Start With A Win - Overcoming Challenges with Flip or Flop's Tarek El Moussa

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

On this episode of the Start with a Win podcast, Adam talks with Tarek El Moussa, star of HGTV’s “Flip or Flop” and real estate industry expert. At the age of 20, Tarek found himself without a degree, without a job, and without a plan for the future. Through the providential placement of an advertisement for real estate school, he enrolled and got his real estate license and within 90 days he had made $120,000. This drastic shift in his lifestyle was the starting point of his career, and when he was faced with the bottoming out of the real estate market in 2007-2008 with everyone else, he decided to stick it out and make it to the other side.In 2010, he pitched the idea of a television show about flipping houses to some production companies and before long, he had received a contract for 13 episodes. The problem was that he knew very little about flipping houses and now he was committed to flipping 13 within 10 months. Like many other things in his life, though, he figured it out and found a way to be very successful doing it. Tarek has flipped over 500 houses in the past 9 years, “Flip or Flop” is about to start its 9th season, and he has a couple of spin-off shows in the works as well.Tarek will be the first to tell you that nothing good comes without hard work, and he has had his fair share of 16-20 hour days trying to meet deadlines. This is exhausting for anyone, and Tarek’s biggest challenge through it all was not quitting when he felt like quitting. He has learned that if you refuse to quit, you never fail, and he lives this out day after day. In recent years, he has shifted his focus to helping other people find their way out of their current circumstances to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them, and he wants to use his platform to impact the world on a larger level. To real estate agents, Tarek’s advice is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and just stick with it until you figure out the process. Everyone struggles, he says, but the work is worthwhile if you commit to it.Links:“The Section 8 Bible: Part I”: https://www.amazon.com/Section-Bible-Vol-Succeed-Industry/dp/0980175909“The Section 8 Bible: Part II”: https://www.amazon.com/Section-8-Bible-Michael-McLean/dp/0980175917 “The Miracle Morning”: https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Morning-Not-So-Obvious-Guaranteed-Transform/dp/0979019710 Connect with Tarek:https://www.instagram.com/therealtarekelmoussa/https://twitter.com/tarekelmoussa?lang=enhttps://www.facebook.com/TheRealTarekElMoussa/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrW8ZauorjZNz7nwmLaZ6wghttps://tarekandassociates.com/https://www.therealtarekelmoussa.com/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the WinNation. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, Win Nation, wherever you are coming from. It's Adam Kanto, CEO of Remax, top of the 12th floor Remax World headquarters here in Denver, Colorado. In studio, I have producer Mark. How you doing, buddy? As always, I am doing fantastic. Thank you very much. I love it. And you got those fancy big white glasses on. That's right. My meeting glasses.

It's awesome. I mean, it's between smiling and wearing those glasses. I mean, how can anything go wrong, right? Every day is a great day. What can I say? And today is a special great day. We have a celebrity on the podcast today. I know we have coming to us on video, an amazing celebrity, somebody who I've been following for quite some time, TV star, co-host of HGTV's Flip or Flop Show. We have Tarek El Moussa. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing good, guys.

How's it going over there? It is awesome. Thanks for being on the show with us. We really appreciate it. You've done a ton. You are a busy man going through all this stuff. Let's jump into this. Is that cool with you?

Absolutely. All right. Ultimately, you are foundationally, you are a real estate professional. You're an entrepreneur at heart. I watched your first video of the flipping type mentality. How long have you been in real estate? Man, so I got into real estate when I was 20 years old. Wow. That was about 2003. And the second company I ever worked for was actually Remax. I love it. Thank you. That's a good plug. So you got into real estate at a young age,

and then you saw an opportunity in home flipping. Tell us about that. You looked at this and you're like, hey, there's money to be made there. What do I do? How did that whole thing start? Yeah, man. Like I said, I got into real estate sales when I was 20 years old. Before that, I was delivering pizza, selling kitchen knives, going to school. And I just, I had to find a better way, man. I was a terrible student. I ended up losing my sales book, which means I put myself out of business. I lost all my leads, my contacts, my follow-ups, my orders.

Yeah, man. And I found myself 20 years old, standing at an ATM at a bank in Cerritos, California, just looking at my balance. Ouch. wise old owl real estate school. So then I'm like looking at the ATM, I'm out of money. I was great at selling kitchen knives. I was looking at the sign. I was like, listen, like if you could sell these knives, you could sell these houses. I walked over, signed up and I got my real estate license at 20 years old. And, you know, I was, I was doing real well, started making some real money at a young age. I made life changing money very fast. I went from nothing to something in a 90 day period. And I ended up moving from my mom's garage with no money in the bank and no gas in the tank. I ended up earning $120,000 in 90 days, which was, you know, back then is like $120 million.

