“I had no plan, but I would never give up my self-respect,” he said of leaving the job where a boss told him to change his name
Credit: Ivan Apfel/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Tarek El Moussa revealed in a Friday, Aug. 28 Instagram video that a former boss once suggested he change his name to Derek
- “The office manager came up to me and actually said, ‘Hey Tarek, we’re going to call you Derek. It sounds more professional,’ ” the HGTV star said
- El Moussa, who is half Middle Eastern, previously shared that the Arabic name translates roughly as “the one who knocks”
Tarek El Moussa is opening up about “toxic” bosses he’s had while working in real estate.
On Friday, Aug. 28, the Flip Off star, 45, posted an Instagram video detailing the start of his career, immediately revealing that his boss told him to change his name.
“Seventeen years ago, my boss told me to change my name from Tarek to Derek to sound more professional,” he began. “It was 2008; I just lost everything in the recession, and I needed a job. So I finally got a job at a commercial real estate company.”
“The very first day, the office manager came up to me and actually said, ‘Hey Tarek, we’re going to call you Derek. It sounds more professional,’ ” he recalled.
Eventually, El Moussa decided the “toxic” environment wasn’t what he wanted, and he left the company.
“I was broke. I had no plan, but I would never give up my self-respect,” he said. “The entire situation taught me no matter how desperate you are, if your environment is slowing you down, you’ve got to change it.”
Credit: Tarek El Moussa/Instagram
He then continued by sharing how five years later he became a reality TV star.
He also wrote in his Instagram caption that he “flipped over 1,000 homes” and “built multiple real estate businesses.” El Moussa also shared that he is currently working on NESTLA, which is “a system that gives homeowners smarter, more transparent ways to sell their homes, and keep more of their equity without overpaying fees.”
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El Moussa has previously spoken about his name and familial roots. In his 2024 memoir, Flip Your Life, he explained that his name rhymes with “car wreck” and “translates roughly as ‘the one who knocks,’ ” he wrote, per Parade.
“I tend to be the one who knocks, over and over again,” he continued.
He explained in a 2018 interview with Country Living that his name is of Middle Eastern origin. “My dad was raised Catholic in the Middle East in Lebanon and then Egypt. My mom’s from Belgium and my dad moved to Europe when he was in his late teens,” he said.
His parents lived in Beirut until 1978, and then, amid the Lebanese Civil War, they immigrated to the U.S., and he was born in California, per Parade.
Credit: Paul Archuleta/Getty
While El Moussa has kept details about his parents and his heritage mostly private, his wife Heather briefly spoke about their experience in a July Instagram Q&A.
“Tarek’s family came from another country and started their lives here,” she said, adding, “and built everything fresh, from scratch.”
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