Creating Win-Win Investing Partnerships - Liz Faircloth

Matt Rodak:

Awesome to have you. Thanks so much for being here. It's funny because I met Liz and her husband Matt 3.5 years ago when I was just starting this company, so it's super cool to have you here.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Absolutely!

 

Matt Rodak:

Get us going, I'd love to learn more about the DeRosa Group. What are you guys up to, where do you invest, and the story of how you guys got started?

 

Liz Faircloth:

Sure! We're based in Trenton, and we focus on buying multi-family properties mostly that either need work or that are more apartment building, value-add opportunities. We got our start right outside of Philadelphia. We bought our first duplex when we weren't married, we were engaged. No, we weren't engaged, we were boyfriend/girlfriend. My father ended up giving us a loan on that property.

 

Matt Rodak:

Fraught with peril right there! It worked out?

 

Liz Faircloth:

It worked out, I'm so thankful it worked out. I think about that a lot -- that it didn't have to work out. To rewind a little bit, my husband and I, that was our first purchase. Both came from middle class families, hardworking families. My husband was in sales and I was finishing up graduate school. One of our first dates was meeting my sister and brother-in-law. My brother-in-law is an entrepreneur. The only one that I ever really interacted with quite a bit. He started his business and he gave me "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," which I know a lot of people in this business start with. More importantly, one of our first dates with my now husband and my sister and brother-in-law was playing the Cash Flow Game. Anybody listening, if you haven't ever played -- that game doesn't get talked about enough. I can tell you beyond just "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" the book, the game actually was very experiential. It's like monopoly on steroids, and it gives you this opportunity to start getting familiar and talking about the real estate investing lingo.

 

As funny as it is, in itself as a game, it opened our eyes to the power of real estate. We started to look at property and said, "What if we were to do something like this?" We got more intrigued with it. We both liked the idea of investing in something and building a business on our own. We didn't come from families like that, but I saw my brother-in-law and he was working his butt off on his own business. I thought, "I'm going to work really hard one day, I might as well work on my own business," type of thing. So, that got us intrigued. We took courses. Long story short, we ended up -- probably about a year or so ago we went to DIG (Diversified Investor Group REIA), which is a very great organization right inside of Philadelphia. Took a bunch of courses and really then got into this duplex.

 

It was good learning. I think we evicted our first tenant, we found bullets in her room. There was just a bunch of craziness that happened, but it worked out because we ended up doing our first 1031 Exchange into a 4-unit in New Jersey. Because of the work I was doing, I had to live in New Jersey and my husband, or boyfriend at the time, was living right outside of Philadelphia. So, we decided to get focused on Jersey and investing in Jersey at that moment, at that time. Then we got married and started really building our portfolio in Trenton, Mercer County, and that area. Over the years we've expanded into other parts of the country. Our newest project is a 166-unit in Kentucky that we'll be closing in December.

 

Matt Rodak:

Very cool. I don't mean to date you, but I like to get a sense of when we started and where we're at in the real estate cycle when you guys got going.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Yeah, we've felt all the different effects. That duplex we bought in 2004. Then we did our 1031 Exchange and we got married. Within the same month of getting married, we basically sold the duplex, got married, and my husband quit his very high-paying, successful, engineering sales job, which he did very well with but wasn't passionate about it. He said, "Why don't you keep doing your work you enjoy at least, and then come along with me once I grow this thing." That was in 2005. So, it's been quite some time.

 

Long story short, I ended up quitting my job, joining him in 2008, and then we all know what happened then. The crash. The beginning of the crash, I guess. I ended up coming into the business at a tough time. We had about 25 units at the time and we plateaued. It was tough. I can even talk a little bit about that. It was a tough time in that the market didn't help because when the crash happened, that was the best time to be buying. That was the best time to be really leveraging and getting into buying things with cash and what have you. We were doing the opposite because we were trying to maintain of all of our assets.

 

I quit my job, which was bringing in money. Any money that we made through my husband's efforts, we were investing in the business. We bought assets. The next couple of years was really tough for us. We had plateaued, and we were using all of our own money or our immediate family's money. We were just plateaued. 2010 came along and my husband and I both decided it was better for me to go back to the work I was doing. My boss gladly took me back, which was really nice. It was consulting work, and she was happy to have me back. Then my husband -- that's really when we started to grow our business through private money. We were able to start raising private money through equity partnerships as well as private lending, and really quadrupled our portfolio. As much progress as we made from 2004 to 2010, we literally quadrupled our portfolio for the next half of our tenure here. So, it really made a difference when we started to say, "Okay, we got to start bringing in private capital into our business," because we were just plateaued.

