Building A Community Of Women Real Estate Investors With Liz Faircloth

 

Investing with your significant other is fantastic. Though you have different personalities, it is essential to note that success follows when you share the same values. In this episode, Liz Faircloth, the co-founder of the Real Estate InvestHER Community, shares her thoughts on how the community of female real estate investors takes their steps toward their goal. She started cultivating the community of women supporting each other on their terms and what works in their lives. The whole process can be overwhelming, but developing perspectives, managing the gap, and diversifying jobs are some of the keys to their path to accomplishing success. Tune in to this episode and listen to Liz’s strategy in leading the community of women to success.

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Building A Community Of Women Real Estate Investors With Liz Faircloth

I have on the show, Liz Faircloth. She is the Cofounder and CEO of The Real Estate InvestHER community and Cohost of The Real Estate InvestHER Show. They published their first book, which is The Only Woman in the Room: Knowledge and Inspiration from 20 Women Real Estate Investors. She also cofounded the DeRosa Group in 2005 with her husband, Matt. Together, the group is based in New Jersey. The DeRosa Group is the owner of commercial and residential property with a mission to transform lives through real estate. The DeRosa Group controls $60 million of residential and commercial assets up and down the east coast.

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Welcome to the show, Liz. I’m super happy to have you.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

What attracted me to have you on the show is yourself and your partner. You are the cocreator of The Real Estate InvestHERs group. A lot of readers probably aren’t aware of what this group is, what your mission is, and what you guys seek to do with your group. Could you talk a little bit about the genesis of the creation of your group?

It was a journey. Many years ago, Andresa and I became good friends. That was the impetus. We met on BiggerPockets. My husband and I, at that time, were looking to do flipping. We wanted to flip houses, but not inside of our geographic area any more. We wanted to flip outside of our area. We saw her doing some work in Philadelphia and connected at coffee. We became good friends and started to share what was working in our lives and what wasn’t working.

We started a women’s mastermind a few years ago when we met and pulled some women together. We did a Skype call every month and talked about one another’s businesses, where we needed support and all the things that come from being part of a mastermind. We then started doing deals together. We started flipping together. We started doing some new construction together.

During that time of collaborating on these projects, we would be like, “Where are the women in this business?” We didn’t know a lot of women beyond the women in our mastermind. We saw a need from the perspective of we’d go to meetings or conferences and we would be the only women in the room. We said, “Wouldn’t it be great to interview just women? Wouldn’t it be great to have a community of women who can lean on each other?”

We didn’t see that anywhere. We couldn’t find anything. They had women’s groups with different niches. It’s not that ours was the first one ever, but in terms of investing, we didn’t see a lot out there. We said, “Let’s start one.” At the bare minimum, we want to be part of it. We want to lead it and cultivate a community of women supporting each other on their own terms. It’s not about what we should do or shouldn’t do, but what works for us in our lives. We started the podcast, The Real Estate InvestHER Show, a few years ago, and that led to building a Facebook community.

We have meetups across the country. We have over 50 meetups. We have about 14,000 women in our Facebook group. These are all free resources. We’d hear what women wanted and needed. We said, “We have an opportunity to also lean into our passion, cultivate our passion, but also build a business, too, and serve women in a much bigger way.” We then started some other pieces. We did our InvestHER CON this 2022, which was a yearly annual conference. We have about 400 women in Charlotte coming together to support each other.

Business, real estate, and investing in self-care are our three pillars. Our mission is to empower women to live a financially-free and balanced life. Everything we do is around that piece. We want to create a worldwide movement where women get what they need, give to others, and also create the life they want on their own terms. It’s not how many doors they have or anything else with what we should or shouldn’t be doing in this business. It’s what’s on your own terms.

At the Real Estate InvestHER Community, we want to lead and cultivate a community of women supporting each other. Share on X

In your group, as people decide to join, they find communities, accountability, if they’re looking for that as well, and knowledge sharing from other investors in that area. Are most of the women active? Are some people passive as well? Is there a mixture of both?

It is a mixture of both. A lot of the women that we tend to be attracting can be new to investing, but they’re not new to the business. They had been a professional. What we’ve found is they’re coming in with the skillsets and they want to deploy that. Maybe they’ve been a passive investor and they want to move into an active investor.

