Shahin's Corner - The Podcast That Bites
Shahin's Corner - The Podcast That Bites
Shahin's Corner with Special Guest Jorge Contreras - From Childhood Crime to Real Estate Mogul: Dominating the Airbnb Market through Mentorship and Tax-Savvy Investment Strategies
Embark on a transformative journey with Jorge Contreras, a man who turned his life around from a childhood steeped in crime to becoming a real estate titan by age 30. Our latest episode isn't just another success story; it's an exploration of the depths of human tenacity and the heights of financial mastery within the Airbnb market. Jorge's narrative is a riveting tale of adversity, and his insights into mentorship and personal development are fuel for anyone ready to take the real estate world by storm.
Dive with us into the art and science of launching a profitable Airbnb business as we break down the various entry strategies available to investors. Discover how you can go from owning property to engaging in rental arbitrage, or even co-hosting, with Jorge's practical advice guiding you at every turn. Learn about the financial perks of real estate investments, including cost segregation and depreciation, and get insider knowledge on how to finesse negotiations with landlords to secure your place at the top of the short-term rental game.
But there's more to this episode than just strategy – it's about the bigger picture. We peel back the layers on how astute real estate investments can carve out significant tax savings, with Jorge illustrating this through the lens of professionals like doctors who've transitioned into creating tax-free income through savvy property plays. By the end of our discussion, you'll not only have witnessed the extraordinary evolution of Jorge's life and career but you'll also have the blueprint to navigate the complexities of this lucrative field and potentially replicate his success in your own journey toward financial independence.
Another episode of Shaheen's Corner. This is going to be a hot topic today, a lot of controversy as far as how to invest your money these days, with interest rates going up, and I think I have a really special guest here to give you some options on investing in the home market, the real estate market. But before we introduce them, why don't you watch this video? To create time financial and location free, jorge, congrats, welcome, my friend.
Speaker 2:Thank you, shaheen, appreciate the opportunity. Excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know there's so much to talk about this Airbnb space that I want to get into with you today, and I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to talk about how someone can get started with their Airbnb business. But before we start, I want to talk a little bit about your upbringing. I think it's really an interesting background that you have, and maybe the fire that created Jorge started way earlier than just a few years ago, so you want to talk a little bit about that, jorge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, man. I always like to talk about my background because people see me now. They've seen that I've created success, became a millionaire when I was first 30, financially free at 29, created pretty solid football on the real estate side. And now people wonder if I was, you know, handed all these assets over to my parents, if I was a trust fund baby or any of that. But none of that is true. It was the exact opposite. And just to kind of take people through the journey, through the timeline, when I was seven years young, I was selling drugs with my dad, and the interesting part of Shaheen is, you know, the fish doesn't know that it's in the water. So when I went to school I thought all kids sold drugs. I didn't know that I was the only one selling drugs.
Speaker 2:When I was seven, at 10, I was smuggling people into this country with my parents. When I was 12, my dad passed away from alcohol. At 13, my mom abandoned me and pretty much started living 100% of my own. When I was like 16. I actually independent, got my first job. Also, you know, I felt seventh grade, graduated high school, with four Fs, one D. We needed five credits and that one D got me those five credits. It's still a passing grade. Dropped out of college and, yeah, just went through a lot of hardships, a lot of challenges, a lot of obstacles, but what really helped me get on the other side is even all the personal development, all the therapy. I think it's not so much the things that we experienced but the meaning that we give all those experiences. So, despite all those challenges, I truly believe in my heart that I had the best parents that anybody could ever have and that's why, you know, I become who I am.
Speaker 1:You know it's really interesting because you know, we in the dental world as you know, I'm a dentist we talk a lot about mental health issues today and stress and dentistry Yep, and many of the dentists today were raised by their parents being dentists, were raised in the private schooling and they had their college paid for. They had their dental school paid for. They might have even had their dental practice funded by their parents and they come on and talk about how they're stressed and they're having a difficult time, or the other way around where, like you said about trust funds, these are the ones that are really incapable. They're just not raised with much skill and they come into the real world with really just the situation you know created opportunities for them.
