[Newbie] I own 1 home free & clear. Is my next step a HELOC?

[Chelsea Karabin]

Hey guys, to introduce myself quickly since this is my first post, I'm a 24 year old entrepreneur, currently growing most of my businesses through social media marketing.

Long story short, I'm looking for "offline" business ventures and am very interested in both flipping homes and buying rental properties.  An opportunity came up over the summer with a foreclosure, and long story short I took a leap to snag the deal and bought the home with cash.  It wasn't my ideal scenario because it was the majority of liquid capital I had but I strongly felt it was worth it since I currently have a pretty good monthly positive cashflow and should be able to build up my own personal liquid capital pretty quickly.

Now comes my question - I'm looking into buying more properties, either to rent or flip. I do not know much about the process yet but am extremely excited to learn and from what I've seen so far it seems the next step would be to take out a HELOC on the home I own free and clear. Is that the route I should take? Should I do it even if I don't see a deal that I want right now to have the money available whenever I do need it? I am young but discipline will not be an issue. I expect the home to be appraised at around 100k in its current state.

Some details on this home I purchased/what I'm thinking:
-I bought it for the purpose of flipping, but am currently using it as an "office" while remodeling.  I film YT videos, ship clothing, do online work, etc. out of that home right now.  My current thought process is to use it as a workspace but be ready to pack up and go back to my own routine if a sale opportunity comes along.

-I'm assuming because of that I should be prepared to pay a penalty closing the HELOC early (but it would be worth it for the access to the cashflow I have)

-I'd use a portion of the HELOC money to make additional renovations that I didn't think I could in the past when I was being stubborn and only wanting to use my own cash, thus making the home value for a flip higher

-I'm not interested in renting the first property - I'd really prefer to flip that one specifically to get back the money I had to fork out to get it in the first place and put that back into an Ameriprise account at the very least.

Can you guys let me know if I've got the right ideas here?  I apologize if any of these things are glaringly stupid but this is my first experience with all of this.

I'd also love to know if there are certain factors that would help me to decide to rent or flip the next property I get when I buy it.  I see advantages to each, but I don't know what to look for when deciding which avenue to chase.

Thank you guys so much!