REIG Faircloth | Real Estate Business Growth

 

When you are aiming to go for bigger things in your business, you need to know what your proximity covers to grow it. It all comes down whether or not you have what it takes to manage and have financial freedom to build and transform your life in real estate. Elizabeth Faircloth, co-founder of the DeRosa Group, is an owner of commercial and residential property with a mission to transform lives through real estate. In this episode, Liz tells us her real estate journey together with the people that has built it with her. She shares her experience to help you in making a difference in your business and how you can grow your company within your proximity.

Listen to the podcast here:

Business Growth And Partnerships In Real Estate With Elizabeth Faircloth

I am excited to have a guest that not only is she doing amazing things in real estate, but she also shares a similar mission of mine of helping other women invest in real estate. She’s like a sister of my soul, Liz Faircloth. She cofounded the DeRosa Group in 2005 with her husband, Matt, and they’re based in Trenton, New Jersey. They own commercial and residential property and they have a mission to transform lives to real estate, which I love. She has vast experience in bringing properties to their highest and best use, which includes repositioning single-family homes, multifamily, apartment buildings, mixed-use, retail and office spaces, many different asset classes.

Her company controls close to 700 units of residential and commercial assets throughout the East Coast. She has a passion for helping women. She is the host of the Real Estate InvestHER Podcast and the Cofounder of that community together with her partner, Andresa. They have launched the Real Estate InvestHER Show. It’s a podcast that provides straight talk along with inspiration for existing and inspiring women investors to live both balanced and financially-free lives. It sounds familiar. It’s my mission to create financial freedom through real estate, so I’m excited to have her here sharing her genius. Welcome, Liz.

Thank you, Monick. I’m excited to be here. I love what you’re up to and I’m excited to have such similar passions and be on this journey of supporting women together.

We definitely can’t do it alone. I’m trying to help one million women but it was like, “Maybe I can help you and you help her and you try to help somebody else. Together we’re going to do it.” This is about your story. How did you get started in real estate investing?

Most people in their early twenties are partying and having a good time. In my early twenties, my husband and I were writing business plans and taking real estate investing courses, which is always funny. I guess some twenty-year-olds do that, but in our mid-twenties, we wanted a different life. As soon as I met my husband, we both loved the idea of creating something big in our lives and serving people. We knew that that was a huge value of ours. Funny enough, every time we talk, we want to do something bigger. He was working in engineering at the time. I was in graduate school for social work. I wanted to do direct counseling. That was my passion at the time.

In talking to each other, at the same time we were talking about wanting to build something different. I took an entrepreneur class and my master’s degree and I was like, “This is interesting. I could build something on my own.” I didn’t have any examples in my life. My parents were both great, hardworking people but no one started a business. It was the same with my husband, we had the same similar type of middle-class, hardworking families. My brother-in-law has started a business within the same few years and he gave me Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My head was turned. I know that’s how most people start to be like, “Hold on.” It’s such an amazing book. What got me thinking was the earned income versus the passive.

I had never thought of that. I never was familiar with it. I was like, “This is amazing.” You start to do some digging. What are the ways that you can create that passive income? Real estate’s obviously one of them. He talks about that and we played the CashFlow game, which is a great game that many people have not played. It’s a great game to start thinking about your life and how to buy property. Then we start taking courses together. We didn’t see each other very much. We both lived in different areas while we were dating and most of our weekends were to go to seminars, go to courses. The more we learned about real estate investing and the asset class of real estate, we were like, “This is powerful.

You can transform space. You can make it better. You can help the community and put some money in your own pocket. This is pretty amazing.”

Little did we know there’s a lot more to it than that, but philosophically we were very intrigued with it. My husband’s an engineer so he’s always intrigued by the numbers and I was more like, “What’s the impact here?” I’m more like a visual person. That’s how we got started in terms of education. For a year, we took course after course before BiggerPockets was popular as before. A lot of those groups were popular, but the REIA groups were still there. We bought our first duplex in ‘05 with a loan from my father. My father loaned us $30,000. We had no money to put together $30,000, so he loaned us that. I’m still grateful for it because that was a risk that he took. He trusted us and from the hardworking perspective, but we didn’t know a lot. We knew enough, but do you ever know enough to buy your first property? I don’t know. You’ve got to know enough to get going and that’s what we did. We learned a lot and then we started to focus on New Jersey and that market.

