I Was Homeless… Now I Make $5M/Year

this is Mark Jenny he is most known for starting the company rvshare which sold for over $100 million and has an Airbnb business that makes $12 million while only working 30 minutes a week you have a 20 portfolio property worth 8 figure plus and you said you spend 30 minutes a week 30 minutes to an hour a week usually but before the money started pouring in Mark grew up homeless the town I grew up in a lot of drug problems not necessarily the best area we'd go to McDonald's and my dad would buy one hamburger cut in half and hamburgers were like 59 cents at the time or something like that he didn't even have enough money to buy both of us a hamburger desperate to change a situation March started over 30 businesses within 2 months I went from an idea to a business that was making over a million dollars a month I've sold a billion dollars worth of stuff online however he found that the businesses he created were extremely unfulfilling basically I felt like a snake oil salesman I was selling Health supplements that I did not believe in I didn't want to do anymore so how did Mark go from homeless to starting several successful businesses closing them down and then creating the business of his dreams let's dive deeper into Mark's story so first off Mark Jenny I got to share I've used rvshare.com you're the founder I love it we've come a long way from there so let's go back to the beginning of your origin story yeah um you grew up homeless I did can you tell us a little bit more about that and how did your family even end up in that situation yeah yeah I mean my dad just was not good at managing money um he was not good at managing money then he's not good at managing money now it's just not been a strong suit of his and um so we lived in the back I have a picture of it I Pro I can show show it to we put it up on screen we put it up on screen um but I'll uh I'll show you so here that's actually where I lived it was in it was behind a tire shop um so we weren't out luckily we were not out on the streets but but we lived behind this tire shop um in this little room for about 2 years and um there was no there was a bathroom but with a sink uh there was no shower um so like we'd get a washcloth and you know throw some soap on it and kind of wash up that was that was how we bathed um but it was I mean I would say I it was humbling but you know I didn't really know much better cuz I really didn't grow up in the best part of town and so it was like I was going from like the bottom to like the bottom bottom um and so it wasn't there wasn't like a massive leap in lifestyle for me where I was like you know Liv in large and all of a sudden I was like you know Liv in the back of a tire shop in a you know little storage room um so you know the town I grew up in a lot of drug problems you know not not necessarily the best area my whole upbringing was really kind of coming from nothing um you know and being homeless was was part part of that part of that Journey but I think that what that has done for me today is it's probably you know it's kept me more grounded um and it's really made me appreciate you know all the blessings that we have today what were some of the moments you noticed between your parents and what was it like with the family uh when it was these these tough times yeah I mean my parents always fought about money all the time like that's you know they they got divorced when I was younger and but I that's really all I remember them you know the interactions with them is just like fighting about money all the time um I mean you know things were lean and like we'd go to McDonald's and you know my dad would buy one hamburger and cut it in half and give my brother half of it and me half of it and hamburgers were like 59 cents at the time or something like that you know and he didn't even have enough money to buy both of us a hamburger um but I I you know I got super super lucky very early on um when I was 13 years old I had some cousins who were relatives of my dad uh they were like my second or third cousins and they lived in Manhattan they lived in New York City and they had a a compound in the Hamptons and they were money managers and they were very very wealthy extremely extremely well off and I always thought money is happiness because of this experience that I had with him which I'll tell you about but later on in life I really realize money is not happiness you know you can be happy money doesn't make you either H more happy or less happy it just kind of allows you to become more of who you are and do more of the things you want to do um makes life easier but circling back to um you know when I was 13 this was the most pivotable moment of my life of anything as far as like coming from nothing to actually making something in of of you know my life is when I was 13 years old I went to New York City my cousins they paid for airline ticket to fly me out to New York for a week I stayed with them at their Penthouse apartment on Park Avenue for the week and then on the weekend we went out to their compound in the Hamptons and I it was the first time I ever experienced or saw like wealth and to be honest with you it was really one of the first times I ever saw people who were happy cuz there was just not a lot of Happiness between my parents and our household when I was growing up and so I went and they were super super happy and for me for many years I thought that you know happiness is money because they have money so that's how you get happiness and that's really kind of what really got me started it was I wasn't seeking um material things I was seeking like a happy household and the household like you know that I grew up in just didn't have a whole lot of love and happiness between my parents and so but um what happened was when I came back from that trip in New York um my eyes were open to a totally new lifestyle you know I was at that time we were not homeless but I was in you know an 8 800 squ ft house and on the wrong side of the tracks and you know I just went for a week and experienced basically essentially living like a Billionaire's life and like saw how they lived and it was totally foreign I'm like I want that whatever that is I want that what I have here at home I don't want this I want that cuz I saw happiness they just seemed you know it was like yes they bigger houses and nicer cars