up, things like that.
We have not done that yet. We're still playing it out to see where the market goes and everything. These construction loans have been great for me.
They're adjustable rate mortgages. They're risky in that sense. I'm typically on five-year arms.
I've got five years to figure it out. Typically, I've either sold it or I'm going to refinance it before that five years is up anyway. Yeah.
I love the local bank thing. Whatever you hear or whatever we're talking about, it's going to be different per bank, per person you talk to. Exploring, it might be a good idea to go to maybe an investor group meetup to try to figure out where people locally are getting their financing and compare what programs different places have.
Banks at different times have different buckets they're trying to fill. There could be a local bank that is trying to get more real estate into their portfolio. One that I had that worked really well, and I wish this was still around, was I had to buy the property first in cash, equity lines, and then they would basically fund everything.
Let's say I bought it for $90,000 and I think I needed $145,000 altogether to have this as a rental. They'd basically give me a check. One time, I had actually two back-to-back where it was kind of stressful because I had to close on one in cash, get this money out with the refinance essentially, and then buy the other one in cash so that I could then get the money out and refinance on that one.
In those situations, it's not quite that you're going to the closing table with a check. It's one step kind of removed from that which I've also had. But I was able to finance the whole thing and it was immediately on a 30-year fix in an in-house loan which is pretty rare.
Those were awesome. Other ones that I've had is where if you're buying at enough of a discount, the bank is going to A, have to be familiar with you and your track record and all that kind of stuff. They usually want you to have a deposit relationship with them so that you have cash in their bank and that they're able to use that to lend to others as well.
But they basically look, okay, you're buying this house for $90,000 and it seems very obvious that it's going to be worth $250,000, let's just say. We're not going to give you 80% of that, but we'll give you $140,000. Then you can with that renovate as much as you can.
Those are probably bigger numbers than actually exist. Yeah. You go to a closing, they're funding the deal and you're leaving with a check to do the renovations which is a pretty amazing thing.
All to say, check with local banks, talk to other investors and figure out what local banks are offering.
I completely agree. When we first got started, we were with a bigger bank in the area and stuff. They cannot compete with those small banks because they get pretty aggressive with stuff.
They're also creative. They have other ways of doing things that the big banks can't do. They're a huge resource for investors, for sure.
Absolutely. I think at the end of the day, a bigger bank is probably going to be looking at this stuff more as a risk on their spreadsheet and not really caring as much about the personal relationship and what you bring to mitigate that risk. Obviously, your track record, they trust you now and they'll be, like you said, more willing to take on risks with you.
Yeah.
Definitely. Yeah. That's awesome.
What are you seeking now? What's your buy box? Is it any good deal?
Is it multifamily? What is your buy box now?
Yeah. This year has been the most active by far. Between buying holds and flips, we've purchased 10 this year.
I've also sold three of my properties. I sold that fourplex I was talking about. I have two other duplexes I'm currently selling right now.
We're 1031ing all that money. To answer your question what I'm buying, part of that 1031 money, I'm building a brand new triplex. I can make the numbers work on it, which is pretty cool to see.
We're building almost at the 1% rule right now. We're in a smaller town outside of... I'm in Columbia, Missouri.
A small town outside of there, it's a commuter town for Columbia. The land is cheap and we can put it up. The triplex building is going to cost roughly $400,000 to build.
I paid $15,000 for the lot. I'm at $415,000 all in. I will be running this thing out between $4,000 and $4,500 a month between all the units.
It's going to be brand new construction. That definitely changed my perspective on some stuff about what I can do. The ones I sold, those were all 1800s built properties.
150 year old properties. I'm getting rid of all 150 years of maintenance and putting up a brand new construction. My buy box, on things I want to hold now, I'm looking at newer stuff.
I'm getting picky. I will still buy old stuff, but it's typically going to be to flip it or things like that. I'm getting to a point where I'm even getting out of the lead-based paint stuff now.
I like just 1980s and newer. That's something I want to buy and hold. I'm looking for that.
Single families, multi-families, doesn't matter. If it's a good location and it'll rent well, that's where I'm at these days.
Yeah, that makes sense. That's another beauty. Again, somebody might think, well, I got to wait for that perfect brand new house that's going to be under market value and I get the 1% rule on.
Those other properties that no longer meet your buy box that you bought and you're now selling are enabling you to do these deals. It's a progression. You can also look at your portfolio and decide to go just straight larger multi-family for some economies of scale where you can actually maybe treat it a little bit more like a business and have on-site a property manager or whatever.
There's a lot of different avenues you can go, but if you don't get started, if you don't take some swings, take some base hits, you're not going to be able to do these cool things like you're talking about. I agree.