There are really good people that would go to battle for you with you, you don’t have to do things alone. Click To Tweet

That’s an awesome story. I’m so jealous that you did it and you were into that in your twenties. I got my first one at 31 but still, I was the stupid twenty-something-year-old.

We’re all very naïve and sometimes I look at how long we’ve been in the game and I’m very proud of what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished. It’s interesting because there’s something to be said about like being naïve and being like, “What’s the worst that can happen?” We were both risk-takers and we were both like, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Sometimes the worst happens. In hindsight, I’m glad we’ve become more cautious and a little more astute as we’ve continued on. We’re not perfect, but we certainly aren’t as naive anymore. Part of me is grateful that I had some of that naïve-ness because maybe I wouldn’t have gotten started. I would’ve been more overthinking of it now. I guess it had those pluses and minuses.

Sometimes what you don’t know that you don’t know is helpful. Sometimes what you don’t know will hurt you, but ultimately you have to get in the game. You have to take action. You’re never going to know everything you need to know in order to start. A lot of the learning you get is like the butts in the seat, the bits learning. You’re going to get it because you’re doing it. You get smarter and you get better at what you do, but you’ve got to start. That’s true. You just have to get in the game. Tell us a little bit more about where you currently are. You started in New Jersey around where you lived and now you’ve spread. Tell us a little bit more about where you are right now.

We start with multifamily and then at the same time we moved to Jersey to focus on New Jersey because we were moving there together. We bought a home and everything. My husband quit his job. I had just gotten a job in organizational development doing team buildings and I was like, “I want to take this on. I’m enjoying the consulting work and I love real estate.” He’s like, “I hate my job.” He said, “I’m going to do full-time real estate investing,” within the same week of us getting married in ‘05. We had a couple of properties under our belt, but they weren’t making the income to replace a salary, nothing like that. People are smart these days on how they do that. We were just like, “Quit your job.”

We bought a home at the same time to say, “We can live below our means,” meaning that I can afford the mortgage if God forbid you do nothing and make nothing in this business. It was a smart decision. I’m grateful for that decision. We just moved from that house because it gave us this comfort level and we were very nimble as starting a business. Basically, we got focused on New Jersey and started to buy within a 30-minute radius. We bought in our proximity and we did a business plan saying, “Where can we buy property that we can afford and where can we make a difference?”

That was Trenton, New Jersey. We still have a portfolio there and that’s where we ended up buying a lot of our initial assets. It’s an interesting city. It’s growing, still figuring itself out and we’ve been able to improve properties. There are so many vacant properties and a lot of urban communities in Jersey and across the country of course. I have a reference for New Jersey in that they’re still developing. They’re still trying to create that economy and where the capital is the capital of the state. A lot of our initial properties are there and then we started to get a little bit more outside the city and said, “Let’s start to diversify other areas as well so we don’t have everything in one city.”

We said we didn’t want to go beyond 30 minutes. That was our rule because we self-manage everything up until some years ago. We managed everything with a team and we built that team over the years. We did everything ourselves. We got presented a property in Philadelphia and it was 40 minutes. We’re like, “Let’s break the rule a little bit. Let’s get crazy.” That was one of our first larger multis, an eighteen-unit. At that point we had a ten-unit and we started trying to scale our multifamily focus. We got presented with an opportunity in about an hour and a half and it was a 49-unit. There are a lot of great teachers out there saying, “Just go buy a 100-unit apartment building.” That’s not what we did. We started very small and we grew very steadily.