and all that stuff but the the the happiness that they had was just like I was so drawn to that so how did this shape your mentality how did that um you know they were in finance and so that's what I that's what I thought I was going to make my Millions I always thought I was going to go into the stock stock market I'm going to become wealthy like them you know in finance I went I went back home from that trip I went to Barnes & Noble whatever little money I had saved up at the time I bought books on you know trading stocks for dummies stock markets for dummies etc etc etc um I read up on uh you know on the stock market I as a 13-year-old you know read as much as I could um that ended up prompting me to uh start my first business and I ended up starting my first business on eBay at the time uh not too long after like the next summer I ended up going to Merl Lynch and I just walked into our local meril Lynch branch and showed up and I'm like I'd like a summer in internship I'll work for free I'll do whatever you want I want to learn the business um and I'll I'll do I'll do whatever it takes and little did I find that that actually that experience turned me off of Finance because I always thought I wanted to be a stock broker and there's a big difference between being a stock broker and actually being a money manager and I realized that stock brokers were essentially you know used car salesmen and they weren't doing anything other than like what they were told from you know up above of here's what we're selling and so you go into the local Mir Lynch office and you know everyone's just pedaling the same products they're not actually managing money and like you know figuring out where we're going to invest our client's money yes and no to some extent but really not what I was looking for like the experience I had was like you know I went to my uh cousin's Wall Street trading firm and they had you know multiple floors and a and a highrise and all these you know charts and and on the wall and tickers and everyone's like you know like a real trading desk and that's what I I thought local Meo Lynch was going to be like and I realized like no that's not this at all like they're making you know these guys are making you know $100,000 a year $200,000 year at the time but they they weren't doing what I wanted to do and they didn't have that you know that was not where I was going so I learned pretty quickly that like you know becoming a stock broker was not necessarily my thing after an internship at maril Lynch uh for the summer and then you know really that was you know from there on I business after business have had 30 different plus businesses over the years how did you make your first million this is before Wix before Squarespace this was like basically like almost like geoc City days this was like way way way back in the day um so I built a website builder that allowed people to build out sites and promote other people's products or Services you know as an affiliate and generate commissions and and the model was um different so I didn't charge for it it was completely free but in order to get access and use my website builder you had to sign up for web hosting through my affiliate link and that took off and that basically I you know I I went from an idea to a business that was you know making over a million dollars a month in a very short duration of time and that totally totally changed my life you know um so that was that was really the first big success was that and I knew nothing about coding programming I um the first version of of this website builder was me going and buying HTML for dummies I was using Dream Weaver and I was like a hack a hack HTML programmer at at best I mean like really really bad I couldn't write you know scripts or anything to automate anything and at one point in time I was either building or editing hundreds of websites a day by hand and I was making like a lot of money but I was literally in front of a computer for like 14 or 15 hours a day copy paste copy paste copy paste because my website builder my V1 of this website builder was not automated it was essentially a like a modern-day Google form where I had a form and somebody would go and fill out their form and I'd say what is your affiliate link what color do you want your website what do you want your website to be about blah blah blah blah BL blah and I would literally then take that info I mean this was this was back I had people giving me their web hosting um logins and their password and their email passwords and it was very like old school it was like stuff that like there was no SSL at the time there was no any of this stuff at all um and so the first version for quite some time is was literally like a form that I had online which was a website builder but I was the website builder I was the one literally taking the information off the form that was then getting sent to me and then I was going in and changing the HTML so it wasn't like if you went in and updated your form you had to wait for me to go in and get the information and go manually update your website for you that was my V1 of a website builder I've been working hard on my upcoming book million dooll weekend which is coming out early 2024 stay tuned looking through my notes I found a lost chapter that is not in the final book very mysterious it reveals things like like how to double your income without any new customer how to create complimentary products to generate more income one solar preneur did this and made an extra $340,000 how to optimize pricing strategy and maximize profits and more the Lost chapter is not online or Amazon or anywhere else it is only for people on my list like you you can download it for free at noah.com slost that's noah.com lost it's also Below in the description all right back to the video all of a sudden you're making all that money what did you spend it on what did you buy well when I was young I mean when I was young I just blew it all I mean I you know I was living the life of somebody who came from nothing and didn't have good guidance and had no mentors to like try to you know guide you of like hey hey you know you're doing well this is an opportunity you know these don't come by every day you're and you should invest your money you should I didn't do any of that when I was young but like what did you do what are some of the stories or ways