 

Matt Rodak:

What caused that shift in mindset? Was it that now this money is becoming more available to us because we have this track record, or was it something that tripped you guys, like, "All right, we got our 25 units, how do we get to -- whatever the goal was -- 2500 units." What caused that shift in mindset because it's a big jump. When you start taking other people's money...

 

Liz Faircloth:

It's huge. You know, Matt, you want to do right by people. You want to make sure you're getting into investments that work. You want to take care of people and make sure that what you say you're going to do with the investment or the project happens. When we ended up making that leap, I wish it was more conscientious and that at that moment we made a strategic plan. I can’t say that we did it that way necessarily, but what I can tell you is we both -- I remember talking to my husband a lot. We had made -- you make a lot of mistakes when you start. I mean we bought a commercial building. We bought raw land. We bought a multifamily. When I tell you we got involved in everything, we did. That's one of the worst things you could possibly do in this business.

 

What we learned over the years -- we did some reflection -- the big learning there was, "What are we doing well? What are we good at? Where have we had success?" There's things that you may not have had success with, but there were things that we were doing really well. Buying multifamily, fixing it up, refinancing it, doing it again in the area that we knew, in the area that we were breathing and living in -- especially in Trenton -- we knew it well. We just started to say, "Let's do more of that." Then we said, "Okay, well, we're kind of tapped. We need to start bringing in more private money." We didn't say it probably with those words, but we said partners.

 

Then I ended up having coffee with a friend of mine from grad school. It was kind of random. He worked at a financial institution and I was in sales. I was back doing my consulting work. So, I knew he lived in the city and I'm like, "You know what, we should have coffee." Maybe I'll be able to talk to him about what I'm doing in my consulting work. I had no intention to actually talk about real estate. We were talking and he goes, "What are you up to?" I told him, and he's like, "How's Matt, how's your husband?" And I said, "He's good, we're growing steadily and our real estate business and doing investments and things." He's like, "I wish I can get into that. I just don't have the time." I said, "Well, you need to really talk to my husband because he's got the time, he's got the expertise and a good track record."

 

So, that ended up being one of our first, outside of the immediate family, private money. That was an equity deal. It was 50/50. We did all the work, found the property, did the hustling of the project, getting tenants in, managing it, everything. He put the money up, and that was one of our most successful projects. We refinanced that and we sold it since then. I think he's involved in every one of our projects at this point now, and that was 2010. So, that's really cool. I would say to answer your question, you start to say, "Where do we want to be? What do we have to bring to the table today, and, how do we partner up with people that can help create some win-wins?" That's ultimately what this business is about. You cannot do this alone -- you just can't.

 

Matt Rodak:

There's two things that I'm pulling out of this. The first one is, you have to know who you are and have a focus of, "Hey, we're the DeRosa Group, we're finding value-add apartment buildings, and that's what we're good at." Once you have that clear -- here's who we are -- you want to talk to everybody about it. You never really know. A great example is: who is going to be, like, "Oh, I could stroke you guys a check." What would that mean for your business? What I've found is it’s hard to raise money when you're, like, "I'm in real estate and I chase the shiniest object and do whatever." No one wants to write that check. If it's, like, "Here's what we are, here's what we do. We do it exceptionally well and here's our track record", the money starts to find you. It becomes a lot easier to talk about it to everyone because it's very clear about what you're talking about.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Absolutely.

 

Matt Rodak:

That was really cool. I want to get into a little bit of you're working with your husband in the business, and it sounds like you've also brought in family and other close people into your inner circle around your deals. How do you guys think about -- and maybe you don't -- how do you think about siloing your universes of like, "This is a business talk. This is a family talk with the kids. This is Thanksgiving dinner, and half of the table has money in our projects." How have you guys built that life that intersects between putting food on the table for your family and also very close to a lot of people that you care about?

