The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex - How Fareed Abedini Lost 17m At 20 Then Rebuilt Through Airbnb

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

What would you do if you earned $1.7 million before turning 21… and then lost every dollar? Most people would crumble. But today’s guest — Fareed Abedini — used that rock bottom moment as the catalyst for one of the greatest comebacks you’ll ever hear. In this episode of The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex, Fareed opens up about the brutal reality of losing millions through day trading, the shame of watching it all disappear, and the exact moment he realized he had to rebuild from nothing. What followed was a transformation fueled by mentorship, resilience, and a new vehicle for wealth: Airbnb. From couch-surfing with his mentor… To managing properties he didn’t own… To scaling into arbitrage… To building a profitable real estate operation from zero… Fareed breaks down the strategies, mindset shifts, and painful lessons that turned him into the entrepreneur he is today. How Fareed turned $25K into $1.7M in six months The moment everything collapsed — and how he handled it The mentor who changed his life and forced him to level up How he started Airbnb with no money, no credit, and no properties The 20–25% management strategy anyone can begin with Why arbitrage became his turning point The numbers behind his first Airbnb ($6,500 month, $3,000 mortgage) How to rebuild your identity after financial failure Why Airbnb is still one of the most scalable models for new entrepreneurs If you’ve ever felt stuck, lost, broke, or unsure of your next move — this episode will remind you that you’re one decision away from a completely different life. Make sure to add me on all SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS: Instagram: https://jo.my/paulalex2024 Facebook: https://jo.my/fbpaulalex2024 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGhDAD1JyGGzSQUPD9lc9HQ LinkedIn: https://jo.my/inpaulalex2024 Looking for a secondary source of income or want to become an entrepreneur? Check out one of my companies below to see how we can help you: 💳 www.CashSwipe.com 📘 FREE Copy of my book: “Blue to Digital Gold – The New American Dream”www.officialPaulAlex.com 🚀 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:Your Network is your NETWORTH! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I walked in one day into my mother's bedroom. I was like, mom, I'm dropping out of college. Wow. She's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, mom, I'm like a multimillionaire. I started off with literally all the money I had in my bank count, $25,000. In less than six months, I managed to grow my portfolio from $25,000 to $1.7 million. And then late September, it all just crashed out.

I lost it all. That is all I needed to fuel me into a different direction of entrepreneurship. And that's when I found real estate. I did everything. Fix and flip, Section 8, wholesaling, Airbnb development. It's the best business to be in. There is no other business that will give you the tax benefits, give you the cash flow, give you the equity of the appreciation,

and allow you to leverage that asset to collateralize and get more loans. Welcome back to Love Allop Podcast. This is Paul Alex. Guys, we have another phenomenal interview in store for you guys. Now, let me go ahead and paint the vision for you. Imagine it is 2020 in the middle of COVID. You are doing trading. How many of you guys do trading?

All of a sudden, you're up millions and then you lose it all. Oh, my God. What do you do? Right? Well, for the guest for today, that's exactly what happened to him, but he was able to bounce back and do it again. That's right, become a multimillionaire. But not through trading, but instead real estate and Airbnb. So we are going to interview this guest.

He's going to tell you exactly how he was able to go from 8 to. to Z and how you can do something very similar as well. Brother, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, bro. Yeah. So for the people that I don't know you, who are you? My name is Farid. I go by Reed.

As Paul said, I used to do a lot of trading back in 2020. Staroff as a day trader. This kind of stemmed from me just being heavily involved and interested in finance because I I worked at an investment bank, and for a very long time, I was so intrigued on, like, how money works. I remember, like, literally just going on Google when I was 19, 20 years old and literally typing into Google, like, how to make money online. Yeah.

And that's where I started. And then there's a lot of opportunities in the market. You know, COVID hit pharmaceutical companies were at all-time highs. Everything was, the market was, like, fluctuating a lot. So I, you know, did what any other capitalists would do. I forgot a way to take advantage of that. got heavy into day trading, options trading, high levers trading. And yeah, I started off with literally all the money I had in my bank account at the time was just shy of $25,000. Half of that

was split into my individual brokerage account and then I had the other half in the Roth IRA that I wasn't trying to touch. But yeah, after that, I went all in in less than six months. You know, I was doing like $100,000 days. In less than six months, I managed to grow my portfolio from $25,000 just trading pharmaceutical companies and oil contracts and tech companies to $1.7 million. And this was all on like TD Ameritrade. This was all logged, screenshot it, recorded. I started a day trading community. I had people like following my trades.

Every single morning, market opened at 930, like the bell would go off. just rip scalp trades on the on the market sometimes I would trade throughout the days some days I would just rip a few trades in the first like a.m. sessions within the first 15 30 minutes of the market and then it was it was crazy I felt like I was at an all-time high in life until it all shortly came crashing down but you know yeah so read at that time you were 20 years old Yeah. All right. So you're 20 years old.

You became a multimillionaire. You're on top of the world. Yeah. Now, let's go ahead and talk about lifestyle. Yeah. What do your parents think about this? What does your family think about this? Did you have a girl at the time?

I did not. No, no, no, no. But I was talking to a girl. I mean, my family, the biggest thing, was I my family is Middle Eastern so my parents are first generation that immigrated to this country

a very very you know a while ago like around 36 years ago so I tried to keep all the entrepreneur stuff away from them because in their eyes there's only two ways to make money

three ways they said I could have became a dentist doctor or a lawyer because both my older brothers are Dennis so I was, I knew they would not be supportive of me become an entrepreneur. And I realized at a young age, you know, the educational system, the academic system, it's all programmed and it's all a scam and it's made to, you know, make you think as a worker. So I always tried to figure out ways to not go to dental school. So when I was graduating, I was in my undergrad at University of Maryland.

I was a junior at the time I was 20 years old. I was a junior in college. I had, I was, I told myself, I have two years to figure this out because I am not going to become a dentist. I'm not. So why were you so against being a dentist, man? I mean, for a lot of people listening, they're like, dude, that's a great profession. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I just don't like working in the hospital, number one, or I don't like working in a dental practice. There's a lot of years of schooling, you know, and I just hated that. I always, I can't, it's not, it might be because I ADHD, but like I can't sit at a desk for too long and learn from someone who's not credible enough to teach me anything that he has done in his life.

