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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
Human-Centric Insights: We prioritize people over profits without sacrificing the bottom line. Think less "cog in the machine" and more "humans helping humans."
I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
Hit subscribe to never miss an episode, and leave a review to help other listeners discover our show.
Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:08]:
Welcome back to the Business is Human podcast, where we discuss strategies to increase our VRI value, relevance, and impact. We're here to blend meaningful work with profitable success. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, here to steward what we call the age of humanity, to transform the way we work so we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request. If you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. And then leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it, too. Always looking to help you and connect with others.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:49]:
Let's get into it, shall we?
Jackie Coffey [00:00:52]:
Anything that is worth anything has not been scary. Your first kiss was scary. You're buying. Your first house was scary. If there's not a fear factor in it, I don't want to do it. I mean, genuinely, who wants that? I was like, fear is the best motivator you will ever find. I love it. I thrive on it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:09]:
That, my friends, is Jackie Coffey. And I think there's. It's obvious that her last name is coffee because you feel like you've just had two or three shots of espresso after talking with her. Her energy is absolutely incredible, infectious. I cannot wait for you to experience this episode. Jackie's story reminds us that we are living a story past, present, and dreams of the future. And it was well into her career as a real estate investor that she realized that her story of her upbringing, lots of things from her childhood, had led her to this place. And she tells that story today as well as some others.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:53]:
She's an amazing storyteller. She's just a beautiful human spirit. And I know you're going to get so much encouragement out of this episode and just to fire you up with some resilience, to know that fear can be a motivator and how to use resilience in a million ways. Enough. Enough. We're just going to. Here's Jackie. It's.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:19]:
It's good. It's really good. Jackie Coffey, welcome to the show.
Jackie Coffey [00:02:23]:
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:26]:
Well, I tell you what, when I looked at your information, your website, you immediately fit into the Business is Human framework, because all of your stories are human stories that you have worked into, business ideas and tips and things. And I'm excited to have this conversation because there's no doubt that you have real conversations all the time.
Jackie Coffey [00:02:51]:
Oh, yes. All day, every day. And that is the only way that I will do business. I don't want this dictionary response like, tell me real stuff. What's really going on? What are you really thinking?
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:03:01]:
Well, that's one of the tenets of this show, is no business b's. We just talk human talk like real people. So I want to get started with you just telling our listeners a little bit about your business so they have the context of what you do for the stories I'm going to ask you to tell next.
Jackie Coffey [00:03:18]:
So what I do, I am a real estate investor, but I'm. I see myself as being a serial investor because I invest in so many other businesses. I have escape rooms and logistics companies. Both my bread and butter, my soul is my real estate investing. I love it. It's, it's rooted deeply into who I am just from some of the things that I went through as a kid and as a young adult. So for me, I flip houses and then I acquire as many rental properties as possible, and I absolutely love it. And then I also teach people how to flip houses.
Jackie Coffey [00:03:47]:
And not just how to flip houses, I really teach them how to ignite their inner entrepreneur. Whether it's for flipping houses or whether it's for building your own in ground, pool, whatever it is, I want them to feel that, like, fire that entrepreneur inside of them. And it doesn't have to be this conventional. I am starting a business. Here's my business plan. And it's perfect. It's finding whatever's inside of you that brings you all of this joy and just doing it and conquering it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:04:14]:
Well, I have to know about the escape rooms, how that came to. But first, I want to make a comment about what you said is what you're saying is we all, as our nervous systems are built, are motivated by either love or fear.
Jackie Coffey [00:04:25]:
Yes.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:04:25]:
And you are a just personification of that. So a lot of your stories are about getting past fear, but it's also about tapping into the love and the joy of whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.
Jackie Coffey [00:04:39]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think both of those things. If any task that I'm doing, if any business that I'm starting is not fueled by love or fear, I don't want to do it if there's not something in it that just gives me this warm, fuzzy feeling and saying, oh my gosh, I'm going to make my daughter so happy by starting this, or my mom or my husband and having that love, or saying, I am terrified of this. So I have to take that fear, and I have to harness it, and I have to make it into something amazing. If any of the emotions are not there, I do not want it. I'm bored, and I just don't have time for it. I need something that makes me feel alive every day, and that is how.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:05:15]:
We are motivated as human beings. And you're just tapping into it in such a big, bold, beautiful way. I love it. And what you also said is, it's not just about the work you connected it to. Is it for my daughter? Is it so I can tell my mom it's a human to human approach that you absolutely have about everything in your life. I feel that.
Jackie Coffey [00:05:37]:
Oh, absolutely. And that's. But aren't we all. I mean, no matter what age we are, it doesn't matter if you're 20, if you're 40, if you're 60, and if your parents are still around. It's constantly, is this going to make my mom proud of me now that I'm, you know, grown up and I have kids? It's not only is my mom gonna be proud of me, is my husband gonna be proud of me, but are my kids gonna be proud of me? So it's always pushing. I always want to be proud of myself, but I love having that factor of showing them what I'm made of and what you can endure if you just really try.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:06:09]:
And that brings up a couple of things in your story, because the whole idea of business is human, is honoring all of our story, all of our humanity. And we have a story about who we were before we got to the job that we're in now, before we even got to work. And that childhood stuff, our education stuff, all of that informs who we are and plays into our motivations. So I would love for you to share with our listeners your story of how you finally got to the point where, like, oh, that's why I'm in real estate investment. It didn't start recently. It goes way back, doesn't it?
