Ashley:
Think you need total confidence or a quit your job moment to break free from the nine to five. Today’s guest proves that one intentional deal can turn vague hope into a clear plan. Not long ago, Derek Brickley was still working his W2 unsure when or how he’d ever exit until one carefully chosen deal changed everything.

Tony:
Now Derek has a repeatable investing model that gives him certainty around his timeline out of the nine to five without the chaos of burnout. So in this episode, you’ll learn how to choose a first deal that fits a full-time job. How to limit downside is a rookie investor, and how one smart move can make your exit from your day job feel inevitable.

Ashley:
This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I am Ashley Kehr,

Tony:
And I am Tony j Robinson. Let’s give a big warm welcome to Derek. Derek, thanks so much for joining us today.

Derek:
Yeah, appreciate it guys. Shoot, really happy to be here. It’s been a long time coming, long time listener, first time podcast.

Ashley:
Well, we’re happy to have you. But before this deal that you had, what did escaping the nine to five actually mean to you and why did it feel so far away still?

Derek:
It was a drastic shift because I had no idea, and I feel like a lot of people don’t, especially when you’re just starting out in anything, and that doesn’t have to be real estate. It’s hard to get the vision in place and put the steps there of where you want to go. Sometimes you might have the vision, the end goal, but it’s where do you start? And so for me, I knew ahead of time, thankfully that when I was in college, I was just like a lot of people who, again, you don’t know what you’re doing. I went to school to get an idea of what might spark my interest. I ended up finding, fortunately the math, the numbers, the finance side of it, and that just sort of started this spiral into what needs to happen in order for me to get where I want to go. And so it was always starting with the basics, starting at the first steps and just educating myself on those principles to get to a point where you have more flexibility.

Ashley:
What uncertainties did you come upon that just made you feel like you were stuck in this day to day and that it wasn’t closely achievable to be able to leave your nine to five?

Derek:
Well, the main thing was it’s the risk of it is the nine to five inherently is very structured. You have a fixed schedule, you know exactly what to expect. And once you’re able to see that freedom, I should say the limitations is what happens. It’s the what ifs. It’s the concern about what happens when there’s not a steady paycheck coming in. And so that was the biggest mental shift that you need to have at least initially, is to get out of that way of thinking, the nine to five, the limitations that provides. And even though there’s benefits to it, you still need to reif your focus as to the positive of what you can actually accomplish.

Tony:
And Derek, it’s a great point, and Ashley and I just recorded an episode where we highlighted the three key reasons we feel most people won’t actually buy a deal in 2026. And one of the things that we highlighted was what you just said is that a lot of people have this concept that a day job is the most secure thing that you can have in your life. But we also know that that’s not true because most adults at some point in their life will be let go. They’ll be downsized, they’ll have to go find a new job. Even people who work in secure industries like the government, when I was a senior in high school, this was right during the great financial crisis, and my mom worked for the government. She was a government employee, super stable job, great benefits, great retirement, all those things.
But during the 2008 financial crisis, they furloughed all of the government employees. And my mom saw her income get reduced by I think it was 30%. And that’s a lot for a working class family. So even if you think that you have a secure job, there’s still a benefit in going out and building something for yourself. So I love the mindset that you have there, but what actually made you realize that waiting for more time, more clarity, more confidence, which is what most people do when they have the idea of investing in real estate, what actually made you realize that waiting for those things wasn’t the smart move or wasn’t actually making things safer for you

Derek:
Because you’re never ready. You’re never going to be fully ready. And that’s the thing. You guys know it too, from every deal you do, there’s always something that scares you. There’s something that you’ve never done before. And so if you just go into it thinking that you have to have full confidence, you’re never going to have it. And in reality that’s going to keep you from getting where you’re actually trying to go in the first place, you’re going to be detrimental to yourself just because you didn’t make that jump. And sometimes it doesn’t have to be a big jump, it’s just the first step. But having confidence in yourself that you’ll figure it out because in reality, that’s what you need to do is surround yourself too. And I think this is another important point, right? Is if you’re around people and surrounding yourself with the people who have experience, who know what they’re doing, that can supplement where you are and get you to a point where you don’t need to know everything, you just need to know who can actually help you with it. So knowing those couple of things, that’s the biggest shift because it’s just trying to figure out, okay, who’s going to make a difference in my life? But in reality, we all know this, you have to be the one that makes a change. No one’s going to do the work for you. So at the end of the day, you got to do what you got to do.