I was 20 years old. Wow. $120 million house. Sold real estate for a few years. And then guess what happened? 2007 and 2008 came around and everybody knows what happens. I got my ass handed to me. Everything I thought I knew about this world was wrong. The ego I had was not justified. And I learned I was just like everybody else. Let's talk about that real quick right there, though, because I was working in the California

region at the time as well. And yeah, the market fell off the cliff and everybody that's selling real estate out there kind of was standing at a fork in the road of, do I stay in or do I get out of this business? What was going through your mind when the recession hit and the housing market fell off the cliff? I had no other option, man. I had no college degree. Before real estate, I was delivering pizza and selling knives door to door. I had no backup plan. That was it. So I just, I just had to grind it out and work. I worked every single person and barely squeak by barely made it by living off $5 footlongs and stealing lemonade and driving my dad's paid off pizza, crap truck with no air conditioning in the middle of the summer. But you know what? I made it happen,

man. I just dug deep. And, uh, 2010, And 2010, I saw all these people making money, flipping houses. They were buying some of my short sales. And I'm like, wait a minute, I got to do the marketing, door knocking these people. I got to do all this crazy work to get this listing, to make a $6,000 commission. And I'm getting this investor, the house, and he's about to make $80,000. I'm like, this doesn't sound right to me. There's got to be a better way. So then I was like, all right, well, I know the real estate side of things. Now I just need to learn the flipping side and the construction side. So I made the decision intent to start flipping houses. It was so easy, like everybody thinks. No, it wasn't. So I had this great idea to flip houses. And I'm like, okay, well, now I need money.

So I pitched everybody, man. I'm talking about friends, family, business associates, like people at the bookstore, people at the movie theater, like everybody. And I found a partner to flip that first property in 2010. And today we're still business partners, 10 years later, about 500 flips done and growing. Wow. 500 flips. So Tarek, so you start flipping houses when everybody is, you know, they're kind of going, oh my gosh, the world's falling still. How did you take that from learning to flip houses because you see this opportunity over to starting a television program called Flip or Flop? What caused that transition to occur? How did that happen? All right. So you're going to like this one. So I actually pitched the house flipping TV show before I ever flipped the house.

Nice. So I did it completely wrong, completely backwards. And here's how I did it. So, you know, Mike Ferry, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I used to go to the Mike Ferry conventions every summer. It was a Mike Ferry convention and there was two seats in the very front row of this convention that had opened up, right? That's where the VIP seats are. That's where the players are. That's where the big agents were. And I'm the kid in the back, you know, with my ex-wife at the time. But my buddy was sitting in the very front row. And he's like, two seats opened up. You can come sit up here. And we was in Las Vegas. I was on no sleep. I might've went out a little bit too much the night before. So it was pretty apparent that I needed some Advil. So this guy comes running across the front row during the

convention with 5,000 people and he hands me Advil and water. And he goes, you look like you might need this. And it turns out his name was Brady Sandal. He's a real estate agent out of Palm Springs, California. So at the break, they have the breaks, all the guys from the front row, Eric El Ligato, Brady Sandal, all those big players, they go up to me and my ex-wife, they're like, who are you guys? We've never seen you before. What are you doing up here? Because they wanted to know who we were. And long story short, I got to know them and we were nobodies. But I remember Brady telling me, he's like, I have a local TV show in Palm Springs. I go to the grocery store, like people recognize me and I get listings. And

I'm like, so you make money from TV. He said, yeah, because of TV, I make money. And it hit me at that moment. I was like, man, if I can get us on TV, if I can get that type of exposure, man, big things can happen. And I will say, I was never a guy that wanted to be on TV. I never thought about TV. I won't ever wanted to be famous, any of that crap. I'm an entrepreneur that ended up on TV. So I went home the next day and it was like 10 o'clock at night. I was living with my ex-wife in the time, San Clemente, California. And it hit me, if I can get us on TV, how do I get us on TV? And I started thinking as a real estate agent, as a realtor. And then I was like, house flipper. I just bought this condo a few days ago. I should, I should flip this house on TV. So

man, you got to take action. The second I had the idea, I started emailing the production companies and that was it. Sent the home video. They loved it. They did a two-day professional shoot. They loved it. And then we got signed up about 10 months later for the pilot for Flip or Flop on HGTV. Wow. Respect. I mean, that is cool. That is entrepreneur right there. Somebody who goes, I'm not afraid of anything. I'm going to walk up and sit in the front row of this massive Tom Ferry event. And Tom is, I mean, he's one of the best coaches in our industry, has this amazing following of really, really high producers. And you're walking right up there like, hey, check this out. I'm right there. And then you just see opportunity and grab it. I just,