Speaker 1:And so I, you know, kind of followed your background a little bit and I thought it's important to create that understanding with our audience today to say that yourself, may, you did it all by yourself and you did it, you know, really with circumstances that are not most ideal for any child being raised, I think we can agree that it was not the normal lifestyle for you as a child and as an interior adolescence. What was it that triggered? You know, this is what always intrigues me as far as the mental stability and the mental control that you have over your life. What, when was it that you realized that this is not what you want, this is not the direction that you want to go? Was it as did you have some epiphany at some point in your teenage life or in your adulthood after you dropped out of college? When was that moment for you? Or was it a gradual process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was definitely a gradual process and you know, I personally don't believe that I'm self-made right, because to me, self is like I did it completely on my own, with no help, no support. But it was the exact opposite. I believe that we've become a product of our environment, that we're always adapting to our environment to survive. We're going to be looking at animals right that have a certain type of fur or skin, the heat, the water and the cold. They developed, you know, those types of furs and skins in order to adapt to their environment. And, as human beings, every time we go into a newer environment, you know, aka surrounding ourselves with new types of people, we always start to adapt to that new environment and, you know, over the years, you know I've invested a lot of time and a lot of money.
Speaker 2:I've invested more money in myself, paying coaches and mentors, and some people have paid for a house, even in 2023, you know, yeah, so I'm definitely standing on the shoulders of my mentors and coaches, which we could talk a little bit about later. But one of the epiphany, one of the turning points where there was a paradigm shift is right after my dad passed away, my substitute teacher, mr Parcell, in seventh grade. He knew all the challenges that I was going through and I remember one day he came down to my eye level, took a knee and he said oh hey. He just looked into my eyes and he said you don't have to be a product of your environment.
Speaker 2:He says you don't have to repeat these patterns. He said you could decide to change your life, set a new standard for your younger siblings. He said you could change your life and you can change the world. And in that moment I had this realization that I didn't have to continue living the life based on the cards that I had been dealt Like. I learned that I could change the cards Like I. That's when I started to understand that I was the architect of my life. Up until that point, I felt that my life could only continue to be, continue to be, a reflection of what it always was Like. I didn't know that I could change my life until he mentioned those words and little by little, I just kept attracting role models, you know, in my teenage years, in my twenties, in my early twenties and then in my twenties. That's when I started going to seminars, like Tony Robbins and you know many others out there. But yes, it was definitely a gradual process, you know, over many years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty interesting because, you know, people go especially on social media these days.
Speaker 1:There's so much noise about messages of inspiration and motivation and exactly what you've talked about, and most people just goes in one ear and out the other, and the challenge is grabbing that one or two percent that really, really dives in deep and in making those changes.
Speaker 1:And one of the biggest things I always talk about is investing in yourself. And this is something, as Dennis, that we lack, as we we're so focused on investing in in clinical courses that we forget that it all starts within. And if you don't have the disciplines and the mindset to to be able to persevere through the challenges because I'm sure you've had many in your in your early life and and that's the part that if you're not prepared for, then it just all becomes interesting and when it gets difficult, you just walk away, you're quit. So I think the mental fortitude is really important here, and that strength to to push through the difficult times and persevere is is really the part that most people need to invest into, because we always take the easy road when it gets difficult, and those are the moments, those are the challenging times that we really have to stay the course and, and 98 percent of the people unfortunately don't, and that's where they fail, Obviously.
Speaker 1:I want to talk today a lot about Airbnb, and you got started with Airbnb, I think in excuse me about five, six years ago, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 2017,. I started in 2012, buying single family homes, doing a lot of house hacking, renting out bedrooms back. You know, when I was single not married, no kids I would like buy my first house. It was a four bedroom property and I figured, like how do I leverage the mortgage payment so that it doesn't come out of pocket? And the other three rooms that I rented to long term tenants were able to cover the entire mortgage payment, all the utilities, the Wi-Fi, all that. So I, and then I just kept saving that money and in two years later, I built my first new construction project in the back. So now I'm living mortgage payment free and I'm making a thousand dollars in my sleep from the unit in the back once it was all done.
Speaker 2:And that was another turning point, because growing up, my family always said Jorge, money doesn't grow on trees. And two years after I built that house in the back, I made all my money back within two years. Now I had no money in the deal, but I was still making $12,000 a year of passive income and I was like you know what money does grow on trees? You just have to learn how to have money seats. And then the other again, you know, a realization there is, like don't let other people's limiting beliefs or failures like be pushed on you just because it wasn't possible for them. So for sure, that was a, you know, another turning point for me.