I love that. I love that. I hate being lied to. Yeah. There's no way I'm going to listen and sit at desk to a professor who's teaching me about business who hasn't created a singlepreneur himself. Yeah. There's no way I'm going to learn about science from a science teacher who's not a scientist

or my English teacher is teaching me about English who hasn't written any bestsellers himself. Yeah. Like just being lied to constantly over and over and over again. At some point I was so fed up where I don't want to do it. Yeah. You know, and apart from like the time freedom, the location freedom, the financial freedom, like these are all things that a normal individual who's work in a job would never get. Even my brothers make tons of money.

Don't get me wrong. But, you know, they're limited to on travel. They're limited to on vacation. They're very limited on what they can and cannot do. so I just never I just hated being put in a box so I always had to keep it low-key like super super under the radar

to answer your question with my family and they had no idea I was trading like literally my life savings away at the time until I walked in one day into my mother's bedroom and I was like mom I'm I'm dropping out of college

wow she's like what are you talking about I'm like mom I'm like like a multi-millionaire. She was like, what? And I showed her my bank account balance at the time, my TD Ameritrade, $1.7 million, set it all there. It was a screenshot.

I showed it to her. And she was like, is this real? And I was like, yeah, it's real. Like, why would it not be real? Right. And she's like, yeah, this doesn't make any sense. She didn't understand it. And then it was crazy because every single day onwards,

she was asking me about like, like what I was doing, how the trading was going. And she, like, would not stop harassing me about it over and over again every single day from that day onwards. Well, you piqued her interest. I piqued her interest. Yeah. Yeah.

And so... What'd your brother say? My brothers were trading with me. Oh, really? So they knew all along. They knew all along. That's hilarious. And I was like, I was like, can you please, like, try to convince mom to let me drop out?

And they're like, no, I'd never do that. I was like, okay. Well. Well, they're good brothers, man. I mean, you know, they're big on family. They don't want to hurt your mom. And, you know, I'm a big guy with my mom, dude. You know, the reason why I even got into entrepreneurship was to retire my mom.

You know, that was my first why, right? Nice. So I completely understand that, man. So you go ahead and you show your mom this. And then how long until you start going big? Yeah. So at the time I was, I didn't, my personality is like I would never like show something that I don't, I can't like prove results for. So like I was showing her everything I was doing after it already happened. Yeah. Right. And so she kept asking me about it. She kept like I piqued her interest obviously. And then day after day like, you know, I was making more and more money. And then I think around September, late September at all. just crashed down. Right? I lost it all. And it wasn't like losing $10,000 a day, 20,000. No,

it was like I was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per day. Yeah. Because I was investing into options contracts. And when the theta starts to decay in your options contract, your contract of your stock that you purchase starts to become worthless. So I was losing hundreds of thousand dollars per day. I was like, you know, I was still high on life. I was spending money on my credit cards. Like, I was a millionaire. I was still living my life. I was going out. What were you spending the money on?

Going out. I was going out. I was... Like, give us an example. I was partying. I would go to, like, a club, and I would buy a section for like $7,000 and $8,000. And I would invite all my friends, girls. And actually, that's a funny story because that's how I met one of my other mentors was at a club.

But I was going out. I was traveling. I was spending money on stupid stuff. And then I racked up a bunch of credit card debt. I was probably like a good $150,000. credit card debt. And then, yeah, just all crashed and burned one day. I literally had nothing to show for it.

My parents were still like on my ass about the whole trading thing. Did they know that you had lost the money yet? No. Okay. So on top of the pressure, on top of you losing it, dude, that's a lot of, that's heavy, bro. Yeah. That's heavy. Yeah.

It was a lot. So like, were you in a dark hole where you couldn't tell anyone? Yeah, I mean, I felt, and the thing was this, like, it wasn't just me who lost money. It was a lot of other people as well. So it was your community. It was my community, no, my community actually, a lot of people in my community made money and they kept it and they were smart. It's funny. My community members, it was probably like close to 200 other traders who were like copying my trades and stuff.

They made, some kids actually made a lot more money than I did, but a lot of them, who made their money were smart, they either dollar cost averaged into like other positions or sold their positions before the market crash. Wow. I was the only one that was, you know, I just, I just felt like I was ahead of the market and I knew what I was doing. I was the only one who didn't sell. Wow.

And like, there was this point where like my account was growing so fast. I went from $25,000 to like $100,000 in one day. And then I told myself, okay, let's hit a quarter mill. and then I'll sell some of it. And then we'll, we'll, like, you know, go into, like, more safe blue chip, you know, stocks. Right. I went from 100,000 to, like, 350,000. Oh, my God.

So I shot past my quarter million dollar goal. Yeah. So then I was like, okay, all right, I'm, like, only 150,000 away from half a middle. Let me hit half a million dollars. And then I'll sell. At what point does it start becoming gambling? It was, it was. It was like, it was gambling.

because I kept telling myself that I was going to sell at this time, at this time. And then I was like, let me hit a million and then I'll sell a million. And then I hit like, one point three. And then I was like, all right, screw it. Let me hit 1.5 and I'll sell. And then I hit 1.7. So I was never hitting. And my ass was like, you know what, at least I have my Roth.

And I'll keep that in there. But I'll start, like, messing around with my individual account. Yeah. My individual account starts losing money. Then I start to recompensate by taking. taking the money out of my Roth and like investing into my individual and then everything just crashed and burn. I mean, it's it's really, really easy to think you're the shit when you are making so much money fast. Yeah.

And then it's like when everything comes crashing down, then that's when you start to learn the lessons and you're like, okay, I should have done this better. I should have done that better. And so, yeah, that was it for me. That was like I will never invest into an intangible asset ever again. And this was still 2020 going into 2021. Yeah. Okay. So you're in this hole now.