I think that is so cool. So you hook up with the producers, you begin this HGTV adventure. Now, what season are you guys in now? Man, we are shooting season nine right now. And we shot the home video in 2010, pilot 2011, started shooting the series in 12. And it was interesting too, because we didn't get picked up for the pilot right away. It took 10 months for the network to pick us up. So we shot the pilot. They're like, okay, it might not go anywhere. A week later, they call and we get a contract. They want 13 episodes of a show called Flip or Flop in 10 months. Wow. But now I had had even bigger problem. What's that? I didn't know how to flip houses. Oh, I had no idea how to flip houses. So then I'm like,

shit, what am I going to do the entire 12 months before I did three houses, right? And now I had to do 13 houses in 10 months on TV. So what'd you do? How, how did, how did you overcome this challenge? I mean, this is, this is like, Hey, do this. And you're going, uh, okay. I had no, I had no idea. I had zero idea how I was going to do. I swear. I was like, I have no idea. But I looked at my ex-wife at the time. I'm like, what's the worst that could happen? She's like, well, they can sue us. And I looked around and I was like, well, what are they going to sue us for? I'm upside down on everything. I was like, they can have all this crap, signed the contract. And I just made it happen, man. I dug deep and worked harder than

I ever, ever, ever worked in my life to figure it out. And when I say working hard, I'm not talking about 12 hour days. I'm not talking about 14 hour days. I'm talking about 16 to 20 hour days. Wow. You get out there and you hustle. You take that innocence and that lack of knowledge, you turn it into this huge opportunity. And then you turn this into a really, I mean, nine seasons for a television program puts you up there in the hall of fame of production and successful programming. So what's it like being on a longstanding HGTV program now? Because that's an amazing network and you're doing amazing things. You know, it's funny when I do interviews, people always ask me about real estate and

house flipping, but no one's ever actually really talked to me about being a TV personality. It's like, yeah, I was never a TV personality and now I'm a TV personality. I've been on TV shows for almost 10 years. I have a second TV show I'm filming right now called Flipping 101. I have a third digital TV show called Tarek's Flipside. So I do so many, I feel like I have so many different careers, right? I'm a real estate investor. I'm a motivational speaker. I'm a TV personality. There's so many different things I do and I just enjoy everything I do. That's awesome. You've come across a lot of challenges, obviously. You've talked about a

few. What do you think is your biggest challenge that you've had to overcome in this entire journey? The biggest challenge to overcome, and it's the same challenge as everyone else, not quitting when you feel like quitting. That's the only difference that separates the ones that make it and the ones that don't. And I say it all the time. It's all mindset. People don't believe they're going to become successful. They don't believe if they make calls, they're going to get leads. They don't believe if they go on appointments, they're going to get deals. You have to have faith and you have to believe in yourself. And I say the key to my success is I refuse to quit. I refuse to fail. For me, I'm okay with failing each and every day. I'm okay failing over and over and over, but I'm not okay with quitting. There's a difference. I love that.

If you refuse to quit, you never fail. That's how I look at it. Ah, that's awesome. If you refuse to quit, you never fail. I love that, man. That's inspiring. That's it. You talk about the challenges you've been through. What influences you? What drives Tarek? Man, I feel like I've lived so many different lives already and in different periods of my life, different things motivated me. When I was younger, I grew up with no money and I had ADHD and I was a bad student. I was always getting in trouble. I was just, you know, I was just too much energy, you know, when early on I wanted to prove everybody wrong. And I wanted to prove to the world that I can make something of myself. And that, that really

motivated me to prove all this teachers wrong. And the people I grew up with wrong. And a lot of the people where I was from wrong. And I did now it's like, you know, I have a global brand. I've, uh, I just launched a Investor, which is a global seminar company. I have two global TV shows, you know. And now what motivates me is impacting the planet on a much larger level. Like, I really want to help as many people as I can. And the reason I say that is because I know what it feels like to feel like shit, right? I've had cancer twice. I've been through a public divorce. I had the crap kicked