Jackie Coffey [00:06:49]:
Way back, back to memories that I didn't even know were there. So, for me, I didn't find out while I was in real estate investing until, I mean, like, 20 years later, 20 years into this business, and then my husband's actually the one that pointed out. So I'll back up a little bit. Yeah, I was about five or six years old. We lived in Garland, around Dallas, Texas. And one day we're there, and the FBI comes and raids our house. Basically, they come and they seize our house, and we have no idea what's going on? My mom doesn't know what's going on. Well, my stepdad, who is you, would never picture this about him.
Jackie Coffey [00:07:29]:
He was always in a suit, didn't drink, didn't smoke, just nothing. The picture perfect Wall street businessman. And then come to find out that he is a massive heroin dealer, but not your. Not your, like, street kind of guy, like, american gangster type, if you've ever seen that movie type of guy. And he had got arrested, and so the FBI had seized his assets, and our house was one of them. And I remember this, and I was. I had to be sick five or six years old. Cause I was in, I think, first grade right about that time.
Jackie Coffey [00:07:59]:
So the FBI, they come and take the house. And my mom is originally from Venezuela, so suddenly we don't really have anything. You know, here's this 20 year old mom with three babies. I'm the youngest of three, and I have an older sister and an older brother, and we just have nowhere to go. And so suddenly she. Because her and my real dad are not together. My dad lives in Waxahachie, but they're not together, of course. So she takes us and she moves us to Venezuela.
Jackie Coffey [00:08:26]:
She's just like, I can't do it here. This is too hard. And she moves us to Venezuela. So then my real dad is like, hey, you know, hey, Maude. Well, my dad calls me Maude. He's like, hey, Jackie, you know, and he calls us all the time, and he basically, he tells my mom, I'm going to buy you a house here. If you just come back, you know, I want to see my kids come back to Waxahachie, and me and my parents are going to help get you a house here. So, you know, we're there for a couple of years, and then she agrees, and everything is going good.
Jackie Coffey [00:08:52]:
Everything is normal, and it's like, okay, things are calm, and everything is happy. So then I come to find out I'm getting in senior year of school, and I'm getting ready to graduate, and I find out that as soon as I leave, because I'm the youngest, that they're going to take the house away from my mom. So now I'm getting ready to go to college. I want to go to college. But now it's, well, do I leave? I can't leave my mom. I can't abandon her, because what is she going to do? She doesn't have a house. And I feel all of this responsibility. I felt like this is 100% my responsibility to take care of her.
Jackie Coffey [00:09:26]:
And it was really, really hard. And eventually I did, you know, leave to move to Arlington to go to for college, and they took the house from her. Well, luckily, since we got back from Venezuela, she had worked for basically a real estate mogul in Dallas who I didn't know it didn't have anything to do with me starting real estate. It just happened to be that. And he was like, hey, Rosie, I have some houses. I have a ton of them. You can have one. You've worked for me for like 15 years now.
Jackie Coffey [00:09:52]:
Here's a nice little bonus. You can have one of the houses. So for me, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so relieved. Okay, I can start to carry on as an adult now.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:01]:
Yeah.
Jackie Coffey [00:10:01]:
You know, I feel a sense of relief. So she moves into her new house. I'm doing good. I'm starting to adult. I have my daughter and it's great, but I'm not doing great. I'm still, you know, that poor 22 year old mom and just trying to make it and bartending and everything else. And I start my real estate company and I'm like, I have three jobs, and it's not enough. I can't take care of this.
Jackie Coffey [00:10:24]:
I can't do it. And I am working harder and not smarter. So I had decided to flip a house. So I start flipping.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:32]:
Where did that come from, do you know?
Jackie Coffey [00:10:34]:
I don't know.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:35]:
See, that's where I think it's just so hardwired and you keep going.
Jackie Coffey [00:10:39]:
So I have no idea. I'm like, I'm drawn to it because I was doing other things at the time, like I had done, my mom had me modeling a lot of, but I wasn't a big fan of it. I liked everything behind the camera, so I was like, eh, I never want to do that. But when I was on set one day, I was watching someone flip a house, and here I am watching it, and they're were on this location for like three days, and I'm watching it and I am just tearing them up. I'm like, what a crappy job they're doing. Those colors are ugly, their door is ugly. And I don't know anything about houses, but I'm just sitting over there just being, look what I could do so much better than that of, and I didn't know anything about it, so, but I decided I was like, I'm going to flip a house. So I start flipping houses and I start my business, and it's going pretty good, it's going slow, and I'm getting it.
Jackie Coffey [00:11:21]:
And there are trials and tribulations. But getting back to where this is rooting in me for, a couple years later, down the road, my mom's boss tells her I got to have the house back. And I am just devastated because I'm not doing well enough yet that I can buy her a house. And I feel like I have to. Like, that's. That is a driving force in me, is to buy her a house so no one can take this house away from her. And I'm terrified. So she ends up moving with my sister for a little while and I start doing a lot better.
Jackie Coffey [00:11:55]:
And I'm with my ex husband at the time, Jamie. At that time, my company was still young and he had developed an addiction. And he knows I talk about. We talk about all the time. And he ended up going to rehab for 13 months. But there were some other things that happened that caused us to separate. Nothing that was, like, awful. Just, you are not being the smartest person and you need to go right now, so you need to go.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:12:18]:
He had to protect your daughter.
Jackie Coffey [00:12:19]:
Yes. Had to protect the kids. Well, I have daughter and son now. Had to just put him in a safe place. So as he's leaving to rehab, you know, my company's still young and I haven't been paying myself yet. I haven't really. Haven't really stood fully on my own 2ft, even though I've always been independent. But I had my bills.
