The “Flip Flop” star spoke at Inman Connect in Miami on Tuesday about how career difficulties, a cancer diagnosis and personal hardships paved the way for his success.
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Tarek El Moussa is best known as the flop star on the hit HGTV show flip or flip — This would be the pinnacle of any real estate agent’s career. But during Tuesday’s Inman Connect in Miami, he glimpsed a series of low points in his life, each one worse than the last, that ultimately propelled him to success.
Those lows began early in El Moussa’s career, when he “made flyers, I got business cards, I held open houses,” he told the Connect crowd. But “I wasn’t making money, I wasn’t learning, I was just wasting my time, and I ended up broke.”
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So he changed his mind and put $1,000 on his credit card to pay for one-on-one tutoring. It worked.
“I was terrible,” El Moussa said, “and then I started getting better.”
Soon, El Moussa made enough money to buy a fancy house and expensive cars. But soon after, the Great Recession hit and his business collapsed. El Moussa suddenly went from living a life of luxury to driving his father’s old truck and living in a cramped apartment.
Soon, however, El Moussa realized he had to pivot, so he focused on short selling. It worked and the money started flowing again. Later, at a real estate conference, he met a high-paid agent who was hosting a local television show, and El Moussa began pitching the idea of producing his own show to Hollywood production companies. He was rejected again and again until finally his idea was adopted and became an unexpected hit.
This is how, flip or flip, which ran for 10 seasons. But early in the campaign, El Moussa learned he had two different types of cancer. HGTV wanted to cancel the show due to El Moussa’s health issues, but he insisted on continuing.
“I was so sick and bloated that I wanted to throw up,” he recalled, telling Wired viewers that the physical toll of his cancer could be seen on screen during the show’s second season.
Tariq El Moussa on Inman Connect on Tuesday. Photo credit: AJ Canaria
El Moussa eventually beat cancer, but his personal highs were soon followed by what he calls his lowest.
“I was sitting on the cooler in handcuffs,” he recalled, without providing further details. But anyway, his marriage has broken down and he no longer plays the role of a great “friend, father, son, or human being.”
“Finally my life imploded in front of the whole world in May 2016,” he said.
But El Moussa persevered again, this time living in a 24-hour care facility and later getting married. From 2017 to now, he said, “I am the happiest.”
El Moussa’s speech was partly a personal memoir, but he also tried to make a point to industry professionals: “If you feel stuck, or you don’t know what to do next, then you take action.” Here’s what he said It’s a lesson learned the hard way, but one that El Moussa believes is the key to success.
“The magic is in doing, not thinking, not reading, not looking,” he said, later adding, “You have to be in it. You have to go out into the world.
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