Most people describe their start in real estate investing as a thought-through process. It usually includes a tedious plan with an incredible amount of time spent gaining background knowledge—but that’s not always the case. Today’s guest, Jan Trisler, stumbled into real estate investing by accident but hasn’t been able to look back after having four successful flips, while currently working on her fifth. Now, she has hopes of getting into rental properties in the upcoming year.

Jan was already in a transition period in her life as she was moving from Nebraska to Arizona as a divorcee but she decided to take it one step further and trade her 9-5 for real estate. It started with purchasing her primary residence from an auction, then later rehabbing it to realize she could do this for a profit. From there, she made the transition from rehabbing to flipping and bought two more properties from an auction.

Once Jan realized that flipping was not only a sustainable source of income but something she genuinely enjoyed, she formed an LLC with her daughter and made things official. While some are hesitant to work with family, Jan and her daughter have created a great system where work is allocated fairly, their wages are paid hourly and the financial investment works perfectly for them. By taking the investing “plunge”, Jan has been able to live and finance her ideal life while doing it with the people she cares about most.