i had this wild dream of I’m going to go abroad and study but my biggest problem was we don’t have money i only had $50

in my pocket because at that time that was the only amount of money which my dad could give me so now what happens is

I get myself educated i get graduate with honors i applied close to 10,000

jobs and I got two calls back so even though I was working at Tesla 90% of my

income was coming back home by like 2022 i want to quit my job and get out of this and then completely switch to

becoming an entrepreneur and do this real estate thing full-time

[Music] welcome back to the Hybrid Real Estate Professional Podcast the show where we

unpack how people build wealth while living life on their own terms i’m your host Aaron Amin and today’s guest is

someone whose story is a masterclass in grit grace and transformation garav Dutau was born in India raised in

poverty and against all odds made his way back to America he cleaned dorm bathrooms by day and studied by night

climbed the corporate ladder face crushing visa constraints survived layoffs heartbreak and the loss of his

mother all while building a real estate portfolio that gave him financial freedom he’s back in India now

redefining success on his own terms and proving that wealth is more than money it’s wholeness healing and honoring

where you came from arv welcome to the show man it’s so great to have you here i’ve heard so much of your story from

the couple conversations we’ve had so far but I just thought it would be a wonderful thing to share it with our audience because there’s so much to

unpack from your experience and perspective so why don’t we just wind back the clock and start from the top because I think you have an amazing

origin story absolutely first of all thank you so much for having me on this show this is super nice and yeah I’ll

talk about a little bit of where I grew up so I come from a city called Lucknau

in India and I grew up in a very small crammed house where three generation

existed simultaneously in that house there was never like 24-hour electricity

gas water the roof was caving and the streets smelled very foul and it smelled

of sewer because where I where we I lived there was a open sewer right next

like a big open sewer right next to our house that’s where I grew up very humble

beginnings but definitely there was a lot of love inside the house and my dad

was a shoe salesman for a shoe company and my my mother was a housewife and my

dad earned on an average a monthly salary of

less than $150 for and he used to sustain like a family of six people so you can imagine

like how it was growing up but I did have a lot of fun here and there at that age I feel when you’re very young you do

not actually think about too many things about what poverty or whatever wealth is

so I did enjoy my childhood like a lot just by hanging out just doing random

things which I was doing but it was fun but more so I actually got that

realization of what is wealth or what is like where I actually am growing up is

when I saw like a few times I started seeing because I think there was a time

where money was very tight And then my mom used to skip meals and with a smile

on her face and she would be like “Oh no I’m not hungry you have this food.” So

just to feed us she would go hungry and that is when I realized like what or

where what kind of environment I am in and what is uh having the scarcity of

money truly feels and that’s I think one of my key times when I actually changed okay I

need to do something about this and help the family in any way shape or form of

how can I start earning this thing called money which I’ve seen my parents

kind of barter for things so when I was age 13 I started just with the little

education I had because that I felt that was the biggest thing which can help you

get out of poverty was education so I started educating so I really started

focusing on education in my childhood how I helped my family was when I was 13

I would come back from school and I remember like in my neighborhood there were children much younger than me and I

would be like you know what I’m going to help them out teach them whatever I’m learning and they might be like two

grades or three grades below me but I would go to their house like in the evening and I would charge maybe I think

for every day I would go teach them for an hour and I would charge like $3 or $4

a month for them but that what that like small amount of money how it helped me

was that I would take all of that money and come back and buy like kitchen

utensils or like plates or maybe like a mixer grinder or something of which

whatever could be helpful for the house because we didn’t have all of those things so I would buy a lot of those

things to help any way or shape or form which would help my mom or my dad or

whoever is living just to make their life a little easier so I think that’s a

little bit of my story of where and how I was bought up yeah the perspective so

a few things there it’s an amazing story right you because like you mentioned at the beginning you don’t necessarily

think about money you just you’re born into the situation that you’re born into you look you said the house was full of

love you you had three different generations so you had a very close bond with your family the story about your

mom skipping meals like to just make sure that the family was fed that’s a type of unconditional love and it’s a

type of commitment to family that I think a lot of people in places like the United States people take that for

granted because they’re born and they just assume there’s going to be food on the table every day they just assume that their parents are going to work and

make ends meet they’re going to meet their mortgage or their rent or whatever it’s an assumption that I don’t think is it’s not a given everywhere in the world

and so just even having that perspective and growing up around that and then trying to internally you wanted to

contribute or find ways to change the circumstances for you and your family i

think that people that come from that perspective and have that deep of a connection to why they’re doing it it

makes it that much easier when going gets tough so I appreciate you sharing that story and so you started doing the

tutoring and teaching other people in your teens what did it look like when you got towards getting out of school

age and working towards the professional world so that’s so I think when I was in class

like my high school like 10th to 11th grade I think because I had educated

myself a little bit and I had started getting decent scores I started to feel

more confident about myself of I can do much more because I’ve always had that

feeling that I’m meant for something more and I can I have that potential of doing something much more like bigger

and this is not the condition which I’m going to accept right now but there is something out like there so I had this

wild idea of you know what like growing up I used to watch a lot of these American movies like I think a lot of

people like just that that was like the star of the show of I want to watch this

or my mom was a big like movie uh like she used to watch a lot of movies and my

brother also had some influence on that as well in terms of music and like watching like movies from the United