 

Liz Faircloth:

That's a good question. It's something that, with regards to our actual family, both of our parents are involved and have been involved in our business. Beyond that, in terms of immediate family, no one else is. So, siblings and all those sort. Our parents have been great supporters. Both sets of parents were not millionaires, just hardworking people who saved money and just did it right. So, in terms of immediate family, that's really it on who has actually financially supported us or invested with us or continues to. We actually still do projects with both sets. In terms of the -- if I'm working with my husband, we've worked together since 2004. That is 14 years. We've been married 13 years, and what's interesting is that for the first 8 years of our marriage we didn't have kids.

 

We waited a really long time for lots of reasons that are too long to get into the podcast episode. We finally made the decision to start a family, and for so many years it was just he and I. So, bringing in our two kids -- I have a four-year-old, and an 18-month-old -- and I feel like they have really created us to have more family time space. They've actually created more balanced for us, because what are you going to do? Just keep working on my laptop with my four-year-old right next to me? That's not going to happen. That's just so hard, young children require a lot of attention. I think our balancing of everything has been helped by having kids, and we've been able to create some more space for our family and things like that. It's taken a lot of personal growth. He and I. He's done weekends, I've done weekends. We've really done a lot of work on ourselves to get to the point where we really work together now, really well. That's taken some time.

 

I can't say that that was always the case. I remember early on, especially in that 2-year stint when I had quit my job, and everything was stressful. Financially, the business, everything. My husband turned to me. He's like, "If we don't change something, we're going to get a divorce." That was hard to hear, but he was right. I didn't marry him so we could start a business together and invest in real estate together. I married him for a lot of other reasons. So, we try to really work at having date nights which we've done, and we'll watch shows. We'll do things that have nothing to do with the business. That helps create that balance. I'll wake up, and I'm an early person -- I'll be up for three hours in the morning. My poor husband gets up -- he's just trying to wake up -- and I'll shoot him three questions. He's like, "I just need to wake up."

 

Matt Rodak:

Need to get some coffee in first. If people are listening and they're finding themselves in a similar situation, have you guys found boundaries, rules or different things to live by to take the emotion out of it? Like, "Hey, I'm going to handle accounting. I own accounting, that's my thing. You're going to own acquisition." Have you guys defined boundaries that help keep this safe, if you will?

 

Liz Faircloth:

Yes, we have. We know what didn't work for us. When I had my son in 2013, I ended up leaving my consulting work for good. So I've been back, more part time, but certainly in our business working on different projects since then. Since 2013. We had an opportunity to start again, and try it again. If I'm going to have some time and create some energy, I'd rather work in our business and help with that.

 

So, when we did it again, we got better with the roles, and we got better with being clear on who's doing what. Also, for me to work on stuff that works more with my strengths, what I enjoy doing, and it also helps the business. We're both doing things that we need to grow our team. That's where we're at -- we're growing our team. The more people we can take on to take things off our plates is where we are in our business evolution. When I came back into the fold, we said, "Okay, what didn't work last time? Let's have more delineation of roles."

 

We also started a monthly business meeting where we'll work, and we'll talk. We were doing it at night when we put the kids down at 9:00pm in the evening, and we were just delirious. You want to just relax. So, we started doing it during the day where we'd have a business lunch. Kids were taken care of for the day, so we had a business lunch. So, we've worked on those sort of things. I also know what works for our personalities. My previous work was personality assessments, so that's actually what I did. I gave these assessments to teams to figure out how they work best together. I know my husband's personality to a 'T' and he knows me really well in that way. We have to work through some things in terms of just our styles and what works and what doesn't. I have to defend him. I know what he's really good at, and I know what he's not good at. I'm trying to say, "Okay, that's why we need this person to help here because you're strength is over here."

 

I'm able to use all my expertise around my consulting work in our business, which is really cool too. As a couple, you have to have fun together. We went away for our 10th anniversary. We’ve got to do this again soon, but with the two young ones and everything going on we haven't made the time, which we need to. We went away to California, and it was right when our son was two, and we drove the coast of California. It was the best time, and we didn't talk about work at all. Our business, it's fine. We literally just had fun, and when we just have fun together, we go out to just have fun and rarely talk about business. We're really good like that. Now, the tough part for us, and the tough part for couples, I think is the day-to-day. Like at dinner, "I have something to tell you." Just trying to create that space of family time. That's where the kids came in, and that's where it's been really helpful.