That was our approach and that was our strategy and we took a lot of twists and turns. We did some flips and we did some of this, we did some of that over the years. That definitely took us off our focus of multifamily. It’s a learned lesson, but focus is so important. I wish we had focused a little bit better when we were in the first number of years, but you’ve got to live and learn. We then started to say, “We can’t manage everything ourselves.” We started to let go of that direct management because it’s a lot of work. Some people are good at it their personality and their goals, but you have to look in the mirror and go, “Where do we want to spend our energy and our time?”

That hour and a half property that we broke our rule, we had to hire our first third-party management, which was scary. You’re like, “Hold on. They’re not going to do it the way we do it,” but in some ways it was a good thing. They’re a very professional organization. They took what we were doing to a different level that we weren’t even doing. In hindsight, it was a very good thing for us. We still got to manage that and it’s not like hands-off like, “Manage my property and send me checks.” That can get very squirrely and you know you’ve got to be on top of those folks.

A quick story in terms of growing more in terms of the Southeast, the numbers started not to work. We were presented with deals in Philadelphia and the trading area that we knew, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and the numbers didn’t work. We raised money, we bring money together and we can’t get folks the returns that they want to see and that we want to see for them. It didn’t make sense anymore, especially with taxes going up, especially in New Jersey. We said let’s focus. PA was our first opportunity that’s a little more outside the city and then we had a broker, the same broker who we worked with in this other area present us a deal in North Carolina.

It was scary. We’re not just driving an hour and a half, now we have to get on an airplane. Right now, it’s eight or nine hours. That got us out of our comfort zone because literally everything was close to us. We’ve grown in Kentucky and North Carolina, so we have our larger assets, our larger multis there. Most people are investing in the South on some level and the numbers make sense. The growth is there. Everything is thumbs up in terms of the diversity of jobs and all those things. You can’t compete in the Northeast on that. That’s how our growth happened.

REIG Faircloth | Real Estate Business Growth

Real Estate Business Growth: We would allow our financial aspirations to sometimes dilute a good business decision.

 

I hear you. Most of our properties are in the South and Southeast as well. I’m in Los Angeles, so I definitely don’t have a half an hour away.

You can’t make anything work. Half an hour is not even going to happen.

If I want a 3% ROI, maybe. It’s slowly, steadily built and grown and you spread your wings. It sounds like you’ve had a lot of success over the years. I want to ask you a question that I ask all of my guests because I know it’s not so much the successes and the smooth sailing where we learn the most, it’s during those mistakes. What would you say was your biggest mistake and what did you learn?

There have been a lot of mistakes. Often people look at people’s bios, what they’re up to and they think it’s easy-peasy and there were no mistakes or challenges. It’s not accurate. Try to be as transparent as possible. There were a couple of things. We got involved in too many things. I mentioned that earlier, early on. I’ll give you a great example. We had bought a few multis in a little town outside of Trenton called Ewan and we’re growing those processes, trying to figure out what’s the right way to manage tenants, all of that stuff. At that point it was more of financing, figuring out your financing, everything.

We’re working on all that and then we got presented with an opportunity to buy a commercial building. We had a line of credit, so we didn’t have tons of money sitting around doing nothing, but we had an opportunity to tap into a line of credit. We just ran the cash, the passive income, the cash on cash return. If we had it fully rented, what would we make? We’re like, “We’ll be out of the rat race. This is awesome.” It’s all about the rat race. We’re like, “This would be awesome.” Plus, it’s in our hometown, it’s in Trenton. We’ll get a tenant and it would be even better. They’re a commercial tenant. It’ll be even easier than in some ways. This is awesome. Thumbs up on that. That was in 2008 and it was a great time.

I quit my job to run it around the same time because I had worked for a few years. I said, “Let me quit full-time to support you in the business.” That was one of the hardest times we went through. We were going through the crash, we had a portfolio, but we’re just holding on to make sure it was sustained. We have a vacant 10,000 square foot building in a city that on a good day is still figuring itself out and trying. It was two steps back, two steps forward situation still, to be honest. The biggest mistake was getting too focused on sometimes the dream of something. What I mean by dream is, “I want to get out of the rat race. I want to achieve my financial goals.” We would allow our financial aspirations to sometimes dilute a good business decision.