States um and I watched this but and but US at that time was this dream fairy

land like especially from where you come from and then when you go out and see those on the movies you’re like oh my

god this is like heaven and like places like these exist and you see those big

buildings and like cleanliness all around and like people dressed nicely

and like having cars and like having a home it planted some kind of seed that

you know why not me of like I could do or achieve that as well and growing up I watched a lot of these movies like the

pursuit of happiness from Will Smith and it also shows it was like a very contrasting thing of oh what you have to

do to achieve bigger things of how to go through so much and still achieve and become something and I resonated with

that so I had this wild dream of I’m going to go abroad and study but my

biggest problem was we don’t have money even like thinking about going to a normal college in India that was like a

big dream but going abroad that was completely baffling or completely different for me i started regardless

I’m like I’ll figure it out i feel I’ve always been that person of I’ll jump into it and you know what I’ll just figure it out let’s see what happens and

if not like I’ll have an experience from it so I started pursuing that dream of

studying i started going out and my parents never got educated like a

formal education so my mom quit school after the sixth grade and my dad did not

even finish high school so it was that

outside world of education and going out there was very different from them like they don’t know how the world works

going that way of they don’t even know how colleges or you have to fill out forms you have to give exams and stuff

to get into colleges and then going beyond that they’re like we can’t do anything you go out and figure out so I

would come back from school and then do my research of hey what is what needs to

be done you have these thing called SATs you have these thing called like college applications or reference letters and

then a lot of those like things I started Ed figuring out slowly and steadily and then I gave my SATs got

into colleges got into really good colleges but what happened was when it

came but I was solely reliant more strongly reliant on getting scholarships

but when the applications came back I did get a scholarship but there was

still like a few thousands of dollars and that would be even a difference of

10 $12,000 which we like oh my god we don’t have this money so I can’t do anything now of

what do I do and that happened to all of the colleges simultaneously so I had to take a pivot

again of okay I cannot go right now so what do I do instead so I chose to stay

back in India do my first two years of education here in India and that was fun

that was a different experience as well studying came here did that but I still

had that dream of one day I will still go to the US because I didn’t want to

let that dream die out so did that and then in

2013 that was the time I graduated from college from the first two years in

India and then what happened was I still have that but now you go and apply for

the remaining two years you go apply to universities in the US and then you apply to a college and you finish your

degree over there and then continue life from there so I thought of planning of doing that but the biggest challenge

still we don’t have money what now so I waited for a year for my dad to retire

this was in 2014 he retired and then what happened how did we came up with the money is in India if you have to

take an education loan you cannot just go out and take like a 3% 4% 5%

education loan from the government or any source to fund your education so

what you have to do is you have to cross collolateralized your house and borrow

against it okay if you do not pay you have to borrow like you have you’ll probably get 80% of the value so my

parents and especially like my like I think my mom was really we need to get

him educated and my dad guessed we have to so my dad crossc collateralized our

house for an education loan which ged us like 60 70% or 80% of the money and the

remaining 20% of the money he retire when he retired so his whole life

savings so it’s called a provident fund where once you retire the company gives you like a big lump sum for retirement

and that was I think close to let’s say 13 $13,000 12 or$13,000 so he gave all

of that away as well and then he crosscolateralized the house so now they have nothing for retirement now they had

don’t have anything for the house no money coming in more savings and they

just gave it up for me to go have an education because I was this is the

opportunity for all of us to change our like destiny did that went to the United

States i only had $50 in my pocket because at that time that was the only

thing the amount of money which my dad could give me but for me it was still a lot because I had never seen $50 which

was the equivalent amount of India ever in my life i’m like oh my god this is amazing like I’m rich i felt like that

and once I land in the US and this is like the second day the first day I land

and the second day I go out to have a meal the first day I go out I go to Chipotle and the food which I buy is for

$7 and I think that was like $6.90 or something and I buy the food and it’s like $7 and I’m like “Oh my god what now

i can only survive for another 7 days here.” It was just mind-blowing for me i’m like I can’t like what do I start

doing now and since I went in the third year majority of the jobs at that time

when I go in the fall are already like filled up because a lot of people might do the jobs during the summer and then

they get the opportunity to do that and I did not have any clue about this is my first time coming into a country and

navigating like where am I but it’s been like a dream place that okay finally I made it but now I have to survive of now

