Creative Real Estate Investing: Camille Spinelli’s Investing Journey

Camille Spinelli (00:00)
Really just thinking that they have to do things the traditional way. Hearing that I did one with credit cards only that I bought a house all in credit cards, usually is a shocker to people. And the biggest question that comes up and this is one of the questions I was talking about is, yeah, but it’s a credit card, but you can refinance out. So it’s how you’re utilizing, you wanna make sure you’re buying the property right. But who would have ever thought to buy a house on credit cards only?

Michelle Kesil (01:59)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today, I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Camille Spinelli, who’s been making serious moves in the investing space. So really glad to have you here today, Camille. I think the listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching building your real estate investing business, as well as helping other investors.

get started on creating their own portfolios. So let’s dive into all of that.

Camille Spinelli (02:32)
Sounds great. I love it.

Michelle Kesil (02:33)
Amazing. So just first off for people who may not be familiar with you and your world, can you give us the short version of what is your main focus these days?

Camille Spinelli (02:45)
Really it’s to build a portfolio to help my family buy more time and help others around me to build the same successes so we can all get there together.

Michelle Kesil (02:55)
Awesome, and how did you get started in all of this?

Camille Spinelli (02:58)
I started a juice bar when I first met my husband and we were in the dating phase. I left a good paying job to just take a risk, start a juice bar. We ended up selling right before 2020 and we did not, you we made money off that. While I was doing the business, it was the most humbling experience of my life because I wore a million hats and the food business is very hard. However, we sold at a really good time, 2019, and that was before

COVID hit. I saw the writing on the wall because there was an expensive, we were inside of a gym. There was a lifetime fitness, if anyone’s familiar, it’s a very exclusive, more luxury, higher priced. So I knew that the customers were going to be traveling over there and I wouldn’t have as many of them face to face. Therefore I felt it made sense to sell since I wasn’t going to scale into a franchise. While I was doing that, I started listening to podcasts.

And that really helped fuel my future and where I wanted to go with it. I knew I wanted to retire within a five year timeframe. I’m now a stay at home mom and we were able to do that. But the sale of the juice bar is what helped us buy our very first rental property. From there, yeah, from there, you know, it becomes addictive, right? So every time you put in a down payment or you’re buying a property, you’re essentially buying yourself a paycheck.

Michelle Kesil (04:09)
Amazing. Yeah, go ahead.

Camille Spinelli (04:20)
And I just saw that that was just a great way to build my future. And I didn’t have any children at that time. So it was really just me. We ended up buying two more rental properties, one of them being on credit cards only. So the whole thing we wired from the credit card, it was 0 % interest for about a year and a half. We ended up fixing up the property, refinancing all of our money and then some, and use that as a catalyst for the next property.

In five years, we were able to build a $3 million portfolio of 26 units. So pretty quickly.

Michelle Kesil (05:42)
Amazing. Wow. What an awesome story. Yeah. How were you able to scale at that rapid of a pace?

Camille Spinelli (05:50)
Yeah, we used again the credit card loans with the first, you know, utilization. The very first property we bought was from the sale of the juice bar that I had. That went to the first one. Then, you you’re either at a money constraint for down payment, or you’re at a debt to income constraint is how we originally were thinking of things because we weren’t familiar with a debt service coverage loan, which is based solely on the income of the property. But we did the

credit card as the second one. We did 401k loans from our own 401k as down payments for the next one. And then we started the equity started building up. So we started refinancing and rolling that back into down payments with the next properties. We made some partnerships, we run a local meetup in Frederick, Maryland, to meet other investors, help other investors learn from other investors.

And the goal really was to build our relationships in our community. We bought small rental, probably CD class properties. And I think it’s a great way for people to get into the real estate world because it’s a low down payment way to get in entry level. But all of these properties were from the 1900s. And you want to think like long term, I think when you get into it, you believe that this is the property you’re going to have for that 30 year loan. That’s not the case at all.

You probably want to think in more five to seven year terms where this portfolio in this C, D class market, we were able to gain, you know, a million and a half of equity and we’re started to actually transition that equity outside. And we are under contract for a build to rent property in Florida. And I think that’s kind of where we will be trans and transitioning into higher class A, B,

higher worker class markets.

Michelle Kesil (07:38)
Amazing. That is so powerful. What has been like the key to keeping your business running smoothly through these phases of expansion?

Camille Spinelli (07:48)
So we really wanted it to be passive, but nobody just gives you money for free. So we did have property management. However, property management is super key because it did wreck a portion of our portfolio and we had to transition. And it’s been about a year and we still haven’t recovered from the prior property manager. And that’s things like them telling you everything’s fine in the house, but not actually taking the time to do inspections, fix anything. Like we didn’t know that there were a lot of things that hadn’t been fixed.

we are kind of catching up to all those things. And when we went with the new property manager, that’s a big output instead of like paying it little by little when something kind of goes awry.