Jackie Coffey [00:12:36]:
And suddenly he's gone. And I'm standing there and I can feel the biggest fear, this childhood fear coming back inside of me. And I'm terrified. And I feel like I am looking at my mom, like, here I am standing on the edge of this cliff and my house is in jeopardy and I'm so scared. And I am just paralyzed with fear. And I'm like, he's leaving. He's gone. I know he's going to be gone.
Jackie Coffey [00:13:03]:
And suddenly I have to do this. So I was upset about it for like a day. And I was just like, okay, anything more than a day is pouting. So the next day, I got up, I cried everything out. I screamed, I was upset.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:15]:
Good. It's good to do that. It's healthy to do that.
Jackie Coffey [00:13:18]:
Yes. I went through all the motions. And then I was like, okay. The next day I got up and I was just like, okay, anything more than day is pouting. Jackie, get your shit together. So I get up, I take a shower, I wash all of those emotions off. And there is one that's remaining in it is fear. And I am still terrified, but I'm ready, and I'm like, okay, I am not gonna let these kids down.
Jackie Coffey [00:13:38]:
I'm not gonna end up in the same position that my mom was. This is not gonna happen. And that fear, like, I have goosebumps right now. I talk about it every time I do. That fear was the biggest motivator I had ever felt in my life. It was almost stronger than love. It was almost stronger than anything else. But it was the love.
Jackie Coffey [00:13:55]:
It was the love for my kids. It was the love for my mom. It was not wanting to be that. It was developing the characteristics that would have saved her. So, for me, I put it into high gear, and the years after that were, I mean, ten times better every year, and the next year was ten times better, and I just put into high gear, and I did so well, and then come on down the road a few more years, and, you know, I get with my husband, Doug, and I love him so much. And he tells me one day, we're standing there talking about. Because I have tons of rental houses, and I'm like, I got to get more. I got to get more.
Jackie Coffey [00:14:27]:
And he was just like, did it ever dawn on you that maybe you're acquiring all of these houses, trying to save your mom from losing her house? And I was just like, oh, my God. No. I didn't even think about that. I didn't even realize that. I didn't even know it. And I was just like, I bet that's why it was. He's like, I bet that's why you got into real estate. You didn't even realize it.
Jackie Coffey [00:14:47]:
And he was absolutely right. This whole time, I'm just trying to do better and save my mom. And luckily, I'm so happy to say that a few years ago, I was actually able to buy her house. So there is no more fear. That's all that I ever wanted to do. I didn't need to be rich. I didn't need to have anything. I just wanted to make sure that this person that sheltered us and took such good care of us and loved us so much was okay.
Jackie Coffey [00:15:10]:
So she was so happy, and I bought her a house, and that was really the high point of my career for me. Not that there's not other amazing moments, but that's really what I wanted, but it was completely rooted in fear and love, and it shaped my entire career. You know, if things would have been different, I probably wouldn't be doing this. I have no idea what I'd be doing, but I don't know if it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:15:33]:
Would be this, but you had that moment of being able to almost go back and heal a little bit of that five year old little girl fear of losing a house by buying your mom a house and knowing that you've got the ability to make sure you always have a house. Like, that's beautiful. To be able to make that be a full circle kind of momentous.
Jackie Coffey [00:15:54]:
Yeah, it was. And like I said, it took 20 years for me to even realize that I was just on hustle mode. And I'm like, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. And I always knew that my security, and I don't mean like, in a financial way, but my security of making sure my house is stable was so important to me, and it was a very nice moment to realize, wow, that is why. And having a little sense of relief, like, now I know, and it's great. And my kids know, and I, we've all been here together since, and it's just great. I couldn't imagine doing anything else since.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:16:25]:
Your husband said that. Do you find that, that pops into your head, like, at times now as a motivation? Does it ever just show up in your daily work?
Jackie Coffey [00:16:35]:
Oh, all the time. All the time. And sometimes, like I said, now I'm flipping like, six houses right now. And he's just like, it's okay, your mom has a house. And I'm like, no, no, no, I gotta buy them now, because now I'm securing my kids future. Yes, later down the road. So it gravitated from my mom now to my kids in the future, and grandkids, whenever that happens. So, yes, I think about it all.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:16:57]:
The time, and you're just getting at the heart of the humanity of having this inner knowing, this, I call it your inner thrive. Guide that. And I believe that God plants it in all of us to know what we need to do. And there's always this story, or this who do I need to help or how do I need to heal? And if we would listen to it more often as a guiding force, I just have to believe that we would have so many more meaningful connections with our work and why we do our work and how we do our work, versus the way it's been set up in society now, which is just go get a job where you can make enough money until a certain age when you can retire. And it's like that just doesn't have the same meaning and purpose that your story has. Yeah, sure, it has fear and hard stuff and bad parts of the story, but doesn't everybody's.
Jackie Coffey [00:17:55]:
Yeah, but don't. To me, it was also so important to push. Like, it was so important for me. And like I said, I didn't know why it was real estate, but I also knew that I was. I was starting life in that role. I was starting life and let's get a job, let's make money, let's pay bills. And I refused. I was not happy.
Jackie Coffey [00:18:12]:
And I learned it very on. I was like, I have three jobs and I barely see my daughter, and I'm still not making enough money. I didn't need to be rich, but it was like I wanted to be able to change the oil when the oil light came on without it being a life changing decision. And for a while, that's what it was. And I tell my, you know, I tell my kids now, because money does not buy happiness, okay? But I try living without any money and see how happy you are. And for me, I don't feel like what I do is a job. I love coming to work every day. It's so ingrained in me, and I couldn't.