I have to also survive for myself and I also have to send back money home because now there is no money coming in

so I started taking care of the family as well sixth day or seventh day come in I’m just rushing around like places from

department to department of any job openings luckily there was one job opening which was for a custodian so and

that was like the only job which was open was cleaning the toilets but that first of all was like that took

a hit to my ego because majority of these people I know I’m like hanging out

in like in classes i’m just getting to know them i’m trying to make friends with them as well and I’m in the same

dorm in the same house like living and cleaning all of that that was a big

cultural shock but I know that’s treated as an opportunity as well so I treated it as an opportunity for me to start

earning because that’s one thing which I feel that gave me that experience is

that no job is too small and that no dream is too big so that was one big

thing i’m like yeah I don’t care like this is something which I have to do and

when I started earning and when I got the first check from that I’m like hell

yeah like I can start like at least paying for my fooding like I can have

like food and I can also send a lot of money back home for my parents like care

so started doing bad and yeah from there I took up like multiple different jobs

of cleaning toilets and then cleaning like going out and like shoveling snow or like painting or just like random but

it was like all under the university which I was doing i would just go as a maintenance coordinator i was it taught

me a lot of those things of like that the thing which I told you about like there is no job small it’s all

opportunities for me because I was like yeah I’m learning something new as well like I never knew how to rent a house or

kind of do this but sure the ego in me at that time did have some kind of made

me actually like uh humble in a sense too it’s okay it this is not permanent

and this will change eventually and what it like right now let’s focus on the main thing which is sustenance of like

my family and me and I didn’t care like what was I doing at that time so that’s

how I came to the US and that was like my first two weeks in the US it’s

extraordinary man and I I can’t remember if I’ve shared this with you offline or not but my dad he moved from Bangladesh

to the United States in 1982 and he had a very similar story like his parents

didn’t have a ton of money Bangladesh had gone through a civil four 10 years prior to that he grew up in a very

completely different world than I grew up in and his dad gave him money and he came over and went to University of

Tennessee with just a few hundred dollars and same thing he was cobbling together different jobs he worked in the

library he worked in the international student affairs office he was just stringing it together there’s so many

parallels i can’t even tell you how much it resonates with me because I always just have such I’ve had such admiration

for my father for how he came with nothing and then made he had a successful career in tech and has really

changed the trajectory of not only his life but his entire family he’s always sent money back and there’s just this

there’s this perspective that people have when they come from roots like that and you there’s no choice but to you

when your back is up against the wall and that $7 Chipotle and you have $43 left to survive you will do what needs

to be done so it’s to your point it’s the ego but it’s also the humility of understanding like I’m doing what I need

to do to provide for myself so that I can provide for my family and change the course of our family’s future it’s

already like a legacy level thing even just on on day one just because you altered the trajectory of your entire

family’s life so I just I have so much admiration for even just being bold enough to take that step but what I love

the most is what you did from there which is you carved out this incredible path that even people that were born in

America with all the opportunity in the world would feel lucky to be able to do why don’t you spell out for us where you

went from there yeah it was a wild ride like now that I look back on it I’m at

that time it was it felt just living life you’re just doing things and taking action for whatever is required but

sometimes when you actually look back and like now that your lifestyle has

changed and you see all of these things what you have gone through it makes you feel proud of like yeah I did that and I

overcame that it was like amazing so now what happens is I get myself educated i

get into the deans list i get honors like I graduate with honors and I thrive like in education I am thriving in the

US because I’m like oh my god this is amazing i can do this i and there was like so many cultural shocks in between

as well while assimilating in a new culture and a new country altogether i

felt I was also simultaneously learning so many new things and also adapting to

so many I would say slangs so many like people would just use slangs and I would

like what does that mean and they would talk to me like I would understand that and move away and I was I was like I

don’t know what that means like what happens I’ll tell you a funny story about that is I don’t know this is DMI

but my first cl like my first day in a lab I was sitting to this next to this

like girl and what happened was I was writing with a pencil at that time I was

taking notes and then I turned next to her and I asked her it’s like hey do you

have a rubber in India a rubber means an eraser so I never use the word eraser

like and when I like when I talked to her and she would just give me this nasty stare and I was like I don’t know

what did I say just those small nuances later on I came to know what Rebel meant

in America but just there was so many of those kind of conversations which used to happen on a daily day like daily

basis that I would be like oh okay I’m learning something new but it was fun and then I graduate out of college funny

enough I also like I was also I became also a like a assistant not assistant

teacher you have those resident education you can reach like I was using my experience which I was already I felt

prepared for in India which I was already going in high school and since I

was doing since 13 I also started doing there where I was teaching more students how to be like good at math or physics

or like tech so I was teaching them as well i would go out and so that was also a source of income which I was getting

and then I graduated college and this is when the more I feel like the painful

process of uh figuring out how to stay in a country starts so I graduated and

now I come to know that if you graduate from a college you the day of like

graduating you only have 60 more days to find a new job and get into a job and

then start earning or continuing that path if you do not like find a job or if

someone doesn’t sponsor you you have to pack up and head home so that thought to

me was like insane because I’m like oh my god what do I do now because if I do

not earn money I have a huge education loan back in India I have to take care

of my family and if I go back to India I won’t be a able to earn that much amount

