From Classroom to Cashflow: Deba Douglas Real Estate Transformation Journey

Mike Hambright (00:00.755)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I am here with Deba Douglas. I just found out that we have a little history together, which is really cool to learn about. But we’re going to be talking about how to do it scared. She’s taken some big risks in her life and it’s paid off overall. I’m sure we haven’t gotten into this yet. Lots of pitfalls there, but if you have thought about getting started in real estate investing for a long time and you just haven’t pulled the trigger because you’re afraid, we’re going to talk about why you should just do it anyway. So Deba, great to see you.

Deba Douglas (00:28.012)
You too, this is such an honor to be on your show. Like, I literally have literally followed you for over 10 years. So this is such an honor to be on your show talking to you and talking about real estate investing.

Mike Hambright (00:40.659)
Yeah, that’s amazing. Honestly, you made my day when just to kind of share with everybody, Debra told me that, cause I wasn’t sure, like we’ve started to kind of reach out and kind of add the ability for people to jump on our shows. We actually have a series of podcasts that we’re rolling out now, a whole podcast network under the investor fuel brand. And Debra got a book with me and I said, have we met before? And she said that she had come to one of my seminars like 10 years ago and you were still a principal, right? And so.

Deba Douglas (01:08.962)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Hambright (01:10.389)
Anyway, I take no credit for anything that you’ve done here, but if I was a little bit of an inspiration or a catalyst to kind of help you move forward, that makes my day. So that’s awesome.

Deba Douglas (01:19.532)
Yeah, you definitely were. Like, I think you were the momentum that I needed to say, okay, I know someone for real. I’ve been able to see them, talk to them. This is real. I just got to figure out how to move it around and make it make sense.

Mike Hambright (01:31.711)
That’s awesome. So before we kind of jump in, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your story because we just kind of alluded to that you weren’t in real estate and then now you are. But then we’ll kind of jump in to give folks some, a little bit of a roadmap or some things to think about for how they might be able to do it as well. So tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Deba Douglas (01:51.49)
Yes, so like Mike mentioned, my name is Deba Douglas. I was a former principal, a middle school principal in Plano ISD and I had spent 16 years in education and I got to the point.

just was over my job, over the day to day. I knew I could not live the life that I ultimately felt like I deserved or wanted staying in the realms of being in education. I had two small children at the time and it was hard being a mommy because I was constantly gone. And so I decided to dive into real estate investing and before I left education 100%, my husband and I started reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. We bought our first rental property and then it was like the light bulb went out like

Oh my gosh, this really works. But how do I scale and how do I buy multiple properties over and over again? And so we started diving into more research, connecting with different people and just doing it scared. And now fast forward seven years later, we own over 30 rental properties in the DFW Metroplex. I now build houses to rent. I flip about eight to 15 houses a year just depending on the market. And I even show people how to do this as well. So it’s been definitely life

changing. It’s doing it scared because we were terrified pretty much every step of the way. But it was so worth it. Every fall, good, bad, it was so worth it.

Mike Hambright (03:13.62)
Yeah.

Yeah, we’ll come back around to, well, let’s start with, you said a phrase that I say daily, and anybody that listens to my podcast or hears me say it all the time, anybody that works for me or that is in my circles, no, I say it all the time, delayed gratification, right? And I have a feeling that that’s why a lot of people are scared to jump in because they either want or need immediate, they want success to be guaranteed, right?

Deba Douglas (03:42.072)
Yes.

Yeah. Yes.

Mike Hambright (03:46.651)
It can’t be, it just can’t be. Otherwise everybody would do it.

Deba Douglas (03:47.616)
It can be, especially in real estate. It’s never that is never you cannot put real estate and guaranteed in any conversation and think it’s going to mesh together. But you do have to do the work. And I think the what really changed the trajectory for my husband and I is that my husband was amazing that he was like, OK, let’s cut back some of our expenses so I can live off so we can live off one income while I try to go chase this world of real estate. And I started by becoming a realtor thinking if I can just

Mike Hambright (03:56.606)
Right.