Ashley:
I think that’s a great point there is to look at your network and your resources around you. And it may not even be a friend or somebody that can come and help you or whatever, but it could be somebody that you could hire that you know that you could trust that would do a good job, such as a contractor. You could feel more confident as going out and talking to contractors, asking them what they do, finding out what their process is, looking at other jobs that they’ve done. And that can give you the confidence and know like, okay, I have a contractor that I want to hire. I have a handyman that can take care of repairs and maintenance. So your network doesn’t need to be people who are more successful than you, so you can leach off them. Your network can be people who are more successful that you learn from. It can be people who are in the same stage as you, and it can also be people who are trying to get where you’re going. And just like having that kind of like-mindedness where you’re both, you’re trying to achieve the same thing and helping each other and sharing your resources there too. So your network and having those resources valuable isn’t available, isn’t just people who are way farther ahead that have already done it, that can help you. There’s tons of other ways to have people around you in your network.

Tony:
Yeah, Ash, I just want to add to that because I think a lot of the rookies that are listening agree with the notion that your network is so important, just like you said Derek, but I think where a lot of Ricky’s struggle, and I’m saying this because this is where I struggle when I first started, is how do I build this network? I don’t have rich uncles or all these people that are doing this. How do I actually go out there and meet those people and build those connections? And I think some of the best ways to do that are one, digitally you can join a community like BiggerPockets. You can get active in the forums and the Facebook groups and network and meet people there. Then you can do it in person. You can go to local real estate meetups and just be the person that shows up month after month after month after month.
And eventually it’ll start to meet more people. You can go to bigger events like BP Con or whatever other event, kind of piques your interest and spend three days with a group of folks in Vegas or Orlando or Denver or wherever and build relationships that way. So it’s not going to just fall into your lap. You’ve got to be intentional about it. But just know even if you have no one in your personal life today who is going on the same journey as you, it doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way. You can go out there and build those connections.

Derek:
It’s not going to be easy. That’s the biggest thing too, just to sort of jump in on that is if it was easy, everybody would do it. And that’s such a cliche, but there’s a reason that most people don’t buy their first deal this year because it’s not easy. And buying your first deal is not going to be, again, it’s going to be a little scary because you might not have done it before, but there’s plenty of resources out there to help with that. And that’s what got me into BiggerPockets in the first place when I was trying to figure it out. I had no clue. I didn’t have any connections regarding contractors or even lenders or whatever it was. And so the resources are there, you just got to take advantage of them.

Tony:
So Derek, when you finally decided to take action, right, you moved past the idea of like, Hey, real estate is what I want to do. You started educating yourself and you finally decided to act. What did you intentionally say no to in that first deal?

Derek:
I set my buy box and I needed to know, and I needed to have clarity with that first step, which the first step for me was what do I actually want to buy? Because there’s a lot of ways to invest in real estate. You can do whatever you want to do. You can do short-term rentals, long-term midterm, you can wholesale, you can fix and flip, but you can’t do ’em all at least at first. So I had to set the criteria and say, you know what? I have to say no to every other opportunity that is not, in my case, small multifamily. That was what I wanted to do was I knew that for me, the least risky way to get into it, which I learned from BiggerPockets, was to go about it with a house hack, buy a two to four unit multifamily property that fit the criteria.
And that’s all of a sudden, once I had my criteria clear, it was so easy because then I’m just looking for that specific deal and it takes some time. But once you have crystal clear criteria on that looking for the deal, that’s where again, you can rely on your real estate agent. You can rely on the people in your network, but you can’t go to the network and say, Hey, I’m looking to get started in real estate investing. I’m trying to find a property because what are they going to say? They’re going to go, well, what are you looking for? And if you don’t know, they can’t help you.