Jackie Coffey [00:18:48]:
I want everyone that I talk to when I talk to people about flipping houses, I'm like, flip houses. I'll teach you. Because I want you to feel that sense of peace, that sense of freedom that I feel every single day when I come to work. It's not about the money. I mean, I know we need money to live, but it's about having that feeling of freedom, because the more money you have, all more money equals is time. And it gives you the freedom to live life on your terms. And that's what I needed so bad. I needed to know if I take a day off of work, I'm not going to get fired because my daughter's sick.
Jackie Coffey [00:19:19]:
I was like, this is not it. I am not playing by these rules of society. No, I'm done. I was like, 22 or 23, and I was like, that is not going to work for me. It is time to push. And I didn't have any money. I didn't have any credit. I had nothing.
Jackie Coffey [00:19:31]:
But my willpower was so strong that I was just like, I'm not going to fail. I'm not going to. I can't.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:19:39]:
And you hit on that aspect of just facing the fear, just letting it drive you. And I think there are a lot of people that are in jobs today that are making enough money that they're too comfortable to risk it. You know what I mean? They're like, I hate this job, but I'm afraid to leave it because of that security, to go out and try to do something that I'm passionate about or try to start a business or change the industry that I'm in.
Jackie Coffey [00:20:07]:
The.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:08]:
What would you say to somebody that is kind of rooted in that I'm afraid to be afraid?
Jackie Coffey [00:20:15]:
When you have the ability to look at fear in the face and just harness and say, okay, look, I'm scared. I know I'm scared. But everything good that we've ever done has fear behind it. Everything. And if it doesn't, I don't want it. But think about it, really. When you have your first kiss, how scared you are when you go on that first date, when you apply for an apartment, when you get a car, everything has this fear of, oh, my God, am I going to do good? Am I going to do bad? But anything good that's come in your life, that job, the marriage, the kids, have all come from a place of fear. And if people would recognize that that fear is just energy, and if you can harness that energy properly, then you can change your life.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:21:00]:
I love that fear is just energy because we are just big balls of cells just vibrating energetically. They're attracting things or deflecting things. But I think that ties really well into once you get in that, like, I'm going to make it work, then you use that to drive you to be tenacious. Tell our listeners the story about when you first got started. You got to the point where it's like, I got to make this work. But on the very first house.
Jackie Coffey [00:21:29]:
Oh, let me tell y'all, let me tell y'all. You want to talk about fear, endurance. Oh, and when you don't, if you, like I said, if you look at any entrepreneur, the common denominator that we will all have is that you didn't give up. Now, I'm not saying it's not trying something and seeing, okay, turning this to the left doesn't work. So you quit altogether. No. You say, okay, that didn't work. You fail at it quickly, let it go and go on to the next step.
Jackie Coffey [00:21:55]:
So when I started deciding, when I decided, okay, to flip a house, and I had no money, I had no knowledge, I had no credit, so basically I knew absolutely nothing. And I'm like, I can do this. Sure. And there was a fear factor because I was taking away from one of my other jobs that I needed, but I was like, I've got to take this leap. Something has got to change, or 20 years I'm going to be here. So I was like, all right, I'm going to flip a house knowing nothing about it. And you have to think, this is in, like 2004, 2005. So there's no YouTube and Google and TikTok.
Jackie Coffey [00:22:30]:
Like it is now. I literally had to go to the library, like, to the library in town, Sims library, and start looking up loans. Like, how can I get someone to give me $100,000 when I have no credit, no money, no knowledge? That's doable, though, right? Of course it is. So I started doing my research. I'm like, I'm going to figure this out. I don't care if I don't know anything. I was so excited that my excitement and my willpower overshadowed anything that I didn't know. So I was like, that doesn't matter.
Jackie Coffey [00:23:02]:
We'll put that in the back burner for later. So I'm ready to flip a house. I find a certain type of loan that you can get that you don't have to have credit and you don't have to have any money. And I'm like, I got this. This is it. I got it. So I'm like, okay, I got to find me some lenders now. There was Google and there was directories.
Jackie Coffey [00:23:20]:
It just wasn't as great as it is now. So I start typing in. I start looking for hard money lenders, and I pronounce, tell our listeners what.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:23:28]:
A hard money lender is like a banking institution versus a private money lender.
Jackie Coffey [00:23:33]:
If you go, it's private lending. So if you go to a bank right now, if you're like, Jackie, I want to flip houses, and you try to go to your bank and say, give me money to buy the house and to renovate it, they're going to laugh at you, you. Or they're going to say, okay, give me your first two born children and some blood and your fingerprints. They need everything. And it's just a really difficult task if you don't have any money or any credit. So it's. It feels impossible. It feels like you can't do it.
Jackie Coffey [00:23:56]:
So then I find there's something called a hard money lender or a hard money loan. Now, what they do is they don't base the loan on your credit, they don't base the loan on your personal bank statements or personal income, nothing like that. What they do is they base the loan on the property itself.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:11]:
The value of the property.
Jackie Coffey [00:24:13]:
Yes. So if I tell them, hey, this house is, I'm going to buy this house for $50,000 and I'm going to put 30,000 into it. That means I'm at $70,000 there. It's going to be worth. I'm sorry I said that backwards. If the house is going to be worth 100,000 after I'm done with it, the lenders are going to give me 70%. They're going to give me $70,000 to buy it and renovate it. So I was like, okay, I can find a house like that.
Jackie Coffey [00:24:37]:
So I start looking and looking. Now, hard money lenders won't talk to you until you have a house. They're like, nope, give me a house. So I wasted, I don't know, two days trying to call, and.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:46]:
Because that's what they're looking at the value of. So they can't tell you anything until they see the house. Know about the house.
Jackie Coffey [00:24:52]:
Yeah, exactly. They have to see the house. They have to look at the value of the house and what it's worth in the market.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:56]:
But this is all you learning. The industry that you. That you live and work in every day.