I’d say the predominant women that we have served the most, especially in our STRIVE Membership, has been a woman that’s looking to scale their business. They’re a solopreneur. They’re doing it all themselves. Women are great at that. We are good at slugging it through and figuring it out ourselves because we are like that, too.

We created a community that we can identify. We are the avatar. Many times, we do try to figure things out. What we’re expressing to women is that you can’t rely on who you are. That’s only going to get you so far, so you’ve got to get out of your own way. That’s set up by having mentors, accountability, masterminds, and a supportive core group of women to lean on.

Our meetups do that. They do that in a little bit of a more ad hoc way. This is more organized. There are events happening all the time. It’s a little more structured. The results are that women are moving on the journey of their financial freedom. Maybe they’ve done 5 or 10 deals, but then, they’re like, “How do I hire a team? How do I scale? How do I bring more money into the business so I can buy more?”

Most of your meetups, do they have both a virtual as well as an in-person component, or are they all in-person?

A lot of them have gone back in person. As we navigated COVID, we had about 40 meetups at that time. We pivoted and figured it out because the whole point of the meetup is that women are meeting. They’re having local connections in your local community. As soon as we could start to get back in person, we encouraged our meetups to do so.

All of them, at this point, are meeting back in person. Now that they have a virtual component, if they have to pivot for one month, it wouldn’t be a big deal. We do, though, have free events. We have two coming up soon. We always have free events happening in our community. Any member can come in on Zoom. We do topics. One event is about talking about your net worth and how important that is, and in another event, we’re going to talk about life insurance as a strategy to invest in real estate. Those are free events that we also do that are virtual.

A lot of our community will come to that because they don’t have to go meet anyone. At the end of the day, you’re not going to shift the trajectory of your business and your investing if you’re just meeting people virtually. You got to meet people in person so that you can build a relationship on some level. I’m a firm believer in that. I don’t know how to build relationships with people if I don’t meet with them ever.

This then moves nicely into pivoting into your background as an investor. How you ended up creating this group is you were flipping yourself. You then met Andresa. In my intro, I shared that you and your husband together have about $60 million in residential and commercial real estate. Can you talk a little bit about the journey of building that portfolio and what that has been like for both of you?

Many moons ago, I was getting my degree in Social Work. I wanted to be a social worker. I wanted to open my own practice and support people in therapy. During that experience, my brother-in-law handed me Rich Dad Poor Dad and said, “You got to read this.” I said, “This has nothing to do with social work, but I’ll read it.”

I was into reading personal growth books and I respected my brother. He was the only entrepreneur I knew. When he handed it to me, I said, “I’ll read it.” I read that and opened my eyes to a world that I didn’t know much about, which is passive investing. I grew up in a wonderfully hardworking family that has a high work ethic, but in terms of investing and starting multiple businesses, I didn’t have too much real-life experience there. In reading that and knowing a little bit about myself, I was like, “I don’t want this 9:00 to 5:00 job. I don’t want the normal life.” I knew that in my soul. I had never expressed that.

Fast forward, I met my husband after reading that and handed him the same book. We started taking courses together. He and I shared similar values together of wanting to create something more than ourselves. We started taking courses at the local REIA meetings. We’re like, “Real estate’s intriguing.” You could take something that’s dilapidated, make it better, and then create housing for people, theoretically. It’s a neat vehicle. Plus, your money is making money, hopefully, if you’re getting into the right projects. It has so many different monetary benefits from tax advantages as you start to unravel the real estate world and investing.

We started with no prior knowledge or experience. My father loaned us money on our first deal, which is $30,000. He’s a school teacher. That was a big deal for my parents to loan us $30,000. That was a lot. $30,000 is chump change, but it wasn’t like he was rolling in it. I was appreciative of that because that was a big deal. We bought our first duplex. That was what was quite a bit of predominance outside of Philadelphia because that’s where my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, lived.

We bought our first duplex while we were dating. I always say it’s probably not the right way to do it, but we did it anyway. We learned a lot with that process. We ended up getting married and moving to New Jersey. We started focusing on multifamily. We started investing in Trenton. My husband quit his job to focus on our business full-time and I kept working.