Parents still don't know. I mean, it's deep. And I'm pretty sure everybody that's listening to this and watching this, they're probably like, oh, my God. They wouldn't even know what to do. So what was the next step that you took, man? Was it, did you get into deep depression? Did you go ahead and just have to like stay low for a few months? Like what was your next move after that?

Yeah, I mean, my next move was like, I eventually told my parents. They, they were like, for them, it was, they were more worried about my mental health. Yeah. Like they weren't like, hey, it's okay, you know, don't worry. They were more worried about my mental health because I was in a state where like I had no more emotion and I feel like that stage in my life really killed all the emotion

that I still am lacking still to this day and they were just glad that I was like safe at home you know what I mean? Just the small things like that and they were under the assumption they were also very like relieved because they were under the assumption that I would finally start taking school seriously

and I would go back. They're like, okay, well, Farid lost all this money, but the good thing is, like, he knows that entrepreneurship is not going to work out for him, so hopefully he'll go back to school. Got it. That was not it at all. That could have been further from the truth. I think that even though I was so mentally drained and exhausted and even depressed, as you can, you know, tell. But at the time, like, that is all I needed to fuel me into a different direction. of entrepreneurship where I was like okay this didn't work I have two options I

can either go back to school which I did I graduated I took all my classes online and ended up graduating two years later yeah with an undergrad in economics so I could have done that route and go full on into dental school or got my MBA or whatever or I could pivot and go into another business and that's when I found real estate I always knew I wanted to get into real estate I just never knew how and the entire purpose of me making all that money was to the eventually sell it and allocate it towards buying my first house or getting some rental properties. Makes sense.

So, yeah, and the next thing I started Googling was how to make money online with real estate. And how long was that transition from the time that, you know, the first business went down. Yeah. And then going ahead and picking yourself up again. Because that is the key takeaway here, guys. If you guys are listening to this story, for a lot of people, they'll go through. through very bad critical incidents in their life where they'll never recover from it, right? Or they end up doing some crazy shit like drugs or party or alcohols.

I was close. I was close to that. It happens to everybody, dude. It even happened to me, right? So at the end of the day, man, the good thing is you were able to pick yourself up and use a negative event that happened in your life and use it for positive, which you went ahead and used that pain into fuel. So how long was the transition until you started going ahead and start doing your due diligence

and your research again? Yeah, it was while the ship was sinking. So I saw holes in the ship. You know, people were jumping ship. There was, it was a blood bath in the market, right? You know, at the time, the NASDAQ was at an all-time low, and there was a bunch of stuff going on. So I knew I had to pivot fast.

I didn't think I would lose that much amount of money fast, but I knew I started had to pivot. Like once I lost a few hundred thousand dollars, I was like, okay, let me start looking for an exit strategy. I was planning to invest a lot of it into buying houses, but then I started losing money a lot faster than I could pivot. And then when I hit rock bottom, I was like, okay, like I need to get into real estate. And then that's when I found, even before Airbnb,

that's when I found real estate wholesaling. So I got into wholesaling. Okay. I was like, there's got to be a way I can, you know, make some money and make some cash, wholesale a couple deals and start buying some rental properties because all the rich people I know own rentals. And the nine out of ten millionaires are in real estate. So I am trying to become that statistic. So wholesaling, you end up doing research. Do you end up investing into like a program? You get a mentor. Where did you really start doing your market research with wholesaling?

So at the time, I met a couple mentors, right? But for wholesaling, I found a mentor and he was he was very cheap. I actually didn't have to pay him anything. I just literally moved to Philadelphia where he lived and I slipped on his couch. That's awesome. Yeah. So at that point, again, like, I was doing all my schooling online. I created like a letter. I sent it to my dean, getting an exception on doing my classes online for like COVID and stuff. I just wrote them a letter saying, hey, I can't attend in-person classes. So while I was taking all my classes and graduating, I was also under a lot of pressure, obviously, from my family, and I couldn't live at home. So I was like, you know what, screw this.

I'm just going to move out. So I moved out, and I lived with my mentor in Philadelphia, and I slept on his couch for like six months. And, yeah, yeah, that's how I got into wholesaling. So how did you find your mentor? Online. Online. Yeah. I like that.

I was just like, I was doing Facebook groups, communities. Yeah, it was literally through Instagram. I met him through a mutual friend on Instagram, and then I DMed him. And that's, you know, that's how I found my first mentor. And yeah, I literally just like flew out. And I was like, dude, I'll literally clean your dishes. I'll fucking wash your laundry. I'll do whatever it takes, bro.

Just let me, like, learn from you because I want to get into the space of real estate. And I'll do whatever it takes. And he's like, okay, well, come live with me. And I was like his little, like, intern. Yeah. No, I love that because you went ahead and you didn't expect a free handout, man. You were like, hey, you know, wash your dishes. What do you need me to do, right?

Put yourself at service. And I think for a lot of people, when they go out and they reach out to a lot of these business consultants online, they expect something for free. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But you did it the opposite, man. You went ahead and provide value. Yeah.

That's what's up, man. Yeah, I always realize, like, there's two ways for someone to take you seriously, right? You either can provide an insane amount of value and bring something to the table, or you pay them in exchange for their time. Sometimes it's both. There's many mentors where I had to pay, you know, the last mentor I just paid, I literally, he's like a pretty well-known developer here in Florida and in Texas, paid him $50,000.

Like literally, just to learn how to build houses. Yeah. There's mentors that, again, I met for free. I slept on their couches. There's the mentors. I met one of my other mentors at a club. He owns a mortgage lending business and you know how those like bottle girls come out with the signs and stuff He had like this his company logo on his sign and it and it said like we lend money just something simple like that and then I walked up to him and I met him

But yeah there's many ways to connect to people. I love that and mentors change my life significantly changed my life because You know there's no point of learning through the educational system through people who haven't you know done anything for them themselves. For me, it's a lot easier to collapse my time because I value my time a lot to learn from people who have done what I want to accomplish. Right. So you'd rather go ahead and connect yourself with those people that have already done what you're trying to do so you can mimic their process and you can learn from them. Exactly. That makes a lot of sense, man. And, you know, I think for a lot of people, they just don't see it that way. They think that, hey, you know, I'm going to go to college and, you know, it's the American dream to go ahead and get

the four-year and then go ahead and do a career, right? But I think now with everything that's going out, dude, AI, all the resources that we have in the online space, dude, it's actually very doable to go ahead and connect with people, right? Yeah. I love that because I get the question all the time, how could I go ahead and network, right? Yeah, online, dude.