We still own that building. This is before shared space was cool and everything. We were like, “We got to break up this building and rent it out to a bunch of companies,” because there’s no one in their right mind that wants to rent a 10,000 square foot building in and of itself. That’s what we did. We somehow figured out a second mortgage to pull some money out, put some money into the building to break it up. Slowly but surely, we worked our buns off to get this building leased and figured out. Now, knock on wood, we’re almost about to refinance it and put solar on the building to hopefully reduce expenses again. We made lemon out of lemonade, but that’s been a labor of love. That’s been almost eleven years and I don’t think we’ve ever paid ourselves a dime from that building, with paying down the mortgage and all that good stuff. I’ve only written checks because we’re at the point where you’re like, “I’m either receiving a check or writing a check.” Unfortunately, some projects need money or we had all that stuff. That was tough.

That was a big lesson for us about focus. If you’re getting good at multi-families, keep doing that. Keep doing it over and over again. It should become boring. It shouldn’t be sexy. People get diluted or out of focus and if they have access to money, it could be good, but it could be dangerous. It wasn’t like we had all this money lying around, but we had access to a line of credit and we ended up putting it into an asset that ended up being a real challenge for us. We worked through it and we figured it out, but I’d say that’s one of the biggest lessons we had. Whenever I look at mistakes we’ve made, it’s because we’ve lost the focus of what we’re doing and what we were trying to achieve. We allowed the money dangle carrots and it wasn’t like we’re money-hungry. We’re just like, “Now we want to achieve this so we can take care of our expenses, take care of our family, all those sorts of things. Those are the learnings. Stay focused.

Don't undersell yourself and figure out what your strengths are today. Keep building what you need to work on. Click To Tweet

It definitely helps to have a focus. Although I feel like to a certain extent, especially at the beginning, when you’re trying out different things, it helps you figure out what you don’t want to do. That’s a good lesson. It’s like, “This is not what I’m going to do.” That’s helpful as well. It’s part of the process or can be at times. Maybe you tried it and you’re like, “Wait a minute, hold the phone.” Maybe if you bought it, a couple of years later, it might have been different.

You’ve got to be thinking about who we had to become to take a vacant building in a real estate crash in a city that was not like all these businesses are flocking to the city. We’ve figured it out and we worked our buns off and I’m proud of that. It’s funny, you think about it and you’re like, “If I was presented with this deal now, would I do it?” There’s no way. On a good day and even in a booming area, I probably wouldn’t because it’s different from what asset class we’re focused on, but who knows? There’s a time to pivot though in real estate. It’s when you have a little more experience, you could take your eye a little bit off that one thing because then you have a new thing. When you take your eye off too soon, you don’t have that mindfulness of that project that needs a little more attention. You’re new. You don’t know what’s niche is right for you. Trying a bunch of things is good. Don’t buy a 10,000 square foot building.

One of my mentors says fail small. Failure and mistakes are part of the process. If you’ve been around for a while then you’ve probably had many other ones that you could share. In the 100-plus interviews I’ve done, I don’t think there’s anybody that’s been like, “Nope. There’s too many to talk about.” It’s part of the process, but it’s like what you were saying, who do you get to be, to get to the other side of that. You got to show up, change and learn and that’s where the growth is. The flip side of the question, what are you most proud of?

I’m most proud of how my husband and I have had a few different roles together. He quit his job. I was working in my organizational development corporate job. In ’08, I decided to quit. We had savings. We said, “Screw it, we’ll figure it out. Worse comes to worst, I’ll come back and get a job.” A year and a half later, I went back to my old boss and said, “This isn’t working with my husband. I want to come back on.” I literally work full-time. I’ve worked part-time with my husband, quit my job and then in 2013 I had my son, my first child. I said, “I’m done now with my corporate work.” It was a good ending of that. I said, “I’m back in the role of working with my husband again part-time, at least trying to balance it all and figuring that out.”