Jackie Coffey [00:25:00]:
Oh, yeah.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:25:01]:
Congested learning. Yes, yes.
Jackie Coffey [00:25:04]:
And this is so much trial and error. And you can't be afraid to look stupid, because I looked stupid probably about 47 times a day for the first couple of days. Cause I was asking questions, and I was like, I have a list of 100 people. That's fine. If I say something dumb to this one, I got it for the next one.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:25:20]:
That is life, right? You gotta be willing to ask the question. Look silly, because learning it then lets you take it into the next. That's learning.
Jackie Coffey [00:25:30]:
That's what learning, that's human in you. And if you. And that's the difference in what I see. Like, if I were to call everyone and be like, I already know everything, then I'm just gonna look ten times more dumb. You have to be honest sometimes. It's not a fake it till you make it. It's just a. Be real and be honest until you make it.
Jackie Coffey [00:25:46]:
Like, it's okay if you're new. It's okay if you're green. And when you tell people that and let them know that, I think so much of the time, they're even more willing to work with you because they see someone that's trying and isn't lying and isn't trying to be something they're not. You're like, this is me. I'm new. I want to do it, though. Help me out.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:26:02]:
Because people want to help each other inherently. And so it's like, oh, I'll help them. Yeah.
Jackie Coffey [00:26:08]:
And here's the thing, too. The lenders, contractors, anyone in the industry. We know. If you don't speak the language we know. If you don't know the key words and you're saying you know different things, you don't speak the language we know. And if you're faking it, we know and then we don't want you because you're faking it. Just be real. It's great.
Jackie Coffey [00:26:26]:
I want the human aspect. It's important to me when I work with people. So I get this hard money, I find all these hard money lenders and again, I start calling and I finally found a house. So I'm like, okay, cool, I've got this. I got a house. I'm gonna start calling. I got this and I start calling and.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:26:45]:
But you can't buy the house until you get a hard money lender.
Jackie Coffey [00:26:48]:
Exactly.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:26:49]:
So this house is on the market and you gotta go find somebody to get you the money to buy it.
Jackie Coffey [00:26:53]:
Absolutely.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:26:54]:
Okay.
Jackie Coffey [00:26:54]:
So I start calling and I have, like I said, I have this list of about 100 hard money lenders, like just that are everywhere. So I'm calling and they do care if you don't have experience. So they start asking me a little bit and they're like, oh, have you done any flips? I'm like, well, no, I don't have it yet. So I just keep calling and I'm honest with them because I know if I'm not, they're going to know it. So I start calling. And I mean, I call ten people and they're all like, nope, I call 20, I call 30. And most people probably would have given up after 30, but I'm like, I got to keep doing this. I got to keep at it.
Jackie Coffey [00:27:31]:
Somebody is going to tell me a yes. I get to 50 calls. I get to 70 calls. I get to 100 calls and I am ready to quit. I'm so frustrated. I'm so many days.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:27:44]:
Is this, do you remember?
Jackie Coffey [00:27:45]:
Oh, man, this is overd. I mean, this is probably over a span of like two weeks. So I am just taking, you get.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:27:52]:
Up every day and go, I'm going in this every day.
Jackie Coffey [00:27:55]:
I'm like, okay, I've got to make these calls. Here I go. And I am just pushing and pushing. So I'm at like probably a week in and I'm at 100 calls and I tell them the house, I tell them everything that's going on. And I'm just still getting nose. So I am ready to give up. I'm ready. I'm like, okay, clearly I don't have the experience clearly.
Jackie Coffey [00:28:15]:
I just, I don't. It's not going to work for me. I can't do it, and I don't think anyone can do it. And I'm ready to give up. And I have this epiphany that hits me. And I remember something that happened when I was, like, ten years old, and it takes me back to that moment. So I'm, as I'm sitting there quitting in my mind, I have relinquished it. I can't do it.
Jackie Coffey [00:28:37]:
I'm quitting. I'm ready to quit. And I remember I felt that way one time before, and it was when I was about ten years old. When we got back from Venezuela, my mom had, you know, a couple years later, she had a skating rink. I was a pretty good skater, and I could do the limbo pretty well. And I was like, you know, we were there every day, so of course we were pretty good. So one day we're getting there, and this little girl comes in. And she comes in and I notice her because she has these, like, holographic looking skates.
Jackie Coffey [00:29:03]:
And I am mesmerized. I was like, whoa. And I, like, kind of say hi to her. And she doesn't really hide me. She kind of snubs at me and I was like, oh, well, that's not nice. So she puts on her skates and she starts skating. And she is a good skater, too. And we can feel this competitive tension, you know, at ten or eleven, whatever it was, because I'm kind of a good skater.
Jackie Coffey [00:29:23]:
And I'm going to say this. I grew up with, I'm the youngest of three, and my brother and me are 13 months apart, me and my brother Scotty. So everything we did growing up was a competition. So the limbo, they announced, hey, limbo's in five minutes. And I'm like, all right, now I'm going to be extra cool. So I watch her and she gets off the skate floor. She had a suitcase with her, and she has another pair of skates that matched her other skates. And they were also holographic, but they were quads.
Jackie Coffey [00:29:50]:
So there's quads, which are normal skates that have four wheels, and then there's inlines we both had on in lines originally. So she goes and she changes her skates and she puts on these four wheel skates. So we all start doing the limbo, and it gets down to, like, 30 people, and then it gets down to, like, 20 people, and then it gets down to, like, three of us. And now it's just me and her. And I'm getting a little nervous. I was, like, talking a big game in my head, and my palms are sweating now. So everybody's watching. All my friends are there that are always there on the weekends.
