How I Rebounded After Losing $1.7M: My Real Estate Journey | Fareed Abedini DSH #858

When I lost all that money, put me into a position and my back was against the wall.

And I was like, all right, like, what the hell do I do now?

I always knew I wanted to get into real estate.

I had no money to do so.

So it forced me to be creative.

And that's why I freaking love real estate.

You can be so creative when it comes to doing real estate transactions.

If I throw my money into a real estate property, it's something tangible that I can touch 10, 20, 50 years from now.

All right, guys, we're talking real estate today.

We got Fareed Abedini here today.

Thanks for coming out to Vegas, man.

Yeah, appreciate you having me, bro.

Yeah, we were just talking about it.

You just moved to Dallas.

Yeah, just moved to Dallas from DC.

So it's been a big jump.

And

I love moving around, bro.

I was born and raised in Maryland, moved, switched cities to DC, and then from DC now to Dallas.

Starting from scratch.

Nice.

Where are, I know you're, we're going to dive into Airbnb, but where are majority of your properties at?

In Texas.

Oh, in dallas yeah um all over texas san antonio houston dallas austin yeah a bunch of my properties are in texas that's why that was like the primary choice of me moving out is because i want to stay close to all my properties

um so that's why i moved to texas because i have a bunch of properties around that area got it and did you have a ton of money to start up with airbnb No, dude, I was just another first generation kid who came from a family that

doesn't even know what entrepreneurship is.

My mom was a school teacher.

My dad was a taxi driver.

And I was just forced to just figure it out myself.

And then I, you know, hit some rough patches.

I lost it all, went, you know, pretty much bankrupt like two or three times.

And then now I got into real estate.

And it's been fucking amazing ever since.

Wow.

So you went bankrupt twice?

Yeah.

Holy crap.

And you're young.

Yeah, I know.

I'm 24, dude.

I lost it all, bro.

I made close to like $1.7 million in the stock market in 2020 when it dipped.

Were you shorting options and stuff?

Yeah, I was shorting options, all that GameStop, all that crap, right?

Made a shit ton of money.

Obviously didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

So I lost it all.

And then I hit like rock bottom depression for a very long time after that.

And then I was like, ah, shit, like, what do I do?

Got into real estate, started wholesaling properties, pretty much just.

locking up deals that I didn't even own and I was just reselling them to investors and pocketing the difference.

So I did that for a while and And then I got, you know, I learned about business credit and business funding and how you can leverage the bank's money.

Like literally, it's the craziest shit ever.

If you're 18 years old, you live in the U.S., open up an LLC, you can get like $50,000 of business credit on a business credit card instantly.

Take that, replicate it, buy real estate properties, or buy Airbnb properties with it.

And now you're using other people's money, like the bank's money, to cash flow.

Started to learn about that, got into Airbnb, and it's been history ever since dude the business credit game is nuts it is you'd get more than that yeah i got 200 because i had two companies so you could get like 50 to 100 for each llc depending on the revenue and stuff yeah 200k at 0 interest yeah bro it's it's um you can legally take out 150 000 of 0

interest business funding Per social security.

Wow.

Right.

And so if you have an LLC, it all goes to your LLC.

So it doesn't affect affect your personal credit.

It doesn't report to your personal credit.

That's why I don't do anything in my personal name, bro.

There's just no freaking reason to.

So I get the LLCs that protect me against any sort of legal, financial calamity if anyone trips, falls, breaks a leg on any of my properties.

And then with that LLC, now

I can get business credit cards and get lines of credit.

Yeah.

And use that to invest into real estate.

So you got that 50K and you immediately put it into properties?

Yeah.

So the first $50,000 business credit card I got, I got like two properties from that in Maryland where I grew up.

And then it started to click because I didn't have any money.

I was like, how am I going to do this?

And I was like, I learned about business credit.

I invested.

I took that entire $50,000 business credit card.

I really didn't have a business plan at that point.

I was just like, fuck it.

I liquidated the entire credit card.

I sent an invoice to myself, liquidated it.

And then I just used all of that money to buy furniture, door, like ring cameras, chairs, desks, like everything for my Airbnb property.

Started to make money.