Deba Douglas (04:17.52)
get a couple of commission, doing a couple of rentals, that would help me buy properties. And so whatever commission that I made, I would just turn around and buy more properties for the end game that was gonna be a portfolio for our children. So we initially went in with delayed gratification because it wasn’t about immediate gains. It was more, we wanted to give our kids a life that they never had before.

Mike Hambright (04:40.853)
That’s great. and I think and you and you haven’t even been in long enough to feel the benefits of a delayed gratification with your rentals, right? I mean that really takes time. I mean if you’ve been doing it for seven years I know you didn’t buy them all seven years ago. So some of those seem like they’re a pain in the butt right now I’m sure they I’m sure they all are at one point or another but it just takes You know give it another 10 years 15 years and you’ll really start to see obviously better cash flow wealth generation like all those things

Deba Douglas (05:05.399)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (05:09.705)
That’s what the late gravitation can do for you.

Deba Douglas (05:12.238)
Absolutely, and we were I feel like we’re tapping in a little bit of delayed gratification just because we were able to buy a lot in a very sought-after area and we never thought we would even be even in the neighborhood or anything of that nature and then now we’re in the process of building but because of Having so much equity and some of those first three properties that we purchase We were able to tap into some of that equity to help us start the build for the house that we’re gonna live

in forever with our kids.

Mike Hambright (05:43.903)
Nice, yeah, that’s great. So Debo, let’s talk a little about like, you had something burning inside of you that said I need to make a change here, right? And sometimes it’s when people hit rock bottom or something bad happens, it could be a health issue, like a lot of things, but how do you know when it’s time to finally just shut that door or open that door? I guess you shut one and open another and say, this is the time to go do what I’ve been waiting to do. How do you know when that time is? Because a lot of people,

Deba Douglas (06:10.68)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (06:12.905)
They wait, well, maybe next year, maybe this summer, maybe in the fall, like, you know, maybe when the kids are out of school, whatever, whatever, right? And then, what happens is if they ever do it, which is still pretty rare, it’s when something really bad happens and they’re forced to make a, versus kind of being, you know, they’re reactive versus being able to be proactive. So how do you know when it’s time to jump into the thing?

Deba Douglas (06:29.932)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (06:34.443)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (06:38.698)
Yeah, I will say I had a combination of several different things that happened at the same time. I stopped showing up for life. I got to the point that I was just complete, just kind of complacent. I knew exactly what I was doing every day. I knew how to talk to the teachers. I knew how to talk to the kids and I was going through the motions. Nothing really excited me. It was just like mundane every day. Wake up, go to work, talk to kids, come home over and over again. Never excited about anything. And in that time, I started serving a little bit more

in my church and I’m seeing so many other people that I’m where I’m volunteering together. They’re so excited about life and I’m like…

I’m only I’ve only been doing education for 15 16 years I still have like another 15 years to go through to even think about retiring and I’m like I can’t keep doing this and then it got to the point that during that motion my dad Ended up having a stroke and my dad was an entrepreneur and literally he went to work one day came back and he was no longer able to move from his right side his whole right side of his body and I was like a daddy’s girl and I did everything I could to be there for him during that time

And with the constraints of my job, I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t go to rehab with them I couldn’t do all these things and I just kept saying I hate my job. I’m going through the motions I know God has something more for me and I want to be more flexible with my family to be there when my dad needs me the most and I can’t because I’m like who can cover for lunch duty who can do this and who that who can do these things and it’s very tiring and draining and you’re still not showing up for your family, which is the person that you that that’s what all this

about more than anything. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (08:17.205)
Talk a little bit about taking imperfect action because I think there’s a lot of people that are very analytical, especially those that are in more traditional jobs like you were in or corporate America where I left is I’m used to following a system and a process and things like that. so you’re usually, and for bigger companies or bigger organizations, there’s usually a lot of resources.

And when you’re by yourself, you you don’t have any resources, right? Very few. And so you just have to take this leap of faith that I don’t know how to get, this is what I say, you don’t need to figure out how to get from A to Z, just get from A to B and then figure out how to get from B to C. But just share your experience and maybe your insights on why you should be willing to take imperfect action and just learn as you go.

