He is up and on the phone with his acquisition guys between 10 and noon, motivating them for the day and pulling updates on deals. At noon he starts hunting: MLS, off-market, whatever surfaces. The rest of the day breaks into mentee calls, strategy sessions with his business partner, and the cold-call center. There is a lot of noise coming in, people reaching out, phones ringing, and he says lessening it is the thing that would move him toward the larger projects he actually wants to work on.
Anthony Wilson is a real estate investor based in Atlanta, Georgia, focused primarily on fix and flips. Seven years in. Alongside the flipping he runs a coaching program for people trying to do their first deal.
The money math has three lanes. He makes money sourcing materials for projects, drawing on a background in ecommerce and goods sourcing. He makes money on the exit of each flip. And every completed project becomes social proof for the coaching program, which brings in students, which brings in capital, which funds more deals. The three lanes feed each other.
For the first time I had met successful Black men who didn't sell drugs. Exposure breeds inspiration.
A smart outsider assumes you need a mountain of cash to start flipping houses. Wilson tells his mentees the real number is closer to $30,000 to $50,000, and it is easier to get to than most people think. Credit, family and friends, private investors. He would rather someone understand the three channels than sit on the sidelines waiting for a bank to say yes.
He grew up in Saint Petersburg, Florida until he was 12. His uncle owned a construction business and his dad did lawn care, so summers meant waking up at four or six in the morning to go to work with them. When the family moved to Gwinnett County, his stepdad was also a contractor and he kept going to job sites. Growing up in the hood in Florida taught him, clearly, the path he did not want to take.
The turning point had a name. He joined the North Metro chapter of 100 Black Men of America, and for the first time he was in a room with successful Black men who had not sold drugs to get there. He says it made the possibility real. He has been repeating the same line ever since: exposure breeds inspiration.
We're only stewards of the resources and gifts God gives us. The greatest show of wealth is how freely you can share it.
2024 was the year everything hit at once. He and his business partners split, which meant a business bankruptcy. He lost money and cars. His father passed. Another car was stolen. He carried a stretch of light depression, not suicidal, just a lot back to back. It broke him for a while.
What he did with the break is the interesting part. He doubled down. Real estate had always been secondary to his ecommerce company, something he did on the side without fully committing. While he was recovering he went all in on it, and investors, opportunities, and partnerships started showing up. The decision he would undo, on the other side of the ledger, is a men's group home in Decatur. He did not do the due diligence and he did not put the structure in place, and it cost him heavily over the long term.
Faith runs underneath the daily work in a specific way. His father was mostly absent, and Wilson spent his life trying to be better than him, to prove he was worth it. When his father passed, that engine went cold. He reads it now as God telling him the motivation itself was the problem, that it was rooted in trauma and could not be used going forward. He had to find a new one.
The book that carried him through an earlier stretch was Think and Grow Rich. From 2015 to 2020 he was homeless for a period, trying to figure it out, and he says the book got him out inside of six months. It is still the biggest influence on how he operates.
What is next is a foreclosure play he and his business partner are building, aimed at acquiring multiple properties per month across several states. Early traction is there. The monthly revenue goal is $250,000. The acquisition target is 10 properties a month. He picked the number 8 for the third slot on purpose, the biblical number of new beginnings.