of money in rupees over here to like even clear off the loan so I started

like applying for jobs as aggressively as possible luckily I landed my first

job in Milwaukee Wisconsin but in that phase alone I had close to 70% of my

friends who were also educating came to the US to get educated they didn’t land a job so majority of them left back for

home you can see if someone has taken that big of a risk if they do not have

any backing back home like it could like completely ruin your life so I at least

luckily got a job offer i started like started with them started working with them doing that and what happens how the

process is that you work for them for like a year and then in between there is

something called an H1B visa so once you educate yourself and then you have

something called they give you a year if you get employed you can work for a year but if you are from a STEM major you can

also do the you use the same visa for another 2 years but what happens is in

those two years your company which you are like a part of they have to apply

for your visa which is called the H1B visa and I was like okay cool like I

have a job I have everything it’s completely fine i can go out and apply for a job and then I’ll have a work visa

which helps me stay for another 6 years in the country where it was not the H1B

program is is a complete lottery system so how it work is you can have a job you

can have the best of jobs you can have a high pay paying salary but at the end it

completely depends on luck that if you get a visa or not so I think last 2

years like 600 to 700,000 people applied for that job and only 65,000 people get

it so it’s a very small ratio and you only have two chances to get it so it’s

wild that for example you can start working at a big firm or like a big company thinking that you’ve achieved it

but if you do not get picked in the visa you again have to pack up and go back home so I was there I was doing that and

I luckily got my first try i got into the lottery now out of those remaining like

30% of my friends 70 80% again went back home because they didn’t get they got a

job in the first year but they did not get into the lottery system so I think like luck also was a big factor for me

to keep staying in the country and then I received my first like I did my first

job I did my H-1B I got that and then as soon as I get it two weeks after that I

get terminated and this is on December 7 and this is wild because now what happens is

that you again have 60 days to find a new job and find a company which will

sponsor you that is the biggest problem right now is that companies generally do

not want to sponsor you because they have to pay a certain amount of money to the government to actually bring you

like offshores and then sponsor you essentially so majority of people do not have that capital so they’ll reject you

so I essentially the day I got laid off

I’m again in this panic mode of oh my god what’s going to happen and like now again that same stuff i started like

applying like this was 7th of December and then 8th of December I started applying my full-time job was to apply

for full-time jobs so I would get up at 7:00 and then go back like I would finish my day at 6 p.m i was just

applying for jobs like whatever was out there and in the next 12 days I applied

to close to 10,000 jobs and I got two calls back so two interview calls

because majority of them had just rejected me and I got two calls back one

was from GE and was one was from Tesla so I cracked both the interviews but I

went with Tesla because it was a much bigger company they had more resources to hire me they had more resources to

sponsor me and I also thought that was like a good trajectory because they were giving me a good title as well so now I

am this is 2019 and now now I am a R&D engineer at Tesla which is I’m still

having this thought like oh my god did I like truly like I’m in this company and this is like a dream company for so many

people but that experience actually taught me of hey I cannot be reliant on

just one single income i then started researching on how to manage money how to form these budgets how to form like

invest in stocks or invest and that was the first time I was hearing about like investment in stocks because Tesla gave

me some stocks to my previous company did not have stock options or any stocks so they didn’t give me any but the next

one gave me stocks and I was like oh my god okay I have to manage all of these I started understanding what are

restricted stock units or stock options and I started learning started learning

So 2019 was a lot of education about like how to create passive incomes or like side income streams or how to

invest money to start growing that if a situation again arrives like that which

I went through I don’t have to totally worry about money so that’s when I went

out and I’m like okay I’ll go full on started reading books started listening to podcast started listening a lot of

these YouTube videos tutorials and then I came I reached to this podcast somehow

I reached to this pocket like bigger pockets but I initially started with bigger pockets money podcast and that’s

where I started and then I would see a pattern of a lot of people coming in who

had real estate background accounts of hey I invest in real estate I invest in so that got me thinking of huh that

could be something because but my first initial thought was I am not meant for

that that is a rich person’s game who am I to invest in real estate or because I’ve seen like people owning homes and

doing all of those things especially in India people who have massive wealths that’s when I thought I’m like that’s

not for me but that was a limiting belief in me but I still kept on doing

like no I’ll figure it out like regard regardless I will do whatever so I started figuring it out and then I was

listening to this podcast one day and one of the host of Bigger Pockets was constantly talking about how he wants to

buy a Tesla with his cash flow and I’m like “Aha that’s my cue.” So I messaged

him on Instagram and I’m like “Hey I’ll help you understand what EVs are like if there’s a potential discount I can get

you I’ll get you a discount on the car if you want to buy and then I can bring you over to the factory i’ll give you

