House Flipping for Beginners: Why Waiting Until You Know Everything Keeps You Stuck

Clay White (00:00)

understand that you don’t know everything and don’t necessarily be scared of that. you’re not gonna if you’re trying to wait until you have all the answers before you buy your first house, you will never buy a house. I promise you that there’s gonna be so much that I don’t know still. So know that you don’t know everything, ask all the questions you can, read everything that you can get your hands on, but don’t necessarily be scared if you find something cheap, just jump in and kind of learn along the way. Otherwise you wait until you’re perfect, you won’t buy.

And that sucks.

Q Edmonds (01:55)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Q Edmonds. Super excited to be here today. Excited about my guest. And I asked him kind of to describe himself. My man just said he’s scrappy. Like so that lets me know that this guy probably has a ton of experience in so many different areas, so many nooks and crannies. And I think that’s

Excites me about this conversation because we’re going to peek through his lens on how he became successful and just really just the scrappiness of it all and just how he just does and elevates himself to another playing field. And so I’m excited. I’m gonna let him explain like everything that he does, what he’s involved in. But I’m super excited to have this conversation today with Mr. Clay White. Clay, how you doing today, sir?

Clay White (02:36)

Good, how are you?

Q Edmonds (02:37)

man, doing good, sir. Doing good. Again, man, glad that we’re here. You’ll hear me say this probably at the end. thank you for your time, man. I value people’s time and the fact that you gave us some of your time is super valuable to me. I think time is our most precious commodity. So thank you, sir. so man, listen, Clay, I’m the type. I like to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people.

Like what’s your main focus these days? If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of a origin story, kinda how you got into the space that you’re in, and then tell what markets you’re operating in, where you are in the world. So Clay sir, you the floor, my friend.

Clay White (03:07)

Yeah, right on. so to be honest with you, I got started just because, maybe I don’t do well with authority, Maybe I just like doing my own thing. Yeah. Not entirely sure, but no, I mean I went to college, I was planning on going out and working in management, finding my way and working my way up. Yeah. spent all the time and obviously too much money going through. I got my degree and I was staring down at a couple of job offers and I was like, Man

this is this really what I want to be doing. And, apparently the answer was no. I wasn’t sure what the answer was going to be up until I finally turned them down. Yeah. so still need to make money in the meantime. so I got my real estate license, started selling, and worked with some investors. And I was like, what? These guys are making so much more money than I am, it’s not even funny. Yeah. So determined that I needed to jump in through there.

started by I painted houses during college and I had a decent amount of stockpiled away. So started out by buying a 17,000 house. so as you can imagine, it was in great shape. the thing was quite literally falling over. But I was just happy to be there. so purchased it, went out the next day. This is my fun fact is I did get a return of house. the house was condemned.

But the sellers had pulled the sign down before they listed it. So I had no idea. And then it was just, grace of God that they posted it literally the day I closed. Yeah. so went back, got my money back, which is nice, but I pulled it out of investments and it’s kind of tough look to be like, Hey, I’m sorry, here’s all my money back, like I give up. Yeah. So I ended up getting in with a buddy because there’s not many 17,000 houses.

So we ended up going halves on a thirty-five thousand dollar house. did it was a nice little ranch-style, eleven hundred square foot, good looking thing. got a loan on the purchase. We funded the rehab out of pocket and ended up being a slam duck rental. And ever since then, I it just gave me the itch. I couldn’t stop. So right now I’m pretty much focusing on

something like that. Single story ranches for our beautiful flips are usually pretty easy. fifties to seventies range generally don’t have too many major, renovations you’re gonna need to tackle. then on the rental side, I love a small multifamily of, any variety.

Q Edmonds (05:52)

Clay, thank you, man. Thank you for taking the story. Seven seventeen thousand. Like it’s funny because when you said seventeen thousand, I was like, ooh, seventeen thousand. I was like, that’s not a lot of money. That’s pretty good. But then you once you start to unpack it. Okay, I get it. Like I get it. Okay, like right. shots. But then I was like, Okay, I get what you’re saying. Right. So I love it, man. So you’ve been through like you worked from the ground up, man. I love it. And Clay often make

This statement, I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? So as we’re going through different transitions, going through business, going through the rise of it all, doing the sometimes the fall of it all, like the success and failures. We are borrowing from each leg of the journey. And it kind of reinforces the people that we are now. We know what to say hell yes to, we know what to say hell no to. And so I would love to know, man, throughout the journey, what has the journey revealed to you, to Clay about Clay? Has it made you like

more humble, has it increased your discipline? I know, and you don’t like authority maybe that much. So has it changed your lens on that? Like what has the journey revealed to you about you, man?