And then I was like, all right, let's be a little bit more smarter about this, created a game plan.

And now I'm just, you know, any, any properties I ever get, now I'm just getting loans.

Never use any of my own money for it.

Loans like credit cards or just

credit cards, lines of credit, hard money loans, you know, conventional mortgages.

Like, I really don't use any of my own cash for anything.

Damn.

Like, nothing.

So, your risk is pretty low.

Yeah, it's pretty low.

I do have a business plan for every single endeavor I get myself into.

I have a financial advisor and I have a very, very good legal team.

And, like, once you create a good structure and a good team for yourself, bro, you're pretty much like bulletproof after that.

But, yeah, all my own cash is just sitting in a

savings account.

I invest into stocks, like long, you know, long-term blue chips,

CDs, stuff like that.

And then, yeah, I just use other people's money to invest and to create more cash flow.

Smart.

So you really can't go bankrupt then.

Yeah.

Now, I mean, you could always go bankrupt, but now with the business plan and the blueprint that I've set up for myself and for all my students, yeah, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty bulletproof.

Yeah.

Trump's gone bankrupt six times.

Yeah.

Which is crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

People consider him like a really good businessman.

Yeah, and Trump's got like seven to eight thousand LLCs that he just

gets business funding for over and over again.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, Trump's got like a shit ton of LLCs, bro.

And he literally, for each and every single LLC, he does the same method is he replicates what I do and he takes business loans out for each company.

He owns billions of dollars to the banks.

Wow.

He's like a multi-billionaire who's in debt.

with multi-billions, right?

But I mean, that's like if Trump's doing it and, you know, all these other bigger name real estate guys are doing it, why would I not do it?

Why would you not do it?

right leveraging debt can be very very powerful obviously you don't want to put yourself into bad debt but if you know what you're doing with your money and it's creating cash flow why not yeah

i wonder if grant cardone does this too yeah of course grant cardone has yeah he's he's uh grant card does something else he's an incredible marketer as well um and yeah he sells a lot of stuff online but yeah he's freaking owns a shit ton of buildings and yeah he's he's got a lot of debt too this is an interesting take because i'm interviewing dave ramsey and he's like the total opposite of what you're saying so really yeah he's anti-debt really do you know dave ramsey i've heard of him yeah yeah he's like totally against debt but i think uh he just thinks it's too risky but i like the way you're describing it because you're kind of mitigating the risk yeah i mean my thing is like

if you don't take out debt you can only go so far with your own cash right let's just say i have you know a hundred thousand dollars sending into bank account cash right how many properties can i get with a hundred thousand dollars of my own money?

Well, you know, maybe like five or six single-family houses, a couple multi-families.

Like the down payments on these properties are going to run out eventually.

You're going to run out of cash.

So what do you do when you run out of cash?

Are you just going to wait for your properties to ROI to then go reinvest?

Like, no, you're just going to take out more loans.

The more you're able to leverage other people's money,

the faster you can scale and the faster you can build.

Right.

So I've taken that model and I've literally only ever used other people's money.

And I use 100% of the bank's money, lenders, private lenders, credit cards.

I don't use any of my own cash to invest into anything.

It's just risky.

I personally wouldn't.

Yeah, it's definitely risky, especially if real estate crashes.

Yeah.

Would you be totally screwed if that happened?

If, I mean, dude, as long as, like, and everyone always asks me this, like, Reed, what if we go into a Great Depression?

What if the real estate market crashes?

As long as the banks are still lending out money, I'm still going to be taking them, taking the loans and investing more.

Wow.

Right.

I don't care what the market's at.

If there's blood in the streets, there's fear in the streets, that's the exact time to be investing.

One, two, as long as the banks are still lending out money, I don't give a fuck.

I'm just going to, like, why would I not use someone else's money to invest?

Yeah.

Right.

And if the real estate market crashes, that's phenomenal.

I'm just going to get the deals at a better rate, better interest rate, better mortgage, and it's going to be a cheaper purchase price than normally at a market all-time highs that we're in right now.

People have been saying it's going to crash the past, what, three years?