you spe yeah I mean you know I I had the huge mansion with all the cars and you you know I had more cars than I could fit in my garage and it's Ferrari Lamborghini Bentley blah blah blah it was all that crap and you know um private jet and you know like your own private jet no I didn't have my own private jet probably I I I didn't make that much money um but no chart you know go Charter a jet and you know have a bunch of friends like Hey we're all flying down to Miami you know um go on elaborate trips and you know I just I blew money like there was no tomorrow when I was younger I didn't know any better and you know and and whether good or bad or indifferent you know I don't regret it um I wish you know yeah I wish I probably would have invested it when I was younger um my mom always told me like should be investing you should save your money and you know me I think I'm smarter than you like you've never made a lot of money you don't know you don't know what it's like Mom and I in Hinds set I'm like yeah Mom was right like I should have you know invested my money and saved my money um but but hold on what but how was it though like how awesome it was cool yeah I was I was 21 years old I mean I was 21 years old I was Private with Ferraris and stuff I mean I was a millionaire I was 21 you know and so like I literally it's like I was I was Hood Rich I mean and I can say Hood Rich because I came from the hood so like but that's that's how I was living I mean I was I didn't I didn't know any better I didn't have guidance I didn't have I really didn't have anybody in my life who I could talk to or who I could look up to to like provide proper guidance which is I think one of the reasons why nowadays you see you know over time you've seen a lot of these like athletes who you know come from nothing they'll get a $100 million contract and then all of a sudden it's like you know they blew it all it's like you know you don't know what you don't know one thing about me that I think that has allowed me to kind of have the path that I've I have had is once I figured out if I if I built a business and even if that business was profitable and even if that business was making me 100,000 200,000 a year you know way back in the day if I didn't want to do that business forever I would literally shut the business down like the next day like I I I I was I would go cold turkey I went cold turkey on so many of my businesses that in hindsight like I'm like oh man I was an idiot like I should have hired somebody cuz a lot of these businesses were sole proprietorships where like it was a business but it was a oneman business that I had going where I could have just hired someone for $50,000 a year to like keep operating the business and then I could have you know made earned the profits above and beyond that I wasn't I I wasn't that um I didn't understand business well enough that like you could even like go out and like hire people to like replace you and so there were a lot of like companies I had early on where they were successful they were making money and I was doing very well at the time for where I was but as soon as I felt like I don't want to do this for the rest of my life my exit strategy was literally like okay I'm going to just shut it down tomorrow and figure out what's next and I would live off of the savings I had and you know I'd usually have some type of savings and I'd live off the savings until I figured out what was the next business but I did that several times you've done over 30 different businesses to where we are today can you walk us through at least some of these different businesses that you've tried over the years yeah and I actually I told you I brought it cheat sheet because a lot of these things I've just done so many things over the years I'm like oh I forgot about that I forgot about that and multiple digital publishing companies over the years um we did a lot we had you know think of like uh ebooks or courses things like that I mean some some things were you know mainstream some things were really random I mean we had products on like you know pre-written wedding speeches things on like how to beat a speeding ticket um natural ways to like stop snoring uh you know things like you know we were teaching affiliate marketing teaching SEO uh AdWords um you we we probably had north of 20 different like product Lines within the business of digital publishing uh at one point in time I had you know we had a staff of I want to say 15 writers you know uh in house and this was this nobody was outsourced it was all Under One Roof we had like 300 employees and um it was a pretty big digital publishing company with like just everything um under the sun we you know find product experts in different Industries and you know bring them in and kind of build build products around them one company I had which is very timely today because chat GPT is obviously like a huge thing now um I had one of the first like AI companies and it's not real true AI but I had uh a company called intell aat which was an AI chatbot this was like the early mid 2000s so I was a you know a big hosting affiliate for a while and then eventually ended up starting my own hosting company had a couple different web hosting Brands you know other businesses so I've had you know search optim optimization company had multiple health supplement companies sold every health supplement Under the Sun you could possibly think of um had a business where it was a timeline of your life uh so my timeline.com a digital timeline of your life that was another thing that didn't work uh another company which was an app company uh called daily Pick so it's like a you know just a day a picture of a day uh app that also didn't work um started RV share uh along with RV share actually built out like you know 10 additional um uh RV related websites in the space um ultimately when I stepped away from that that those other websites didn't become a a focus um so they never really you know made much of them uh and then you know now today I have uh Resort style vacation homes which is the Airbnb company um there's been a whole bunch of other things that I didn't list off and are not on my list um cuz that was maybe like 15 things but when i' have gone through and like tallied up everything I've ever done I mean I owned part of a nursing home at one point in time um I've done I've done a lot and