out of me for years. And I also know what it feels like to feel like this, the way I feel today, sitting in this chair, talking to you. So my hope and dream is to help as many people as possible feel the way I feel right now, sitting in this seat. That is awesome. I mean, it's so inspiring. This is a fun interview. I mean, just, you know, we sit here and break through all these barriers and set the mindset and never give up. And you've seen some pretty significant challenges. And it seems like, you know, you're a man of wisdom way beyond your age. And you probably see a lot going on in the marketplace, real estate, things like that. Anything, any trends you're seeing in the real estate market that, you know,

that you can call out coming up in the future? You know, things continue to evolve. Flipping's probably slowing down a little bit, or is it? What trends are you seeing that you can throw out there for our audience? I think the biggest trend, well, not the biggest, one of the big trends I'm seeing right now are people are more excited,

more interested in investing in larger real estate deals. With the use of social media, you're able to raise capital and buy apartment buildings and just help other people invest their money. And I'm actually working on launching a fund early 2020. Oh, it is early 2020, about March 2020. And we're going to look to raise some capital and buy some apartment buildings. So that's kind of next on my list because for all these years, I've flipped all these houses. I made a ton of money.

And I just want to take every single thing I've ever done to the next level. And I want to help everybody do it with me. So instead of going in there and flipping a $500,000 house, I want to flip a half billion dollar commercial building. Wow. Amazing. That's pretty cool. What about advice for real estate agents? Do you have a piece of advice that you can throw

out there for real estate agents? I have more respect for real estate agents than like anyone in the world. I'm going to say this. I say it all the time. People might think I'm full of shit. The most difficult career business I've ever had or I've ever ran was being a real estate agent. Believe that. It was more difficult for me than TV, more difficult than seminars, more difficult than flipping houses. It's a very emotionally draining business. And what I learned is for all the real estate agents that are struggling, every single person struggles. That agent that you see their face on the bus bench and on the social media ad and all over the community, they doubted themselves. They struggled. They had times in their life where

they wanted to quit and they thought they weren't going to make it. So the thing is to realize it's a process and we have to learn to sell and we have to get used to it rejection and the ones the the ones that succeed are the ones that become comfortable being uncomfortable i love that i mean that's the funnest part about this industry is you get to hang out with a bunch of winners it's fun man it's like a good group of high energy people like i'm enjoying this podcast it's one of my favorites actually thanks well you're one of our favorite guests on the show, so thank you. You're bringing a ton to this. Let me ask you a couple of questions. You have a favorite book that you would recommend to people? I do. I do have my favorite book. It's actually called The Section 8 Bible,

and there's volume one and volume two. I'm not a big reader. I bought the book, and I read the entire book in one weekend back in 2011. And it's about these guys from Philly that built their entire real estate business off section eight housing, buying these like 30 and $40,000 brick buildings. And I think it was like Chicago and they built their portfolio to over 500 units. Wow. I love it because it actually tells you how to do it, tells you what to do. And it's so inspirational. I just love that book. So real estate books, section eight Bible volume one and two. Another book I recently, I read last year was the miracle morning. And you know what? I never try to bring my ego into things because I can say,

well, I'm too good for that book. No, I'm not too good for a book. I listen to everybody. There's probably a guy out there today making $20,000 a year that's way smarter than me in certain things. So I listen to everybody. And as you know, the most important thing I got from that book was waking up early, moving my alarm clock away from my bed and getting the most obnoxious alarm clock ever so I won't hit snooze. And you know what? That one book changed my life. I love that.

We've had Hal Elrod at our convention as a speaker. I'm with you, man. That book is killer. And it's actually part of the inspiration for Start With A Win because obviously that's what he does is start with a win. Tarek, that's one of the questions that I always love to ask all of our guests on the show, particularly extraordinarily successful people like yourself. How do you start your day with a win? Because I know you're a big routine guy. You talked about crazy alarm clock, the bomb, I think is what it's called. And I saw some video

of that on your website. Unbelievable. But how do you start your day with a win that you could share with the audience? My win is the second that alarm clock goes off, I jump out of bed, I turn it off, I start my day. That's my win. No snooze, no sleeping in, no changing the time, sticking to a schedule. So for me, starting the day with a win is starting on my schedule. That's awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, starting the day with a win is starting on my schedule. That's awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, we're so blessed and honored to have with us on Start With A Win today, the HGTV co-host of Flip or Flop, television star, amazing real estate agent, Tarek El Moussa. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tarek. Thank you for starting with a win. Yeah, buddy. See you next time.

Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask Adam a question and potentially be on our next episode, give us a call and leave us a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go on to iTunes and subscribe, write a review and rate the show. For more great content, follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.