Speaker 1:Well, I tell you, in 2005 and six, I bought all the real estate I could in Vegas, new Mexico and Arizona. In 2008 was a huge learning lesson for me of being undisciplined real estate investor and it was a painful experience for me, and so I didn't get involved in real estate again. The only investments I made was really just in my dental practices, and that was a learning experience in itself. But, you know, today the discipline has to be the 20% down if you get into any real estate investment. But, as you will explain and we want to learn obviously more about the Airbnb you don't really need any money down to be able to start with Airbnb.
Speaker 1:So, if somebody's listening in here and is looking for some opportunities, because, look, the debate is is do I get into real estate investing at this point with seven, eight percent interest rates, or do I go into something potentially more conservative at the starting gate? And there's a lot of talk right now that real estate investing is obviously, you know, in a bubble and a lot of people are shifting their investments into Airbnb's. So do you want to talk about that a little bit? And because I know you own some real estate property as well. So what's your thoughts on which direction to go today?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So you know, just to kind of catch everybody up, there's three ways that you can get into the Airbnb business. Right, of course, you could buy the real estate, and that's always going to be the best strategy, because that's where you create wealth. You want to own the land, you want to own, you know, the actual real estate, and then we can dive into this later. But then you know, when you combine owning real estate and short-term rentals, you get at, you have the ability to do cost segregation studies and bonus depreciation which can offset profits from your dental practice or any other active income. So we can dive into that later.
Speaker 2:But this is a must for all you know people in the dental practice or medical professionals or just anyone with a W-2 job or a business that wants to offset and lower their tax liability. Because you know most people, most professionals, right, they just pay and look away. They don't realize that there's a lot of strategies to legally pay zero or very little, even though you made a lot like hundreds of thousands or millions of profits, right, because of depreciation. So that's on the ownership side. And then the next strategy that is also available is arbitrage, and this is just like when you you know a lot of people, for example a lot of manufacturers who sell, for example, clothing. They'll often buy the clothing at a wholesale price and then they sell it at retail. Or you go to the bank and you deposit I don't know $10,000 debate pays you close to nothing for having it in the savings account, and then they will loan that money to somebody who walks in right after you for a car loan or towards a mortgage and they charge them 8%, 10%. Now the bank is making their arbitrage right. So the arbitrage is the difference from what you pay someone to what you make at a retail.
Speaker 2:And so, in essence, with Airbnb, we are becoming the bank. We pay, say, $3,000 in rent for a property in San Diego that's probably a studio and then if you're able to generate, say, $6,000 on Airbnb, then that difference is your profit. You don't own the real estate, but you are controlling the real estate Through a legal contract. You get permission from the owner and this is what I call strictly a cash flow play. So if the listeners are wanting to get out of the rat race, they want to get out of their nine to five, or they just want an additional stream of income where they can delegate, build a team, manage men and still get the outcome without doing the work. This is a way to just build cash flow. And then the final way this is the best way for someone who has no money and no credit. They can start with co-hosting, where they are actually managing other people's Airbnb's and they get a percentage of the revenue for managing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, each one of those is probably a whole discussion in itself as far as taking a deeper dive. But tell me a little bit about what your current strategy is, and are you kind of playing all three? Yeah, and what's your direction and maybe that will help kind of guide the audience on what is the right approach today. Well, let me ask you this first, before you do that so do you have to ask for permission in order to do Like? Let's say, for example, you lease a space and do you have to ask the complex? Does that have to be in the lease agreement? Tell me a little bit about the permission side, because it's not. I mean, if you're in a community of homes, for example, you know and it has HOA, or you're in a complex and they have their guidelines is it really that easy to be able to just get permission and people will say yes to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a numbers game, just like our real estate. You are some flipped homes or wholesale homes or even a real estate agent with door knocks, right, you're probably going to get one or two yeses out of 10 or maybe out of 20. Sometimes you get it on the first one, but it's definitely going to be a numbers game. I would say more than 50% of people are going to say no. Probably about 10 to 25% of people will be open to the concept. And then the other part is 100% of lease agreements say no sub-leasing. So, like Shaheen, if you were to go in a rental house to live in yourself and that's what you intend to do and that's what you communicate to the landlord, it's going to say, hey, no sub-leasing. Like you can't rent this property and rent it out to other people.
