Flipping Your Mindset with Giovanna at #SheInvests
Episode 61: Welcome to the She Builds Show, I’m your host, Stefanie Olson. Today, I am so excited to introduce to a super fun guest, Giovanna Ramos. Giovanna has a MBA in accounting, and last year her and her husband moved from NY to Texas, starting a new life, she quit her job in accounting and pursued real estate investing full time, doing what she loves flipping houses.
Ready? Listen in…
SHOWNOTES:
• So before I even had the idea to do this, my background is in accounting, so I went to school… My major was accounting, then I moved on to grad school, got my MBA, concentration in Accounting and pretty much started working right away. I did that for a few years, I wasn’t really loving it, but now it was like, Okay, I got my degree in this, so this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life, this is just the path that I’m on. So whether I love it or not, this is just my career now… Right? And then my husband and I, we grew up in New York, we were born and raised on Long Island. We decided after we got married, we were going to move to Texas, his parents had lived here for about 10 years, and then… So we were like, Okay, we’re going to pick up and move. We’re going to try something new. So after moving, I said to my husband, I don’t really think I want to do accounting anymore, new state, new me. I want to figure out something else that maybe gives me a little bit more freedom that I can go fly and visit my family when I need to, or just not having to take those days off work, something that’s more just based around me, a little more flexible. So I was doing all this research, what can I do? What can I do? A little soul searching. A little deep dive into what makes me happy and what I would be good at, and then I was like, You know what? Why can’t I do house flipping? (01:03)
• Yeah, so first I started following people on Instagram that were real estate investors that posted little nuggets of information on their pages, I started watching a lot of YouTube videos on it, listening to podcasts, like absorbing everything that I could. I had a whole notebook that I was taking notes on everything. And then there was somebody that I came across on Instagram who did a mentorship program, and that was kind of like what brought it all together for me, everything that I had been learning. Every day my husband would go to work and I’d pull out my laptop and I would just study all day… I mean, I went through a master’s program, so I know how to study. If there’s one thing I could do, I studied for years, so that’s pretty much what I did all day, every day. And then that last little bit of mentorship was to bring it all together, to wrap it up, bring it all home and really give me that last push to start doing it. To get out of the analysis paralysis, where you just reading, studying… How much more information can I accumulate before I feel ready to do this? At some point you just have to go. You just have to do it. (06:21)
• My husband would come from work for lunch and he’s like, What did you do today? And I’m like, Oh my Gosh, I put in an offer on a house. But now it’s like I do it, I just send these offers like they’re nothing, but it was really funny to look back. So that first house, it was actually the second offer I ever put out to… Where was it? It happened really quick. It was in Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee. It was a cute little house, it was in pretty rough shape and had been vacant for three years… How did you find it? I found it just on Redfin, I was just zooming in on map, looking for trends, looking for a cluster of homes with a certain price point, and then maybe one or two that was super low, so I was just looking for something that stood out to me and the only reason I started looking in Memphis was actually because I had a really great conversation with this lender, like a hard money lender, that I was reaching out to all these different places to see what their terms were, and she had recommended me to an agent and Memphis, she was super helpful. (11:02)
• Yeah, so actually, this was my first one and it went on the market a month ago, so I got a handful of offers on it, but they were all creative finance offers, which I wasn’t interested in taking, and that shows me that maybe they’re trying to use it as a rental, and then I had a handful of Airbnb people come, and I was thinking like, hmmm… If everybody is looking at this for rental or an Airbnb, then why don’t I just keep it? So I’m like, I’ve already taken out the hard part of how to flip the House, right? Why not just pull two birds with one stone and figure out how to Airbnb as well, which is a very good way to build wealth and cash flow and all of that good stuff. So that is where I’m at right now. I am in the process of doing a cash out refinance on… Okay, I’m just waiting for the appraisal to come back to see how much I can actually take out, which the numbers are really good, everything sells pretty high in the area, and I felt very comfortable with my assessment of it at the beginning. I also had my mentor analyze it and give me his number, and then my hard money lender on top of that, to lend on the deal, they had to tell me what they thought it was going to be worth. So I had three confirmations of this after repair value, so I’m pretty sure that after the cash out refinance, I’ll be close, if not… Right on! So then you’re going to… Are you going to move forward and make it into an Airbnb? (16:57)
ABOUT GIOVANNA RAMOS:
Giovanna Ramos is the owner and CEO of She Invests, a real estate investing company. She earned her MBA in accounting and worked as the Assistant Controller of a midsize company for a few years before realizing it wasn’t the right fit for her. After moving from Long Island, NY to Dallas, TX last year with her husband, she knew it was time for a change. She quit her job in accounting and decided to pursue real estate investing full time.
The focus of her company is flipping houses, she does these flips thousands of miles from where she lives. Long distance investing is a great way to find deals without limiting yourself to one particular market. Giovanna currently invests in multiple markets across the United States. She still considers herself a newbie since she started her company less than a year ago! She is learning as much a she can, growing a lot along the way, and taking it one day at a time!
Giovanna is a big believer in creating your own reality. “Your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings inspire action, and action produces your results. It’s never too late to start a new career path or learn a new skill, yet many of us put these limits on ourselves. People believe “they can’t” so they don’t but imagine living from a place of “I can” and “I will” … there would be no limits to what you can achieve!”
CONNECT WITH GIOVANNA:
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/she.invests.co
WAYS TO CONNECT WITH STEFANIE…
• Website: https://shebuildshomes.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shebuildsbetter
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shebuilds.homes
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/shebuildsshow