The guy I'm selling one of the duplexes to, I was talking to him a week ago, but I told him, I was like, this is an old property. It's built 1800s. I'm not hiding that.
It's old. You're going to have maintenance on this thing. I was like, but I'm so glad I bought this because it enabled me to build that brand new triplex right down the road.
If I didn't buy this old thing first, I never would have gotten to that point. I still recognize that. I'm actually under contract right now for another triplex that's 70 years old right now.
It's a fixer-upper. I'm going to go in, renovate unit. It's all under-rented.
I'm going to go do it again. It's probably going to take me a year, 18 months to do it. I was like, but it pays out at the end and I can use that money to put it into what I really want later.
I just have to get through the crap to get to the good stuff later.
That's an awesome place to be. That's really cool. Are you all doing any of the work yourselves?
Did you start off doing any of the work yourselves on these flips?
Yeah, I did start that way. I was putting in vanities, light fixtures, all that kind of stuff. If you wanted me to do major plumbing or electrical, I never did that.
I was like, I'm already smart enough to know I'm not the person for that job. Even moving forward, I was even putting in bathroom vanity stuff. There was one I put in.
It was my fourth attempt at plumbing this sink up and it kept leaking. I was so done with it. I called a plumber.
He had it fixed in 45 minutes. I paid him $100 to do it. I'm like, all right, there's my lesson learned.
After that, I just started hiring everything out. I'm like, you can do it faster and better than me. You're saving me the money of me trying to do this for the next three hours anyway.
I'm getting to a point now where my time is better spent trying to find other properties rather than having my head underneath the sink trying to fix it.
There's a lot of different ways to go about that. Ultimately, when you're leveraging other people and their skill sets, et cetera, it's definitely more efficient for me, especially with renting property. I do manage my own, but I drew a line in the sand.
I was like, I don't want to do the work for them. I'll take the call, but I'm going to call somebody to go unclog the toilet or whatever is needed. For me, that's mainly a longevity thing.
I have three kids. I've got a wonderful wife, and I've got an active real estate sales business, and I don't want to also be a plumber or also try to figure all these random things out. Having the contractors and having the go-to people that can help is so critical for the longevity for me.
I think if I was trying to figure everything out this whole time, I probably would have stopped at one and just been done. Yep. I agree with you completely.
Yeah. Cool. How does the work-life, I'm not going to say balance.
I don't think that's the best way to describe life. I think we should be engrossed in what we're doing. Are you and your wife, do you have kids?
How do you manage? I know real estate sales are also really hectic, so how do you all manage prioritizing what's important to you outside of work and real estate?
Yeah. It's difficult to find that quote-unquote balance. We have a one-year-old at home now.
That really changed things for us. It really showed how big a workaholics my wife and I are. We were working 80 hours a week, and we and Ben and I, it was just what we did.
We did it for years. When the kid came, it was like, we can't do that anymore. We've got to figure this out.
And it also came with, I jokingly call it withdrawals. I would have withdrawals from work. I'm like, I feel like I need to be working, and I'm holding my baby.
It's slowly getting to a point where I'm okay to, you know what? I can just turn this off and go be with my kid. Because I want to be there.
You want to be there for your family and things like that too. I was definitely being pulled in two different directions for a while. That first year of my son's life, for sure.
But it's gotten better. I don't work weekends really anymore. I just can't with the kid.
It gives me that quality time with him. We send him to daycare. We try to fit our jobs into that nine, eight to five sequence.
In the real estate industry, it really doesn't work like that. But we try to mold it to that as best we can. In the evenings, we turn off and be with each other as a family.
Surprisingly, so many people are very receptive of it. I was always worried. It was like, I'm going to lose out on this deal, this flip house if I don't go there tonight and go look at this thing.
I just started telling these people. They would say, yeah, I got this house for sale. I'm like, hey, I'm with my family right now.
Can I come tomorrow at X time? Or like, yeah, that's perfectly fine. Be with your family.
That's great. It has not stopped us one bit. We're working less now, but this has been one of the most profitable years we've ever had.
It's pretty crazy.
That's awesome. I guess a natural follow-up question to what you were just saying is, where do you find your deals?
Yeah. I do direct mail, postcards and letters. I have bought three deals off of mailers this year.
The rest have been networking and social media. Being a realtor in the area helps big time because you're talking to other realtors all the time. They might know of other sellers, things like that.
I get there before it ever goes on the market. Also, my wife is very, very good at this. She's making me get good at it now, but social media like Facebook, Instagram.
We have gotten a few deals just posting what you're doing every day. Just taking a video of your construction site or like, this project went horribly wrong. I just spent an extra $20,000 on this or something.
Just saying how much I even screwed up on this. This is bad. But they're like, hey, I see you're invested in real estate.