Speaker 2:However, if you are transparent about your business model, hey, I'm looking to rent this property, add it to my portfolio because I own a short-term rental, vacation rental, corporate housing business. But you show them references, your strong financials, your strong credit, you build rapport. You never know, maybe they own a dental practice, so they're in a medical field, and you're like, oh my God, I coach people on that. Right, you build rapport. And if they're open to the concept, to the strategy, then you can now get permission in writing. It's like hey, Shaheen has permission to use this property as a short-term rental, so now you can re-rent it to other people. So it's very important that you get permission, because if you don't, you're in violation of the lease agreement day one and now they can evict you. On the other hand, if you have permission in writing again, now you have the contract that protects you and backs you up to be able to run the business.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the third option that we talked about. So one is on the real estate, the other is the arbitrage. Tell me about the third option a little bit and how that works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with the co-hosting side, the way that works is imagine you have an Airbnb, but maybe you have five dental practices Like you listen to this podcast with the word Shaheen and you got multiple dental locations and you're basically managing overseeing five locations.
Speaker 2:So you're super busy, but you know that you need to own real estate and do short-term rentals to offset the profits from your five dental locations. So you're like you know what? I'm going to hire some help. So you bring in a co-host or it could even be your assistant. It could be the same person that manages or helps in your you know, run your offices could also be doing communications when they're not working with clients and they do all the communications from their phone and you pay them maybe a percentage or a flat fee for each Airbnb unit that they manage, and so they, as the co-host, are either getting a flat fee or a percentage of all the revenue that comes in in exchange for overseeing the operations, which are cleaning, maintenance and communication now giving you a hands-off experience and so you can still make that additional cash flow and get that depreciation to offset active income profits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that many doctors will be attracted to that, because time is always a big complaint for them, because they're obviously always so busy. I talk about the inefficiency of time in my presentation, my communication and content with doctors, but they will still have that issue. As far as you know, when do I find the time to invest in Airbnb? Let's talk about the second option. I know you say, for example, let's say, somebody's listening in and wants to start their own Airbnb business. What do they need to do, step by step?
Speaker 1:By the way, every time and I'm just sharing this with you because every time we talk to an investor or somebody that's helping others make money, they make it sound so easy and so simple and in practice, then they you know, they get into it. They get into the practice like holy shit, man, this is difficult. Like I got to go and you know, you know find the furniture. I got to communicate with the landlord, I got to get the permission, I got to find a cleaning person. Then I got it, you know. So how much time does it take to To make the three thousand dollars per property on a weekly basis? And then what are the steps to get started? I think this is the part that you know when people go oh I make three thousand dollars, sounds pretty easy, let me get started. And then they get into and like holy shit, I didn't know there's 15 steps, that I have to go through in order to make that three thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think this is a, you know, super important for all the listeners to in order to help them determine what role they should take when they want to get into real estate and short term rentals. I'll give you a perfect example. Last year in June, I was heading to Phoenix, to Scottsdale, to get on Ken McLeroy's podcast and on the airport. At the airport, when I arrived, somebody approached me. They're like hey, they're like you're the Airbnb guy, right? I'm like, yeah, that's me. He's like oh, you know what's up. You know my name's Ray. He said I watch your content. I've been following you for a couple years. He's like I got a question for you. He said I'm I'm looking into, you know, buying some Airbnb's, but I'm just wondering if I should manage them myself or if I should hire it out. And I said well, that depends, like on the value of your time. I was like what do you do for work, he said. He said I own a dental practice and I have 10 employees and you know it's a pretty big operation and we're doing multiple seven figures. I'm like well, in that case your time is so valuable, like on a per hour basis, that it would be worth for you to manage the Airbnb because your time is so valuable. In fact, like you might lose money At the beginning because you're going into these low-income activities that you could delegate from the very beginning, like you could pay somebody to to do your acquisition, to find up deals, analyze the deals Some made offers right, and that that's just. The real estate agent will do all that work for you. The real estate agent Can, if they understand short term rentals, which nowadays many do can figure out if you can get a permit, if the numbers make sense in that area. They can run the comms for Airbnb revenue on AR DNA, which is like our data software to see what the projected revenue is for the next 12 months, and then you could pay that same agent or someone else a launching fee. They will be in charge of putting together the furniture, assembling the furniture, doing the decor, creating the listing on Airbnb with your login, and then they could potentially manage the Airbnb for you, right, and so if your time is already like worth a lot, or you or you want to just continue to focus on your dental practice and build that business to multiple seven figures and beyond, it makes sense to just hire somebody to do the acquisition, the launching and the managing and just pay them a fee so you can still get the outcome without doing the work.