Yeah, online. It's the best university. A lot of it's for free. And I would seriously encourage anyone who's listening or watching this right now to like find someone who's already crushing it in their space, like find whatever it is, a high-income skill that you want to, you know, do, right? And if you're young and you're watching this, I would suggest sales as a good skill to learn. It is.

Find someone who's crushing in the space, learn from them, get coaching from them. And don't just buy like a bullshit course or anything, right? Like if you're, and a lot of people are different. Some people like to learn from courses. Some people like to, and that's, you know, whatever, whatever works for you. me personally, I've always learned hands-on, right? Like one-on-one, being in the trenches, learning. I'm a visual learner.

And I realize most people are like that as well. So for me, like what worked was coaches, mentors. So when I can call, like literally a contact in my phone where if I don't know something, I can call them. Right. Right. And now AI is great. Chad GBT is great and everything's out there.

But AI can't give you real-life examples and experiences of what to do in a particular situation. You know, so that's why having a mentor is really helpful. There's still an operator feeding AI the information. So either way it goes, I mean, AI is not going to replace the experience. Yeah. And that's ultimately what you're buying into or you're providing value to get that, is that experience, right? So that's good, man.

I like your point of view, brother. So you went into wholesale. How long until you went ahead and landed your first deal? It's funny. I didn't do a single deal. at all that during the six months that I lived with my mentor. I didn't do a single deal. And this was in 2021. 2021 now. Yeah. And I didn't. It was really, really hard because I was trying my hardest.

And I just wasn't good. I wasn't good at cold calling. I wasn't good at sales. And I didn't know how to talk to people over the phone to get them to trust me to, you know, give me their houses to buy. And because I was literally behind a trading desk. My entire life I was just behind a desk and that's all I was doing. And before that, I had small other businesses and actually had an ATM business, which was funny. But yeah, so that was like the hardest six months of my life because I was not only learning how to underwrite properties, run comps on houses, learn about real estate, but real estate's its own language as well. But then, like amongst that as well as learning sales, learning how to get people to trust you. Yeah. You know, through just

rigorous, rigorous amounts of cold calling. Persuasion, yeah. You know, got to go ahead and have those phone skills, got to have that gift of gab and everything, right? And I like the way you described. You're like, I was a traitor, you know, aka meaning that you didn't have to talk to no one. Yeah, just clicking by and line on the screen

and just printing money out of thin air. That's it. And you know what? To be honest, you know, people ask me all the time, they're like, Paul, if you were to do it differently, would you? I was just like, yeah, if I was smart enough to go ahead and do something like you did, right?

Go ahead and print money by, you know, going ahead and picking different options. But, you know, with me, I had to learn the hard way, man. I had to learn through experiences and all that jazz. But no, that's good, man. So you went ahead and you went through a rough six months. So you went through a shaky season. Yeah. And then after those six months, what happens?

So I did a lot of deals on my own after that, right? I learned a lot from my mentor. He taught me everything. I needed to know about just real estate and just sales. Like my mentor, Adam, he has like the gift of gap. Like I don't know how to explain it, but like he's not like a closer. Like if you go on a phone with them, you're going to get closed. But like he, the way he talks to you and the way he like controls and runs his verbal

mannerisms or whatever, even in person, people just gravitate towards them. And people just trust them. And in sales, like, trust is everything. Nobody's going to sell you a house or do business with you if they don't trust you. So that's the number one. And he always taught me, like, the three Cs of getting someone to trust you is care, confidence, and credibility. I love that. You have to let people know you care about them because if you don't, you're not going to provide value to them.

And then people are not going to do business with you because they think you're a selfish person. The second one is confidence. You have to be confident that whatever you're promising the other person, you can actually come through on and be confident in your abilities. And then the third is credibility. And credibility is one thing I never had because I just got had gotten started in real estate. So I didn't have a portfolio. I didn't have, you know, many rentals and I didn't have a credible business and whatnot. So that's why I found a mentor. That mentor helped me close more wholesale deals later down the road because he allowed me to leverage his portfolio that he had of rental properties. And,

now I had the three Cs. Right. And I was able to leverage and use his experience and expertise in his rental portfolio to close my own wholesale deals. So after that like six month internship period, I did wholesaling for an entire year, the entire year of 2021. At that same time, I was using all the money I was making from wholesaling into investing into like Airbnb's.

So I started learning about the Airbnb game. And yeah, I just took off. Like I just went full into real estate. I tried Airbnb and used some of that money. I tried to flip. I had some houses that I had bought that I had rented on Section 8 as well. So I did everything. So you did a mixture of everything, brother.

Yeah. That's amazing, you know. And which path would you say you were like, this is my favorite? This is the one that's going to take me up to that next level. It was Airbnb. be. And the reason was because a lot of stuff was too transactional in the wholesale business. And a lot of it was out of your control. Right. So in a wholesale business, you have to get a really good deal on a distressed house. And then you have to find a buyer to buy that distressed house.

So if I get a property for like $100,000, I need to find a buyer to buy it for over $100,000, maybe for like $120 or whatever. And that buyer will come in. And that buyer will come in. And, you know, fix that property up and resell it. So there's, but there was a lot of moving parts, right? You have to number one convince the seller to sell their house to you, right? So when they have never met. Yep. Then you have to convince a buyer to buy that house from you, so when they've never met, right?

Yeah. And then hopefully the house gets cleaned on the title. Hopefully it doesn't come back with any backdated taxes or any liens or anything, right? That always sucks if title comes back and says, hey, the homeowner owns $50,000 in water bills. Like you can't sell the house. So there was a lot of moving parts. And I was like, all right, there's got to be an easier way for me to just, you know, set up a business, have it run for me and have it be passive.