 

Matt Rodak:

The boundaries are important. I had another person on the podcast recently that said, "Don't forget why you're doing this real estate business." It's so that you do have the time to do the things you want to do. Otherwise it's all in vain. I think that's really cool that you guys find time to have time.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Yeah, and then to teach our kids that. If that means we have to do a few things on a weekend, that's fine. Then there's days -- we took our son to his first movie when my daughter was in her daycare. One day this summer, it was a Wednesday. We're, like, let's go see a movie. That was cool, we could just go do that. We didn't have to check with anyone.

 

Matt Rodak:

That's awesome. Very cool. So, the theme of the show is Real Estate Investing Unscripted, as you know. Things that have happened -- and I'm sure you've got a number of different stories over the 14+ years -- but do you have a good example of like: you went to the training, you read the books, you played the Cash Flow Game. Nothing really could have prepared you for this scenario. What was it? How'd you get through it, and how has it informed how you guys think about your business on a go-forward basis?

 

Liz Faircloth:

There is a lot to pull from that, but I would say one of the more recent situations. Last year -- and I'll be as succinct as I can here -- but last year we got a 198-unit apartment building under contract. We were set to close early December, and that was a big project for us. It was an exciting project; expanding our markets, expanding our investor base. We had done other multi-families, but that was an exciting project -- just like every project -- but we had a lot to get in there and get it done. My husband was busy. His strength is raising private money and he was moving forward on all that.

 

In the midst of that, we also got an offer a couple of months before that -- or actually during the summertime -- to sell our 18-unit. We had an 18-unit in Philadelphia. Like many people listening or learning about real estate investing, you can do a 1031 Exchange. I'm not going to go off on a 1031 Exchange, but in a nutshell, we sold that during the summertime. All the gains that we made and the initial investment we can roll into the new property in a certain timeframe, tax deferred. So, we were set up to do that. We sold the property, made our investors 25% on their money, which they were very happy. Everyone part of that 18-unit said, "Yeah, put us into the next project. That'd be great," which is awesome when investors want to keep working with you. So, we were ready to go. That was $750,000 as a 1031 Exchange that we had in the bank, quote-unquote.

 

My husband found a custodian -- and that's what you have to do, find custodians to hold your money -- and then he kept working hard to raise the rest of the money. I think he raised close to $2.5 million for that project. He was working his tail off to raise the money, do due-diligence, all that good stuff. We were about three weeks out from closing, and he was right there in terms of all the money that needed to be raised for the project, which was exciting. Obviously the $750,000, that was kind of like our money; our investors' money, about 6 or 7 investors’ money, including ours.

 

What ended up happening was, he kept reaching out to the custodian saying, "Hey, we're getting ready for closing." They had been great. They were great up to that point, communication-wise. Then, he kept trying, no response, kept trying, no response, kept trying, no response. Our attorney was great, and we were, like, "You need to call them and send them a letter," because now it's two weeks until closing. So, there's no response. I think it was Matt who got the idea to just Google the company, because there was no response and we didn't know what else to do. They were in Florida. So there was no way to -- we were considering -- there was a moment he had his ticket, he was just about to book. We were going into like a vigilante mode. Whatever it takes. "Okay, I'm going to Florida tomorrow." That's how you feel.

 

Matt Rodak:

That’s three quarters of a million bucks. You’ve got to find it.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Yeah, and it's just not ours, it's other people's. Long story short, without getting too dramatic, we found on the forum BiggerPockets this long, very disturbing thread about the company as we're trying to uncover what's going on. My husband ended up getting on the phone with a lot of the people in this thread. the gentleman ended up being like a mini Bernie Madoff, and ended up taking a lot of people's money. I think close to $10 million. It was really, really bad. So, what ended up happening… first you feel like, "Is this really happening?" I don't mean to say in this in a cocky way, but especially where we were in our business. We were not new to this. It just wasn't something that was even in our radar, that someone that was a 1031 Exchange company or custodian would do that, or could do that.

 

Matt Rodak:

It seems like they should be regulated, someone's looking at them.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Of course, I don't see how people could be a custodian of that kind of account.

 

Matt Rodak:

That's the point of having a custodian -- is so the money is safe.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Exactly. That's a very good point. The story just started to unravel. He started to talk to all these people and everyone had the same story. We weren't alone. There was a couple of other people that had a little more money than what we had at stake. Beyond the fact that now we have to go after our money -- that's a problem --now you have to start to say, "We’ve got to get to closing." Now you have multiple issues, but the biggest issue at that moment was: if you don't have an asset, you have nothing to give those investors who now have lost their money. Nothing. Are you going to give them an IOU? I'll write you a letter and say, "Hey, when this all comes..." We could have done that. They knew their risks. People know the risks in real estate investing.