I've done so many different things and and from time to time like I'll find something in my email and I'm like Oh my from you know I'm searching for something I'll find something from like 10 12 15 years ago I'm like oh my gosh I totally forgot that business that I built and it would be like a real business it had like real Revenue it have like you know something that I you know probably maybe had like $30,000 in revenue and just never really got enough traction so i' like ultimately like shut it down but yeah I've done a whole bunch of different things over the years uh how do you identify opportunities to things that want to do businesses in yeah I mean so early on I was literally just looking for like any way to make money I mean I was young Scrappy I came from nothing I was just trying to like Escape poverty so to speak and I I was just looking for ways to make money I was not look I was not analyzing businesses you know like in the early days of like eBay I was literally just like searching eBay for like what could I make hm what's something that like is selling on eBay that I can make so here's a good here's a good example of something where like I was literally just searching eBay for a business idea on eBay I ended up turning into a 6figure business so some I saw someone selling dollar bills with pictures of celebrities on the dollar bill on a $1 bill and I'm like oh that's interesting I'm like couldn't I just get sticker paper and print out a picture of a celebrity and cut it out and put it on a $1 bill and sell it like they're selling I'm like there has to be something else to this so I bought the product on eBay came to me and it was literally just a $1 bill with a printed out with a sticker paper and with a picture of Michael Jordan on it so that night I became I was in the dollar bill business and literally I built that business up to I was making a couple hundred grand a year selling dollar bills and I was selling dollar bills on average for probably like 15 bucks a piece and the dollar bill business was very good for a period of time until I decided I didn't want to be in the dollar bill business before and I just kind of at one point in time cut that cold turkey and moved on to the next thing but you know I I think just keeping your eyes open looking for opportunities like what is something that someone else is doing that you could do or what's something that you know you can improve upon slightly do you have other stories like the dollar bill one that worked or didn't work cuz that that I think that's that stuff also inspires people to how they're thinking about opportunities right like people on eBay are buying and selling things all right let me look there to see what else is happening yeah the Airbnb business which we get you later you rented it out you did it you built something cool for your kids it's working all right now I have 20 of them yeah what other kind of stories do you have from earlier on yeah I mean this is this is like very parallel to the the dollar bill thing but just I guess another example of of that is you know I also sold a ton of window clings at the time um window clings so basically just like a clear image with a picture printed on it that people would put on a window or a car window or whatever um I didn't know anything about copyright at the time so I'm not like this is not something I would do today but I was a young kid and um you know I saw somebody selling window clings online of like different celebrities or whatever it may be and I'm like I can just go to the store I can I can go to Office Max they got window cing paper I can literally buy and I can put in the printer and print out window clings and I did that and I literally started making a bunch of money you know probably sold couple hundred thousand on window clings um and you know they were you know like I said they were probably copywritten um which I probably you know shouldn't have done and didn't at the time I had no idea I didn't even know what copyright was you I think I I got my first like dmca notice of like hey you can't be it was Toby Keith I think I saw the Toby Keith window cling and uh his real name's not Toby Keith his real name's Toby Corell and I only know that because I got a dmca notice from his lawyer saying hey you're not allowed to sell a Toby Keith window cling because you don't have the permission you don't have the the the you know we have a trademark on this and then so I stopped selling I'm like oh sorry I didn't know I literally had no idea like at the time I was so naive I didn't even know you weren't allowed to do that like I was like oh okay I could just print this out on my printer and sell it like I didn't know there was this thing such as copyrights or trademarks or anything and you find that out and you stop doing it what was a story or experience that was one of the lower moments during these early years I had a business partner who was my best friend like absolute best friend and we lived together in the same building hung out together every day and um he like left the country and left with all of our money and um yeah it was it was that was that was tough that was really tough really tough because we were doing very well at the time and um one day he left the country and didn't come back and there was there was there was a whole story on how he got the money and he basically before he left kind of pitched me on this oh I got this great investment for us it's guaranteed etc etc I need you to wire money and I you know did so and um yeah it uh unfortunately he didn't come back and we weren't business partners anymore um so that was that was a really really low point in my life but I was more distraught more so than the money was the friendship that I I lost and like the emotional impact that had of like I had somebody who I thought was like my best friend who like I hung out with every single day we were in we had an office together we were with each other every day we hung out at night you know we hang out on the weekends we took trips together um so yeah that that was that was definitely definitely a low point you made a lot of money doing affiliate marketing I believe and like internet marketing kind of company direct marketing which there's always like I would say gry Zone with those so some of those companies I'm proud of and some of those companies I'm not proud of um you know it's