Ashley:
So what specific criteria were you actually looking at and made you feel safe that you know what, you don’t have as much risk and you’re ready to move forward even without total certainty.

Derek:
For me, that needed to be that there is cashflow and with a house hack, you’re not going to have the same cashflow. You’re not going to all of a sudden make a couple hundred bucks living for free. I mean you might in certain markets, but for me, where I invest, what I was looking for specifically, I wanted to make sure that if the worst happened, if this thing didn’t work out, I could rent that second unit I bought a duplex or at least whatever other rental income was coming in would cover the expenses. Again, it’s just meant to reduce your living expense while you live there. But in order for me to conceptualize and accept that risk, at the time I needed to know that I was buying in a strong market, I looked at the market fundamentals, making sure that there was enough, what would I say?
I guess just to make sure that in again, the worst case scenario that I looked at that and gone, well, if the worst happens, what if? And as long as I’m okay accepting that risk with whatever likelihood it is to happen. It’s kind of a mathematic equation for me because, well, again, I get to be the numbers guy, but I always look at it as what are the chances that that actually happens? And that’s also something I had to look at is great, the best thing could happen, but what’s the chances that the worst thing happens and the chances that the worst thing happened were pretty slim. So fortunately, just going through and looking at all the different factors for the market, the cashflow, the rent amounts, any upside in regards to appreciation, forced equity, they were there.

Ashley:
And even though this decision didn’t remove all the stress, it did change where the stress showed up. And once the deal closed, Derek actually found out quickly what theory doesn’t prepare you for That’s coming up right after a quick word from today’s show sponsor, okay, welcome back. The deal was done, but this is where confidence gets tested. So Derek, what surprised you the most in the first few months after closing, especially while you’re still working your full-time job?

Derek:
Initially I planned to do a cosmetic rehab. I didn’t want to go walls in, it was a newer structure, but it was very outdated. And because of that, if that was going to be a place that I was going to live in or someday rent out, the marketability wasn’t there. I wasn’t going to get above market rent. I wasn’t going to get possibly even the best tenant, which I knew was important criteria even at that time. So when I did that rehab, this was right off the bat, we go ahead and start breaking into the flooring, let alone to know that there is pounds of industrial glue that they’ve just poured on the bottom with staples stapling three to four layers of flooring in. And so it was one of those things, you start breaking into it and it’s not something you can’t overcome, but what turns into what you thought was going to be a week long job when you’re doing it yourself turns into months because you’re just hammering away at this floor with a chisel every three inches trying to pick up these little industrial staples.
And it was like, okay, this is something I did not plan for at all. And you break up the bottom layer of flooring and there’s cat pee smell, right, and smoke smell, and there’s the tarnish of the smoke on the walls and everything as well. And so it was one of those things where it was like I didn’t really know what to expect, but that’s when I needed to rely on people who did. I couldn’t do it alone and I didn’t want to because of how much time it was taking away. I mean, I’m trying to do a full-time job and build a book of business for myself at that time especially. So it was like, how much time is this taking away from me? But that was the thing that I had no clue was going to happen, at least right off the bat within the first month of what I got myself into.

Tony:
So Derek, you chose to purchase a duplex as a house hack. And for our Ricky listeners that aren’t familiar with the house hacking phrase, I think most of you are, but for those that aren’t house hack basically means that you’re buying an investment property, but you’re also living in it as well. So you live in one area of the property, you rent out the other area, and this is what you opted to do. And it’s a great way to get started because the costs to acquire the property is a lot lower typically than what it would be for a standalone investment property. But you also opted Derek, it sounds like, to at least do some of the renovations yourself, right? You talked about chiseling away at the floor every three inches or so. Did you have experience in a renovation already? Were you handy to begin with or was this more of a YouTube university route? And if so, what made you feel that DIY was the best approach for you specifically?