Speaker 2:Now, if someone else who maybe is not making you know, multiple six figures and above and maybe they're making you know, I don't know 20 to 40 dollars an hour, it might make more sense for them to launch it themselves because, again, the value their hours not that high like that guy I'm at the airport it's a lot lower.
Speaker 2:So it always depends on that how much is your hour worth? You know, like, again, if I start mowing my lawn or cooking my own food, or me and my wife do our own laundry, we will lose money. Right, that's why we hire a housekeeper that does cleaning, laundry, ironing, all that stuff, because it yeah, it buys us 40 hours plus a week of $20 an hour activities. So I can focus on those two, three, four thousand dollar an hour activities. You know so. But and I'll still guide you through the step by step, but I think that's really important for someone to look at it's like well, how much is my time worth? And you know what is my priority? Am I really trying to get this dental practice to multiple seven figures, or Are you someone that is just trying to? You know, be boots on the ground and be an active investor and do the work, and maybe this is All. This is going to be their primary source of income.
Speaker 1:You know, there's a large group of dentists and I don't know if I would use the word large but there is a group of dentists that are looking for side gigs. Right, they're looking for opportunities create income to what where they either become a part-time clinician or they completely walk away from dentistry altogether. I mean, dentistry is it's not an easy profession and Many times after five or ten years that the doctor realizes that. You know, maybe I signed up for something that I'm not that interested in, right, and so there's a there's a large group of dentists that that are looking for side gigs and you know, those situations.
Speaker 1:I think this could be a great opportunity for them to get involved in in, in in Airbnb and kind of start creating so for those dentists. Tell me what they need to do. What's step one in this process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know there's a couple options like here. Here's something else that we do right Now. Being in this business for over a decade and with some of my partners that have done billions of dollars in development and commercial real estate, we are buying apartment buildings. Right now, for example, we have one in escrow. It's a 10 unit apartment building here adjacent to Korea town in Los Angeles High end property and we're going to go in there. We're going to renovate the 10 units. Most of the rents are like $900 because they're way under market and once the units are renovated the rents are going to go to like 2200 for the two ones and 2700, I'm sorry, 2200 for the one ones and for the two ones they're going to be like 2700. We're also going to convert some of those one ones into two ones, add more parking and we're going to build two garage conversion accessory dwelling units, so convert garages into habitable living space. So now we'll have 12 units and you know this project is going to take aside from the loans that we are getting.
Speaker 2:We have to come out of pocket like just about $2 million between acquisition. You know, engineering, the designs, construction permits, the whole thing. It's a lot of work and we know that if we put our own money, we might only be able to do a few deals, and so the way as investors that we're able to leverage and do more projects at once is we partner with investors and we give them equity. So now they get a piece of the appreciation, the depreciation, the mortgage, pay down the taxes, the cash flow, and they're a partner equivalent to their cash contribution. Right, this is called a syndication. As a general partner, we're in charge. We basically do all the work 100%. As a limited partner. They are completely passive, but they get all the same benefits that we do. So this is also something to consider for busy professionals that just want to again get the outcome without wanting to do the work, and if somebody out there wants to do the work themselves, my first piece of advice is to get mentorship, because real estate is always going to be like your biggest purchase, whether it's a home to live in or an investment property, and if you do it wrong, you could be out tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, just look at 2008,. A lot of people that didn't have the right guidance, who over leveraged, who were too confident. They thought the market would never change. So I would find a mentor who already has the results that they want and go and learn from them so that way they can follow their blueprint and their proven roadmap. After that, I would say they got to decide like, hey, are they in a position to go and buy real estate, which is going to always be the most beneficial, but it's going to require the most amount of capital? But if they need the depreciation to offset profits from other active businesses, then that is the strategy that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Like for me, the strategy that makes sense today the most is buying real estate. Why? Because I want to make the profits from my Airbnb's and the profits from my education company, which are both active businesses. I want them to be tax free, and so, for 2021 and 2022, I paid $0 on my federal tax return because of the depreciation from the real estate that I own. I only pay state taxes because I live in a beautiful state of California, but if I lived in Nevada or Florida, I would be paying zero everywhere.