You want this house? I'm like, yeah, great. Yeah.
Let me come see it. It's been a lot of that too. So I do mailers.
I think that is worth the money to do it. But more of my deals have come from networking and social media this year.
That's awesome. Thanks for those tips. I guess that's a good transition to asking if you have any golden nuggets to anybody who's looking to maybe start investing.
Especially if you're starting. I get a lot of people locally that call or text me and stuff and ask me other stuff. I was like, dude, and a lot of them have cash too.
They'll come to me and things like that. But even if you don't have cash, just start looking. If it kind of makes sense, bring it to me, I'll help you or whatever.
But say this is a person that doesn't know me. I'm just giving you advice right now. But if it kind of makes sense, like I would just, if you have that desire and you really want this to be your thing, I would just say do it.
Even if you lose a little bit of money on it, you're going to learn so much. I already know as a starting investor, you're analyzing the crap out of it. If the numbers kind of work and you're really underwriting it well, like you're being conservative, chances are it's probably going to work.
I've had jobs where I had a $40,000 renovation on a house. It's like my second flip I've ever done in my life. It's supposed to be a $40,000 renovation.
It turned into $90,000. I just didn't know what I didn't know. I started ripping the floors and everything was wrong.
It was a whole deal. I still came out on that deal making $800. I didn't lose any money.
I made $800. I was like, as long as you're underwriting it, just be super conservative. If you think it's going to cost you $2,000, say it's $5,000.
Just be ultra, ultra conservative with it. If it somewhat makes sense, just do it. You will learn so much even if it all goes completely wrong.
Then it will give you so much more confidence to do it again and again and again where you can start. That's where I see most people. They want to do it.
They never buy their first property and they just sit in a circle and never get going. I've gotten to a point where so many people have these conversations. You already learned everything from the books and podcasts.
Just go. Just act on it and do it. You got to trust yourself a little bit.
At the end of the day, it is a risk. It doesn't matter how much experience you have. You are going to risk it, a chance of losing money on it.
You just have to do it. Sometimes having a success can make you be less cautious and then you take on bigger risks and don't analyze quite as well. I can see that being a thing too.
My first deal, I partnered up and it was probably one of the most profitable ones I've done. That's probably the wrong way to start. I didn't really lose my shirt on anything yet.
I think it just set me up to be like, I can do this. It's not hard. I don't have to worry about it.
Let's just go. That's really good advice. I agree with you completely.
So many people don't actually ever take action on it. It's fear. Know that you are looking for the next holy grail of real estate investing if you're going to the next strategy or whatever.
Know that that's just a response to you're scared to take action. Like we talked about, take a base hit. Do one that's a solid cash flowing rental with 20% down if you can and just kind of start.
Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Almost every deal I buy, the day after I buy it, I walk into these things and I'm like, what the hell am I doing? I second guess it every time.
It's flip number 20 for me. I'm like, I don't know why I did this. Why am I doing this to myself?
It doesn't go away. You just have to embrace it.
It's not until the drywall and paint and the floors are all done that it starts being like, this place is nuts. That's when it's exciting.
The funky smell is gone.
Hopefully. Okay, so what about any books? I know we're just kind of pooh-poohing on the analysis, paralysis and reading and podcasts, but if there is a resource or some kind of mindset or whatever book that you'd recommend, what would that be?
Henry Washington came out of the book. I think it's the dealmaker. I think it's the dealmaker is what it's called.
Henry Washington wrote it, but it's just a very good laid out matter of fact. It's a very short read. It's just bullet point after bullet point of this is what you do.
Don't overthink it. Go do it. Here you go.
Henry has been a really big influence on me in my investing career. He's just very matter of fact, straight to the point. He also cares for people in the process.
This is someone's home you're buying. You need to respect that. It's not like you're in this to go make money and try and screw the other person over.
It's like, let's get them the most money we can, get them to their next place and move forward and try and help everyone out here. In that book, he talks about that. Pretty much a game plan of like, here's your marketing plan.
Do this direct mailer campaign. When you're going to underwrite this and see what the renovations are, this is what you look for, X, Y, Z. I would recommend that one.
It's very short. It's not a story or anything. It's just here's a game plan.
Go for it.
I love it. That one hasn't come up yet, but I am definitely familiar with Henry. That's great.
You're putting yourself out on social media, right? If anybody wants to follow you and your journey and all that, where could they find you?
Instagram, it's Jesse.V. It's like Victor. @Jesse.V.Walters. You'll find me on there. I post a lot of the fails on there too.
If you're ever in a really bad place with one of your flips or something, just come to my page. I can show you all the mistakes I made too.
That's great. Jesse, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you for having me. It was a blast. Thank you.
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