Clay White (06:50)

it’s about me and I think it goes to a lot of people. Like I think as long as you’re passionate about it, you’re gonna find your way. I wasn’t sure I was gonna be passionate about real estate and then I found it and I’ve done so many things that suck so bad. Even in real estate, I’ve done so many things that suck, but the entire time I’m doing it with a smile just because I know what the end goal is. I know that I’m stoked to be here, stoked to have the opportunity to go buy the next one, no matter what it is.

Q Edmonds (07:12)

Absolutely. So it kind of like kind of increases the tenacity and it lets you so I put it too like this, like my mentor says, when who you are, what to do. And so like you say, like it gets you stoked, it makes you humble. So no, like I hear that. And I always ask that question because I’m always interested in what pulls people. Because as it get tough sometimes. Things are not always as some are easy times, some are just times where you just like, wait, that worked then, why is it not working now?

But when you can pull from kind of that the reserve source in you and know why you’re doing what you’re doing, it kind of like lightens the path a little bit when it’s dark. So no, I appreciate that. And I know people listening, operations and systems are a big thing. And so Clay, I would love to know maybe what’s one operational thing you’ve put into place, let’s say like the last two years that has really helped you with your success, with deal flow, with whatever.

Clay White (08:02)

standardization is a big thing. So, it it’s disgusting looking at my Google Drive. I have so many spreadsheets and Google Docs that are open. Yeah. I mean it it’s honestly terrible. so the biggest thing is like any rehab, this is what’s helped me by far. And I got a little bit of it from like David Greene’s BRRRR book and then a little bit of it from *The Book on Flipping Houses* with J Scott. Like I just basically copy and pasted his order, changed it into a spreadsheet, and I just have a base one. So whenever I walk through a property, I can literally just copy paste.

And then manually fill any inputs and then it automates it all down for me. And then I just basically, follow orders. It didn’t take too much brain power after that. Yeah.

Q Edmonds (08:36)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What’s next for you, man? Like what are you looking to solve with scale next? Like what’s the next real goal? What do you have your eyes on? Like what’s next for you?

Clay White (08:44)

Biggest thing right now is going into a little bit more flips than I ever have in the past. I’m under the illusion that, I think in our very little niche market here in Kansas that we are going to see a slight droop here in the next six to twelve months. And I just wanna have cash on hand so that way, I’m just not drawing out my absolute maximum from the bank every time I need something. Yeah. and then, we kinda talked about it a little bit, but I have my property management company now and hopefully getting that scaled, we’re full up.

as far as, time commitments and rentals that I have out right now. But, I love to get to the point where I hire somebody else on full time. I enjoy being scrappy, but to take some of the pressure off would be huge.

Q Edmonds (09:19)

Yeah, No, absolutely. so you talk about hiring. I think when we talked before, we might talk about past, maybe partnerships. So Clay, I wanna get your philosophy on relationship building. And now when I ask this question, everybody has their unique perspective. So I literally want to hear Clay’s perspective on healthy relationship building within business. How does that look? how do you evaluate,

How long the relationship lasts? Like, and what are maybe some relationships that’s in your corner right now that’s helped you be successful? So Clay, talk to me a little bit about relationships, man.

Clay White (10:29)

Yeah.

real estate, it’s most of the time it’s pretty much all on you. So, essentially you have two different types of relationships, at least in my head. You have your actual partnership and then you have, the people that help you go. Mm-hmm. and it’s a little bit of both, I love having the moral support of people know what I do. And I but it’s something you don’t necessarily talk about all the time just because, for whatever reason. So it’s nice to have those groups that kind of say, Hey, you’re doing great, keep it going.

and that’s very validated and makes you want to keep, find the next deal. But as far as, partnerships go, it’s more so about being honest and setting expectations 100% of the time. If you’re not doing that, dude, you’re gonna screw yourself awfully, fast. So, my first partnership I did with like my best friend from college. We both painted house, we both had some backlog and we’re like, Hey, we want to get into this. And we had a great partnership mostly because we just rationalized it from the get go. neither one of us necessarily know what we’re doing.

know, we all rather than try to split it fifty-fifty, we’re like, screw, we’ll both go a hundred percent. we went to every property management interview together, we went to every contractor meeting together, we went through every inspection. We literally did it all absorbed absolutely as much as we can. If somebody for whatever reason couldn’t make it, wasn’t a knock on them for not making it. We both had lives outside of that. I’m just stoked that if he couldn’t make it, I’d still be there to learn and then I can go back and relay that information to him. and we did several really good deals together.