I ended up getting a job in sales, not social work. One of the things that Kiyosaki talks a lot about is that you need to know how to sell. If you ever want to be a successful entrepreneur, selling is a big part of it. I took that to heart and I said, “Let me get a roll in.” I ended up doing consultative sales. I did it for about ten years while simultaneously starting our portfolio and our business.

We got involved in a lot of different things. We tried different things. It took us a long time. It wasn’t until we got focused that our business stopped being steady and accelerated. We bought more units in the last few years than we did in the first several years, which is not the most uncommon thing for someone to say. It wasn’t like whatever we own is divided by seventeen years. At that pace, that’s what people say. They’re like, “I’m going to buy two every year.”

We tapped out of money. We tapped out of energy. We tried different things. We then went all in on multifamily and then started raising money around multifamily from small to large. It was that pivotal moment. We were also getting outside of our market. We were very heavily in New Jersey, and we started to see the writing on the walls with taxes and different things that were coming up. We said, “Let’s start looking at some new markets.” That’s where we had the strategy in place. We started to invest out of state, and that has helped tremendously propel our business beyond our 30-minute radius rule that we had for the first few years.

If you buy something shovel-ready, you're going to pay for that. So surround yourself with people who have done it and been there. Share on X

Can you talk a little bit about some of the key things you guys have had to put in place to make investing out of state successful for you?

There are a number of things. People talk about teams and how important teams are. Having people that represent you on the ownership side is important. You could hire a property management company, which is great. You can hire a realtor. You can hire a commercial broker. You want all these people. These are critical roles, especially when you’re investing out of state.

We were scaling into 50, 100, to 200 units. Unless you’re starting a property management side of your business, you’re going to outsource that. Some businesses do create that business in and of itself. We decided not to and hired that third party. In doing that, though, what was powerful for our first hour and a half purchase outside of our home was that we had a partner on the GP side, the General Partner side, that was my husband’s cousin. He was also a real estate investor, so it wasn’t like he was some random cousin. He was the right partner for us. That was huge.

He was ten minutes from the property and still is ten minutes from the property. To have that local ownership representation, you can hire someone who represents you as the owner with that property manager. That was a helpful team member to have beyond just you managing it from out of state. You can, but it is also helpful to have local boots on the ground that represent you and your interests and that are looking at the building from an ownership perspective, not from any other perspective.

We’ve had people in Kentucky and North Carolina where we have buildings walk the property. We pay them a monthly fee to update us completely, separate from our property management team. These are big buildings. We have a large staff. It’s not like we have small buildings. It is something different when you have another person that’s boots on the ground that’s looking at your property in a way that you would look at it if you work ten minutes from the property. That, to me, has been critical beyond a good property manager that knows the area, the asset size, and the asset type and is the right property manager to manage your assets or a strong commercial broker.

Usually, a great property management company is the leader of a lot of different relationships. If you have the wrong property manager and they don’t know the resources or who they should be hiring for construction or turnarounds, then you probably have the wrong property manager. That’s a good sign that that’s not the right partner. We’ve been through that. We have three property managers. We have one that manages all of our Kentucky stuff. We have one that manages our North Carolina buildings, and then we have one that manages in PA. We’ve developed that over the years. We’ve had to fire a couple along the way and hire new ones. You have to keep on top of that.

You talked a little bit about some of the different markets. You mentioned some of the different markets that you guys play in. Can you talk a little bit about what your criteria are or what makes you decide to play in those markets?

We were in the capital. We were heavily invested in Trenton, New Jersey. Part of our interest in investing originally there was that we can certainly afford the properties because it was one of those cities that was still figuring itself out in New Jersey. There are a number of them in New Jersey. We were like, “We can afford properties there. There’s tons of difference we can make.” That was important to us. We wanted to make a difference as well. We can start to buy a few properties on a block and make could difference. We were close to it. It was fifteen minutes from our house.