 

However, we knew that the most important thing was to get to closing. Obviously, we're shy $750,000. We didn't need all that to close because we had a bunch of money set aside for capital expenditures once we closed on the property because it needed a bunch of value-add investments. I forget how much we needed; it was less than that. You were instrumental. That's when you start to call the people that you know, you like, you respect. You start to say, "Who do you know that can do a short-term loan?" Not private money, but literally, "They're loaning me this money for short-term. I'm going to keep raising money afterwards." So that's the first issue at hand.

 

So my husband worked his tail off. People like you, Matt, you were so helpful and we really are appreciative of that. You’ve got to go to the people that know you and can connect you to the right people. We didn't know a lot of the short-term financing guys. That wasn't something that we used a whole lot of. So, we had somebody lined up. They were able to loan us the money at very good rate for him and us. I'm, like, "I want to be there someday!" That was the first issue. God bless my husband, he just put his head down, got it done and we were able to close on the property and take ownership, which was awesome.

 

Then the next question, and really the bigger one, was how do you make up the money? These were equity partners. When you do projects like syndications you're not just raising money so they are lenders. They're not lenders anymore, they're partners in the project. What ended up happening there was my husband takes a piece of the building, as well as a general partner. He and a couple people are the general partners. Then there are limited partners, which in essence are the investors and the people that are investing money to become a partner in the project. So, it's just like they own part of the building as well.

 

Matt Rodak:

Passive investors.

 

Liz Faircloth:

You got it. So what ended up happening was, the way it sliced and diced, he and a second gentleman, a great guy, Ben -- who does a lot of the underwriting and a lot of financial pieces of the part of the puzzle -- they slashed their equity of the building to make everybody whole. They own a very small part of the building, but most of it was given to the investors to make them whole. Then he called them all. You're not going to send an email. He called every one of them. There is only six of them, but he called every one of them, told them what happened, and as he's telling them what happened, he goes, "Here's what I'm doing about it." It wasn't right when it happened, it was two weeks after because he wanted to tell them, like, "This is what I'm doing, this is what I’ve got figured out."

 

There were a lot of things to figure out. We had talked to our accountant. How's this going to impact everything? So, he figured it out and everyone was like, "Okay, that's great." And you know what? None of them were worried because they were made whole. In essence, they had their same equity in the building. They just don't have the cash, but at this point it doesn't really matter. It's not about the cash; it's about their 2%, 5%, or whatever equity stake they had.

 

It was a tough pill to swallow. Matt, you know, it was a really tough one. It was tough for me and I was a little more on the sidelines. I do parts of the syndication work. I help a little bit in the marketing and communications, but my husband was on the front line. He works very hard on this building. He works hard like he owns it 100%. It's not, like, "Oh, screw that building. I don't really own it." He owns a part of it, along with his investors, and he is just as committed to making that successful as though he owned it 95%.

 

So, the big lessons. You're, like, "How can that happen?" You have to look at yourself. He vetted the company, but I would also say he vetted them to a point. Could you have gone to our accountant, our attorney, these people we work with all the time? Could they have given us a recommendation? Well, in hindsight that probably would've been a better approach. He vetted this company as much as he could, but it still wasn't a recommendation. So, that was a learning for us and we will never do that again, obviously. Also, you have to make it right for the investors, even if that means you take a haircut and that's okay. You got to be prepared if you're going to raise money. While this is happening, my husband's writing a book on raising private money. I wish I was joking, but he was in the middle of writing the book at that moment.

 

Matt Rodak:

Hopefully that story made its way into the book and you get some value back on it. That's crazy. There's a ton to learn in that story. I think one of the big things -- and you guys do this right -- is you have to be thinking long-term when you're thinking about building investor relationships. The easier, and probably less painful thing to do, would have just been to walk away from it and be like, "Sorry, guys, not our bad. We'll catch you on the next one." But that destroys those relationships. Now those six investors are investors with you guys forever, I would imagine. You did it right. How do you put a value on that? Yeah, you own less of that building, but --

 

Liz Faircloth:

It's short-sighted to focus on that.