Yeah, there's warmongers and you know, people on social media always like, you know, talking about the next crash and the next Great Depression and this, that, and they've all been fucking talking for the last, you know, six, seven years and it hasn't happened yet.

Yeah.

Will the real estate market hit a dip soon?

Will we go into another recession?

Possibly, yeah.

I mean, that's just how the general cycle of our market, of our economic market works.

But you just got to be ready for it.

Yeah, it probably happens four or five times in our lifetime.

We just got to prepare.

Right.

It's already happened twice, I think, in our lifetime so far.

Yeah, the last dip was in 2020.

And, you know, 2020 and 08.

Yeah, if you position yourself correctly, you can make a shit ton of money from those types of dips.

I mean, I made $1.7 million trading stocks in 2020 when we went into the greatest recession in a while.

I mean, granted, I lost it all, but still, like, you know, you position yourself correctly, you can make a shit ton of money.

And you probably barely put up anything to make that 1.7.

Yeah, I put up like $25,000.

I have screenshots.

I literally, oh, I have screenshots of me starting with $25,000 in my bank account and scaling my stock portfolio all the way up to $1.7 million.

Damn, did you cash out any of it?

No.

You risked it all?

I was high off money, bro.

I was a kid.

I was 20 years old.

I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

And I was like, yeah, this is chill.

I was on the top of the world.

I was, you know, high off life.

I was about to drop out of college.

Yeah.

And, you know,

I'm glad for it because that adversity that I got hit by when I lost all that money put me into a position and my back was against the wall.

And I was like, all right, like, what the hell do I do now?

Right.

And I always knew I wanted to get into real estate.

And now I had no money to do so.

So it forced me to be creative.

And that's why I freaking love real estate is because you can be so creative when it comes to doing real estate transactions like one real estate property could give you five or six exit strategies you could fix and flip a property you could burr a property which is buying and renovating it

you can um buy and hold a property you can buy a property airbnb it out you could buy a property completely destroy it and then build a building on it there's so many different strategies you can take that's what got me into this space is because i understood like okay well it's not just like stocks.

So, you know, let me throw my money into a stock, right?

And if it goes up, great.

If it goes down, I'm fucked.

No, like, if I throw my money into a real estate property, it's something tangible that I can touch 10, 20, 50 years from now.

The address is never going anywhere.

The land's worth, you know, some value.

And I have multiple exit strategies on what to do with that property.

Absolutely.

So, how many properties you got now?

I've got 19 real estate properties.

The latest acquisition I had was a $560,000 two-bedroom condo that I purchased in Washington, D.C.

Nice.

I was going to actually live in D.C.

And then before I decided to move to Dallas, I was going to stay there.

I bought the condo for myself under my personal name.

I got a mortgage.

I put down like $120,000.

And yeah, then I decided to move to Dallas and I was like, fuck it, I don't want to live in D.C.

anymore.

So I transferred the asset to my LLC.

And now I've rented it on Airbnb.

It's pretty much like 90% booked out.

Wow.

90%'s insane.

That's almost every day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The occupancy is like there's there's ways to get your occupancy high as a short-term rental.

Many people think Airbnb is dead, bro, but they really just don't know how to run a business.

That's the thing is like when you underwrite and you calculate the numbers on your deals before you invest into your deals, then that's how you can mitigate and reduce your risk.

And really just start to figure out like what like what is a good deal versus a bad deal.

As long as you're running your numbers correctly, bro, there's really like

you know, this, yeah, I mean, Airbnb is so profitable.

I'd say most people are not even running numbers when they get an Airbnb, right?

Yeah, they're not, they just buy it and then try to list it.

Yeah, in 2020, um, I would literally, and I was one of these people, I would literally just buy a property or sign a lease on an Airbnb and just throw it up on Airbnb and it would get like fully booked out.

Wow, and nowadays, you can't just close your eyes and get into real estate.

It's obviously gotten a little bit more difficult

to find and source out a good good deal.

So just got to be aware of the market trends and whatnot.

Yeah.

Was there any mentors or books that really guided you through this?

Yeah.

I used to read a lot of fucking books, bro.

And I'll be honest, like, now I don't.

Now I don't read any books.

I don't watch videos.