like a tour like how these cars are made or everything so I tried to like lead with value of whatever but I didn’t say

that I wanted to buy a house or anything and then I created this massive PPT of what cars are like how do they work

everything so I sat down for like a day and then I presented him it to him and

then he was impressed and then he came in and he’s like hey how do I help you i’m trying to like dabble in this space

and I know you’re a real estate investor i’m trying to dabble in the space of real estate but I want to eventually buy

a house in the next 6 months and he was like “No we’ll buy it in the next 45 days.” I’m like “Wait Honda W what’s

happening?” But he gave me a big mindset shift of it’s possible to do it in such

a short because I think there’s a big saying like the work expands to the time

you give it so if I give it 6 months then I’ll do it but if I give it 45 like

days I will have it in the next 45 days so that was also another mindset like shift which I had of compressing time as

much as possible of having these goals and not extending it for like a period of time and then in the next 45 days he

coached me through everything through books through a lot of different things he I had never read like a book like

cover to cover at that time but I went out and I read those books every day so

it was like one to two days per book and he would like if you do not read this book do not message me and now I’m here

though I have to read so I was like finishing book as soon as possible started reading a lot of books so I was

finishing one book every 2 days and in the next 30 45 days I had read like 13

14 books which he had recommended and by that time my mindset completely shifted

towards looking at money looking at real estate or looking and I’m like this is way more easy than I was thinking where

my job I was like this engineer at that time like this is so much easier this is a lot of basic maths which I could do

and like it’s not rocket science and that was also a limiting belief I broke

away from yes I can potentially do this so in the next 45 days I got into my first home so that was my first home in

Reno which I bought and I started house hacking which essentially means that I was living in one one of the smallest

rooms and I was renting out the other three rooms at that money which I was coming like getting that covered my

mortgage so I started essentially living for free in my home so that is I sorry

like I spoke a lot but that’s like how my real estate journey started with the first deal yeah today’s episode is

brought to you by the Remote Real Estate Academy the community I launched last year where I personally coach investors

and empower them to buy rental properties anywhere in the United States my business partner Nathan and I have a

collective 15 years experience with over 20 cash flowing out of rental properties

we provide a step-by-step playbook on how you can build your own portfolio and start accessing the life-changing

benefits of real estate investing starting today go to remoterealestateacademy.com for more

info or better yet shoot me an email at aaronamine.com with subject line RRA and

I’ll throw in a special bonus for podcast listeners who join the academy now let’s get to the show no I think

it’s important to there’s a reason that your story is so sequential because each the evolution it also is exponential

right it started with a very humble beginning in India where you had this very different perception of money and

then as you came to the United States like you were forced into growing as quickly as possible finding different

ways to make money and then you put yourself out there like clearly you worked probably 10 times harder than the

average person overcame a lot of obstacles both financially and even just this bureaucratic

obstacles of how to stay in the United States legally this has been a particularly challenging decade for

figuring out how to do that and and like you said at the end of the day some of it comes down to luck the fact that the

H-1B is on a lottery system i have family members that have been affected by that too and it’s no matter how hard

you work no matter what you do no matter how confident competent and capable you

are there’s still an element of luck that decides whether you can stay in the US or not and so like to your point if

being completely dependent on a single income from a single employer it’s very risky when you came from all across the

world and you and your family risked so much for you to be here it’s scary

almost in the sense that you got you want to find a way to diversify and then the second piece that I just love about the story you told is that you figured

out very early that leading with value was a good way to attract mentors

instead of trying to force your way in or just take you figured you figured out a way to provide value to someone who

you admired their approach and you saw that they were openly talking about something that they were trying to solve

and you found a way to take your experience your perspective and offer them something that they were looking

for and in return you didn’t ask them for anything they offered i think there’s a really powerful lesson in

there about mentorship and just being someone who can take action and by the way I think too that if that person had

responded to you and offered that hey let’s do it in 45 days and they told you books to read and then you just didn’t

do it that would be catastrophic for your relationship with them because I think there’s one of the worst things

you can possibly do is get somebody who’s willing to pour into you their experience and their knowledge and they

give you something to do and you don’t do it so I just want to share that because I’ve heard I’ve heard stories of stuff like that or even me like I’m not

a guru or an all- knowing person by any stretch but I do give away a lot of my time trying to help other people out and

it one of the most frustrating things is if somebody comes to you asking you for perspective you give it to them and they

do nothing with it right correct i just want to acknowledge and highlight that

you earned that opportunity and then you acted upon what he told you and that’s

how you ended up getting the outcome of buying your house learning all this new stuff about how to manage money how to

get into investing house hacking lower your expenses to zero like all this incredible mindaltering stuff came as a

result of you actually taking action on what the guy told you so I love that story and then it just keeps getting

crazier the more the further we get into this story because so that was the first deal that was the house hack and then

now what i also tell you like I I go two years back so what happened was I came

back this was right at that time when I had just received my first job offer so

I had told them like my company that I’m going to go back come back and then start the job so I started the job

because I know once I get into the H-1B process it’s going to take a long time where I wouldn’t be able to just exit

out of the United States and come back because once the visa is in process you cannot leave the country it’s very hard

and there are challenges so just to avoid that my immigration lawyer said not to even go back so in