So that's why I got into Airbnb because I always knew that with my money that I was going to make from wholesaling, I was going to buy rental properties. Yes. Why not just buy rental properties or get into the Airbnb short term rental business? that makes significantly more than your traditional long-terminal. So that's why I figured it clicked for me. And I was like, okay, I need to get into short-terminals. Yeah.

That's my next business. So, and again, I've done fixing flips. I've done Section 8. It all works. I love it all. That's the thing is like a lot of real estate gurus and people online nowadays. They like shit on each other, right? The Section 8 guys will shit on the Airbnb guys and then vice versa.

And then developers come in. They're like, oh, no, development's the best. And like my thing is as long as like you're in real estate or investing into some aspect of real estate, you're ahead. Because for me, just any, any form of investing in real estate, whether it's fix and flip, section 8, wholesaling, Airbnb development, whatever it is. It's the best business to be in. Nate, like, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no other business that will give you the tax benefits, give you the cash flow, give you the equity of the appreciation. Yep. and allow you to leverage that asset to collateralize and get more loans.

Yeah. There's just no other business. It's the best. No, you're absolutely right. You know, unless you build a multimillion dollar business within your first couple of years where, you know, it's evaluated at multimillion and, you know,

then the bank is able to go ahead and give you loans. But the chances of that happening to, like, let's say a beginner, right? Especially come from like a nine to five. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It doesn't happen, dude. I forgot the statistic, but it's like 90% of the businesses fail within the first year of being launched.

And then out of the remaining variants, the rest fail within the first five years. And like they're not able to sustain their overhead. But like debut to be out of a short terminal is you don't even have to buy houses to do Airbnb. That's when I like, I was like, holy crap, this game is insane. Okay, that's interesting. So talk about that, man. Okay, let's talk about that. because I think that's one thing that would hold a lot of people back

is the fact that they would have to go ahead and have the money to invest into some property in order to do the Airbnb. But you're saying right now that you could go ahead and start the Airbnb business without owning the property. So what would be, I guess, a step-by-step for a beginning right now listening? Right. Yeah, I mean, it's very simple.

Keep in mind, I went from a $25,000 stock portfolio to millions of dollars, then losing it all. So I was forced to start from nothing. So I literally just found, like I went on Zillow, which is a rental website where you can find other listings that are being put up for rent or sale or whatever. Yeah. I went on Zillow, like literally in the location that I was living at the time was in Maryland near D.C. area. I found like super luxury, single family, nice houses around three to four bedrooms listed for rent. Yeah.

I found the houses. I contacted the homeowners. And I literally told them, like I offered me. my services to manage their property. Okay. I was like, hey, like, I know you're listing your property for rent on, you know, one, two, three, main street for $3,000 a month. You know, have you ever been opposed to listing this property as a short-term rental instead?

And they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, okay, well, I own a hospitality management company. I'd be willing to sign a management agreement with you to take your house that you have listed. We can do it as a short-term rental. I can get it photographed because these houses were already furnished, too. Yeah. I would target furnished properties. Smart.

That way you don't have to buy any. I don't have to set up furniture. I don't have to buy couches. I don't have to buy beds. Like the biggest overhead in a short-term mental business is the furniture set up and all that stuff, right? So I would target properties that were already furnished on Zillow within three to five bedrooms. I would sign like six-month-to-one-year management agreements with those homeowners. And I would list a property as a short-term rental on Airbnb, VRBO, and a 50-old.

other websites and I would take 25% of all the cash that we would collect in revenue each and every single month as a property manager yeah like via commission yeah and so these houses that are listing were not only making double what the homeowner had it listed for right I remember my first rental property I ever did was in Virginia my uh the homeowner's mortgage was like $3,000, I listed as a short-term rental, and within the first month, we generated $6,500 in revenue. Wow. And we had, like, out of a 30-day calendar, we had maybe, like, 20 days booked. So it was at, like, just around under 70% occupancy.

Wow. And we made $6,500, and I collected 20% of that. So I made my, like, first $12, $1,300 check, and I was like, that hit my account. And I was like, holy crap, like this is a legitimate business. Yeah. So then I got a few other properties under management. I started managing other people's houses, started to build my credibility, right? The three Cs going back to that.

Then I had the care. I had the confidence. And now I had the credibility because I had like five or six of these rental properties. Then I started to get my own Airbnb's. The next level after that, after managing, was signing my own leases. Right. So then I went back to those same houses that were listed on Zillow for rent. instead of pitching them property management to take 20, 25% commission,

I would offer to take over the entire lease. I would pay them 100% of their rent, and I would in turn take that property with their legal permission, of course, and relist it on Airbnb, and I would make double what they had listed for rent in revenue. So I'd make like $6,000 to $7,000 of revenue on these houses, and instead of collecting 20% as a manager, I'd collect 100% of it. Wow. So like when you go ahead and you negotiate those type of deals, when you try to take over the lease and you're paying them the full amount, I mean, obviously they're happy, right?

Yeah. Because they're like, oh man, you're cashing out. Right. And that's a home run for homeowners. But the second thing is the, I guess the objection. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure you dealt with it before where homeowners are like, what are you trying to do? Yeah. How do you get over that? Yeah, so, I mean, it all comes back to the psychology of like putting yourself in other people's shoes. Like you have to understand like, why are all these middle-aged people renting their properties out on Zillow? Well, it's probably because their CPA 20 years ago told them that buying real estate was good to reduce their taxes in X, Y, and Z. And that's why the average homeowner is like 35 or 40 years old with their property on Zillow and they want to rent that out. And so you as an investor can come in and provide value, right? Because finding a good tenant nowadays that will actually pay your rent on time, take care of your house, and not damage it is pretty rare.