I don't do any of that crap because like I'm a visual person.

I have to learn visually.

Me, my learning process is being here with my mentor, with someone in the actual mud and going through trial and error and going through experience.

Like, I can't just open up a textbook and sit in a classroom and learn how to run a business.

That's why I've never been really, you know, good at school or anything like that.

Yeah, I feel that.

No, I'm the same way, to be honest.

Yeah.

That's why I don't film these over Zoom.

It's always in person.

Yeah, fuck Zoom.

Fuck online.

Fuck everything.

Yeah.

I sucked at school, bro.

And being Asian, that was not a good mix.

You know how it is, right?

Yeah, I did not fit in with those Asian nerds, man.

God damn.

School was so boring.

Yeah.

Now I love learning, but it's just shit I care about.

Yeah, it's like, bro, you're not, you know, it's like when you,

you know, you could be in a classroom and learn how to drive a car, right?

And like watch all these videos and take all these tests, but you're not going to learn how to truly operate a vehicle unless you're in the driver's seat with your foot on the gas.

Facts.

Right.

And it's the same thing in business.

It's like you could have.

as much gas in the tank you could have a mentor sitting beside you in the passenger seat with google maps open.

But if you're not in the vehicle in the driver's seat, putting your foot on the gas, brother, you're not going anywhere.

You're fucked.

Right?

So, you at the end of the day, you have to be the person to be able to take action and put yourself into the mud and really like roll up your sleeves and get down to it.

Yeah, there's a lot of real estate Airbnb gurus on social media.

Does that make it harder for you?

No, it actually makes it easier.

I'm like, and it's really unfortunate, but 60 to 70 percent of my students get scammed before they actually find people like me who help them.

Yeah.

You know, there's some big name guys out there who've done some shady stuff, which I won't name because I'm not that type of person to talk bad about everyone.

But yeah, like a lot of my students have been scammed by coaches before who promise mentorship.

And then when they buy the program, they just get, you know, a condensed PDF version of a freaking course.

Right.

And like, you know,

I'm not talking bad about anyone who sells courses.

Some people love to learn from courses.

Some people are book readers.

They love to learn.

I prefer to, you know, I'm a visual, like in-person.

I want to learn from someone who's done it before.

And that's why I offer mentorship.

That's how I've learned and that's how I've gotten mentored.

Yeah, so that you're more hands-on with your students?

I'm super hands-on.

I actually partner up with my students.

Really?

Yeah, so I teach my students how to go find deals.

Then when they acquire and find those properties, they bring them to me and then I help them and I partner up with them, and I manage the properties with them.

Oh, wow.

So, it's like a win-win, right?

Um, it's not like I'm selling them a course where I'm saying, Hey, here's all the education.

Good luck, have fun, fuck off.

No, it's like, hey, I'm going to teach you how to catch the fish, brother.

You come back, we eat together.

I like that model.

Yeah, it's a win-win.

Yeah, because a course is, I've heard the chargeback rates on courses are nuts, nuts, bro.

And it's on both sides, right?

Because people are lazy, so they're charging back because they never read it.

And then it's also the course sucks.

Well, yeah, I mean, the, you know, the person who's at fault is really the consumer because most people, whether you think it or not, most people are visual learners.

But a lot of people think that they can just buy a course and it's gonna make them rich overnight.

So, you know, they're they're at fault for just being naive and stupid.

Like, if you're online, bro, you're buying a course online from someone else, you're just honestly, you're stupid, bro, because you could literally just go open up a tab on YouTube and Google, and they're both free.

So, why would you buy a course from someone when you you can go and consume content for free?

The real value of a course comes when you get access to the guy himself who created the course.

If you're not getting access to a mentor or a coach or anyone, why the hell would you, bro?

I can pull up hella manuals on how to drive a car online for free, bro.

You don't need to go to an in-person instructor to have them teach you how to do it.

Yep.

Right?

So, YouTube University, baby.

YouTube University.

I learned way more on YouTube than in college.

Yeah.

Like, not even close.

Yeah.

College was a waste.

Did you graduate?

I did graduate, bro, and I fucking regret that so much.