2018 what happened was my grandma passed away and immediately a few days because

I think like we are a very close tight-knit family my mom just having

that experience in her own arms had a like a stroke uh so her whole half of

her body got paralyzed so now you see in 2018 when I’m there and I’ve just

started making amount a little amount of money that fell in line where I’m like cleaning toilets and doing all of like

the labor to sustain my family and then as soon as I get a bump in pay or like

my first job this added extra responsibility happens so even though I

was working at Tesla 90% of my income was coming back home because now I had

extra money to pay like a physiootherapist a doctor a nurse all

the medicines which has to be taken care of a cook a maid a cleaner like all of those people I had to hire out and all

of that money came back home and I didn’t have much money so I was also it

wasn’t even paycheck to paycheck it was like even if my for example like a tire of my car goes out I don’t even have the

money to pay for it so I would have to pay either get put it on a credit card or borrow from someone else so that

whole piece of getting into real estate or like money management and all of that also came from that that was a huge

significant motivator for it came out of survival instead of hey I have to do

this I don’t have any other option instead of let’s dabble around into this so that kind of made me a very focused

or like I was focusing on it very sharply of I have to do this there is no other option absolutely no it’s and the

craziest thing too and I have not ever lived all the way across the world my my grandma and my a lot of my extended

family is in Bangladesh and I don’t know that I don’t have the same perspective as you but I saw with my dad how he

would constantly be sending money back and he’d constantly be thinking and then similar situation when his mother got

sick toward the end of her life it just broke his heart that he was 10 12,000 miles away whatever it was yeah he would

all the money in the world can’t solve for being there for them and with them

as they’re going through this stuff so it’s a crazy story of contrast right as you’re coming into your professional

success and you’re learning about real estate and starting to understand what your financial future might look like

then of course you’re also dealing with the stuff at home and it shows you how complex life can be it’s never a

straight line right correct yeah absolutely oh yeah it’s hard like

sometimes just because you’re in a different country you see your friends

and like peers around you like going back to their family on holidays or celebrating holidays but you cannot do

that from such a like afar or you just have to just call or be on video calls to celebrate you cannot truly celebrate

with them and just being alone even on holidays like within the US like unless

people choose to invite me or do something like that majority of them are just like me sitting at home like not

doing all of those things so sometimes those also weigh you down where I’m like I’m just like here existing now and like

everything which is happening is just happening from afar where my friends are getting married my friends are having

kids so I’m like missing all of these like important moments in my life which also is not the best for mental health I

would say it’s like what am I earning money for like that like there is no purpose to it it’s just mindlessly

chasing after something being in a survival mode that I I’m here just to do this that’s it like I cannot truly enjoy

life so yeah that’s a big thing i feel like that’s the immigrant lifestyle I

would say a lot of people go through yeah absolutely it’s and it’s something unique that I think people that are born

and raised in the United States can’t necessarily understand and so I think it’s important to tell the this story so

we buried the lead with this whole interview because I I think the origin story is so important but what I want to

do is let maybe even fast forward a little bit to where you are today and also what you built between that first

house hack and now because there’s a really cool story I think of not only how you spent your time in the US but

also what you’re doing now but I’ll let you tell that instead of me yeah and I’ll tell you like all of this was in a

period of sometimes you say growth actually happens exponentially so now you see the origin

story creeping in slowly and then like as soon as I first bought my house and this was like midco in 2020 and from

there everything kind of starts going up so I what I do is I join so I follow up

with my mentor of hey what do I do more like how can I keep like doing this he

tells me oh I have this mastermind of and that’s the first time I’m hearing mastermind so it’s a group of people

where like from all the way from east coast to west coast everyone is in the same place you’re surrounded by people

like who are growth mind growthminded and who want to grow or do something much bigger in life and I started and

it’s called a mastermind and I’m like okay cool so he said okay join my mastermind me and another partner of

mine have created this space of people to join and educate themselves and go to

the next level i was like cool I’m all in so now I started living in my house

so I had started because I was not paying any rent so I started saving a little bit of money so I poured that

money into taking another big leap of faith of you know what I’ll just join and figure that out and that’s when I

started meeting a lot of people who were two steps ahead than me five steps ahead than me 10 steps or 20 steps ahead than

me who were had got 10 properties 12 properties or were even like just buying

their next property but they had completed that that gave me a lot of motivation just by surrounding myself

with people of hey I can do this I can do that gave me a lot of confidence in

me to go out there and take bigger risk because now I knew that I have a backing

of people who are knowledgeable enough and have faced those things so who I can go back and forth and ask those and

that’s a kind of a thing which we are in a group as well doing the same thing because now I truly understand the power

of masterminds and surrounding like people who you surround yourself with and from there I started 2021 2022 2023

in the next years through various different ways through there is this thing called the burr method where you

buy a distressed property you rehab them you rent them out and then you refinance for a long-term loan you do that and you

start earning money and then if you’re you do not have money there are different ways of creatively structuring

deals and like negotiating deals where you do not have to bring low money or like you have to bring low money or very

low money amount of money so combining all of that and like also later at like

later in my investing journey I started partnerships as well that helped me go from zero to like in

