Life & Work with Jenny LeeAnn Yi

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenny LeeAnn Yi.

Hi Jenny LeeAnn, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Oh gosh, I don’t even know where to begin. Honestly, I wake up and think I don’t even know how I got here, is this real? Is this actually a thing?

I started flipping houses a few years ago. I grew up a military brat, so my mom was very good at making any places we moved to feel like home. And, I’ve always had a weird knack for setting up things and being able to assess functionality. So, I figured why not try to flip a house?! The flips I did weren’t the average “lipstick flips” … you know, the ones that have grey walls, grey LVP floors, yada yada. My goal going into a flip was to make a house different. I’ve always thought that houses tell a story. They WANT to tell a story. I mean, they’ve been there far longer than the humans that live there have. If you actually think about how much a house has experienced, over time, it’s truly a place of history and memories and so many stories.

Turns out I was pretty good at flipping. Soon, what I thought was going to be a side hobby turned into investors wanting to be a part. When that happened, I was like…. are you surrrrre about that? Like, are you really, really sure? And it actually went great. I was married at the time. And while the business and execution was my idea, I brought my husband into it because I really thought we could build something unique. It felt right. It felt like the things I wanted, to create financial stability and to bring good homes to people, was actually happening. I mean, at the point investors want in, it has to be good, right?! hahaha. Pretty soon, a film production company randomly found my Instagram. And when I say random, it was so random. The Instagram wasn’t big, At all. And before I knew it, we were under contract for a possible TV show. Total Chip and Joanna Gaines life happening.

Then, one day, I came home and my husband wasn’t there. I remember walking in the door and sensing it was different. It wasn’t the, oh, he’s just not home. It was eery. It was off. After a couple of days of minimal communication, he tells me that he’s left because of me. For me, it came out of the blue. Looking back, there are always warning signs, but those are the hindsight signs. For two weeks, he made me believe all the reasons why he left. I begged, I cried, I vowed to work on anything and everything, the whole shebang. Then it came to light that he didn’t just leave because he was tired of the marriage. He picked up and moved in with another woman two streets down.

As you can imagine, I was in total shock and devastated. When he found out that I knew, I offered to continue to work on things, to forgive him and let’s put the work in to make this thing work. To me, I didn’t get into marriage with the option of divorce, of quitting. If that meant that I had to forgive and that we had to figure out how to move on, then so be it.

Obviously, affairs aren’t ideal. But, I do think that people can work through them – if they’re willing to put in the work. This usually means the partner having the affair cuts it off and then the couple digs in for the hard work. Well, that didn’t happen in my case. For the next few months, he needed time to “decide” which woman he wanted to be with. So he would come home for a couple of days, usually less than two because he would get withdrawals from being away from her. And then always went back.

I can see the look on your face, you’re like, Jenny, okay, clearly he’s made his decision. What the heck were you thinking? Again, looking back, I have no clue what I was thinking. I think it was a combination of things. My definition of loyalty wasn’t normal and obviously wasn’t the same as his. What we were building was so good, and I only wanted it to be good. He came from a difficult childhood, so I had convinced myself that if he was able to experience good things, then he’d see. He’d see what I wanted all along was good for us. He was also a CIA and highly trained manipulator. That was his job. And, again, hindsight is 20/20. But I see very much now how my emotions and vulnerability were played on. He would tell me things like he felt bad for dragging the other girl into it. Just give him time, he’ll make sure she’s let down easy. I miss us. All the things I wanted to hear to keep holding on. And, I knew the research on affairs being addictions. I had dealt with addictions from people close to me in the past, so I thought, if we can just get him away from the source, then he can be “rehabilitated”.

Well, over the course of the few months, turns out this wasn’t his first affair… but his fifth. Just that year. Two of the information came from the husbands reaching out to me to ask if I knew that my husband had slept with their wife. A couple of the women were friends. In fact, one specifically baked me brownies while she was sleeping with my husband.

So fast forward, and how does this end? Well, the beginning of the end happens when he and I are getting drinks on one of his days home, and the mistress shows up at the bar. And then at this point, I had had enough. I go talk with her. Yes, yes, I do. That turns into a two hour cry fest between us and she agrees she’s exhausted and never meant to hurt me and apologizes for all of it. She breaks up with him. I think it’s done.

He comes home for a couple of days. Then is gone again. Sure enough, she takes him back. Then after this big public scene in some parking lot, breaks up with him again. The final break-up leads to him coming home, then him not leaving her alone. Then there were the protection orders put against him. It also leads to him getting on tinder instead of trying to work it out with me. Who, by the way is still home trying to make it work. And then the series of women that he’s contacting. And that leads to alcohol and then to drugs. And in all of this, there were all the reasons why all the women were better than me. A complete and utter degrading of who I am. My contact is literally replaced as “Pig”, with the hog emoji, in his phone. And then the threats. I was the reason they broke up. I had to watch my back. He was going to hurt me, there will be blood. All of it. I was the brunt of everything.