I really don't know what to say because both my parents are Middle Eastern and I had to graduate for them.

And at the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to do.

So I was like, all right, fuck it.

I'll get this degree to make my mom happy.

That is the biggest regret I've ever had in my entire life.

Wow.

Yeah.

I don't regret many things, but the fact that I went through life wanting to make my parents happy because I cared cared about what they thought was the biggest setback I had.

And if I didn't give a fuck about what they thought, like I don't give a fuck about what anyone else thinks, I'd be, you know, worth, you know, a very, very,

bro.

It's four years of my life that I wasted.

And like, bro, the biggest breakthrough I had in my career as being an entrepreneur was when I stopped giving a shit about what other people thought, but also what my parents thought.

Right?

And that's what a lot of people are like, no, I care about my parents.

I care what they think.

And I love my parents, don't get me wrong, but I just do not take business and career advice from my parents because they don't have the business or career that I want to have myself.

Facts.

And that's not, you know, selfish.

I'm just being a realist, right?

So,

and they understand that now.

Back then, there was a lot of backlash when I was, you know, wanting to drop out and do my own thing because both my brothers are dentists and doctors.

So the bar for me was set super high.

It's like, hey, you're either going to be be a doctor, lawyer, engineer.

And I was like, fuck all that, dude.

Like, I respect you, mom and dad, but I really don't give a shit about what you say or what you think.

I'm going to block all the noise out.

And the biggest breakthrough I had was when I actually moved out of my hometown and I just started my own life.

So you just moved out just by yourself?

I just moved out.

One day, you know,

I turned 21.

And I was like, fuck it, I'm just move out, get my own apartment.

Because it's super difficult to work on a business when you're at home and you're living at your parents house right and like imagine like you're locked in like dialed in just doing work you got your headphones in you're getting shit done you're being productive and then your mom walks in like yo like let's go out to eat or wash the dishes or dinner is ready or this and that like i for me bro when i'm building a business i don't want any distractions at all right like

If I want to go hang out with my family, I will go out and visit them.

If I want to go hang out with friends, I will go out out and have lunch and dinner with my friends.

But I need to have my own sacred space to come back to to lock the fuck in.

That's why moving out of your hometown and having your own place to live is crucial.

And that's what everyone needs to do as an entrepreneur.

It was one of the biggest steps for me too, dude.

Because I love my mom, but similar, we would fight all the time.

And she would try to give business advice.

She'd try to give like money advice, but that's not her strength.

She's a nine-to-five corporate job, which is fine, but just a different lifestyle.

Yeah.

And my thing is, like, why would you take business advice from someone who's never created a business themselves?

Right?

And you hear that all the time, but it's true.

Like, really think about it.

Motherfuckers are in school putting themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for four years straight, coming out of school with no guaranteed job, no guaranteed income.

Right.

And they're afraid of putting themselves into four or five thousand dollars of debt for a mentorship program.

But in reality, that mentorship program is going to teach them how to create income and actually come out with the business.

So it's like people got it so backwards.

It's like everyone, like people are ready to take out loans to go to schools like Harvard and Yale and just because of the name.

It's all programming.

I mean, I remember when I was in high school, you were a loser if you didn't go to college.

Yeah.

So I was pretty much forced socially to go to college all of a sudden be looked down on.

But now looking back at it, who cares?

You know what I mean?

That's the thing, bro.

It's like you're programmed to think that you need to have a degree in order to become successful, but peel the onion back and like really start to understand that these colleges and universities are in business to make money.

They don't give a shit what degree they sell you as long as you take it alone and buy it.

That's all they care about.

It's a piece of paper.

It's the highest margin of all time.

Yeah, it's the best business model ever.

If I could go out in the future and create an online school, I would.

Well,

actually, scratch that.

I do have an online school.

And the difference is we actually do help people and we guarantee things like business funding, helping them get their properties, right?

Acquiring deals, partnership, right?

So that's the difference between like modern day online school and what you're going to university for.

Yeah.

No, it has to shift, man.

Colleges, for business, we're talking about, obviously, but it's just not the same as mentorship.

Yeah, like if you're a doctor and or if you want to become a doctor and you need to go to dental school or med school in order to do so, then I respect you, bro.