Initially, our market analysis was those three things. That’s not our market analysis now. We’re thinking about many other things. Jobs follow people. Where are people going to? Where are people leaving? It was a few years ago. People started to move to North Carolina. They were starting to move away from Jersey unless they had to live here. We started to see that. We also started to see taxes going up and costs going up. The numbers didn’t work anymore. We were forced by the basis of the numbers to say, “Where else can we look that makes sense beyond Philadelphia or our quick little radius?”

 

There is this community about an hour and a half outside of Philadelphia called Lancaster. It’s known for being an Amish country. A lot of Amish farms are there. It has a strong farming community. We started to learn about that community. Things that you wanted to look for or things that were important to us were, “What is happening? Are people moving there or moving away from that community? What does the job market look like? Is there a diversity of jobs?” You start to look downtown. There was downtown somewhere. We were like, “Is that on its way to thriving? Is it already thriving?”

We tend to not invest in areas that have peaked. You want to invest in areas that have a lot of strong fundamentals. Lancaster was right by the train station. It had colleges and universities. It had a strong art center downtown. A lot of young professionals live there. A lot of young professionals were moving there. Those were all good signs. People want to live there. You start to look at the job, the population, and the trends that are happening. What corporations are there? Are corporations leaving? Are corporations coming?

Visiting there, we liked the area a lot. That was after we started to say, “Are there opportunities there?” This opportunity popped up. The opportunity came first, and then we did a lot of research on the area. We said, “This is an area we want to be in.” In terms of Kentucky and North Carolina, I don’t have to say North Carolina’s on a good trajectory. In terms of the Southeast, a lot of people had been and are investing there. We ended up investing our first deal there. It was Fayetteville, North Carolina. It had job growth. It had a lot of good things going. It also had a strong Army base. That was also huge there in terms of the growth and who was there.

It was an hour and a half right outside the hotter areas of North Carolina. We started to see some good trends. This building, in particular, was in a strong area of Fayetteville. It was a hugely dilapidated building in that particular area. Early on, we didn’t realize what we had control over and what we couldn’t. You can’t control the market. When we went into Trenton, we were a small fish. We couldn’t make the changes we wanted to. We are doing work there. We have buildings there. We’re doing extra development. Are we all in on Trenton only? No. We are more diversified, and that’s a smart move for us.

You have to remember. You want to participate in the market, but you can’t control it. That’s the thinking that we go into. We were like, “What’s already happening in this market? What are the good signs, jobs, corporations, population, and things that are happening? Is there a need for the asset that we want to invest in? What’s happening with the new construction? What are you buying? Are you buying dilapidated?” It was all those pieces. There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle. Job diversity is one of the most important things. You want to be able to know that not everyone’s going to be heavily in one particular sector or another.

We’re in Winston-Salem now. We’ve sold that building in Fayetteville. We have a lot of units in Winston-Salem, which is right outside of Raleigh. That has become an innovation quarter of growth hugely and what’s happening there. Our building is outside the city but has seen tremendous growth in terms of what’s happening in the rent increases. All those are good signs.

Kentucky was an interesting one. One of our team members brought Lexington, Kentucky, to our plate. We never thought of Lexington. You start to see the same things about diversity. We were like, “What’s happening there in terms of corporations coming in and their downtown population? What assets are there that people need and want? How can we make those better?” We’re looking at new markets, too.

Connected to this, your asset class of focus is multifamily. I have two questions. The first is based on playing in multifamily specifically. As investors think about continuing to invest in multifamily in the market conditions, what are some of the things that you guys are doing as you continue to acquire multifamily maybe?

Since COVID, multifamily has become hotter and more competitive. That also has driven up the cost. We closed earlier in 2022, our largest project to date. There’s a need for looking at markets that are up and coming. There’s also still a motivated buyer. You have to stick by your numbers. For us, it’s like, “What numbers will work? Where’s the value that we can add?”

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Building multifamily is something we’re very excited about because then, you can control some of those pieces. A lot of the existing assets have been driven up by crazy numbers that don’t make sense. We’re working with investors and we’re beholden to them. You have to build those broker relationships. We close on properties that are all in our radius. This 2022, we bought more in Kentucky and more in North Carolina, which are the two areas where we knew we had the economies of scale.