Derek:
It was mainly focused on cost at the time as the reason for why I did a lot of it. Now, that’s not to say there was certain things that I could not and would not do because I’m not handy. I am not that guy though. For me, I knew right away that there was going to be things if they came up plumbing, electrical, I needed somebody who’s experienced and wouldn’t burn the house down. So yes, there was those certain things, but otherwise anything I could do myself was basically one of those things of, well, it seems to make sense because it’s going to save me the money of hiring somebody else. But then you quickly learn how much time that actually takes away from you. And that’s when I immediately started to realize, okay, I got to figure out what my time is worth too. Because at the end of the day, you only have so much of it and it’s not scalable to do all of the rehabs and everything yourself. It can be fun, a little frustrating at times, especially as you’re trying to learn it all, but you take away those lessons.

Tony:
And I want to get into the systems and the scale piece because I think that’s important for the Ricky listeners. But just one last question on the renovations. How much time did you initially plan for the renovations and how much time did it actually take to get through it all?

Derek:
Wow. So it a pretty big jump. I thought initially that again, it was just going to be cosmetic. What can go wrong? You’re just going to lay down some new floor, maybe put in some new cabinets. What was expected to be maybe four to six weeks turned into about six months of just trying to go through it all. And the other thing too is timing it because wait, okay, great, I got the floor done. Oh wait, did we ever call that guy that’s supposed to come next? It’s like, no, we didn’t actually think that far ahead. So it took a lot longer than we initially thought it would. Thankfully again, as a house hack, I had that flexibility where I was able to take a little bit of time to do that. I wasn’t in a huge rush. I know some people that we help with house hacks on our side, they do more of like a fix, or sorry, a live and flip where they might go in and actually do the construction while they live there. But with what we were doing that wasn’t in my cards.

Ashley:
So where did the plan start to break down? And you have to really systematize faster than expected. What were some of the first systems you put in place that maybe you wish you would’ve done even before buying the first deal?

Derek:
I should have known right away before buying the first deal, what work was going to be done and who was going to do it. And that’s the part that I missed. The second part specifically is I just knew a general idea. You look at it when you buy your first deal, you’re going to get a home inspection most likely to get an idea. And when you go through it, they’ll tell you a few things that probably need to be fixed, which is what their job is that’s expected. So you should have an idea even before you buy the property, who’s going to do at least those basic things. And if you’re going to do a cosmetic rehab, knowing who’s going to put the floor in, knowing who’s going to do the plumbing, because when you don’t know, when you haven’t reached out to a contractor or some handyman who can help with some of the little things, you don’t know what your timeframe’s going to be. And so that was the biggest thing that got away from us is just knowing ahead of time and planning that process out.

Tony:
And Derek, I think that’s a common challenge that a lot of rookie investors face. And there’s a book from BiggerPockets written by Jay Scott. It’s the book on flipping houses. You can pick it up at biggerpockets.com/bookstore. But I remember when I did my very first rehab, I read that book front to back multiple times to try and figure out, okay, what am I actually getting myself into? And maybe what are some of those common pitfalls that most rookie investors make that that kind of sets them back? And it’s a really great book, and j Scott’s one of the smartest guys that I know. So again, if you guys want support on that, it’s the book on flipping houses. But as you were going through this, Derek, there were a lot of unplanned challenges, and I think that is part of doing your first deal. That’s the purpose of that first deal is to educate you, to teach you the lessons to lay the foundation so you can then scale on and up to your next deal and your next deal and your next deal. And I guess I’m just curious, you didn’t stop. How many deals have you done in total now?

Derek:
I’d say since then. So just to give the listeners context, I bought that first duplex in December of 2023. So now here we are two years later and there’s been three additional deals.