Deba Douglas (08:48.238)
Yeah.

Yes.

Deba Douglas (09:00.884)
Yeah, I think I realized early on in life that no one has this stuff figured out. And once you kind of give yourself that grace of like, you’re going to make mistakes, it’s going to be okay. And your spouse is okay, knowing that we’re about to go into this dark tunnel, and we don’t really know what’s going to happen. You guys can move in alignment together knowing that hey, we’re just going to try it out, see if it works. But before we even bought our first property, it took us almost two to three years to mentally tell ourselves that we can do this. So

So we spent time instead of listening to the radio, we were listening to podcasts. We went to different meetups like yours. We attended different things. We literally like put ourselves in a situation where you could not fail because you’re getting so much information. Now there is a thing called information overload and analysis paralysis. And we did get a little bit to that point, but I think my personality is a risk taker. My husband’s personality is a little bit more calculated and wants to make sure that

all points are together and we know where A and all the way to Z is. So I think you have to have a balance because I was ready to, you know, go out there and build a plane in the air while it was going on. So you really can’t do that all the way, but you do need a level of that to get you where you need to be. And because we’re listening to different podcasts, we’re talking to different people, we relate to them. I’m like, they’re regular people like us. They are figuring it out. They talk about things that went wrong, but they talked about how they overcame those. And so,

As long as we kept that in the forefront of our minds that it’s not gonna be easy, it’s not gonna be perfect, but we will get through it.

Mike Hambright (10:39.827)
Yeah. So what are your thoughts on, you know, one of the questions that people ask me, have asked me many, times over the years, and I’m sure you thought about this too, is can you keep your job and try to get started part-time and then prove it out, I guess? Basically, people are trying to bridge the fear gap of like quitting cold turkey and not being able to go back. I guess it’s the idea of burning the boats, right? Should you burn the boat or should you…

Deba Douglas (11:04.929)
Yes.

Mike Hambright (11:07.205)
ease into it and I have opinions on that but I want to hear yours before I say anything.

Deba Douglas (11:10.75)
Yeah, we, I…

My husband and I, eased into it. And what did that look like for us? Because I had to leave to go to work at seven o’clock in the morning, I woke up at four thirty in the morning. And that’s the time that I would focus on real estate and focus on, OK, who do I need a wholesale? What type of deals am I looking for? That would be that time to just nurture and get myself ready. Then I would get the kids ready. And then throughout the day, I would just focus at work. But then when I would come home, I would spend time working on real estate. So and then we

got to the point where we had about three rental properties while we were both still working and that was what helped us keep going. And then once we got to the point that we had those three, we were cash flowing a little bit, then we felt comfortable like okay which one of us is going to quit and really jump fully into this.

Mike Hambright (12:03.669)
So have you both left your jobs at this point? You both focus on this full-time or?

Deba Douglas (12:08.194)
So my husband still has his full-time job, but I will say this is probably gonna be his last year, just because now we’re just talking about benefits and how that’s gonna affect our family and just different things like that. But the financial side, that’s not something we really worry too much about. So now it’s a good place, and I think he actually enjoys his job even more because it’s not something that he has to forcefully do.

Mike Hambright (12:10.815)
Okay.

Mike Hambright (12:35.487)
Yeah, know, there’s something to be said for knowing that you have alternatives, right? You could, even if you, you know, sometimes people can’t quit their job, like they just can’t even fathom that, right? So now if you’re like, well, I could if I want to, so I’m gonna choose when the time’s right for me. There’s a lot to be said for having that option, right?

Deba Douglas (12:40.557)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (12:52.172)
Right. Absolutely. And I think that’s why we tap into real estate. I think that’s why we all did it for real estate because we wanted options. We didn’t want anyone to tell us when you could travel, when you could go out to eat, when you could have lunch. I remember being in education, we only had like a 15 minute lunch. And sometimes I still have, seven years later, have PTSD where I’m like, okay, I got to start this down because I got something else I got to do.