Jackie Coffey [00:30:19]:
My mom's watching. Nikki the elder's watching, and she goes, we're on, like, the second to the last one. And she goes, and she nails it. So I'm like, okay, it's my turn. And I'm just going. And I go. And I skate, and I hit the stick and I lost. And I was devastated.
Jackie Coffey [00:30:34]:
Cause I wasn't used to losing. I wasn't. I was a sore loser. I was mad. I didn't feel like, good job. I was mad. I started crying, and I went to the back where my mom was, and I was upset and I was devastated. And all my friends were like, oh, my God, someone beat Jackie.
Jackie Coffey [00:30:47]:
And I was.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:30:48]:
It was just, oh, I can feel it. I can feel that devastation.
Jackie Coffey [00:30:52]:
I want to cry now thinking about it. So I tell my mom, like, that night, I'm like, I quit. I'm done. I'm not going to skate anymore. So humiliated. And I was so embarrassed, and I just felt that loss so hard. So we go home, and I am, like, crying myself to sleep, and I am devastated, and I quit. And then the next morning, my mom comes in, and she checks on me, and she's like, how you feeling? And I'm still crying.
Jackie Coffey [00:31:15]:
I'm like, I don't want to go to the skating rink tonight. But I had to go because it was a Saturday, so she had to open the skating rink. And she was just like, well, she was like, two things. One, you cried about it all day yesterday. We're not going to pout about it. We're going to find solutions.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:31:29]:
That's where you got your. We cry one day, and then it's pouting.
Jackie Coffey [00:31:32]:
She's just like, anything more than that. You're pouting. She was like, stop it. You can be upset for a day. Give yourself a day to be upset. After that, you make changes. You've got to figure out solutions and make changes. So I told her, I was like, mom, I just.
Jackie Coffey [00:31:45]:
I can't. I don't want to skate anymore. I quit. And I was remembered that feeling of, that quitting feeling, and she was just like, okay, okay, so you lost. Accept it. Now, if you were going to go against her again, which I knew I was never going to go against her again, what would you do differently? How would you beat her? And I was like, how? I was like, I can't. She's like, how would you, though? And I was like, how would I? I was like, well, I guess maybe I would put on quads, too. I'd put on different skates.
Jackie Coffey [00:32:11]:
Maybe I would hold onto the boot of my skate. Maybe I would. And I started thinking, oh, my God, how? And it never dawned on me to look at it from that perspective, because once I told myself, like, I can't do that, I shut down. There was no room for growth. There was no room for opportunity. But then suddenly, with how it was like, well, maybe I could try this, or maybe I could try that. And then my mom knocks a bombshell on me, and she was just like, I don't know if it's gonna make you feel better, but just so you know, that little girl had came from the world championship limbo contest. She was like, it was in Houston.
Jackie Coffey [00:32:43]:
She had came, and she had just won the world championship of her division. And I was like, that makes me feel so much worse. It didn't make me feel better. You feel better? Oh, no, I didn't feel better. I just felt worse. I was like, that's great. She came, she beat me, and she was a super winner. Knew she was going to, like, cream me and did.
Jackie Coffey [00:33:04]:
But I was just like, okay. How could I beat her? If I see her again, which I never will, how could I beat her? And it changed everything. So I started practicing. Every day, I switch into quads. I start holding my boots when I skate, everything. And then, sure enough, a year later, guess who walks back in the day? She comes back to my skating rink, and I was just like, oh. And I saw my mom saw that. I saw her, and I was like, oh.
Jackie Coffey [00:33:31]:
And she kind of said hi to me. We start skating, and then they call it it's time for the limbo. Oh, my God. I go and switch my skates. She goes and switch her skates. I switch my skates, and I am so scared, terrified. So we all line up for the limbo, and again, it's like 30 people. All the, all the little kids get out of the way.
Jackie Coffey [00:33:50]:
It gets down to ten, it gets down to five, and then it is down to me and her. So we go, and we're down to the second bar, which is where I got to last time, and I had failed. And I am terrified. And I know she's a little bit nervous, too. I can see it. So she goes first. We go through the bottom bar. She makes it.
Jackie Coffey [00:34:10]:
Now it's my turn. I go through the bottom bar. We're on the last level, and I make it. So now we're at a tie. So what the guys do is they hold the stick right under the. You know, that hold the stick up. I don't know, the little bar that you place the stick on. They just held it underneath it so it was like, two inches lower.
Jackie Coffey [00:34:28]:
So she goes first, and, I mean, I'm watching her. She goes through and she hits it and she loses. I'm like, oh, God. Oh, my God. But if I lose two, then we're going to tie up. But I am so scared. Cause I don't think I've ever gone this low, and I don't know if she had. So I'm like, all right, here we go.
Jackie Coffey [00:34:45]:
And I go, and I skate, and I go down into my split, and I close my eyes, and I'm, like, waiting for the tsk to hit the bar, and I sail right through it. And I had passed it. I had won. And in my own right, I was the world. Cause she had won it again. So in my mind for a year, I was now the world champion of the limbo skating. And I was so excited. And she came up, she shook my hand to you.
Jackie Coffey [00:35:09]:
She was really sweet. And I know it was an official title, but I was like, yes, yes. So that moment was, like, such a defining moment for me. But it wasn't the win. It was that changing that one mindset from I can't do it to how could I do it otherwise? I could have just said, I can't do it powder. That never would have happened again. So here I am, back to present day, doing these calls. And I remember that.
Jackie Coffey [00:35:33]:
And I was like, I wanted to give up. And I said, and I want to give up now. So I was like, okay, I have to stop telling myself, I can't do this. I'm 100 calls in. How can I do it? So I was like, let me adjust what I'm working with. Let me find some different lenders. Let me try different states. Let me try different criteria.
