Making $200K (in 4 Months!) and Waving Her W2 Goodbye

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tired of working inflexible jobs or living paycheck to paycheck? Elizabeth Esplin’s back was against the wall when she made an all-in bet on real estate investing. Once living off food stamps, Elizabeth and her husband have been able to leave their W2 jobs and are firmly on track to achieve financial freedom—all thanks to the power of real estate! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Elizabeth was caring for a toddler and pregnant with her third child when her husband’s health started to deteriorate—quickly leaving her family with a financial crisis. With bills piling up, Elizabeth turned to real estate. Although her first deal didn’t go to plan, a $2,000 lesson set the stage for a wildly successful second deal—a house flip that not only pocketed her $200,000 (with just four months of work!) but also allowed both her and her husband to trade the W2 grind for full-time real estate! In this episode, she talks about using handwritten mailers to find off-market properties, winning “probate” deals, and surviving stressful renovations. Whether you need an escape rope from your nine-to-five job or creative ways to find your next real estate deal, Elizabeth shares all kinds of helpful nuggets you won’t want to miss! In This Episode We Cover How Elizabeth flipped her first house during a family crisis (while pregnant!) The $2,000 mistake that helped Elizabeth take down a $200,000 deal How to create financial freedom through the power of real estate investing Leaving your nine-to-five job to become a full-time real estate investor Creative ways to find (and buy) more off-market properties And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-590 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What would you do if your spouse couldn't work?
0:02.8	You had a toddler and another baby on the way and you were losing money every month.
0:07.9	Today's guest went from that exact moment to flipping a house that changed her family's future.
0:13.0	And she did it while pregnant with baby number not one, not two, but number three.
0:17.0	Elizabeth Esplin is a mom of four, a former W-2 worker, and a total rookie who used
0:22.7	handwritten letters and a wild probate deal to get her first big win. And trust us, she
0:28.3	learned the hard way. This is a story about mindset, about survival, and one seriously stressful
0:33.9	first.
0:42.6	This is Real Estate Rookie, and I'm Ashley Care.
0:44.3	And I'm Tony J. Robinson.
0:46.5	And let's give a big warm welcome to Elizabeth.
0:48.4	Elizabeth, thanks for joining us today on the Rookie Podcast.
0:49.5	Yeah, absolutely.
0:50.9	I'm so happy to be here and honored.
0:53.2	So let's rewind to the beginning.
0:55.9	What did life look like before real estate really became a big part of your world? So my husband and I were W-2 workers, just barely making
1:02.7	ends meet, you know, hopping sometimes between jobs, just trying to make it work. We live in a place
1:08.2	where it's definitely kind of lower income, but high cost of
1:13.0	living. So we were never really like making it. We're like, we've got to figure something out,
1:17.6	but we didn't ever really know what that would look like or what to do. And we just kind of were
1:22.5	trudging along in the jobs that we had until my husband got really sick in 2020. So he's had chronic migraines
1:30.7	for 10 plus years and we'd done treatments. But in 2020, they changed and he started losing
	...

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