Mike Hambright (13:15.477)
Yeah, yeah. So what are some pitfalls to overcome like making that leap from being in, you know, working for somebody else, I guess, to working for yourself? What are some pitfalls?

Deba Douglas (13:27.764)
Yes, I would say.

Like you mentioned, the mindset of now I’m not waiting for my manager or my boss to tell me what’s next. I have to figure it out and I have to really set goals and have a vision for the year and follow up with that vision and making sure I’m in line with it. One of our biggest pitfalls that we had is that we didn’t really know a lot about hard money lending and different opportunities of using other people’s money. So our first deal, we just got a conventional loan and bought a duplex and had

to put 25 % down because we thought that’s the way to do it. And so we have properties that have money locked in and we may not get money out for quite some time. But it was one of those, those were the properties that helped us get going. And you kind of have to go through the pitfalls so that you can appreciate the outcome later.

Mike Hambright (14:21.397)
There’s no way that you, I mean you have to, this is the difference when, this is how I felt too when I was in corporate America. Like you’re so afraid of failing, but as an entrepreneur, if you’re gonna have any level of success, you learn pretty quickly that failure is just a lesson.

Deba Douglas (14:31.618)
Yes.

Mike Hambright (14:39.399)
I learned what not to do next. You have to touch a hot stove to know not to touch the hot stove. You have to, you you got to kiss some frogs or whatever and realize that that’s gross. I’m not going to do that again, right? You just have to go through those lessons because it’s just part of a stepping stone to success ultimately.

Deba Douglas (14:39.511)
It is.

Deba Douglas (14:43.874)
yet.

Deba Douglas (14:48.182)
Yes.

Yeah.

Deba Douglas (14:57.076)
It is. I one thing of just because I was in education, that was the biggest thing I had to to to shift in my brain. Yes, we’re in education. Yes, we’re teaching kids right from wrong and you know how to set themselves up for the future. But we do put a big emphasis on them being perfect because it causes them not to feel comfortable failing. And one thing I have now that I’ve left education, now I’m talking to my kids, I have three now, I’m always saying

just try it. What’s the worst thing that can happen? And the only reason I say that is I want to build up their endurance so that as they get older, they know what it feels like to try something different. They know what it feels like to do something they don’t like to do. Like my oldest son, he’s now in middle school and it was time for him to pick an elective and he wanted to go the easy route and do choir. And I’m like, no, you’re going to do band. You’re just going do it. You’re going to pick an instrument and you’re going to enjoy it and you’re going to do it. He hated me for the first semester, but now he really enjoys playing the tuba, but I’m teaching him it’s open.

Mike Hambright (15:55.029)
Yeah, wow.

Deba Douglas (15:56.832)
to try something different.

Mike Hambright (15:59.113)
Yeah, yeah, failure’s not final. Like, try it. Yeah, awesome. So let’s talk about, I mean, you really have to become a different person. You have to transform into somebody that has a totally different mindset than the traditional path, right?

Deba Douglas (16:01.932)
Yeah, absolutely.

Deba Douglas (16:14.206)
Yes, you really do. it wasn’t until I’m like in the middle of the transition that I’m like, I can’t see myself the same way as a principal. I can’t see myself as just the educator. I have to show up as a businesswoman. I have to show up and think about where I’m trying to go next year and do I have the KPIs in place to make sure I meet those. And I think that’s the biggest thing. But then you have to change the people you’re around that align with where you want to go. And it’s OK.

to leave the people behind because I’ve always looked at it as I leave you alone for a moment I’m gonna come back I just got to get some of this information and then when I get the information I’m gonna come back and share it and hopefully you’re sharing new information that you have found as well so we can all grow.

Mike Hambright (16:59.221)
Yeah. So what would you say are some of the lessons that you learned from the education world? So like I said, I came out of corporate America, honestly, for a lot of years, because I have a lot, we ended up getting a lot of formal education before I got into real estate, because I just thought that’s what I needed. And you know now, I mean, you were an educator, so you’re…

Deba Douglas (17:18.222)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (17:21.651)
like more into that thing of probably the following the traditional rules of education, right? And now you know there’s a lot of ways to make money, there’s a lot of ways to learn, there’s a lot of things out there, but what are some of the lessons, but so what I would say is I used to kind of poo poo my corporate background and be like.