like I yeah I I look back you know I had before I did RV share I had a business that was you know I would call it an internet marketing business it was a health supplement company but basically we were just pedalling whatever was like the hottest latest craze that Dr Oz was pitching you know on TV I was like oh this is the miracle weight loss pill or whatever and you know that that business I mean scaled that up literally from like zero to like $300,000 a day in sales in like a couple a day in in like two weeks um and that was we we just we were tied in with a lot of traffic sources and we had a lot we it was really driven off of Affiliates we did almost none of our own media buying for it so that $300,000 a day it was all Affiliates that's a business that I ultimately I ended up walking away from I was making a whole bunch of money and um I gave my Equity back to my partners and I just said I don't want to do this anymore I don't feel good about it I don't believe in the products I don't believe in the marketing I I'm not proud of this like I literally lose sleep at night like thinking like I'm just like basically I felt like a snake oil salesman of like just selling you know Placebo pills and I'm like I don't like this this is this this is this is not good I was you know personally making you know 300,250 $300,000 a month and that was my personal cut take-home that I just gave back to my partners I was like you you guys can have this um I just I didn't I didn't want to do it anymore and that actually was a big pivotal moment in my life because that was when I stepped away and started RV share and had I not done that I might not have started RV share when you were doing RV share did you give up and sell everything before share and you said I'm only doing one like what what is that so how does that relate to RV yeah yeah yeah so I mean when I buil RV share it was literally right after the supplement business like I decided so I got one of the best pieces of advice that I've ever received and this is another piece of advice that has kind of changed my life um a friend of mine Perry Belcher he said to me look at what you're doing and see are there any old happy Rich guys who are doing what you are doing or did what you were doing and at the time you know I was selling Health supplements that I did not believe in you know I mean they were fine for people to take they were probably more Placebo than anything it was you know whatever Dr Oz's latest diet pill was um you know but I didn't believe in it I personally just did not believe in what it was prior to RV share I had a lot of different businesses running simultaneously at the same time so I was definitely very dist distracted and scatterbrain and I had the you know the shiny coin syndrome big time um when I built arv share I I just made a commitment that like I'm not doing that again I'm this is I'm all in on this like this this is this is what I'm doing and then I I did I was selling things so to fund that business I owned some long-term traditional rentals okay nothing remotely to this scale homes that I had bought for $30,000 to $50,000 okay nowhere near on on this level and um I was building RV share off my savings and basically you know I as the the business was not generating Revenue nearly as quickly as I thought it would and so I bootstrapped that business off of my savings and that required for me to make payroll and continue building that business roughly how much you sell RV share for and then why did you decide to sell why I decided was I was burnt out at the time um um just had my second child you know I I had just my mom had just passed away just lost her I was working seven days a week working like crazy um we had a couple different opportunities we were we were looking at you know I wanted to buy my time back at that point in time and it was going to also allow me to get a meaningful amount of money that you know if I invested it and was wise with it would be you know would allow me to not work for for the rest My Life um as far as how much you know we sold for I mean I think it's public we had two different rounds um where the majority was secondary um uh fundraising rounds um the most recent one was with KKR at a little bit more than 100 million um but that doesn't mean I personally put $1 million in my you know bank account um so we had you know at at that point I was not a majority uh shareholder in in the business business uh you know I had sold a majority uh stake to trading partners other private Equity Firm prior to that I'm still an equity holder in the business today so I still have Equity um so I've had two bites at the Apple so far probably hopefully a third bite um and who knows depending on how things go the third bite could be just as big or bigger than the first two bites it's cool because you know my partners became millionaires um and so that was really cool and fulfilling just you know like Not only was I able to you know do well financially but you know they were able to do well financially from it we built a lot of jobs you know built a good company um I was able to do well and make enough money that you know like I said not I don't have to I don't have to worry if you know about my electric bill and I don't have to worry about bills anymore and think about those things so that's that's nice what did you learn from starting and failing with these 30 different businesses it's not failure it's just learning you know it it's really only failure if you quit and I think just having to be persistent um having to grind it out uh you don't have to be the smartest I mean I dropped out of high school um I would say I'm probably of like average intelligence um I'm around a lot of like really smart people these days who are like really a lot smarter than I am and like um can be quite intimidating intellectually and so like I think that one thing I've learned is like you don't need to be a genius you just need to put in a ton of action and just keep plowing forward and pushing forward and you will learn and learn and learn and it'll compound and your learning will compound as long as every single day you are giving it your all and pushing forward to the next next step too many people just get too discouraged and they just don't give it their all or they give it their all for a short duration of time and they don't see immediate feedback that feedback