Speaker 1:That's why a lot of people are moving out of California, by the way. A lot of the serial entrepreneurs are really just heading out of California because they don't want to pay the state tax and they're going into Miami and, like you said, there's seven I believe seven states that don't have state tax Wyoming gosh, I got to remember this. Texas is one of them. Yeah, so Miami's a nice place to live, if you can put up with those clouds in Miami, don't mess around man. They're not like the clouds here in San.
Speaker 2:Diego in the Nalaya man I've been there during a couple of the storms.
Speaker 1:man, those things they don't mess around. But hey, you save on state tax. So then you deal with a little bit more humidity. So a lot more humidity, that's right, that gets pretty.
Speaker 1:but you get used to it, right. But with that said, look, yeah, I mean it's. It's an interesting position to be in because, you're right, there are a lot of doctors making a lot of money and looking for options to lower their taxes and depreciation, and investing in real estate is a great option. What about the doctor that just wants to just do it on their own, just wants to go out and say you know what I'm going to build, what Jorge has built over the last five, six years, and I want to get into this business myself. I want to roll up my sleeves, just like you did. What do you say to that doctor? What do they do?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in that case it sounds like it might be a little bit more of a cash flow strategy. They want to maybe exit the dentist business, maybe they want to sell it and then take those profits and just build a business that's going to prioritize cash flow. In that sense they would go the arbitrage side, where they're renting properties and then re-renting them and then once they do that for a couple of properties say three or four and now they're making six figures a year of net profit, then maybe they can reinvest that and start buying. But let's talk about the arbitrage step by step.
Speaker 2:The three most important things in this order is one figuring out if they can actually get a permit in that city. My recommendation is only launch an Airbnb in a city where you can get a permit. San Diego is a perfect example. Where you are, you can get a permit. The numbers are great, regulation is open to it and they're going to cap the amount of permits at some point once they reach their threshold. And I think that's a great idea, because all that demand is going to go to those who have permits, whereas if they didn't have a regulation and there was a million Airbnb's, then it could be saturated. So it's actually a great way to make more profits in a city where they have regulation. So that's the first thing. The second thing they need to do is call the building department in the city. They can go and go and put building department in the city of San Diego and then ask them hey, what is your short term rental regulation? Can I get?
Speaker 2:a permit for this address. I'm looking to ranch or I'm looking to buy or I'm looking to manage. How long does it take? How much does it cost? What's the process? They'll give you all the information over the phone.
Speaker 2:Second thing for the arbitrage is running the numbers on that property that you find on Zillow. So let's say you find a property four bedrooms, three baths, maybe a rent for $4,500 a month, fully renovated. It's got parking, ac, you could probably fit eight to 10 people and charge four to $700 a night. And you plug in the address on the rentalizer section of airdNAco and it's going to tell you what the projections are for the next 12 months. So it might say hey, shaheen, based on the performance of similar properties, this property is projected to make 100,000 over the next 12 months and if your rent is going to be 60,000 for the year, then you know that's an uproar. You can easily clear 30 to 40 grand.
Speaker 2:The third thing is getting permission and writing. That's what you're going to. Typically you're going to find the owner's phone number or the property management company's phone number on the Zillow listing and then that's when you call them and ask if they're open to doing vacation rentals, corporate housing, and if they say yes, then you go and take a look at the property. If you like it, then you move forward to them doing your standard credit check, income verification, make sure you have the income requirement, sign a lease and then you launch the listing. But those are the main three things. It's the permits with the city, making sure the numbers look good on airdNA and getting permission and writing.
