fresh and new investor looking for strategy with no w2 job

[Kadeem Rose]

Greeting BP! pleasure to be here! I am currently looking for a strategy to get my real estate investing career going. So a little background. I have no worked a w2 job in about 2 and half years due to be being self employed. I started my own business but had to leave and left the company with nothing due to errors in paperwork. since then, I have worked on gigs and off the book jobs like DJing, and Uber. I decided recently to work on getting my real estate license and becoming an agent to help me learn the business more and have a better stream of income to help me in this pursuit. I am currently about 60 percent through. I have money saved up, 15k, that I am looking to use to purchase my first property and my credit score is ok at 670. one of my issues is my credit utilization due to credit cards I took out for my business that I maxed out and I also have student loans. now fast forward, I want to get into house flipping and later on buying and holding, probably 5-10 years from now. i have done a lot of research on loans I could utilize including the fha loan which seems to be the most attractive to me however I am aware that I would have to stay in the property for a year before I can do anything. I was also looking into hard money lenders, however my concern is that I may not be able to refinance the property after the term due to my credit situation and I would be in a bad place with the lender. I am open to all options and looking to learn more before I take any steps. all suggestions and opinions are greatly appreciated! thanks so much!