I’ve worked with him in a lot of different ways, strategic, in the business, on all kinds of things. I had to say, over the fourteen years we started this thing, it hasn’t been roses and sunshine all the time, because you’re growing together, you’re married and now you have two little ones. That presents a whole interesting thing, but I’m proud of building something with him and building a legacy for our kids. That matters on some level but it doesn’t, in terms of you can have ten properties, five properties, 100 or 10,000 units and still achieve your goals. It matters to me more of what are your goals and how are you going to achieve those? The numbers are nonsense that people like to talk about at networking meetings.

Not to be rude, but a lot more men like to talk about how big is yours. Women are more not like that. I’m more like, “I’m in multifamily.” I’m not like, “I don’t have this amount of units.” It’s not where I start our conversations. That’s not necessary, but I am proud of it. I’m proud of working through all the communication disconnects. My husband turned to me and he’s like, “We’re going to get a divorce if we don’t change something.” We had a happy marriage and we didn’t get together to buy real estate. That wasn’t the reason why we got married. We got married for a lot of other reasons. I’m proud of our growth and I’m to keep working with him and that we work through the challenges. We’re leaving a legacy for our kids beyond the other stuff that I’m most proud of.

REIG Faircloth | Real Estate Business Growth

Real Estate Business Growth: Women outlive men and women usually don’t know as much about the investing side as men do.

 

I also work with my husband. We had this real estate investor soulmates retreat for couples. When you’re married, your money is married. Investing with your partner is something that like most women if they’re in partnership will have to do. What do you think has helped you be successful as a couple working together?

It’s evolved over the years. It’s a lot of personal growth. We’re also very spiritual like having a prayerful life. We can’t do it all ourselves. It’s asking for help when you need it. As I said, doing a lot of personal and spiritual growth individually and then as a couple hands down has been how we’ve been able to move through challenges. It was him going to some intensive men’s weekends and figuring out how he is in communication and us both going through a bunch of workshops through Landmark and Millionaire Mind Intensive. There’s so many, and then me going through some women’s weekends ironically before some of the work that I’m involved in now. It’s growing ourselves personally and then our relationship so that we can be more effective communicators because we go about things differently.

It is what it is. Most people, when I say I work with my husband are like, “That’s intense. I don’t think I could ever do that.” I’m grateful. Part of it is knowing what you can do and not do as a couple. I know it works for us finally fourteen years later. I know what the recipe works for us. It doesn’t mean I could do it every day, but he needs to have his areas. We come together on certain things and then I have the stuff that I’m doing that my husband is not involved. As a mom with young kids and having a business where my husband’s been a little more in the limelight than me in some ways, even though I know a bunch, I wanted to create something that was mine. That works for us. I could talk about what’s coming up for me and my husband too.

To have a successful partnership, grow together and grow individually. Click To Tweet

That’s the long-winded answer to your question. It’s growing together and growing individually. Also, for me, it’s the spiritual connection because we share the same values. We go about it differently sometimes. Our styles are different, but the values are the same. Being able to look at yourself in the mirror and go, “I was wrong here. I could do this differently,” is not easy, but you need two people doing it if you’re going to work together and build something of value together. I can’t say it’s necessarily the easiest thing or comes naturally. We’ve had to work on it. We continue to work on it. We take tweaks and what meetings do we need to have? Do we want a date and chat or not talk about work?

It definitely takes work and commitment. I love your answer. It’s the personal development, spiritual development, spiritual growth, and working yourself in that working, growing together. I want you to talk briefly about InvestHER. There’s a similar audience, so tell our audience a little bit about how it came to, why you started that.

Andresa and I, years ago, became good friends because we were getting involved in doing some flips in Philadelphia. I found her on BiggerPockets. I said, “You live in Philly. Can we meet for coffee and connect?” We started a friendship and we started at that time too a women’s mastermind. We’d literally did a Zoom call and for whatever reason we felt drawn to doing a women’s mastermind. At the time, we went, “Let’s get women around the country to get on a call once a month.” We’ve literally had it for about five years. We were doing that and we’d be getting together for our projects. We’ve done some flips, some new construction together and we would be chatting about stuff about family and life, the balance of it all.