Tony:
So you’ve continued to transact as a real estate investor, so obviously you continued. So I would assume though that there was a moment when you question on that first deal, is this even worth it? Are Tony and Ashley just like spewing lies on this real estate rookie podcast about what it means to be a real estate investor? What pulled you through that moment to allow you to continue on to do number deal or do deal number two in three and four?

Ashley:
And just to be clear, the only time I lie on this podcast is when I tell Tony he looks great in his black shirt, every single recording.

Derek:
Well, yeah. So the thing that really made it stand out for me is seeing that it was possible and knowing what was on the other end of it. No, that deal, I still own that property. And it is not a home run. It doesn’t cashflow a ton. It basically breaks even at this point. But the lessons that I took away from it I knew would set me up so that the next one was just even better. And that’s what I had fortunately started to see with a lot of the investors that we work with. That’s what I started to see with the personal network guys started to grow is that we all have our first deal and everybody does. And most of the time it is not some outrageous cash cow. It is something that is just a base hit.

Ashley:
I think my first deal, it cash flowed like $150 a month, and then I had even forgotten to include snowplowing. So it ended up being even less than that, but it still got me started. I bought the second deal within three months after that. And that’s such a great lesson is it doesn’t have to be a home run. It doesn’t have to be the most perfect deal. So Derek, what did this deal permanently change about how you evaluated future opportunities that came your way?

Derek:
The biggest thing that shifted for me was qualifying your tenants. And you guys probably have some horror stories about these, but starting to realize when you buy an investment property, chances are you’re going to inherit one or more tenants that are already in the property. Maybe they’ve been there for a long time and that’s great, good for them, but you got to make sure you’re doing your due diligence. And so going forward, making sure that you know exactly who’s in your rental property, right? And I say that for a reason, but whoever is in the property, who’s on the lease, what does that look like and what are their terms? And understanding what your responsibility is to them as well. Because as a real estate investor, our job is, I should say a long-term real estate investor is to provide housing for these people. It’s to make sure that they have a safe place to live, a good place to live. And so sometimes things have to change in order for that to actually happen. And not everybody might be on a board with that, but in the end, that was the biggest change that I had to have then and going forward is making sure that again, who’s in the property, your tenants, and you’re actually serving them in the way that you should.

Tony:
Derek, I feel that maybe that lesson is based on an experience that you’ve had with some tenants. So do you self-manage all of your properties?

Derek:
Yes. Well, I was going to say, how much time do we got? Because with that, and to summarize it, I came across this where the tenant that was in that original duplex and is still there, but she’s a great tenant, always pays on time. She’s been on the lease for seven years with the prior owner. And what happened is over time that I had purchased the property and started to own it and operate it, we got a little flexible. And I’m trying to think with that specifically because when you are flexible on one thing, maybe, oh, okay, you have a new cat. I didn’t know about that. That’s okay though, right? A cat can’t be a problem until again, long story short, next thing I know, there’s three people and nine cats in a two bed, one bath, duplex, and it’s like, okay, well this is not the best for anybody. So staying on top of it, making sure what’s actually happening in your properties as well, and not just we all want things to be as passive as possible. We don’t want problems, we don’t want maintenance, but the routine maintenance, the checkups, the things that you’ll do in the middle are what are going to protect you, your asset. And again, make sure that the tenants actually have a great place to live and it’s something that is good for their.

Tony:
Ashley, I want to ask you, because you always talk about how you don’t like conflict, and there’s probably a lot of folks listening who feel the same way, and I think it’s even harder, especially as a first time landlord to enforce rules on other people. So what have you found to be the best way to make sure that tenants are respecting the lease, respecting the property without all of that internal dialogue or internal turmoil over creating conflict with your tenants? And don’t say that you made Daryl do it,