loop the feedback loop is not always immediate you know you got to keep putting that work in and sometimes that feedback loop is not going to hit hit you for a while and I think the thing I've learned is really like you can really do anything I mean you you can do anything I I have I have a buddy who started um one of my groomsmen who started a company called made in space and they put a 3D printer on the International Space Station and I remember he and I we were kind of like coach at the time he started that company I was starting RV share and we were like each other's coaches and we would have a weekly call with each other kind of like Consulting on each other's businesses and what what's going on just G giving each other guidance and feedback and I remember him telling me he's like I know nothing about space I know nothing about engineering I know nothing about any of that but I can find people who do you know and even though I don't know any of this like I can find people who who do know how to do this and like the vision is this and I can still make that happen even though I don't I don't know that and I think that that's one thing is most people think that they need to know everything before they do anything and I think that's totally opposite you need to know nothing you just need to do a lot and you'll figure a lot along the way how do you know when to push through something versus just maybe like all right this is enough and I should to something else yeah so I mean I think for me RV share was a good example of that where um like I was saying it took a lot longer and a lot more uh money to get that off the ground but I I saw some positive feedback loop so even though I wasn't making money for the longest time with that business it wasn't generating any Revenue we started to see we were getting some traffic we were getting listings we were getting people transacting through the site even though we weren't in the beginning we weren't actually party to that transaction people were just we were connecting them almost like Craigslist we were connecting them directly and we would ask people hey did you rent you know and we we would get feedback yes we rent it so like we knew like okay great well there's transactions happening even though we're not making money here this is still going in the right direction and so I mean I think you you know you do need some type of positive feedback loop but at the same time you need to be willing to have delayed gratification so it's kind of like you know you need you need to kind of it's more of a I guess a an art than a science um to figure it out on a situational basis one thing I wish I would have known earlier on in my career and one thing I would kind of go back and tell a younger version of myself is make sure you're playing the right game and one thing I've learned is it doesn't matter like what you do if you're going to go and build a business it could be a small business or it could be a massive business it's going to take about the same amount of effort and energy to become super successful at anything and if you're playing the right game your outcome can be exponentially better than if you're playing the wrong game you know if if your goal is basically just just to open One restaurant and you know that's you're very limited in like what your upside is versus you know if you want to go and build a software company then obviously you know you could have you can build a billion dollar business both of those the owner of the restaurant and the owner of the software company they're both going to work really hard they're both going to put all of their energy all of their effort into their business to make it as successful as they can but they're going to have very different outcomes you know if once if they're both successful you know one is going to have lifechanging you know amount of you know income and they're going to probably become very very wealthy from it and it could be even generational wealth and the other one they may they might have worked thems into you know a successful job that maybe allows them to pay for the pay for pay the bills but it doesn't have the same type of outcome and I think that like if I were to look back at my life and teach my my earlier younger version of myself something is don't do things that re that have a longer time Horizon I was really focused on things that would make money tomorrow like what is something I can do today that'll make money tomorrow and and I wasn't really willing to like put in the work to see the return more long term and I think I shortcut it myself on quite a few things and I think there was a few businesses I built that if I would have stuck with it longer they would have become very very successful um so that's one thing is just kind of like have a longer time Horizon and really look at in like a fiveyear chunk like if I'm going to go and build something I'm investing five years of time into this and I have to be able to you know expect that I'm probably not going to have like a massive Payday for five years you know um and then you know the other the other thing is really just making like I said making sure you're picking the right game I've see so many people going into business and wanting to do something and they say like they want a lifestyle to teer but the business they're going into if they're the most successful at that business their lifestyle is only going to be here and the the the game they're playing doesn't match with the lifestyle they're trying to achieve how did it feel to finally make it you have the money eventually you're not homeless like were you happy did it give you the happiness you wanted uh I had a feel to make it yeah I mean I think you find out I think a lot of people find this out like you know you you put in all this hard work and you think like oh I'm GNA make it I'm gonna make it and then go sit on the beach and life will be great and that it's like that for a little while I've always I've always been happy so like money has I think allowed me to like do more things and you know um have more experience es and help more people and do things like that so that's great I mean that's that's great about the quote money um but I would say for me like literally the biggest thing for me as far as like when I made it had nothing to do with money had 100% to do with time I own my time I own mying