As we move into new markets, we’re even more cautious about making sure we’re not spending too much per door, where the value can be added, how motivated these people are, and walking away. We’ve had to walk away from a lot. That’s why the new construction or those other strategies could be powerful. We’re building on one of our properties in Pennsylvania. That’s something we’re excited about because we’re going to be able to build at least 50 more units on that site. That’s an opportunity versus going out and finding new multifamily that you’re paying too much for. We’re more cautious that way. We’ll wait until the numbers make sense.

As you pivot into development and as investors think about deploying capital in development where they previously have deployed capital for value add plays, what do investors need to think about differently when looking at development deals that are presented to them that they’re thinking about investing in?

One of the things that, from a developing perspective, is critical is to know what’s happening in that market and be in contact with the local council or the local economic development office. What does it even zone for? There are so many constituents when you’re doing development. If you’re buying existing multifamily, it’s owned as is. Unless you’re trying to convert, then that’s a whole other conversation. You do have to enroll and connect with the local offices and folks.

From a development perspective, depending on when you’re buying it, are you buying it shovel-ready? Are you buying it raw? Has all the necessity of making sure it’s zoned properly been in effect? You pay for that. If you buy something shovel-ready versus buying more of an opportunity, you’re going to pay for that. You’ve got to have people on your team that know that world. If you, yourself, are like, “I don’t want to stumble through this,” there are team members, partners, and even consultants that you can hire to support you along that way.

For us, the big thing for our multifamily construction is that where we’re building 40 units. Would we go out and build 200? I don’t know if we’d do that unless we’d have another. We’ve built before, but not at that scale. You need to surround yourself with people who have done it and been there. More people are developing. There’s a lot of that happening. I always say to folks that the other key is to get to know not just the local authorities but your local Chamber of Commerce, local bankers, and local attorneys. These people are also part of not just what is going on with that particular land but, more importantly, what’s happening in the city, too.

That’s important from a development perspective because there’s supply and demand. There are a lot of unique pieces that come up in different towns. You’re not going to know that by googling a random piece of land in an area that you don’t know that’s shovel-ready. Is that even needed? There’s a lot of research that needs to happen, process with zoning, and make sure the land is going to be used for what you’re wanting it to be used for.

With parking, what does that look like in terms of site plan approval and going to the town meetings? It is a whole process. That can be overwhelming but not to be not looked at. You have to start to say, “What do I know? Where are my gaps? Where has someone developed in this area that maybe I can mentor with, barter with, or hire? I can take a smaller amount of the equity and give them some.” There are a lot of creative ways to do this.

Also connected to this are red flags. As you think back at your journey of being a real estate investor, can you talk about maybe some of the red flags that have become rules of thumb for you and your husband as you think about projects that you want to participate in or partnerships? It could be anything in the real estate space or everything from acquisitions to property management. We’ll go with the top 1 or 2.

 

To trust, but verify is a big one. My husband and I are naturally trusting people. We entered into partnerships and team members over the years too quickly. We were trusting too quickly. Over the years, you start to get a sense of, “I’m still going to be a trusting person, but let me back it up a little bit and make sure we’re on the same page.”

To have those ongoing conversations, you’ll know what’s working and what’s not working. You can give people feedback. We were too trusting initially, even with tenants. They were like, “I’ll pay you later.” It was everything from dealing with tenants to dealing with partners. Trusting but verifying is important and also leaning on other people and leaning on other experts.

Sometimes, as entrepreneurs or people that start something, you keep figuring it out yourself and then you get to the point where you’re tired. You’re like, “I don’t want to do this. I’m not going to wait 1 year or 2 years to figure this out. I don’t have that time anymore.” We’re in our 40s. We started in our twenties. The timing of your life shifts depending on where people come into this.

If you’re coming into this in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, it’s different than if you’re coming into your 20s. It is what it is. There is no right or wrong. I think about myself because I’ve been in it for a while. I went into it much more junior and much more naive. I don’t have that time. I’m much more interested in partnering with people who are bringing what they need to bring to the table and what we bring to the table and setting something up.