and then he just went a different way. So looking for new partners. the biggest thing, as far as the workload, I don’t really know. because I don’t I don’t know how bad I would want to trust somebody with a certain aspect of my business. So in my personal partnerships, I like to do just all of the work and I look for funding just because that’s my biggest, constraint right now. Yeah. And most of it is just, setting expectations of hey, here’s this great deal.

here’s what it’s cost, here’s what I think I can get it for. If we can knock it down from here, here’s what our renovation’s gonna cost, here’s gonna be our time frame we’re paying interest payments on with bringing no money in. Yeah. here’s what I generally think our return’s gonna be. And I’d love your money.

Q Edmonds (12:19)

Yeah yeah.

Clay White (12:20)

And for the most part, anybody that is looking to, become a private lender and loan to you has known you before, a lot of it. Like I had, mentors at my real estate company when I first started selling that know what I do now and have asked, like, hey, if you ever need money, we’d love to do it. family members, other buddies that have then therefore made good money and are looking to invest it in a different way. now it comes from a whole bunch of different sources just because they’ve seen what I’ve done and they understand that it’s given money, and I’m like, hey, this is

Worst case scenario, I’m hoping this is what’s gonna happen, And then when we come back generally a little bit better, it’s most ’cause I said the expectation the right way and we’re stoked.

Q Edmonds (12:55)

Yeah, absolutely. So follow me, man. Look, quick story, because you talked about setting expectations, right? So when I was dating my wife.

Actually, scratch that before I was even dating my wife. I was dating her in my head. She didn’t, she wasn’t worried about me at all. And I it’s funny because I thought I was kicking game and come to find out a year later, she was actually interested in somebody else, but that’s a whole nother story. But when I was talking to her, I borrowed something from Brené Brown and she says clear is kind, unclear is unkind.

And so when you talked about setting the expectations, that’s something I did with my wife right up front. I said that line to her, I was like, listen, clear is kind, unclear is unkind. So let’s ask each other the tough questions. So I love how you talked about setting the expectations from jump, letting people know what it is that you’re trying to do. Because if it’s either it’s gonna work or it’s not gonna work, but let’s not get false expectations. And so I love that aspect of relationship that you talked about, setting expectations from jump. I think that’s beautiful, man. I really do.

Clay man, if somebody’s out there like, hey, I want to be Clay, like what is what is some just fundamental maybe advice you can give somebody that’s maybe looking to do flips or get into the world that you’re in? Like what is some fundamental advice that you would give somebody that wants to get started?

Clay White (14:07)

understand that you don’t know everything and don’t necessarily be scared of that. you’re not gonna if you’re trying to wait until you have all the answers before you buy your first house, you will never buy a house. I promise you that there’s gonna be so much there’s so much that I don’t know still. So know that you don’t know everything, ask all the questions you can, read everything that you can get your hands on, but don’t necessarily be scared if you find something cheap, just jump in and kind of learn along the way. Otherwise you wait until you’re perfect, you won’t buy.

And that sucks.

Q Edmonds (14:31)

Yeah, absolutely. Listen, man, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, man?

Clay White (14:40)

Yeah, best ways going through your Instagram. I am on Instagram @clay__56. you can DM me on there. that’s gonna be generally the best way to reach me. And if you have any questions, I’m definitely happy to answer them. I’m no expert myself, but we’d be happy to help anybody’s path.

Q Edmonds (14:55)

Yeah, absolutely. Listen, y’all heard Clay. His information is in the show notes. Please get in contact with him. Clay, I wanna say to you, sir, thank you, man. Again, thank you for your time. think time’s our most precious commodity. So thank you for that. Secondly, man, thank you for your story. Thank you for what I call like the gift of integrity, like the gift of just authenticity, right? People just bringing who they are to the scene, no BS, like this is what I am, this is what I do. Because I think those tell us telling our stories.

It plants it’s it spread seeds for people and like we never know when those seeds will take root and grow, but the seed is out there, right? And so I believe you’ve you gave some real seeds today that’s really gonna help some people out. And lastly, I always like to like thank people for their mindset, for the way they think, because we all process at different times, different speeds. But I thank you for your process and bringing your mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming on today, Clay.

Clay White (15:45)

Yeah, thanks for your time. It’s been awesome.

Q Edmonds (15:47)

Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Clay. Please, his information is in the show notes. Get in contact with him. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here. Because I promise you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people, just like the Mr. Clay White. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.