time and that is the biggest thing like if you own your time and you own your calendar and you own your schedule like it if you own your time and you're making 100 Grand a year you have a better life than a guy who's making $5 million a year but doesn't own his time how much money did you have when you finally felt time Rich it wasn't about a certain dollar amount it was about passive income and so what happened was when I exited RV share I made enough money that I could just put that Capital into passive 100% passive Investments that I'd be set for life okay now my lifestyle might not have been what I wanted it I wouldn't have been able to Charter a private jet and purely off the passive income alone but I would have all my bills would pay and nice house have you know every really good lifestyle um I had two level I would say I had two levels of time Freedom the first in Financial Freedom and just like just fre that feeling of fre Freedom one was right when I exited RV share and there was like a lump sum of money okay but I didn't touch that money I didn't go out out I didn't buy things with it I I I bought two things I spent money I invested almost all of it except for two things uh we bought my wife a fancy coffee maker for like6 or $700 and we went on a trip I took my wife my kids and my wife's parents and we went to Europe for the summer outside of that I didn't touch any of the principle I invested 100% of it and that so that is when my lifestyle like started improving as far as like me being more comfortable to spend money was actually once my passive income started kicking in from Investments and so once that money started kicking in then I was more comfortable with like okay then you know fly nicer then you know go to nicer restaurants then go to nicer vacations it was really kind of at that point in time where I I started to become a lot more comfortable with spending money because I I was fortunate making a lot of money when I was younger but blowing it all and I knew that like the amount of money I made was enough money that if I was a good Steward of this capital I could be set for life but it was also the same amount of money that I could I could go blow it pretty quickly as well and so you have I mean it's like Mike Tyson made $500 million and blew all of it like I didn't make anywhere near $500 million but I made enough that was like if I was a good Steward of that capital I would never have to work again and I could do whatever I want it really for the for for the most part I couldn't buy a yacht or a jet but like you know I could live great live a great life what do you think the business opportunities are today can I start an airb luxury business what are the areas you're like if you were starting business today you're like oh these are categories I'm interested in or I think there's you can make a million dollars of more doing it Airbnb is not going anywhere I don't think that there's opportunity there today there's going to be opportunity there tomorrow there was opportunity five years ago I I I think that this is here for the long term people are always going to want to rent uh a vacation home um you know if you're traveling with a large group you know not everybody but like a lots of times it's just more optimal if you're traveling with a large group versus staying in a hotel um so I think that that opportunity is here today it'll always be here I don't see it really disappearing I think the opportunity within that space is really just comes down to like building something unique building something different um really standing out from the crowd and not just being another me too um yeah I in in general as far as like other opportunities if I if I were to go back in time today and I was 20 years old um I would be spending a lot of time on trying to learn about AI uh which obviously is the big craze today but I think it's that's a it's a very real thing that's going to have meaningful impacts um you know over the next 5 10 15 20 years uh and then I I'm I'm super bullish on YouTube I am so bullish on on on YouTube um and maybe it's just because I know a couple people who have you know kind of built up uh a nice little business and nice life for themselves off in YouTube um but just being a content creator and kind of building your own platform today and around any subject matter and it doesn't even really matter I think I think that if you can become like the top 1% in any topic man you can build a great business for yourself and a great life can you tell us your investment thesis for your Airbnb because it's not I think what's interesting with the Airbnb thing that you're doing versus everyone else is everyone knows about it but you're playing a game that seems different and that you're winning so how did you first identify the opportunity and then I think the other thing that's interesting about your strategy is that you didn't just do it once you've done it now almost 20 times tell us about a little about those two two things I have a more artistic strategy than than a um mathematical strategy with this business um I'm probably totally opposite from most Real Estate Investors uh most people I know are looking at spreadsheets and doing Prof foras and I'm doing back of the napkin um here's how much it's going to cost here's how much I think you know uh can rent I can rent the place for here's how much the improvements are going to cost um I think for me it really just comes down to like building cool experiences and I feel like if I build a cool experience and if I stick within somewhat of a range of a budget that the return will be good and that's kind of how I've approached it it's it's probably not the best way to approach it but for me it's worked well the first one you added like the pickle ball cord you added like shuffle board outdoor uh bowling and it worked really well I think what a lot of in investors do is like oh this is cool I'm making money great mhm what's your thought process then you're like no I'm going to get 20 of these my thesis on that property was buy a property that's a little bit outside of town for a small fraction of what it would cost in town add the add the special amenities and I should be able to get returns comparable or better than the properties in town that cost three times as much and that played out um and yeah so I mean it made a lot of sense I'm like okay well let's