Michelle Kesil (08:28)
Yeah, absolutely. So what are you most focused on solving or scaling next in your business?

Camille Spinelli (08:36)
So I think the next big wave is learning to pivot, being forthright, having that many properties put us in a accredited investor status. And what that allowed us to do is since we had that equity, we were able to invest in things like startups or we were in an ATM vending machine business. We were in car washes. We’re currently in a company called FrameTech that has robotics and

can build a hotel within inside two to three weeks. It’s ridiculous how fast they built these things. But from that, we were met with ⁓ fraud. that can pull you back. We lost about $200,000, but we just decided to stay positive, pivot. And if you look at a problem hard enough, you can get through it. So we decided to sell off five of our buildings, take that equity, reinvest it into a couple other

projects that we really believe are going to do well. Some hard money we’re investing in, we’re doing some more flips. We are putting more money in FrameTech and also buying that property that we talked about in Florida, which is a bill to rent. So all of those things are going to yield us back kind of not necessarily what we lost, but we’re pivoting into a better direction. And, you know, what people do to you is not about you, it’s about them.

And once you apply that to yourself, anytime you feel triggered or hurt, you can maybe feel a little bit of empathy for the other side and you can navigate through those problems.

Someone isn’t paying you rent, someone’s destroying your property. What they’re doing to you is not about you. It’s about them and you need to re-strategize and figure out how to not allow that problem to happen again. That’s just what we’re doing right now.

Michelle Kesil (10:51)
Yeah,

yeah, that is so valuable. So you went through this situation and yeah, clearly you overcame it. So what are like some of those maybe mindset or tangible things that you had to put into process in order to overcome like what happened to you?

Camille Spinelli (11:13)
I’ll give this example. think we all, as women, probably look at pictures of our old self and think, I thought I was fat then. I want to be that fat. And you went all those years thinking that you were either unattractive or heavy or whatever. And how did that change or frame your personality to where you didn’t have the confidence to go out and get the job or make the deal or do the thing? And you wasted all that time. Had you just said,

I’m not gonna allow, I am the arbiter of my emotions and I’m gonna choose how I feel and I’m not gonna allow anything to affect that because what we think turns into our feelings, our feelings turn into chemical reactions. Just imagine walking into a dilapidated property. You look at it, I’d never live here. Well, how are you gonna make it into anything valuable if you can’t see past that? But it’s those who can see past that who can move forward and operate in this space.

Michelle Kesil (12:08)
Yeah, that’s really what separates those people that are just dabbling in this world versus the people that are here for that long term vision.

Amazing. So what is the next big goal that you have, whether it’s for your business or for your students?

Camille Spinelli (12:27)
Right now I’m helping a couple people build their portfolio. can say any person that doesn’t take action just won’t succeed. But I’ve had about 50 students and out of all those 50 students, every single one, 100 % of those that took action have a property, if not multiple now. So that is like the biggest, know, action takers are what’s going to make this happen. And most people

The reason why I started the meetup is I would go to these meetups and ask, hey, how did you get here? And I would hear a lot of, you just gotta do it, just gotta do it, but no real like line of way to go. So I created this class to help other people. I originally started doing it for free for many years, just to help people in the industry. And the goal is to get them moving, hold their hand, give them connections and let them know that it’s easy.

A little story about myself is I dropped out of high school on 10th grade and real estate is my third business. If I can do it, anyone can do it. There’s nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it. And losing money can be scary, but working at a job for 50 years that they let you go can be scary. There’s always scary, you know, the old saying, choose your hard. You just have to move forward and not look back and everything is fixable.

Michelle Kesil (13:45)
Yeah, that’s so important. how, like, let’s say someone’s listening to this and they’re brand new to investing and they don’t know where to start, like, why are some of those first steps that they can take?

Camille Spinelli (13:59)
Yeah.

My first three classes actually are on mindset. I do six classes total, and then we all get together for a potluck and we play Robert Kiyosaki’s cashflow over food. And it starts to put into practice kind of what you’ve learned throughout the time. But the first one is really finding out your strengths. Me as a problem solver, that’s my number one strength. I have to go into a situation in solving things. Another one is self-belief. That’s my second trait. And being a self-believer,

If I tell everybody what I’m doing, then I’ll actually do it because it holds myself accountable. If I tell no one, it won’t happen. So learning how to trick your strengths into pushing you forward.

The second one is a 5-1-1 plan that I have you do, where you want to be in five years, whether that’s monetary or number of properties. We also talk about your why, and then your one year, where you want to see yourself in one year, and where you want to see yourself in one month. And that’s really your to-do list, and that changes every month.

The third class is fear setting. So we go through what if that tenant trashes your place, you need to evict them, they don’t pay rent. What are the things you’re going to do to set that up? It’s actually a Tim Ferriss Ted Talk that I listened to that really made this impactful. And we go through that fear setting. How do you come up with all these solutions that if the bad thing happened, and how do you set yourself up for success so the bad thing doesn’t happen?