Yeah. Right? But if you as a company, come in and provide all three of those things like we do, right? And we even have short-term rental insurance for all of our properties that we sign leases for. We will not only guarantee your rent every single month on time via ECH on the first of every month, but we will take good care of it because my team and my property managers do inspections weekly on our houses

and our cleaners come out after every single checkout and check in just like hotels and we clean and we take care of houses but also like we treat their house like it's ours because we're running a business out of it and so we need it to be up kept and so you provide all these things to a homeowner

they're getting their guaranteed rent per month in what world would anyone be opposed to that? Yeah. Do you, like, if I paid you guaranteed rent every single month in your house with whatever you were asking for, would you care what I did with the house? No, no. I mean, as long as you have, like you said, the social proof

that, you know, you could take care of it, I'd be okay with that. And every single month I allow my homeowners to come into the house, they inspect it, to make sure it's up kept, to make sure it's, you know what I mean? I'm not I'm not I'm not living in there myself yeah right so everything's like pretty much up to code up to standard at all times and we literally guarantee our homeowners that we're going to give them the house back into the same condition that we take it on yeah that's amazing man so from going ahead in learning this concept and running with it and getting a few now where are you at at scale so at scale um 2023 I used all

the money I made from my property management business and arbitrage because I would start arbitrage and signing my own leases, right? 2023, I bought my first house. Wow. Okay, it was a, it was a house I actually bought from my mentor who wholesaled it to me. Yeah. So it was in North Philly. It was in German town, Philadelphia. I bought a house for 100,000 cash. My mentor got it under contract for 80,000. So he made 20,000 off of me on a wholesale fee. Nice. I took the $100,000. I bought it.

It was a fixer-upper. I put $30k into it. I was all in like $130 with interest on the loan and stuff, or I'd say like $1.40. And then it got reappraised for $2.10. Nice. So I had a lot of equity in the house. My Airbnb debt for a few months.

My mortgage was like, my monthly payments were like $900. Oh, wow. And I was doing like close to $3K in revenue. Yeah. Like $32,000. $3,300 in revenue every single month as a short-term rental. And so I actually ended up selling that as a business.

So I came in, fixed it up, got it appraised for a higher value, had a lot of built-in equity into the asset. Then I flipped it to an investor, not only cashed out on all my equity, but I sold it to them as a stabilized cash-flowing rental as well. Wow. So I added like a small little multiplier on top. I think it was reappraised for, I got appraised for like around $210,000. I think I sold it to them for like $230.

That's amazing. Yeah. I got another $20K out of that just via, you know, handing them an asset. Wow. And that in itself is another business. Yeah. Which is amazing part about it. Buying property, stabilizing them and then flipping them as a business.

Yeah. It's almost like a done with you, done for you, Because a lot of people don't want to go through those steps to do it because it takes time and effort and expertise Exactly. Yeah. Some people just take my money and give me something that's already cash fund. So is that what you ended up doing? You ended up going ahead and building that business concept? I did it for a while, but then I was like, okay, well, I'm just going to grow my own portfolio. I don't really care about, you know, at that time I wasn't really coaching or teaching anyone how to do anything. I was like, I'm a big firm believer in understanding how to build my own business before helping others. Like I want my cup to be overflowing before I'm able to like, because I don't want a lot of these people nowadays that will get like one rental property or or do like, you know, one real estate transaction.

And all of a sudden they're selling a course online teaching other people to do the same. Yeah. I didn't want to be that guy. So I did it for a while. After I bought my first house in 2023. I bought my second in 2024 and I bought a third that same year. I have a few houses that I own right now that are. rentals for short-term rental. A lot of them are arbitrage though. So I have around like,

I used to have a lot more, but now I'm sitting around like around 35 arbitrages. Nice. Yeah. So a lot of my properties that I have are just long-term leases with homeowners that I'm sub-leasing. Right. But I'm thinking about just like, because I had around like 50 to 60 of them. And I sold a few to kind of like spend more, invest more money into buying houses. Because for me, buying was that end goal. Like, there's always level to the game, right? I started as a property manager. Then I started doing arbitrage.

And then I started buying houses and putting them on Airbnb. And then now my next goal is development. Yeah. So I literally closed on my first lot in Texas six months ago. And we're doing a ground-up construction on a like $2 million house. I love that. That one will probably not be an Airbnb. I'll probably end up like flipping that.

But I want to start getting into. like building and developing affordable like four, five, six hundred thousand dollar houses and turning those into Airbnb's. Wow. Because short term rental is just like the short terminal is just an exit play. It's just an avenue to cash flow and make money from, right? But like up to that point you can decide on how you want to do it. You can either buy a short terminal, build one, sub lease one, manage one. There's the reason why I love real estate is because you can be so creative. There's so many ways to skin a cat per se. Like in this industry, there's so many ways to do a deal to get a deal done. And where do you see the future with Airbnb?

I mean, a lot of people say Airbnb's not going to last. It's not going to be there for a long term. Whatever, whatever ends up happening with the platform itself, right? Because a lot of people are going and doing business through private booking websites now and other websites. The way I see it is like Uber and taxis. Right? It's like, you know, it's like, you know, ride share. Right share is always demand for ride share. Whether it's going to be Uber, whether it's going to be Lyft, whether it's going to be a taxi, whether it's going to be another app in five years, there's the demand for ride share will never go away. So same thing with like housing. There's, you know, people need food, shelter, and, you know, water. It's essential. It's essential, right,

to us, to life. So the concept of people needing furnished places to stay on a short-term basis while they travel for vacation, work, et cetera, will never go away. Yeah. And when I figured that out, I was like, okay, well, I'm in a business that has high demand. Americans spend trillions of dollars traveling every single year, just within the country.

So whether it's another app, whether it stays on Airbnb, whatever it is, I'm always going to be ahead of the short-term rental game, because for me, I'd rather run a short-term rental business and make double to triple the revenue on what these old, folks are making on their long-term rentals. No hate to anyone who has long-term rental because, you know, those are truly passive. But like, I would rather make double or triple the revenue on a short-term rental than owning something and renting out long-term. So break it down, let's say to one of our listeners, let's say here's the scenario. They're working nine to five.

Let's say they have about 20K in savings. Okay, they want to invest in into our cash flow and business, but obviously like everyone else, they wanted to do a passive, right? Right. So, Airbnb, what would be the first couple of steps that you would advise this beginner? Yeah, I mean, first thing is like mentally understanding that nothing's passive in life. I love that. If so many people will sell you the dream and say, yeah, real estate's passive. Like, all right, dude, if you're trying to half ask something, sure.

