Seasoned Investor Opinion Wanted

From similar experience, I pushed the envelope and used my money with hard money as a newbie, which has not worked out very well.  When you use hard money, there is no room for error, mistakes, delays, market hickups, etc.  My last flip I got caught holding a property for 6 months with $2K per month interest only payments going to the hard money at 15%.  The market in my area just stopped and I could not find a retail buyer after the flip and the bank would not refinance for 6 months to get a loan to pay off the hard money and turn it into a rental.  My advise is to start slow using your own money as it is much more forgiving as a beginner.  Once you are more comfortable flipping and have a good team in place (i.e. contractors, realtors, lawyers, etc.) and your speed and predictability improves, then I would start using leverage to scale up your business.