 

Matt Rodak:

That's an incredibly awesome and horrible story all at the same time.

 

Liz Faircloth:

It's still unraveling. It's kind of like gravy. We'll just buy more of the building. That's our thought process, because at this point we're thinking of all the money in essence is really ours more so than the investors because they had been made whole. So, things work out. I do believe that things happen for a reason, and I do believe you have to just keep getting better in this business. There's moments that we've made other mistakes, and you look back and go, "Okay, we could have given up then." What keeps you going? Obviously, perseverance and the fact that we want to create a legacy for our family and our legacy for our kids and just make things better.

 

Are we perfect? No. Do we make a lot of mistakes? Yeah, of course, but we're really committed to getting better and living a bigger life. To do that, shit is going to happen. Really bad things are going to happen. I looked at my husband when he came home and told me that. I said to him, "I could be the wife of that guy." My husband's coming home to me to say, "I'm going to make this right. We're going to figure it out", because that's my positive husband. He just figures shit out, and he's amazing at that. But I could be that wife of the guy who took all the money. That could be me, and I'm so grateful. You start to become grateful of who you are and what you're doing. It's not about stuff, or dollars, but who you are. That's not something you can buy. You can't put a price tag on that. It was tough, I'm not going to say it wasn't, but I think those are the things that got us through. We have a lot of faith, me and my husband. So, we prayed a lot about it.

 

Matt Rodak:

You figured it out before. You start to build some confidence. Another underlying theme that's starting to -- I think we're on episode seven or eight here -- that's starting to come through in the show is that if you're going to be successful in this business, you have to have a very high degree of grit, be okay with getting punched in the face, and moving on. Each one of these stories that we hear -- and this is a good one -- it takes a lot of resolve and a lot of, "I can't quit. I can't. It's not within me." If this story scares you, as it probably should, something like this is eventually going to happen to you. Be ready for it. Know that there's a lot of good people out there that can support you and pull you through it, but on the other side, if you don't ever want to deal with something like this, real estate may not be your game.

 

Liz Faircloth:

You can't always be prepared for everything, but you can be prepared in your relationships. It wasn't like we had a great relationship. We had a relationship with you, Matt. You knew us. We thought, "Hey, give this guy a call." That was really helpful -- that was hugely helpful -- because you're in the business of financing stuff.

 

Matt Rodak:

That's a really interesting story. I'll be interested to see how it plays out. Hopefully you guys get made whole. Wow, that's something else.

 

Liz Faircloth:

The FBI's involved now. You know what's interesting, too? It should be on a TV show at some point, but what's interesting about it was that this gentleman -- or people that sometimes these things occur with -- we spoke to a couple of the people that actually had more money lost. Matt talked to the one gentlemen quite a bit, and the gentleman told Matt that he did five deals with him. He goes, "This is my fifth deal. He'd never done this." So, it also reminded me that if you don't keep yourself in check, one bad choice leads to another bad choice, and another.

 

I don't think this guy got up and said, "You know, I'm going to screw all these people." I don't think that switch went on. I think it was a slippery slope. As a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a person in this world, you’ve got to keep yourself in check to ensure that you're doing right by yourself and other people. Small, little bad decisions can really add up, especially in this business that can have some shady characters in it.

 

Matt Rodak:

They can get creative very quickly if you’re not careful. You're obviously a rock star podcast guest, and you also have your own show. Tell us a little bit more about your show: what it is, what it's all about, and where they can find it. Give us the skinny.

 

Liz Faircloth:

Sure! So myself and one of our business partners, good friend and colleague, Andresa, she and I are co-hosts together. We run a podcast called the Real Estate InvestHER Show. The concept came from her and I masterminding together and talking about different things in our businesses. We were like, "You know, we need more inspiration, and wouldn’t it be cool to bring women together because it's an interesting business -- I'm sure you know, Matt -- and it tends to be a little more male dominated from the investment side. There are women investors, really successful ones which we've been interviewing. We're up to like 33 shows and every woman we interviewed, just one after the other, is just top notch. Really, really great ladies.