Speaker 1:And then you talk about also forming an entity, and then I'll see with the arbitrage model, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do recommend, yeah, that they set up an LLC. One for asset protection. Two, it's going to give you more credibility when you present yourself as a business rather than as a person. And three, which is very important, it's going to keep your books clean when it comes to accounting and tax time. You want to ideally open up an LLC with its checking account and then a business credit card so you can start building business credit, but also so that all the income flows into that LLC, all the expenses flow out of that LLC, and when it comes tax time, you're not in on a phone call with your CPA saying, hey, you run everything through your personal checking account. You're coming to me, which is not good, but now you have to tell them which ones were personal versus business expenses, and that's going to take. It just gets messy, way too much work. So it would just keep your books clean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's. Those are great suggestions. I even you know doctors have multiple practices. You might want to consider having separate balance sheets and, you know, for evaluation of the practices as well, separating all the practices and maybe the entities as well. Because it's true, when you get into evaluating the business as a standalone business and it's, you know, commingled with many different projects, it's very difficult to extract a true number and it becomes difficult to value that business alone. So that's a great, great way to separate everything. I mean, I've learned that the hard way. Separate everything and keep everything clean and that way the numbers make a lot more sense when, when it matters as far as valuing your business. That's a great point. So you know, when do you go from you know the first property, as far as arbitrage, to the second and when you know you're in a position now that obviously you've expanded your business. Tell me of those three and if you're offering all three opportunities for as a service to doctors, tell me a little bit about your program and and how that works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. We started the coaching side of the Airbnb's back in 2018. We've had over 3000 students come through our program from all over the US even you know various countries. And yeah, I currently do all three strategies. So I have 18 Airbnb's. We do over six figures a month. I own eight of them, I subly seven and then I managed three for other people. So in my coaching program we talk about diversifying your portfolio and the benefits of having a balanced portfolio with all three. So, yes, we teach our strategies and we have, you know, live group coaching calls, like five coaching calls a week.
Speaker 2:Some of our programs come with one on one on top of the group coaching. We also have a three in person two day masterminds. The next one is in the middle of October. We have students flying from all over the country here in Southern California. We bring in guest speakers. We talk about mindset, the tax side, the legal side, the strategies, purchasing, subly seen, co-hosting, how to create partnerships. We talk about the visionary, the integrator, how to build a team around you, how to work on the business, not in the business, and everything that we teach on the Airbnb side. They're all 100% business principles that are applicable to any other business and any other industry. These aren't strategies that only specifically work for Airbnb, but they're more, you know, business principles and, yeah, we have a pretty amazing team. We got five coaches and a couple team members on the customer service side to ensure that, you know, they have a great experience and that we helped them create the results that they came here to get.
Speaker 1:So to me it sounds like you're fully embedded into the real estate business from all angles and this coaching program that you have, I believe that you know, for somebody just starting out, you really need to get a mentor and follow that community. And so, jorge, how can somebody contact you, get a hold of you and kind of get started with? You know what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they can message me on Instagram. Then they can see all the testimonials, the content that we post, that I post every single day. It's an ad and then a T-H-E and they my name, jorge Contreras. So Jorge Contreras and I'd love to share more information and see if we could, you know, work together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you and I are going to be talking a little bit more after this podcast, so I'm interested to learn more obviously and see how we can get my community involved as well, because I think you know a lot of doctors are looking for options, and this is a great option.
Speaker 1:Jorge man, listen, I appreciate it. This whole Airbnb is. It's pretty noisy but obviously can be very profitable. And, as you said in this podcast, if you can get involved with investing and on the arbitrage side as well, those two options are great opportunities for financial growth and financial freedom, which is where you are. How old are you now, jorge?
Speaker 2:Just turned 36.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know, you've been a millionaire now for six, seven years. That says a lot from a kid who was selling drugs at age seven. So congratulations to you. I know you give a lot of credit to your wife as well and the support that she's given you as well, so we have to make sure that you know that we include the significant other in this journey and in the success that you've been having, and I really appreciate you coming on our podcast today. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Can't wait to collaborate with you and your community.
Speaker 1:Awesome, buddy. Thanks so much. Thank you, yeah, so that was awesome. If you want to get involved with Airbnb, you want to learn a little bit more about real state, you want to have a mentor, you want to have a coach, I think Jorge Contreras would be a great opportunity for you, at least to get on a call with them and learn a little bit more about what he does. And that's at the Jorge Contreras on Instagram. You can just send him a DM. That was pretty cool. I'll come back later. A little bit later today with Dr with with Michael Burt coach. I'm interested to talk to him because there's a lot of things that we doctors can learn from him. Until a little bit later today, I'm Dr Shaheen Safarian.