2023 2022 2022 like mid 2022 I was able to scale to 55 units in the next 3 years

I was able to scale to 55 units and this is I still pinch myself to be honest that I don’t feel I have done anything

extraordinary or enough And I still feel I have so much to grow because now I

want to do bigger things and but I feel it was just that grit resilience of hey

I would come back from my like my Tesla job which was not a 9 to5 it was more so 8 to 6 and then I would come back and

then from 6 to 9 or 10 I would be in these masterminds conver have conversations studying a book or

educating myself or doing something more so I was constantly like learning and trying to put out offers deals doing

anything possible to make more money what started off as a cash flow goal was that I wanted to replace my

income so that my family is taken care of i started enjoying a lot by like 2022

i started enjoying I was like now I want to become an entrepreneur of I want to quit my job and get out of this and then

completely switch to becoming an entrepreneur and do this real estate thing full-time but on my visa I cannot

do that i cannot create a company which is like so there are a lot of restrictions with my visa i can only do

that specific job which is my Tesla job or like with whatever

company I’m hired under i cannot go out just doing any other work so I was like cool if that’s the case then there are

three options I can go for the three options for me to become a green card holder or a citizen is the first one is

I can keep continue working for another 25 30 years for that company to get my

green card the second one would be marrying a citizen or falling in love with a citizen but I didn’t feel like

that was like the right motive to do that like that went against my morals

but the third one was investing a million dollars into a governmentbacked

project which essentially is there to stimulate the economy so if I invest

that million dollars in that econom like in that project that project will create

has to create 10 full-time jobs in the economy so that’s called the EB5 program

where you invest a certain amount of money and you can get a green card in return but that also happens in the next

7 years once you start investing so I thought okay I’ll sell my portfolio and

get the million dollars out and then I will invest this money into this project

and then I’ll get my green card life happens from 2018 where I’ve

did not had not seen my mom in that space of having a paralysis attack so I had left her before that I had seen her

healthy in I that is 2018 i went back home because of all the visa situation i

went back home in 2023 that’s the first time I could come back home where I got the green light to come

back home to meet my family and I came back home met my mom met my dad and then two

weeks later my mom out of nowhere on my birthday has a heart attack and she

passes away god Yeah that was brutal that was brutal

because I was doing all of this for family and suddenly one of my big why

was snatched away from me so that happened and then a few weeks later like

my relationship of 6 years also ended 2 weeks later so I was in a very tough

spot at that time and then my lawyer comes in and tells me that hey you have

to immediately start selling this these portfolio and I was like okay I’ll start like doing this please to get a green

card and then she eventually comes back and she’s oh you have raised some of

these money or borrowed money from some of these people so now you have to give us a whole trace back to where that

money came from and I’m like I can’t do that that’s impossible and then she tells me so it’s not possible for you to

use that million dollars to give it to the government or invest in it and so I felt like so suffocated at that time

that I’m like so stuck i can’t do anything whatever I’m trying to do it just like fails and then I decided you

know what like I have my whole life in front like I can my value doesn’t come

from doing this but it’s more so what I can do and if I cannot achieve that like

through all of these hurdles and like things going on I would rather just exit

go back to family come back here to India live life with my dad who still

alive make memories so 90 days ago I came back to India like I packed up

everything came back to India i am having the time of my life i’m like pampering my dad taking him to places

making memories meeting old friends like doing whatever it’s possible but I do

not have that stress now but I’m still growing i still have the team i still have all my resources like all my

friends are in the US so I’m like I’ll still keep building in the US i’ll still keep buying real estate i’ll still keep

buying businesses i’ll still expand over there but I will figure out how to do

that while I’m in India so now I’m on that path of okay now this is a big

challenge of how can I figure out how to invest 9,000 10,000 miles away but I’ll

figure that out as well yeah it’s such an amazing story and I’m I’m so sorry to

hear what you went through i’m very glad to hear that you were able to see her one more time before that happened but I

knew this part of your story but just hearing you describe it gave me the chills but I also know that you’re

extremely resilient very humble person and I think one of the things that you said there that I just want to also pull

highlight is nobody can ever take away the experience that you had building all

the mindset evolution all the new skills you built the career you had the money

you made all that stuff if that all went away tomorrow you were still equipped and strong and able to even do it all