 

What we found was we work with men really well. I love men, of course -- this is not like a man-bashing show or anything -- but what I have found in talking to a lot of women as we've got going was the challenges and things you work through in this business are sometimes a little unique to women. Whether it's starting out and they may not feel comfortable asking questions in front of another group, or whatever it is. We're developing a community of creating that safe space that women can really encourage, mentor, be a mentee. Every woman that we've talked to about it, that's in this business, is really like, "That's awesome. I need more of that." We have almost 500 women on the Facebook group so far, and our podcast is growing. We're doing meetups and creating some workshops. It's pretty neat. We hear from ladies, and they just thank us. It's like, "Okay, we're doing something right with this." You don't feel like -- running a podcast is not something that if you literally have nothing to do, this is something you do. It's something you have to feel is going to add value to yourself and to other people. I used to do workshops and things like that, so I love the idea of teaching and sharing which podcasts help.

 

We're really excited about it. Our mission is to really help women not only become financially free but also create balance in their life. Obviously, men need balance, but women have different kinds of struggles and challenges than men do. So, that's what we also talk about in the show. We talk a lot about the balancing act. There are a lot of mothers with young kids, older children, or no children. It always seems like the balancing act has to be talked about and figured out. You want this, but you also want to be a great mom or a great wife or just a great community member. So that's a little bit about the show.

 

Matt Rodak:

Check it out! The Real Estate InvestHER Show.

 

Liz Faircloth:

www.TheRealEstateInvestHER.com. We couldn't get 'show' on there.

 

Matt Rodak:

The playbook and a lot of the stuff that's out there is male-dominated for whatever reason. So the more we have out there is awesome. Well, listen, we'll get you out of here. If people want to get ahold of you -- obviously we know where the show is at now -- is there a way people can reach out to you and learn more about what you guys are up to?

 

Liz Faircloth:

Yeah, absolutely. So the show's a good place in terms of what were up to in helping woman investors. On the DeRosa side, with my husband, it's www.DeRosaGroup.com. You can learn a little more about me and my husband, what we've created and what we're up to. You can check out my husband's book. It has the story I just shared in the book. I think it's one of the last stories. BiggerPockets published the book in August, and it's called Raising Private Capital. Matt, you were so kind to endorse it. It's been a really neat journey with that book as well, being able to share what we've done and then how do you do it right, take care of people, protect people's money and enroll people. The whole story. www.DeRosaGroup.com or efaircloth@DeRosaGroup.com is my email. You're welcome to try to reach out anytime. I'm active on BiggerPockets, but you know, it can get a little nutty, so email's probably the best way to get ahold of me. If you have any questions or you want any follow up it’s efaircloth@DeRosaGroup.com.

 

Matt Rodak:

So check out www.DeRosaGroup.com. They've got some cool projects going on. Liz, I really appreciate your time. This was awesome. It was packed with a lot of information. I think I tried to distill some big points. What I got out of this was, at the beginning, get schooled. You guys talked about the Cash Flow Game and the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" books. The even more important thing is the learning never stops. No matter how many deals you've done, you've got to continue to look for places to learn and sharpen the tools. Another thing that I love that you said is get focused around who you are, what's your business, and then once you have that -- whether it's flipping houses or doing your apartment syndications or whatever it is -- you’ve got to pick. You can't chase all the shiny objects. Then, talk about it. Talk to everybody because you never know who's going to be a potential investor or partner.

 

The last one is, you have to think long-term in this business. The disservice of a lot of the TV shows and other things out there is that this is a business that people get wealthy quick in, and it couldn't be further from the truth in my experience. I started thinking in terms of like 10-year increments on the relationships that I try to build. We knew you guys for 3.25 years before we were able to do something together, but it was a good relationship. We invested in it and it paid off.

 

You’ve got to be thinking long-term. That informs all the decisions you make in terms of which properties you purchase, but also how you treat your investors and how you treat almost everyone that you come in contact with. This isn't a trade today, this is something that we're building for the next decade or more. Those were my takeaways. Anything you want to add?

 

Liz Faircloth:

No, thanks so much for being on this show. I love what you're up to and you do great work at your company. You offer so much to investors, so I appreciate being on here.

 

Matt Rodak:

I appreciate the kind words. Thank you all for listening, and thanks again, Liz. For more great resources, definitely check out our website www.FundThatFlip.com. Otherwise, I look forward to having you all back listening to the next episode. Thanks again.

 

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Thank you for listening to this episode of Real Estate Investing Unscripted. For more resources or to fund your next project, head on over to FundThatFlip.com. 

Reach Liz at efaircloth@DeRosaGroup.com, or visit www.DeRosaGroup.com.

 

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