Walk before you run. Don’t just join people arm-in-arm and say, “We’re going to build this empire.” Look at your lifestyle and say, “What do I want?” You could also say yes to people and be that person and not know your own boundaries and your own terms. That’s also been something that I’m still learning, to be honest, but I’m much more aware of being able to say no and look at myself in the mirror.

Self-development is a big thing for my husband and me. With any partner or anyone that’s close to me, it is looking in the mirror and saying, “What do I need to do differently? What’s working for me? What’s not?” Nothing’s perfect. As you grow, you’ve got to be continuously evolving yourself. That’s been important as well.

You guys do projects on your own. You acquire your own assets that you do and you own 100%. You also raise private capital from investors to execute projects as well. This question is twofold. As investors think about using the vehicle of real estate to achieve financial independence, in your opinion, what are some of the realities that they need to think about if they plan to play either actively or passively?

It’s so easy to say to people, “Go buy a couple of rentals and you’ll be financially free.” It’s so not that simple, but it’s not that complicated either. So many people go into it and say, “I want to buy a single-family. What markets should I invest in? I want to get into Austin. Is it too late?” We get so specific. Those are not the questions you should be asking.

If you’re trying to determine active versus passive, the more important question is to do an audit on your life. Even before you do an audit, say, “In five years, what do I want to be? Where do I want to be with my life? Where do I want to be financially?” You start to look at financial goals but also lifestyle goals. You can then work backward.

It's essential to get clear where you come together, where you're headed, and where you're going. It needs to be aligned. Share on X

You might be able to get there and be a passive investor. Maybe you love your job and you want to create a stream of income as well as a retirement strategy and real estate is the vehicle that you’ve chosen. You want to take control because you don’t want that person telling you which stocks to get into because you want to get into real estate. 8%, 9%, or 10% interest, or on the upside, 15% to 20% interest will get you to your goals in the timeline you want yourself to get to. You might be like, “I hate my job. I want to dive completely into real estate and do this full-time. What do I need to make for me to keep my lifestyle going and keep the lights on? What do I have now?” You then start to dissect.

There are multiple paths. Whatever path you take, whether it is active versus passive, you start to look in addition to auditing if your time is available, what resources of yours are available, money, and people that you know. You also start to look into your knowledge, skill, personality, and also interest. You might get to the point where you’re like, “I don’t want to go and deal with contractors. I want to invest in real estate. I don’t want to deal with contractors. What’s a way that I can do that?” There’s plenty. Invest in notes. You and I can go down that long list of, “Do you want this? Go here.”

Too often, people see HDTV or they read an article and they’re like, “I want to buy a property.” Before you go there, let’s think and talk about what is going to get you to your goals. It’s not a hobby. There are a lot of tough things that happen that I can talk for the rest of the time about. You got to know your why. You got to know what you’re looking to accomplish and then audit where you are. There’s going to be a gap, whether it’s knowledge, time, money, or availability. Whatever it is, you can manage that gap once you know, “This is where I want to go. This is where I am. This is what I bring to the table. There’s a gap. How can I fit that gap? Is it a mentor? Is it a group? Is it education?”

Some people don’t want to learn a new thing by themselves. They want the shortcut. We went the long route in our twenties because we had time on our side. I don’t feel that same way anymore. If we’re going to get into a new venture, I’m going to partner and I’m going to cut my time down somehow. That might cost me more, but not in the long run because my time and my energy are more important to me, whether it is spending time with my kids or what have you. Everyone’s life is different. Some people are going to work with whatever they need to do and make it work. It depends on people’s goals, interests, and commitment levels.

That’s important because sometimes, you get caught up chasing a path. You’re years or months down that path and you realize, “Who’s this for? This is not even the life that I want. This is not the lifestyle that I want.” A lot of people go flipping because it’s glamorous on TV. In real life, you need to be managing it well and have good teams in place to make sure that you get the profit that you need. Otherwise, you could be in a position where you have a loss. That’s critical. To finish things up here, I wanted to touch on investing in a partnership. What are lessons that you could share with others who are thinking about investing with a significant other as we wrap up the show?