But like, if you're trying to become really successful at something, no matter what it is a business, nothing's going to be passive for you. So be ready to be hands-on. Now, if you want it to be 110% hands-off, you can obviously hire property managers, whatever. For me, I wanted to be hands-on because this is my main income. So what I would do with the $20,000

is I would invest it into a small, short-term mental arbitrage. I would find an Airbnb or a short-term mental, whatever, on Zillow. I would find a nice luxury property you know, I would say like 10, 15 minutes from a major city that has good attraction near a hospital, near, you know, office buildings, whatever.

And I would make sure it's already furnished because, you know, furnishing a property takes a while, then you don't want to, you know, spend money doing that. So I'd find a furnished property as well. And I would go to the homeowner and I would make them a proposal. I would go to them, sign it to your lease with the homeowner, can make them a proposal, tell them that you're going to guarantee their rent,

every single month and take that house, get the legal permission to re-sub lease it as an Airbnb. And setting those properties up is really, like, very easier. Paying first month's rent, which is around $3,500 to $4,000 for a size of property like that. And then first month's security deposit, which is another $3,500 to $4,000. So you're all in like $8,000. Property is already furnished. It's turnkey. It's done.

sign one of those leases and your like my good rule of thumb is that I want to be profiting whatever the rent is so if the rent of a property is $3,500, I want to make sure after all expenses, cleaning costs, turnovers and everything, I'm making around $3,500 in profit, right, per deal. Yeah. So one of those will literally help you break even on your investment within like three months, four months. and you have those properties for two years straight. Wow. Right?

Wow. So if you think about it, the average business, as we were going back to before, like 90% of the businesses go bankrupt and fail within their first year, being in business. This business literally helps you break even within three months if you find a good short-term rental, a good property. And now you have a cash-flowing asset that's going to cash flow for the remaining two years of your lease. lease. With 20K, you could get like three of those. That's amazing, man. What you don't know is what you don't know, right? Yeah, exactly. So how long have you been going ahead and now consulting, actually helping people do this, man? Because this is amazing stuff. I never knew this. So how long

have you been helping now people learn this? Yeah, I've always been like big in the coaching space before like coaching became like a big thing on social media. But truth is, I would not have been able to do any of this without my coaches and my mentors. So, you know, I post a lot on social media. My Instagram is Reed Abadini. So I post a lot on social media. And I'm super passionate about it because I like helping other people out. Yeah. I'm a man of faith. So I truly believe that like God put me on this planet to become a vessel to help as many others as possible. And I'm teaching other people through like coaching, through mentorship, through coaching and consulting. So I've been doing it for a couple years now, I find a great sense of fulfillment in it.

I love it. Like there's, there's, I generally hope at least one person who's listening to this can experience this in their lives, but there's no better feeling than someone random walking to you, like literally walking up to you at a conference you're speaking at, right? And saying, bro, I've been following you for so long and I'm inside of your coaching program and you changed my life. Yeah. And now I started with zero properties and now I'm at six houses and I'm doing a consistent amount

of like 18 to 19,000. $1,000 a month in cash flow. Wow. Like it happens all the time. Some people stop me in the streets. Some people, you know, they come to conferences. I spoke at a conference in Chicago a while ago. And it's the best feeling ever.

So that's like a high in itself, you know? That's amazing, man. Yeah. What would you say is one of your most memorable client success stories? There's a lot. There's a lot. One that touches the heart, man. One that touches the heart.

Yeah. I had this student name Travis. He's actually one of my chief acquisition officers at my company at MMM now. He runs my acquisition side. But he started off as a student. That's the best, man. I only hire from my program, from my student program. Smart because you vetted them.

I vetted them. They did the work. They're willing to invest up front. They did the work. they're willing to take risks. These are all things that we want to see. Of course. So, yeah, whenever I hire,

I always hire from my internal programs and my communities. So, but this one really touched my heart because he literally spent every last dollar to his name to invest into, like, me. He invested his time and money into me. Yeah. And so when he did that, he was living in a small town in Mississippi.

He invested every single little bit. last dollar he had into our program. And we flew them out. We flew them out for, we run quarterly events. So we flew them out for, I think it was our Q4 event at the time of 2024. At MedCan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body check-checkout

that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. And he came in person, we met up with him, we brought him to the office in Texas, and he loved it so much, he loved the energy, he loved the teen, he loved, like literally everything.

he put, I think, a one-month, a 30-day notice at his job and his lease in Mississippi, and he moved everything over to Texas. Like, he moved to Dallas. I was like, and I didn't even know. I didn't even know until he showed up one day. He flew in like a month later after our Q4 event. Now it was like around like January, February. He was like, hey, bro, like, I moved here.

I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, I sold everything back at home and I live here now. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, what are you going to do, bro? Because, like, we were in the process of still helping him get his credit and his funding for his business, setting up his LLC before he helped him get properties. Like, there's a process, right? And he was like, yeah, I just got a server job, like, down the street. I'm going to be hustling here.

And I want to come into the office every single day. And I want to make this work. I love that. So I was like, holy crap. And long story short, we gave him, you know, in the process of helping him acquire some rental properties for his portfolio, we give him a job at the company. Yeah. You know, I was a small little, like, first tier, like, sales position. He crushed it in his first month.

And we level them up to, like, like, a sales leader, sales manager. And then after that, I was like, dude, you're crushing it. You're, like, it's always the people that, like, take everything that they learn and apply it as fast as possible. Like, he's a very fast-paced guy. Right. That just do so well. Yeah.

And at that time, like, you know, four months. Once in, he started to get a bunch of rental properties as well. We structured up his business. We got him funding. He had like four to five Airbnbs. So he was making money passively on that end as well. And he was making active income from the business. At that point, he quit his server job.

And now he's my head acquisition officer at MMM. And he's dominating. He's crushing it. And he bought his dream car. You know, he got his dream apartment. and he's crushing it. That's fire, dude. That's fire.