again in a sense if you needed to and not only that but you have this perspective of what it’s like to be an

immigrant going through and building wealth in America and I know that’s one of the things too that you’re focusing

on now is helping other people who might resonate who have similar obstacles maybe they’re held up by these H-1B

lotteryies or maybe they came to be a student in the US but they don’t even understand what it’s like to live there

long term and what what they need to look out for what how to navigate the whole employment cycle there’s all this

very specific stuff that you probably you had to learn on the fly and that most people probably don’t know and I

just I love because you and I have had some conversations offline about how you’re trying to create a framework for

people who are in a similar situation so that they can there are a lot of courses out there on how to buy rental

properties and there are a lot of bigger pockets books and podcasts that that talk about this but not necessarily in

the lens of the immigrant experience and and so I think it’s really valuable what you’re doing and also before I I forget

I think it I love seeing these pictures because you and I are in a mastermind group together of you taking your dad and traveling and doing all this stuff

this bucket list stuff where I think that you had correctly understood that like time is limited and having been

away for as long as you were and then having gone through what you did right it’s like there’s no time to waste in in

doing the things that are important to you and mean a lot to you so the beautiful thing to bring it all full circle is that all that experience and

perspective that you gained throughout your life leading up until now you’re now in a position where you’re harvesting some of that with the

experiences in your own family and if I’m not mistaken you’re sitting in the house that you grew up in right exactly

yes i’m still in that yes and now you’re in a position to give it which I want to give you an opportunity because we’re

coming up on time here but give you an opportunity to explain like what this next chapter is what you’re looking to do and how you’re looking to serve and

help others absolutely so I think since

that was my biggest problem when I was like in these masterminds and broke was that whenever I used to go out to these

masterminds the first question which I would ask is someone on an H-1B visa or is someone on a visa who can truly

understand because we cannot just go out and form a business or hey do wholesaling or just do flips like I

cannot do all of that because I can only be tied down to my company so navigating all of those challenges and also

navigating what is legal what can you do and majority of these people you ask who

are immigration lawyers because the code is so old it they would just respond

it’s in a gray area or you cannot do it at all but I had to go through 10 15

like immigration lawyers to actually find a person who would say oh you cannot do this but maybe you could do it

this way and that’s the only thing which I needed okay cool i’ll do it i’ll do that and that’s what I want to I’ve gone

through that journey and built this portfolio now I want to help people who are in that similar stage of figuring

that out so that they don’t have to go through the same process which I did but

they have the much easier path of they can scale much more for anything or they are trying to get become financially

free they are doing it for a green card if they want to whatever or I want to just have some side income for their

family or themsel so I want to help more people or want to empower them in that

space of yeah this is possible this thing exist you do this and you can also

enjoy the life hypothetically if you want to come back to India if you want to go somewhere else you can do that too

so you can have a grasp on your life you do not have to be chained down by a visa

yeah I love it and I know we’re we’ve been talking a lot about how do you find that audience because it’s a specific

thing but it’s also something that is so common that people struggle with and I have yet to find anybody who speaks to

people going through this spec very specific type of hurdle and then so there’s the tactical piece that you can

help them with about how to navigate all the paperwork and like the different things you learned but then there’s the mindset piece like you said where you

can build you can build this life maybe it’s in the US but wherever you are came from like wherever your family is

wherever your roots are and therefore probably a big piece of your heart is you can still go experience and serve

and build a life in those places without having to give up what you might have built in the US so I just think it’s

such a cool story man i’m so grateful to have you on the show and be able to share your story i want to do another

one because you you have probably 10 different parts of your story we could do an entire episode on but Yeah thank

you so much yeah this was amazing yeah this is very like Yeah like whenever I talked to like about this because there

were like so many pieces to the puzzle where I something might but like a lot of the major things I do remember of

like how could I grow up but there were obviously we can have a conversation again for sure of course man so if

people want to find you learn more about your story learn more about what you’re building where can they do that i think

the best place is Instagram right now so my Instagram is your investor mate you

can also s like search by my name gorov data g a u r a v da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d u d t d t d t d t d

t d t d t d t d t d t dt dt dt dt dt dt dt dt dt dt a but I think your investor mate would be the best place is definitely the place where I can be

easily found and I’m very active on that too all right hit him up i’ll make sure that’s in the show notes and remember if

you ask him questions or if you’re trying to get information from him make sure you act upon whatever he shares

with you right that’s that’s the best way to to do yourself a service and and hopefully stay in touch all right we’ll

make sure that’s in the show notes and thanks again so much for coming on and we’ll talk to you later thank you so

much Aaron i appreciate this thank you for making it to the end of today’s episode as you may know podcasts are

very difficult to grow organically if you’re getting value from today’s episode I’d deeply appreciate if you can

take 30 seconds to leave my show a fivestar rating and review this will go a long way to helping me reach more

listeners just like you thank you so much in advance