Jackie Coffey [00:35:49]:
So I go, I print a whole new list of lenders, and I start calling again, and I keep calling, and I keep getting no's, and I widened it. Like, I changed all my criteria. So I met, like, 150 calls, 170 calls. I am at call 202. And finally I talked to a guy named Shane, and he was like, jackie, I would love to do a flip with you. And I was like, oh, you will. You'll do the flip with me. Like, I was so ecstatic, and it was that same mentality.
Jackie Coffey [00:36:22]:
It was, okay, how can I do it? And it was not giving up. And I thought I had just accomplished the hardest part of it, which, oh, my God, it so wasn't. And that comes later. But just the fact that I had sat through all that, I didn't give up. I didn't quit. I had to take 201 no's before I finally got to a yes. But I got to it. It was the biggest motivator of anything.
Jackie Coffey [00:36:45]:
Like, I was so much more proud of what I endured to achieve the yes than the yes itself.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:36:53]:
And that's the big takeaway, is when you endure the level of confidence that it brings when you finally do succeed is so much greater than if it would have been easy. Oh, yeah.
Jackie Coffey [00:37:05]:
If they just would have told me yes. I wouldn't have appreciated as much as I did. It was now. It was like, okay, now I can't quit. I've got over this massive hurdle that I didn't quit. I just kept going. I kept going. And now it's like, I have to do good now.
Jackie Coffey [00:37:19]:
Now it's a test to my soul of if I'm going to be able to, you know, what else can I conquer? If I can do this, what else can I do? And it was the best, one of the best moments of my entire life.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:37:30]:
Oh, my God. I can literally picture you standing there with that limbo, her in front of you, and it's like that slow motion moment. You can literally make a movie out of this. It's such a great story.
Jackie Coffey [00:37:42]:
Oh, it was so. It was so scary. And let me tell you something. It was. Two things came out of it. One, this humility. Because when you're a kid, you don't really know humility. You don't really know what it is to be humble until it happens to you.
Jackie Coffey [00:37:54]:
And it really did change so much of my demeanor going forward. So it changed how I have dealt with my winnings and dealt with my losses, this one thing. And it's changed how I see things when something feels unsurmountable, that if I just keep going, if I just have the strongest willpower in the room, I can do it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:38:14]:
Oh, my gosh. You are so inspiring. I am so glad that we've methadore. I just feel like there's, like, a whole list of takeaways that we can provide to listeners today. Give us two or three. Like, listeners out there today are either working inside of business. They might be running their own business, but they're business people. And what are the two big inspiring takeaways that you would say to anybody that wants their life to be better.
Jackie Coffey [00:38:43]:
For one, when you're scared, when you are afraid, because we all feel that fear. We really do. You might say, hey, I'm at this job and I want to change it, or I want to switch jobs, or I want to start a bakery or whatever it is, that fear will be the best motivator that you'll ever have and that you're going to fail. You're going to fail at things, and it is okay. Failure is not the end. It's really not. That's what people think. Oh, I failed.
Jackie Coffey [00:39:07]:
It's the end. It is the start. And opening your mind up for opportunity and growth, now you found a way not to do it. Now you've seen something that doesn't work. Just like I said before, once you go through the fire, once you walk through it, it gave me so much more confidence, that one little thing to feel like, man, I can take over the world today. I can do anything. And as long as I try and do it one step at a time, it's possible to move about a mountain. So it's really about not giving up, not seeing failure as an end and enjoying the fear, learning how to harness the fear, learning how to use that fear in your favor, because staying somewhere you don't want to be, to me, that's torture.
Jackie Coffey [00:39:51]:
If you're somewhere you don't want to be, nothing will change until you change it. So you just have to have a strong enough will, and you don't have to be perfect at something. I didn't know anything about flipping houses. I didn't know anything about it, but my hard work beat out anything else. And then when I started flipping houses and knew how to do it, and I was going up against these seasoned veterans that would go find the houses and they'd show up at 09:00. I was showing up at 07:00. My hard work beat their talent because they were good at it. They did it.
Jackie Coffey [00:40:22]:
They knew it. But you couldn't beat me because I wouldn't give up. And you can't beat someone that won't give up. So it is accepting that and being proud of yourself and not giving up. And when you feel like you can't give up, when you feel like you're going to give up and that you have to quit saying, okay, I can go further. How can I go further? Beautiful.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:40:42]:
Beautiful. Okay. I feel like I have to close the loop on this because I know some of my listeners, and they will literally message me and say, you forgot to finish that one question. How did escape rooms become a part of your business model?
Jackie Coffey [00:40:56]:
Oh, my God. Okay, so my daughter on her 12th birthday. Now, now listen, hold on. Let me. I need to give a warning to y'all, okay? I need to give a warning to all of your.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:41:06]:
Jackie comes with a warning. Yes.
Jackie Coffey [00:41:08]:
I come with a warning for you. When you change your mentality of I can't into how it's kind of like a superpower. So when you start saying, how can I do it? And you start finding out ways, you will feel invincible and you're going to try to fly, and that's great. Just be cautious that you have really good wings on. So once you change that mindset, you will become an unstoppable force. So when my daughter was twelve, I took her to an escape room. I had never been to an escape room. So we go to this amazing escape room in Mesquite, and it's an hour long.
Jackie Coffey [00:41:43]:
It is so much fun. I was like, this is awesome. Why don't we have one of these here? And that's what my daughter says. She's like, mom, I think you should open an escape room. And I was like, I think you're right. So I go back home, I start looking at all the numbers, I start looking on my cost, I'm looking at the demographics, and I'm like, I bet we could do this. I bet we could build an escape room. Keep in mind, I know absolutely nothing about escape rooms.