Like if you're okay with dropping a quarter mil, half a million a degree to get your MD or your PhD or whatever, more power to you.

But respectfully, if you're not a business owner, I don't give a shit what you say.

You're not going to sit on a Batuna projector and lecture me on how to run a business at university, bro.

I'm not listening to you.

Yeah.

Do a lot of people hit you up that have terrible credit, but they want to buy a house.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of people, I get DMs every single day with people with, you know, horrifying credit collections, bankruptcies, negative derogatories, all that crap.

And what people don't understand is we can help those types of individuals increase and improve their credit.

And how we do this is we have a credit repair company within our division that will come in, remove those collections, remove those late payments, even remove bankruptcies.

We can even get student loans removed.

Damn.

Yeah, I got my student loans all removed, wiped out.

Yeah.

Even if it's like 50K?

Yeah, I got had like $35,000 of student loans just removed.

Holy crap.

Legally, these corporations and universities are not allowed to report student loans to your credit.

Wow.

They're just not allowed to, but they do it anyways.

And so you can get them removed from FACRA laws, just Fair Credit Reporting Act laws.

And many people don't know this, but yeah, like we can help individuals not only repair their credit, but build it.

to a certain degree where we can go out and even get them an LLC.

And bro, once you have an LLC with good personal credit, you're dangerous.

You can go to the banks and get $50,000, $75,000, $100,000

on a business credit card.

What's considered good credit, like $700,000?

Bare minimum to get a $50,000 business credit card with us would be a 680 credit score,

at least four open positive personal credit card accounts.

Right.

And then no late payments and at least two or three years of credit history.

If you hit all four of those boxes, we will come in, acquire you an LLC, and then we can get you a $50,000 business credit card.

Damn.

We have underwriters that we're heavily connected with that we literally take out to dinner, buy them gifts, you know, AirPods, iPhones, and whatever.

And we have established very, very good relationships with these banking underwriters who go out and manually submit credit card applications for us.

That's huge.

And the reason why we're able to get so much in funding is because there's a difference in automatic underwriting online when you're just going on chase.com and applying for a credit card versus manual underwriting through a bank manager.

And when you get your application manually underwritten, that's when you can get $50,000, $100,000 on a business credit card.

Yeah, because if you apply online, you're getting $3 to $5K per card.

I know that from experience.

Yeah, I've done it myself.

Yeah, you're not going to get, I mean, I've had clients who have had 800 credit scores and they're like, oh, well, you know, fuck you.

I'm not going to go through your funding program.

I have an 800 credit score and I'm, you know, I've got a perfect credit report.

I'm just going to apply for a credit card myself.

And I'm like, okay, go ahead.

Let me know how it goes.

They come back a month later.

They're like, yeah, bro, I only got $8,000.

Like, the banks don't lend out money unless you don't have relationships with them.

Right.

Yeah.

Eight versus 50K.

I mean, no-brainer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's something we guarantee in our program.

We guarantee each and every single student $50,000 on a business credit card.

And that's major when you're starting out.

Like 50K?

You need that.

You could double that if you make the right play.

Yeah, 100%.

I love that, dude.

What do you got going on next?

I'm getting into development.

I'm getting into new construction, multifamilies.

My main focus right now is helping my students start up with Airbnb Arbitrage.

I partner up with them on their deals to help them get started.

And then the cash that I make myself from those deals, I reinvest into actually buying properties on my own, right?

Because that's my goal: equity ownership.

I'm young, so that's that's what I want, right?

Would I suggest someone who's just starting out in real estate to start out and you know, buy properties?

No, definitely not.

Right, get started with the arbitrage, learn how to operate an Airbnb business, learn the sublease model, and then get into acquiring deals.

Love it.

Where can people find you and potentially get a mentorship from you?

Yeah, Instagram,

YouTube, TikTok, Reed, Abadini.

I respond to all my DMs myself.

So if you're shooting me a DM, you're going to be talking to me.

Awesome.

Yeah.

If you're interested in Airbnb, guys, hit this man up.

We'll link this up below.

Thanks for coming on, dude.

Let's go.

Peace.