Deba Douglas (17:25.921)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (17:30.722)
yet.

Mike Hambright (17:39.091)
I didn’t need to go, I didn’t need all this education, I didn’t need all these things. However, if I look back, there’s a lot of lessons that I learned, some good and bad, that help me now, that I used to not give credit to, but what are some lessons or things that you’ve learned along the way that maybe you couldn’t have done without that background?

Deba Douglas (17:56.63)
Yes, I mean, I don’t think you have the time of the day to go over all the things I’ve learned. I mean, conflict resolution. I know how to work with anybody because I’ve had to sit with two teachers and try to find a way to resolve their issues and we can still walk out of here amicably and still respect each other.

Mike Hambright (17:59.861)
Well, let’s take, let’s make a dent in it.

Deba Douglas (18:14.926)
being organized. In education, we had to document document in the fear of getting sued. So in real estate, it’s literally the same thing. I over document. have folders and files for everything. I have electronically. I also have a paperback just in case anything ever comes back. And I think multitasking, being able to have four or five different things going on at one time, projecting for the future numbers of, okay, now we have to cut back on teacher assignments. How are we going to do that?

had to do that now with education, with real estate. Okay, now doing underwriting at the beginning of every year, I look at all my properties, which one am I making money from? Which one I probably need to consider selling if I can’t increase the rent. All of those things play into who I am today that I really have to give a lot of the credit of being in education, working with so many different types of people that now I can relate and find something I can communicate and connect with all different types of people that I work with.

Mike Hambright (19:14.857)
Yeah, that’s amazing. So Debra, if you were to give advice to people that we started this off by saying, if you’re scared to do it, do it anyway, basically. And so for folks that are scared, like sometimes they have legitimate concerns like bridging the gap financially is probably one of the bigger ones, right? And then let’s just talk about like advice you would give for…

Deba Douglas (19:24.458)
Yeah

Mike Hambright (19:38.601)
Bridging that gap financially for folks, if that’s an issue, which it is for most, it would be. And then also time. Like you said you got up early and you stay up late and stuff, but just let’s kind of come back to that. So let’s talk about money anyways. Like what would you do to bridge the gap to, for people that are thinking I can’t afford to do it, tell them otherwise and then we’ll come back to time.

Deba Douglas (19:43.436)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (20:01.064)
Yeah, so money wise, if you can go to Starbucks every single day, you can come back, get your coffee at home, and you can start building a little bit of money to build you a cushion.

get real with your finances because if you move over to real estate, you have to know all of your financials at a literally at a drop of a dime. So if you can get comfortable with looking at your finances, trying to figure out where is all the money going and cut back, you don’t need it as much as you think you do. And I think when I was in the education world, I spent so much money on unnecessary things like going to the mall every weekend. I haven’t been to the mall this entire year. I don’t think I went to the mall in 2024 at all. Why anything?

Mike Hambright (20:41.845)
All right.

Deba Douglas (20:43.184)
So it’s like cutting back because you know eventually what if what if you had a world where you could buy anything cash? Because of the real estate time that you put into the grind and then another thing with money wise is There’s people in your family that have money. There’s people in your family They’re in your circle that they would love to tap in and partner with what you’re doing If you can get the knowledge you will find someone that has the money and if you already own your home You already have equity sitting in that house so you could pull out

get a HELOC and pull out money and you don’t need all your equity just pull out at least 20 to 30 grand to get going but if you really want it you’re going to find a way to make it happen

Mike Hambright (21:24.563)
Yeah, that’s great. I always tell people when they’re getting started, like, do you have time or money? That’s a question. It’s like, if you don’t have a lot of money, then you got to use more time. And here’s the path you go down to get started, right? And so it’s like, if you can’t afford to pay somebody to pick up a shovel, you’re going to have to do some digging for a while. But that’s not the long-term goal. But that’s what you got to do to get started. So let’s talk about the time side. A lot of people are like, I don’t have time for that. I’m going to kids sports. I’ve got

Deba Douglas (21:31.235)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (21:41.208)
There you go. Yeah.