Ashley:
That was definitely going to be one option is you’ll let somebody else be the person that communicates and it either goes that he can be the bad guy or he’s saying, I’m so sorry she said that. No, or whatever. So I don’t even have to save face. But really one of the best ways is lease enforcement. So having as much as you can in your lease and just saying, this isn’t a lease. We both signed it, we both agreed to it and making the lease the bad guy. So that I think really should be the number one thing. And then the second thing is to have somebody else that’s maybe the communicator, the middle person or whatever. There was a time period where people just thought that I was the property manager and that I was not the owner of the property. So I always blamed stuff on the owner even though it was me and they just thought I was the property manager.
But over time I felt like that was almost deceitful in a way, but it really did help diffuse situations by not letting people know that I actually own the property. But yeah, there’s a couple different ways, but I think really the best way is to enforce the lease and then have that communication in writing emails. If you have a property management software like I use Turbo Tenant, you can message right through there and have the conversation in writing. Having things in writing has saved me so much. I had a tenant sue me for their security deposit. The judge dismissed it. One of the reasons right away was because I told my va, I told my contractors, anybody, I said, do not take this person’s phone call only in writing. So emails only text messages only. And because we did that, we had everything in writing, which helped our case in it got dismissed.
And so I think that would be another big thing too. And it gives you time to think. Definitely when I was very early on being a property manager, I can think back to sometimes where I was immature, I was not professional, I was reacting with a hot head and frustrated and just like, how can they even be asking this? This is ridiculous. And thinking those things. And I think also having it in writing, it gives you a second to think about what’s the appropriate way to respond to this? And for my PMS system for short-term rentals is hospitable and they have their AI chat respond for you. And it’s just like that is the best. If you can throw your response into AI and have it approve, like, okay, yep, this is how we can make it sound nicer and you’re more customer service. That’s also a great way to handle conflict too, is to have AI actually write your responses.

Tony:
There you go. Well, there is a masterclass on enforcing the rules of the beliefs without creating a bunch of conflicts. I appreciate you walking through that Ash.

Ashley:
I have a book recommendation too. It’s by Jay Bayer and it’s called Hug Your Haters. And it goes through basically how to kill people with kindness and customer service. And I think that is super great for handling tenants.

Tony:
One additional book recommendation is called Crucial Conversations, and there’s a few folks who wrote that book, but if you just Google Crucial Conversations, it’s another book that does an incredible job of giving you frameworks to use and you have to have somewhat difficult conversations. So once Derek realized that real estate investing wasn’t a fluke, the question stopped being, can I do this? And became how fast do I want to? So up next we’re going to talk about how that clarity created a real timeline to get Derrick potentially out of his nine to five. Alright, so now that the model works, everything else starts to look different. So Derrick, how did your decision making change once you knew that this path of real estate investing actually worked?

Derek:
So once I started to see the bigger picture, that’s when I was able to go ahead and say, what do I need to do to get there? And again, that’s the way that my mind thinks. I know I’ve said that a couple of times already, but is always thinking about next steps because getting to the end goal can seem like a huge jump. It’s like, how do I get from buying my first property to get where you guys are? How does that even happen? It happens one deal at a time. And so just focusing on the next one and the next one and the next one and what I want to get out of it, that was the biggest shift that allowed me to go working a nine to five didn’t get me. That wasn’t something that I saw being scalable, right? Because if you have all of your time tied up, you’re in the office.
And I say that, right? But I working as a lender, yes, I’m still in the real estate industry, but I needed to not do something that wasn’t going to play out that way, something that wasn’t going to help me figure out how to get exactly where I wanted to go. And so being able to actually be in the business allowed me to focus all of my effort and thoughts and energy around what I can do to better myself and allowed me to see a lot of context too for what other people are doing. And that was one of the things that helped me grow my network. Right

Tony:
Now you’re still working your day job, Derek, but what does your exit timeline look like now and why does it feel more realistic given what you’ve accomplished so far? As a real estate investor?