Jackie Coffey [00:42:05]:
I know nothing. That was the first one I went to, but I started looking into it. I was like, you know, I think walks out. You can use something like that. So I start putting together a business plan, and I get Bella to help me, and I get my mom, because my mom is super creative and so is Bella. And I'm more, which I am, but I'm like, more on the business side of it. So she was like, let's start an escape room. And I was like, let's start an escape room.
Jackie Coffey [00:42:26]:
So I started looking at the other ones in Texas, and I'm like, okay, they all have three to five rooms. I was like, we're going to do seven rooms, so we can have the biggest one. Because why not go big or go home, of course. But that's what I did. I started researching it, and I started looking at other escape rooms. I started going to them. I started talking to owners, and I just start. I just.
Jackie Coffey [00:42:43]:
I just started it. And that's what you have to do if you want to just try. Don't think about it. Just get up off your feet and do it. Just try. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have a perfect business model and you just got to get creative with it. So that's what I did.
Jackie Coffey [00:42:58]:
And we set out to build Texas biggest escape room. And I had, you know, I built like, I mean, I hand built everything in there. I couldn't get contractors because trying to tell a contractor, when you push this button, this door is going to open and this is going to fall down and it changes constantly. It was impossible. So me, my mom and my daughter all built the entire thing ourselves. I mean, handcrafted, like everything in the rooms and they painted and designed it and it went fantastically. Now, I did tell my mom, I was like, okay, we're going to build this. We're going to get it to its peak and then I'm going to sell it because I want to build some apartment complexes.
Jackie Coffey [00:43:33]:
So they knew going in I was going to sell it. So at the five year mark, I sold it. And we did really, really well on the sale. They were a little bit sad, but it was like, this was amazing. It went well. Now it's time to move on to bigger and better things. And that's what we did. But the adventure was phenomenal.
Jackie Coffey [00:43:49]:
I got to be with my mom and my daughter every day for like five years and it was a blast.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:43:53]:
And the message that I take from that as a parent is because of your confidence and your courage that your daughter has watched. She didn't even hesitate to say, mom, I think we need an escape room. And then for you to say yes, you've just passed on that DNA confidence that now she's going to be unstoppable because she's been watching you and she.
Jackie Coffey [00:44:19]:
Has that mentality already. She has always, she's my oldest of my two, so she has seen me grow. I've grown. She's watched me grow up as I've watched her grow up and she's seen me. She's been to every house I've flipped. She's always there. So she has this really good confidence about her and she has that unstoppable I can do anything quality. And she's in college now.
Jackie Coffey [00:44:41]:
She wants to be a doctor. So I'm so proud of her. And I tell her, I'm like, even if you change your mind, you don't want to be a doctor. Your twenties is a workshop phase. Try things, fail with them. See what you like, see what you don't like, just don't be afraid to try anything. And she's not. She's already traveled.
Jackie Coffey [00:44:57]:
She's gone to Japan by herself or with her boyfriend. She is so brave and she's so, so confident in herself. And I think as mothers, not that our dads are not great, all the dads are lovely, but I'm talking to moms with girls. Cause I have a son too. But there is just something about seeing you be able to do it as a daughter and seeing your mom being able to do it without any help. And I think it's inspiring them, for them to feel like I can stand on my own 2ft. And if I can stand on my own 2ft and whoever I'm with stands on their own 2ft, then we are a force to be reckoned with. So that's what I try to teach her, is that as long as you can do you do whatever you want every day, doesn't matter what is, do what makes you happy.
Jackie Coffey [00:45:39]:
And if you can make some money while you're doing it and pay the bills, then you have everything. That's it. Doing what you love is the most important thing in the world. Everything else is just a bonus. If you happen to have a cool car, if you happen to have a big tv or whatever, that's just a bonus. All that stuff's going to break. But if you have that happiness inside of you, that's genuinely all you need and you can build on it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:45:59]:
Well, there's no better place to just mic drop moment right there. But I will say thank you for being you, for everything you've shared today. And I want to encourage our listeners if they need a keynote speaker, that's part of what you do, is bring this inspiring message out to others, too.
Jackie Coffey [00:46:17]:
Absolutely. And they can go to. My website is jackiecoffey.com and that's what I do. I like it is the most important thing for me now to share this with everyone else. People call me all the time. I don't charge people to ask me. People send me emails, I don't. It's not a paid thing with anyone that's asked me questions about flipping.
Jackie Coffey [00:46:34]:
I will always help. I will always. Everyone's on TikTok and they're like, hey, can you send me hard money lender? I'm like, yes. And I help them all the time because it's so important for me to share this feeling that I have that for the last 20 years, I don't feel like I go to work. I'm so happy every single day and I want everyone else that's stuck in a position that they're not happy to say, I'm going to dare to step out of this. I'm going to dare to do something new. I'm going to try. I'm going to light that entrepreneur spirit inside of me and see what happens.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:47:09]:
Thanks for listening to this episode. I would love it if you would go to Apple podcast and leave a rating and a review and then you can go to rebeccafleetwoodhession.com and join the Badass Women's Council. And if you really want to take a deeper dive, join the movement of a thousand thriving women. There's amazing thrive tools there for you today. Love you. Mean it.
Jackie Coffey [00:47:30]:
I'm not coming down.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:47:34]:
Hey y'all, fun fact. Did you like the music for the podcast? That is actually my son Cameron Hession and I would love it if you would go to Spotify and iTunes and follow him and download some of his other music. My personal favorite is tv land.