It was coming off of a lot of networking meetings where women are in the minority. We’re like, “Wouldn’t it be great to bring women together a little bit more than what’s happening right now?” She’s like, “It would be awesome. It’d great to create a community that we need,” a community that she and I need, selfishly. We’d want to be members of that. We’d want to ask women questions and give and get support. We did some soul searching of how do we begin that? There are so many ways to start. You can do YouTube. There are so many ways, but we wanted to do something where we can get inspiration but more importantly, give it.

Podcasting and interviews in this format are one of the greatest ways to do that. That’s what created this InvestHER podcast. Where we’re coming from, which I know you appreciate so much, is the financial freedom piece because women outlive men and women usually don’t know as much about the investing side as men do. All those things about finances and all that stuff, that’s not accurate. All those things fueled this wanting and this need to say, “We want to grow our wealth. It would be cool to bring women together to do that too.” It’s not like we’re done. We’re on this path with everyone. That’s how we feel and that’s where we are. The podcast started from there. If nothing comes out, we’ll interview some great women. That’d be awesome. A couple of guys tell me I’m going to run out of women. I’m like, “I don’t think I’m going to run out of women to interview,” and I haven’t and I’m sure you won’t either. It’s like, “No, there are plenty.”

REIG Faircloth | Real Estate Business Growth

Real Estate Business Growth: Every human being has strengths that they can pull upon to use in a new industry or a new focus.

 

I keep finding more and more, then hopefully we’re inspiring more and more.

It’s the community itself too, the idea of bringing people together. We know this, but women want to commune. They want to connect and it’s not just they want to get something and move on. We started a meetup right around the same time. I love the connection. I love networking. I did so much of that in my corporate life. As a new mom, I was like, “I love my kids, but I’m going out of my mind. I want to connect with other people.” I feel comfortable with men. I love men. I work with them very well, but there’s something about a woman’s group. I’ve always had a positive experience with women in my business experience. I didn’t have the backstabbing, negative experiences people have had. I’ve been very blessed.

I had a woman business owner who was my boss for many years. I had positive experiences and she’s a funny lady. She was great. She would tell me so much about people. We said if we got this podcast going, we’re inspiring people. Let’s bring people together because that’s important. That’s what created this meetup group in Philly. Then we’d have people in our community say, “Do you have a meetup here? Do you have a meetup there?” We’re like, no. In talking with folks, I was like, “Maybe women can start groups.” That’s where that got into motion in terms of investor meetups around the country. We have about twenty right now, which is cool. We have women coming together, whether that’s online and offline. That’s the story there.

The sisterhood is so important for us women.

It’s the comradery. I said to someone, “Women go to the bathroom together. They’re going to want to probably invest together.”

I’m reading the book now, The Female Brain and it’s like we’re hard-wired for that. Before we get to our famed end-of-show trinity, I want to ask you two more questions. First, what advice do you have for a woman who’s starting out? What do you wish you’d known at the beginning that you now know?

I can speak personally to this, on the scaling of overselling themselves or underselling themselves, there are women who oversell themselves, but it’s not the most common behavior. You see women undersell themselves more often than not, if I can make a complete generalization. I did the same thing and I still do the same thing sometimes. I would say to women that starting out, don’t undersell yourself. Look at the strengths that you do have because every human being has strengths that they can pull upon to use in a new industry or a new focus. You may not have a ton of real estate investing experience, but you have other strengths. You have other skills. If you start to hone in on them, you’re going to need some of those, whether it be marketing, sales, communication, connecting with people, however big or small you think they might be.

I was in the business of helping people figure out their strengths, but sometimes I forget that for myself. I did certainly early on and then entering back into working in our business, it’s intimidating. People are talking about a bunch of jargon, but you’re like, “What?” Don’t undersell yourself and figure out what your strengths are and then keep building upon your strengths. Certainly, works on this stuff that you need to work on, whatever those areas are but don’t undersell yourself and don’t talk badly about yourself. I feel like that’s an important one. It’s not real estate related to answer your question, but is helping you through the process.

It is definitely so important. That’s wonderful advice. Before we get into the Trinity, what’s the best way for people to connect with you?