That’s a big one. That’s something my husband and I talk a lot about and have been in the throes of. Get clear on where you come together, what you agree on, your values, the why behind what you’re doing, and your money personality. Everything about each other, where you’re headed, and where you’re going needs to be aligned. Having a lot of conversations and a lot of opportunities to get clear on all those things is important.

We’ve done a lot of personal growth weekends together. We had a lot of those times that we’re solid where we know our values. We’ve always shared similar values. Get clear on where you’re different in personality, time, expertise, and what roles you need to take. Some people take the back seat. Some people take the front seat. Some people take the visionary. Some people take the integrator. There are so many tools and services out there.

Read Rocket Fuel and figure out whether you’re a visionary or an integrator. Do every assessment so you can start to say, “Where do we both fit in all of this?” Own your role, manage your role, and then tweak it because it’s going to tweak. It’s going to change. Have those proactive conversations where you’re being able to manage it.

My husband and I do monthly dates where we don’t talk about business. We have fun together. We have business meetings. We have both. We try not to combine the two too much because we’re doing something fun and then we’re talking about numbers. That’s not fun, no offense. I don’t like talking about numbers and P&Ls. That, to me, is not like a fun Saturday night. It’s important and it’s going to help you with your business, but I’d rather do something more fun.

 

Have those big buckets in your marriage. Also say, “What do we know? What worked for our lifestyle?” I see a lot of spouses where one is the predominant person and the other person is the support. That works well. My husband and I have learned that you have to get clear on what’s working and what’s not. He and I are very similar. Even in our business, I’ve taken more of a strategic role in our day-to-day investing except for a special project I’m working on, like a vacation rental. In terms of our syndication, he runs that day-to-day and I don’t. I’m more strategic. We’re clear on that. That works for our relationship.

At one point, I could have probably joined him and built that with him. At that point, it didn’t work for our marriage and our family. An investor came in right at that same time when I was figuring myself out, “What am I passionate about?” Everything lined up, so then I could pour myself into something I felt passionate about. You got to have those ongoing conversations. You got to be honest with yourself. You got to work on yourself and on the relationship. If you’re not working on yourself individually and then you’re working on the relationship, I don’t think it could work.

Thank you so much for coming on. This was an amazing episode. You shared so many good gems. If my audience wants to learn more about you and find out more, what is the best place they can go to find out?

TheRealEstateInvestHER.com is a great place to get connected to a lot of our free resources, Facebook community, and meetups across the country to see if you have a meetup close to you. If you don’t, we’re always looking to expand and have great women at the helm of these meetups. You can connect with us there and on Instagram. We’re active on Instagram @TheRealEstateInvestHER. Our podcast is published twice a week. We’re on the BiggerPockets network as well. Tuesdays and Fridays are when we release our episodes there. I’m active in our Facebook group as well. I’m always on there helping women and everyone along the way in their journey.

I love it. Thank you again for coming on. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Important Links

• The Real Estate InvestHER
• The Real Estate InvestHER Show
• The Only Woman in the Room: Knowledge and Inspiration from 20 Women Real Estate Investors
• DeRosa Group
• Facebook – The Real Estate InvestHER Community
• STRIVE Membership
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Rocket Fuel
• @TheRealEstateInvestHER – Instagram
• BiggerPockets – The Real Estate InvestHER Show

 

About Liz Faircloth

Liz Faircloth 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 controls $60 million of residential and commercial assets up and down the East Coast.

Liz is the co-founder and CEO of The Real Estate InvestHER community®, co-host of the The Real Estate InvestHER Show and recently published InvestHER’s first book, Only Woman in the Room – Knowledge and Inspiration from 20 Successful Real Estate Women Investors. The Real Estate InvestHER Show is part of the BiggerPockets Podcast Network. BiggerPockets family of podcasts has generated more than 110 million collective downloads across multiple industries. The BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast is the #1 Real Estate Investing Podcast and it offers a community of over 1.8 million members. The Real Estate InvestHER Show can be found in Top 25 of Investing podcasts and Top 50 in Business podcasts.

The Real Estate InvestHER® community is a platform to empower women to live a financially free and balanced life on their own terms through over 40 Meetups across the US and Canada and an on-line community and membership that offers accountability and mentorship for women to take their business to the next level!

 

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