The other part of this was the business. Because I had included his name in all of it, not only did it stalemate, but all his money spent on drugs and alcohol left the business as more than a complete and utter loss. Literally everything I had worked for was taken from me. I couldn’t do a single thing in the business anymore, we were in a hole because of his additions, I had no husband, no life, literally no anything. That whole Chip and Joanna gains surreal life… haha, yeah, that was completely and utterly in ashes.

Finally, I was ready to leave him, but at that point he was so far into drugs and alcohol, I felt like I couldn’t. What kind of person leaves an addict? I felt like I was my job, just as a human being to get him into rehab. And more importantly, I felt like, as a wife, even then, I had to see this through for him. And then, then I could figure my life out. So I did. I was able, despite everything, to convince his command (he was an active duty soldier) that he genuinely needed help. He needed rehab. So they sent him. And I walked away.

And then he got out. And the house break-ins, and the stalking, and the threats continued. There was one time I came home and after a couple of hours he came walking down the stairs (he had broken in) and been sitting upstairs just for the heck of it. He had parked his truck behind a fence in the backyard so I wouldn’t see. Have you ever seen the Julia Roberts movie, Sleeping with the Enemy? There’s a scene where she’s escaped and opens up her cupboard to see that it had been completely rearranged. The look on her face, where she knew that he had found her. Yeah, that’s absolutely how I felt when he came walking down those stairs. It was insane.

And the rehab didn’t work the first time. He was sent back. It was during this process – the part where I walked away but still had to deal with ramifications, that the sheer and utter brokenness came. Or, more, I think, the realization of the brokenness. I think up to that point, I was in such a fix-it mode that while I was in pain, I didn’t really turn it internally. Until I was by myself. And every doubt I ever naturally had about myself was amplified. And then there were new doubts, and new insecurities, and such utter lonlieness. I remember thinking, everything I had ever touched collapsed. How do I start over from this? If I touch something again, if I try again, it’s just going to turn to ash too.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The healing was long. There were a lot of hikes and mountain tops. They were a lot of oceans and sunrises. There were also alot of doubts. So. many. doubts. I had absorbed everything that was said about me. I had accepted as truth that leaving me made sense because I wasn’t worth the staying. I felt the loss not only of my husband but of the future and the business. The dreams and goals. Literally everything. Somehow I existed day after day. And honestly, I literally can’t tell you how, but the random single jobs would come my way. And I took them. Because it was something. And I needed something.

From those single jobs came random AirBnB inquiries. Hey, we need someone to help us decorate or makeover a property. Can you help? Again, hahaha, I have no idea how. I was just barely existing, so there wasn’t any advertising or marketing or anything like that. To this day, I literally have no clue. But they did. And I took them. And each job became a new one. A new part of rebuilding myself. Even as I was taking the jobs, I never thought I was building a business again. I was too scared to think that way, honestly. The idea of loss was too fresh. That scar still too sensitive. To me, they were just individual jobs.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Because I was still naturally good at creating spaces and the renovations, those jobs turned out well. And from there, the inquiries kept coming.

And then, before I knew it, I was in a place to have my brand again. The legalities and after effects of his poor decisions were still present and caused their own business issues, but the work I was doing. That I was personally doing again. That work slowly began to be a business. I think, without me realizing it.

Now, Myself, and my team literally fly all over the country (and soon internationally) to help investors curate successful STRs (short-term rentals)…aka AirBnB’s. We handle everything from product sourcing to design, to logistics, to setup, photos, listing, etc. We call it all the way down to salt and pepper. Did I ever, in a million years think this would be a thing. Ha! no. Ever. Ever. Ever. But it turned out that all the work I did in flipping was for a reason after all. My investor and budget mindset is one of the major reasons investors reach out now. They want the biggest bang for their buck.

I’m seriously, literally, everyday still surprised and excited at every single job that comes in. And recently, we’ve taken other jobs that don’t fit the traditional AirBnB model… helping with hotel conversions, making over restaurants, and the possibility of commercial real estate design. It’s been a lot of growth. Relatively quickly.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
During this entire, very long process. There were two women, they were the only ones that knew what was going on. How I tried to cope and all the drama. Seriously, I could’ve made a youtube channel with how insane it was every single day. These women are like family. And I couldn’t, in any way shape or form have made it without them.

And then my current team now. I literally couldn’t do it without them. As we’ve grown, it takes all of us. And because of the team, we’re able to coordinate logistics, do intake, etc. the whole thing. It gives me so much more flexibility to be creative and to solve the individual problems that arise for the airbnb’s. For example, the last project had this amazing vintage furniture in the garage. Like, mid-century modern ranch. We took the old shutters and actually turned them into a headboard for the master bedroom. This helped give the space character. These kind of things, the unique special touches, happen when there’s an awesome team.

Contact Info:

• Email: jenny@liveinflip101.com
• Instagram: @Jenny_lifeinflip
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/JennyLeeAnnYi/, www.facebook.com/lifeinflip
  
• Other: TikTok @lifinflip