TheRealEstateInvestHer.com is the website. You can learn more about what we’re up to there. Some of our real estate projects and things we’ve been involved in, in terms of multifamily and syndications and things are on DeRosaGroup.com. That’s more of my husband and I’s business.

It’s time for the trinity. What’s one brag that you are celebrating?

My son is five. He started kindergarten, so I’m going to get a personal brag. He’s becoming a little guy, someone who’s not a baby anymore. I know he’s not a baby, but he came home one day and he was telling me about a kid at recess who was not acting the way he should be. He was like, “He was not making good choices, mom. You told me to make good choices and he was not making good choices, mom.” He was telling me about it. It’s so cute. I literally tell him that all the time. I don’t say, “Be a good boy.” I’m like, “Make good choices and be kind to people.” “Mom, anything else?” “Do those two things and you should be good for a while.” He came home and he had this cool way of being about it. Not every moment is like that, sometimes he’s got a lot of crazy moments, but I was proud of that. I’m proud of him hearing what I’m saying and taking it into the world because I feel like sometimes as a mom, you’re literally banging your head against the wall. That’s a personal brag, but that’s an important one.

It’s important that with these bragging, you own it. It was like, “I bragged that I’m an amazing mom. I’m a mom raising a kid who’s making good choices, who knows the difference between a good choice and a bad choice.” Own that brag.

I got to do a better job of owning my stuff. I appreciate the encouragement.

That’s why I have everyone brag because as women, we don’t celebrate enough ourselves. To follow up on what you were, what you were saying in terms of underselling ourselves, we don’t brag and share the cool things we’re doing, but it inspires ourselves like, “I am doing great things,” and then it inspires others around us to go, “I could do that too.” What’s one thing you’re grateful for?

I’m grateful for building systems and teams around our business goals and not doing it alone. I’m grateful for the people we work with. They are good people. There have been a lot of partnership. I didn’t get into the mistakes made, but certain partnerships didn’t work out. In this business, you can’t know everything. It ends up you’re going to have to partner, JV, connect with other people doing this work, and not every partnership works out perfectly. I’m grateful for the people we’re doing business with. They are good people with similar values. That was not always a case, so I’m grateful. Above all else, there are good people that would go to battle for you and with you. I’m grateful for that because you cannot do this alone, any of it.

Last but not the least, what’s one desire?

The desire for me right now, piggybacking on being grateful for a lot of the people I am working with, is building more of a support team. Sometimes the desire means putting the right processes in place, trusting people, letting go of things, delegating, all those sorts of things. I’m putting things in place to do that, but the desire is to get in my own way and do a better job of delegating and building more from a support perspective, not so much partners, so I can be freed up to do other things. It’s a desire/goal or focus, if you will.

So shall your desire be or so much better than you can imagine. Thank you so much, Liz. This has been fantastic connecting with you too. To reach Liz, you can find her at DeRosaGroup.com or at TheRealEstateInvestHer.com. To connect with me, go to REIGoddesses.com. There you can join our community of women from all over the country and the world that are in sisterhood together investing. We can also get on the list and join our investor club to find out about our investing opportunities, get freebies and information and all sorts of goodies. Go to REIGoddesses.com, subscribe and comment and like us and come back for another amazing show.

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About Liz Faircloth

REIG Faircloth | Real Estate Business Growth

Liz Faircloth is co-founded the DeRosa Group in 2005 with her husband, Matt. The DeRosa Group, based in Trenton, NJ, is an owner of commercial and residential property with a mission to “transform lives through real estate.” DeRosa has vast experience in bringing properties to their highest and best use, which includes repositioning single-family homes, multi-family, apartment buildings, mixed-use, retail, and office space. The company controls close to 700 units of residential and commercial assets throughout the east coast.

Liz is very passionate about her work with the Real Estate InvestHER Community. Together with her partner, Andresa, they have launched “The Real Estate InvestHER Show,” a podcast providing straight talk along with inspiration for existing and aspiring women investors to live both balanced and financially free lives.