Derek:
For my timeframe, I just look at it as a supplement. This is something that I enjoy to do, and I think that’s one of the biggest things a lot of people underestimate is I need to get out of my nine to five as quick as I can, or my day job, I got to quit. I can’t do this anymore. That’s a good goal by all means. But having that there can sometimes actually be the reason that you are allowed to keep buying properties. You can have multiple sources of income, multiple income streams that help grow that. And so in terms of, to answer the question of an exit timeline, it’s like why would I stop until I get to a point where I can’t when I don’t have the time to do it? But as long as I put the systems and delegate the things that I need to do, I’m just living life, right?
I’m just enjoying what I do and making the most out of it. And that’s kind of how I get to approach every day at this point is I can look at it as something I get to do rather than something I have to do. And that is the goal, that is the end goal. It’s not about necessarily, well, I can’t wait to leave this place. Do I have the flexibility that I want out of life? Can I do the things I want to do? And for a large part, I’ve been able to already do that, which is insane to me, but I’m very fortunate to do that. But it’s taken a lot to get here.

Ashley:
Yeah, it definitely has. And I think that just sharing this opinion you have about quitting your job or keeping it maybe if you really do detest your job this much, that building this real estate portfolio can offer you the opportunity to go part-time or to maybe transition to a different job that’s more fulfilling, but maybe it’s less pay. So I think the really important thing to think about is not only real estate as a tool to quit your job, but also how much faster and efficiently you can build wealth by doing a W2 job or building a business while simultaneously investing in real estate investing too. So I think oftentimes, and I think back to COVID in 2021 where a lot of people I felt like quit their jobs and went full-time into real estate because it was a gold mine. Properties were appreciating like crazy.
You could flip a house and make a ton of money, but how sustainable is that? And I think there’s a lot of, you can feel more comfortable and confident in keeping your W2 job and investing in real estate, and it kind of gives you that balance to have even a bigger safety net. If something happens with a deal, you have your W2 income that you can help supplement to that something happens with your job, you have your real estate income to supplement that. So I think there’s a lot of pros and cons to all sides of it, keeping both or just doing one or the other. So definitely something to think about. But if someone listening, Derek, they want the certainty and not just the hype. What’s the first thing that they should actually build out before their first deal? What should they be thinking about

Derek:
Who not how? That’s the biggest thing is you don’t even need to know how you’re going to do something because again, things are going to change, things are going to come up, things that you didn’t expect. But if you know who’s there to support you, who’s there to help get you through it, who’s going to do who, different parts of that process, that is the thing that’ll set you apart as you go through it and give you that certainty of it’s not can I do it? Can we do it my network? Do I have the network to do it? Can this business? And approaching it from the entrepreneurial mindset instead of the maybe DIY mindset of I’m going to do everything myself. That’s great. Can you really though, are you the best person to be able to do property management? And I say that right as we self-manage, but there’s different aspects of the real estate business that rely on the people who know better than you do. Because I don’t know everything, and I’m not going to pretend that I do, but I know people who know how to do that. So it’s like as long as I have that connection, building that and starting to work on figuring out who can help you through it, what resources you have and can take advantage of, those are the systems that will scale.

Tony:
Well, Derek, I appreciate so much of what you’ve shared on this podcast. Obviously the tactical side, but more so just the mindset around getting started and the importance of that first deal. But looking back, what did that first deal actually buy you? That money alone couldn’t,

Derek:
It bought me the confidence that I could do it, right, because that House hack was also my first property. So it gave me the confidence that, okay, I can buy a property, work through it, I can manage it, I’ll figure it out. And that was the biggest shift is from not having the certainty, being a little scared of what’s going to happen, how does this work out? What if this doesn’t work out? And that confidence shift of being able to go, oh, that worked. I can do that again. I can do that better. I can do this better. It just gave me a leg to stand on.

Ashley:
Well, Derek, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciated you taking the time to share your journey and your experience. Can you let everyone know where they can reach out to you and find out more information about your journey?

Derek:
Yeah, absolutely. So feel free to reach out to me on any socials. My tag everywhere is Loans by db, so feel free to connect DM me. I’m always as responsive as I can be, so if you shoot me a message, I’m sure I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Ashley:
Thank you guys so much for joining us today on Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you guys on the next episode.