And that's a true definition of burning the boats. Yeah. Right? Like he burned the boats, bro. There's no other alternative. Just burn them all. How did he, how did you feel, man?

That's like an aha moment for you. Yeah. And the reason why I see that is because when you go back to when you went and you were couch surfing on your mentors. Yeah. You know, couch, dude. And you moved from your parents, right? Yeah.

It's like almost an aha moment for someone else to do that. you. Yeah, there's been, I've had a couple interns over the last few years. I've had a couple interns. I was always big on like recording the journey and recording the process. So like throughout me wholesaling, throughout me, um, doing Airbnb. Like I always had other interns on social media who would swipe up on my stories and say, hey, like, can I come shadow you or hey, can I come live with you, whatever. Yeah. So I always had like people like coming in my, out of my house, like sleeping on my couch, recording me in exchange. I would teach them how to do like, you know, Airbnb and get their first rental.

Because back then I wasn't charging anything. Right. But like, you know, this was, you know, this was like one of the times where it really like paid off. And I think it's because he literally put every single last dollar into his bank account and invested into himself. Yeah. And then I knew like this guy has what it takes.

No, for sure. I mean, you have so much belief, man, that you're, that's the definition of having skin in the game. Yeah. Right? Going ahead and putting your last. dollar into it, it has to work or it has to work. Yeah.

Right. So I love that, man. So what would you say it takes as far as having the proper mindset, man? Let's say somebody wants to go ahead and do this business. What type of proper mindset do you believe someone needs to have it in order to get into this business and be successful? Right. Because at the end of day, it feels easy.

Everybody would do it. Of course. So what type of advice would you give to the listeners right now? Just be ready to learn more than you earn. on your first deal in your first year of being an entrepreneur. You have two options. You can either pay to collapse time and to learn from someone who's already done it

or you can figure it out yourself depending on what type of learning style you like. A lot of people like to learn by fire. They like to figure it out themselves. I've done that many times. I'm out of stage now where I would rather invest into a mentor because I have too much to lose now in terms of like managing my time and et cetera.

So it's just investing everything you can and realizing that at the end of the day, so many people like shit on people who do nine to fives or work a nine to five job. But if you're really smart, figure out a way to use the active income you're making right now into investing into something that's more residual and passive. Smart. Have both, right? Don't burn the ships too early. Obviously, I gave you an extreme example of one of my students who now became a,

part of the team, but you don't need to burn the ships early. You can use the active income you're making right now. Use your job. Use your nine to five to five to nine to fuel that five to nine, to if you don't have a separate business or rental properties or whatever it is, you're going to be trading your time for money for the rest of your life. And to me, like, that is the peak definition of just wasting your talent. Yeah. Because the minute that you stop working, man, that's it. The income stops. God forbid. Most Americans, I read this statistic,

most Americans are one car crash away from like financial poverty. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It matches that scene that I love one of my really good friends, he goes by Nehemiah Davis. He always says this. I'll never forget it. He said this four years ago out of that. He goes, if you only got one source of income,

you really one step away from poverty. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And it happens to every body, dude. It happens to everyday people, man. That's why it's important. So if you want to give some words of advice for people to level up in 2025, man, what would it be?

Find a mentor. Find a mentor. I feel like so many people nowadays are trying to event things or come up with the new things, but there's just there's so much value in just doing what already works. Yeah. Right. And the most important thing is a lot of people don't. So you're just putting in an unreasonable amount of work ethic to the,

point where it's absurd for you not to get results. Just work harder than everyone else does. Find a mentor. Put your time to use wisely because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again every single day and getting the same results and not doing anything different. Yeah. So you don't want to be that. You don't want to be insane. Right. But make progress, work towards your goal, figure out what your vision is, what your five-year plan is, 10-year plan is. Find someone who's already living that life and just pay him for his time. Whether or it's a coffee, you know, for lunch or dinner, or whether it's for a one year program or whether it's a conference, like just get into those rooms however way you can.

Yeah. I love that, man. That's some great information. I'm a big believer in that. And you learned that at a young age, man. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people say that. They're like, oh, you're so young.

But it's like, you know, I've ate enough, I've ate enough shit to. A hundred percent. You got a lot of experience, my friend. I learned the hard of age, brother. I got lucky yet at a young age to make mistakes. Yeah. I mean, to learn more.

Well, that's what we always say. You know, you want to make the mistakes at that age. You know, around your 20s, better than in the 30s and the 40s when you have a family and kids and all that jazz,

right? Now you're just like, oh my God, what do I do, right? Yeah. So it's good, man. And where can my audience find you, brother? Instagram,

YouTube, TikTok, read Abadini. Okay. And then do you have anything, like, as far as like a free community, any resources that you could go ahead and provide to my audience?

Yeah, my YouTube's pretty big. I'm going to be going big on YouTube. I'm just started it, but I'm going to be posting a lot of value, a lot of education on there. I'm really big on value, so I give a lot of a way for free. I speak on conferences for free. I have to fly to D.C. next week to speak at a real estate meetup as well. But yeah, just shoot me a DM.

I do pretty well at responding to a lot of my DMs on Instagram, so shoot me a DM. You know, if you want to chop it up, talk about anything, you need some advice. And yeah. And there you guys have it. Reed was able to go ahead and transition from trading, losing millions. And then going ahead and building himself up to the greater version of himself once again, guys. And before the age of 25, look at that, guys. Amazing, right?

See, guys, adult is up to you. Okay? It's about your environment, your mindset, what you listen to, who you are around, and just follow Reed's advice. go ahead and learn from those mentors, from those people that already accomplish what you want to do in life. Guys, we are top three in business because of you guys, the millions of listeners

that have been listening to this for the past year, guys. Thank you once again. Leave a five-star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and on YouTube. We actually have a brand new YouTube channel. Emilio, what is the handle? That's right.

The level of podcast, guys. We moved it from official Paul Alex to the level of podcast. Brand new YouTube channel, guys. episodes going to be on there. Make sure to check it out. Once again, guys, this is Paul Alex. This is the level up. Catch you on the next one.

Peace.