And what are you losing by not doing the thing in the first place? And the loss typically doesn’t, it outweighs the good stuff from it. the first three classes are mindset. Then we go into all about lending and all the ways you can get money to buy real estate, all the different kinds of ways that you can utilize real estate to make money. And then we do it together. We just look at a property and we evaluate it.

I’ve actually invested with people. I’ve done a flip with one of my students. He asked me three times and the first two times I said, look, you can do this on your own and I’ll just be there and help you. There’s no need for you to give me half of your money. Well, on the third time I needed investment dollars for another project that was funding. So I actually ended up using, and I used Fund and Grow three times. The first time was for my business. The second time was to buy a house outright. And the third time was for a flip.

So we utilized that strategy and it went beautifully and we made a good profit. I’m actually doing another flip with him in Washington DC. Right now I’m possibly looking at another. And he told me, relationships are more important than the money. And he was so right. Had I not taken that step, I may not be doing the one to two flips that I’m doing now, which are a much bigger scale. Like the buy-in for the first one was like 130. The buy-in for the ones we’re doing now are about 400 to 500,000 and they’ll sell.

close to a million. you know, it’s relationship, it’s who you know, talk to people. That’s the most important thing.

Michelle Kesil (17:31)
Definitely. I love that you brought the relationships topic into this space. So when it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what are some things that made the biggest difference for you?

Camille Spinelli (17:44)
I always believe that I need to be offering something. That’s not always necessarily the case because I do see that that can inhibit me and it inhibits me from speaking to people who I feel have so much, why would they waste their time on me? But for me, giving my time to people who don’t have a portfolio yet, that gives me joy. So I probably shouldn’t take the joy from people away who are doing so much more because that’s what you can learn from.

Michelle Kesil (18:10)
Absolutely. And did you learn from like mentors in this space or were you self-taught?

Camille Spinelli (18:16)
I was self-taught and like I said, every meeting I went to, no one really told me the how. So I listened to a ton of podcasts, I problem solved myself, I figured it out and then I’m just gonna give this knowledge out to other people. And I know that there are other people in this space that do the same thing and giving is the most, helping others is super important because it comes back to you no matter what.

And it may not even be monetarily, it may be in a friendship, it may be in so many other ways that place no value on money, but definitely money can be one of those.

Michelle Kesil (18:51)
Yeah, that’s so important, that service and that reciprocity, definitely. So why is like one thing like maybe overarching that you learned through this journey that people maybe in the beginning stages should know?

Camille Spinelli (19:07)
not thinking big enough, not thinking far enough, and you don’t know what you don’t know. Students will come in and ask, well, you know, what if, you know, it’s a small question. like, what if the down payment doesn’t go through? What if we don’t have this? And I say to them, the questions that you’re asking me now, after doing your first flip or your first buy,

won’t even be something you’ll ever think about again. Those are the beginner questions that don’t even really matter. Then the questions that you’re gonna get to are, what do we do if we come over budget? And how do we fix that? How do we set places in the contract to show that this won’t happen again? So it’s really like dotting your T’s, you know, crossing your T’s, dotting your I’s, and all of that just pushes you forward.

Michelle Kesil (19:54)
Absolutely. And as far as your students, is there like a common obstacle that they all have that you help them overcome?

Camille Spinelli (20:01)
really just thinking that they have to do things the traditional way. Hearing that I did one with credit cards only that I bought a house all in credit cards, usually is a shocker to people. And the biggest question that comes up and this is one of the questions I was talking about is, yeah, but it’s a credit card.

but you can refinance out. So it’s how you’re utilizing, you wanna make sure you’re buying the property right. But who would have ever thought to buy a house on credit cards only?

Michelle Kesil (20:28)
Yeah, I’ve never heard of that.

Camille Spinelli (20:31)
There are many ways. There’s sub 2. There’s borrowing money from friends. There’s doing a couple flips to gain the money. But there’s all sorts of ways.

Michelle Kesil (20:40)
Yeah, it sounds like the important thing is to get creative and to not get stuck in it looking one way.

Camille Spinelli (20:46)
and start yesterday.

Michelle Kesil (20:48)
Let’s start yesterday,

yes. Highlighting that one, amazing. Thank you so much for all of that knowledge. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to connect, reach out, collaborate, or just learn more from you, what is the best place for them to reach you?

Camille Spinelli (21:07)
have a link tree that I have in the bio and that is a great way to meet me. DM me through Facebook if you’re looking for a loan. I have my lender on there. If you want to understand how I did fund and grow, there’s a link on there for that. And just looking forward to connecting with everybody and helping each other grow.

Michelle Kesil (21:24)
Perfect. Well, listen, I really appreciate your time, story, and perspective. We need more people in this space doing things in this right way. So thank you for being here.

Camille Spinelli (21:33)
I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Michelle Kesil (21:35)
Of course. And for those of you that are tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations coming with operators just like Camille, who are building real businesses. And we’ll see you all on the next episode.