Deba Douglas (21:46.53)
Right.

Mike Hambright (21:52.053)
two jobs, whatever it might be, how do you tell people to kind of navigate those waters?

Deba Douglas (21:54.082)
Yes.

Deba Douglas (21:58.7)
Those same people are probably the same people that can watch a full Netflix series in one day. You got time. You will find time. I was a big believer that, and even now, I don’t even watch that much TV, or I give myself Sundays where I’m just hanging out with the kids and that’s when I’m really gonna watch TV. TV is a distraction. You gotta minimize the distractions. Maybe happy hours aren’t where you need to be. Maybe you just go in home and listen to a podcast while you take a walk around the neighborhood.

Mike Hambright (22:03.269)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (22:26.718)
If you really want to do this and you really want to see a different level of life and live life with abundance and no restrictions, you’re going to put in the work because you’re going to realize it’s going to be worth it. There’s not a successful real estate investor that I know that even today, even being successful for years and years, they’re still putting in the work because it’s natural to them. They have put in and even today, I mean, I do this full time. I still wake up at 430 in the morning. Why? I don’t really know some days, but I still do it. I just still do.

Mike Hambright (22:56.02)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (22:56.682)
it’s ingrained in you and part of that is the transformation of who you become.

Mike Hambright (23:02.259)
Yeah, you’re right. Like I think once you’re an entrepreneur, it’s not that you shouldn’t be satisfied, right? But you’re never like complacent. You’re just like, you’re always ready for that. Because when you, when you, when it comes down to it as an entrepreneur, your job is solving problems. And if you like to solve problems, well, the problems never seem to go away. So there’s always a new problem to solve and you kind of fall in love with the idea of being a problem solver, right?

Deba Douglas (23:10.52)
Yeah.

Deba Douglas (23:17.891)
Yes.

Deba Douglas (23:22.668)
Yes.

Deba Douglas (23:28.172)
Yes, yeah. I love her.

Mike Hambright (23:29.083)
It’s like if you’re a runner and you like not very many people like that could have run a marathon ever say, you know what? I ran a mile. I’m done. I’m not a runner. I don’t want to run a marathon, but people are always looking for the next challenge. And for us, that is solving bigger problems. Ultimately.

Deba Douglas (23:37.045)
right.

Deba Douglas (23:42.338)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And I just love how you’re able to create jobs and create stability for other families because of just starting the business. From my contractors to my admin team to other realtors on my team, I think it’s just a beautiful thing to see because of what I started and just kind of going blindly into it. It’s created a wealth of so many different people’s livelihood.

Mike Hambright (24:09.087)
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well Deba, it’s such a pleasure, honestly you made my day. So really cool to meet somebody again from the past that’s had some success and I didn’t even know what was going on. So I’m proud of you.

Deba Douglas (24:23.244)
Thank you so much. This has been such an honor. This has made my day like serious.

Mike Hambright (24:27.539)
Yeah, thank you. If folks want to connect with you, where do they go to learn more how to connect?

Deba Douglas (24:32.204)
Yes, so you can connect with me on Instagram at DebaFlipsTexas. That’s D-E-B-A, FlipsTexas. You can also connect me on my website DouglasDwellings.com. You can find me on Facebook at DebaDouglas. I’m always the one answering. I just love to connect and inspire people. So I would love to chat with anyone.

Mike Hambright (24:51.711)
Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Well, we’ll add those links in the show notes down below the show. So thanks so much for joining us today.

Deba Douglas (24:59.598)
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.

Mike Hambright (25:01.245)
Yeah, and everybody the lesson here is if you’re afraid to do it, do it anyway. Have a great day everybody. We’ll see you on the next show.

Deba Douglas (25:05.015)
Do it.