keep keep doing this not all the prop were that exact strategy of buy outside of town add amenities and get in town returns but people started doing the same thing and that's when we really transitioned to like these more large estate properties that we're at today that are a lot harder to duplicate you know that's I I I want I wanted properties that were not just going to perform well when I bought them in a year or two years 3 years later I wanted properties that were going to perform well 5 10 15 20 years later because even if you went 10 15 20 years down the road like you don't have a whole lot of them like places like this this is 15 acres in Southern California you know there's not a whole lot of even land available of this size to be able to like do something like this and so you really like unique assets is really where I've transitioned to today of like how can we buy or build something that no one else either can or will do can we walk through the economics uh of this you know this airb I think people would be curious like how much does it cost to buy how much it cost for amenities what do you target your returns at does it cost to run just at a high level yeah I mean at at the highest level the metric that I focus on is the unlevered yield so assuming you bought a property let's just say let's just take this one let's take this property for example so this property let's just say you know around 2 and half million quisition uh r a million and a half in um upgrades so total Capital into the property 4 million assume there's no uh mortgage on that whether there is or not I don't I just kind of make the Assumption for the calculations and like the way I look at it is if there's no mortgage on your property which that's not the case but that's for my calculations and then I want to see a 10% return so if there was $4 million into this property I want to see a net income on an annual basis of $400,000 so and that's that's really you know across the board on all of our properties that's that's the number that's been the Baseline now today's that's not that's not where I would Baseline them today that number would actually be a lot higher today because the cost of capital today is a lot is a lot more and interest rates are a lot higher sounds like they're generating based on my envelope back of the envelope calculation million dollars a month profit for yourself or some ballpark of that but the craziest part is not even that how I I think you work how much a week on this business my involvement is is a half an hour a week to an hour a week call and that's it and so this business is really for me it's a it's a passive business um it's not a passive business at all but for me it's a passive business because I've set the the business up and built the business in that way that I have awesome people who are able to not only you know operate the business but help the business grow improve processes procedures and really optimize the business um without my what advice do you have for people watching who just getting started and they want to make their first million if it was easy enough to tell anybody hey here's exactly what you need to do to go get your first million everybody would be a freaking millionaire it's not like that like for for people who are looking for like the blueprint of like what is the ABC all the way to Z Blueprint of like how do I get to 1 million it doesn't exist because if that actually existed like everyone would just go and do that exact exact formula like you got to the world is dynamic things change you got to learn along the way and I think that you know the person who you're going to learn from like if I if I wanted to learn from you or I want let's just say I wanted to you know learn to be a real estate developer and that was my thing I'm going to go out and I'm going to contact all the most successful real estate developers in my area who I could go like and physically be with them and work with them not just you know remotely some positions it is appropriate to work remote but this position I'd want to I want to actually be with them so how can I go and and essentially Shadow them and help them and work work with them and do whatever they need me to do I'm going to get an education that you could not purchase anywhere else because it's like you're seeing the inner workings behind the scenes of a of a successful business or a successful person and what they're actually doing and you know you and I can sit here and talk about things today and like you know I can reminisce on like oh yeah I did X Y or Z you know back when we were building this and we did ab and C but it's very very different from actually being there on the ground like right next to somebody when they're actually doing it and I think that's the biggest thing is you need to be with someone when they're actually doing it and like help them in whatever form of fashion you can so you can just soak in as much as you can from whatever they're doing you know and for the people that I know who've done that there's not a lot of people who've who've who've taken that approach in life to try to like use this cheat code that's available to literally everybody but the ones that I do have that I know who have done that have done extremely well you know I have a friend who he did this and um he started with nothing and now he's worth like $400 million and that's all you know he he's he's of average intellect um super nice guy um I mean he's smart but he's not like a rocket scientist or anything like that he's just like you and I and um he he went out and he sought out somebody who was much further down the career pathway than he was and far more successful financially and when he showed up and he said hey I want to work for you for free I'll do whatever you want I want but the thing is I want to learn from you and I want to work directly with you and I want you to give me as many difficult hard tasks to that I can that I can solve for you as possible I will do whatever you want I'm going to be your best worker and you're not going to have to pay me a dime the only thing I want in return is I want to learn from you cuz it's one day I want to be where you're at and the guy said no and so he came back to him the next next week and said the same thing and he said no and he came back to him the next week and he said this the same thing he took four tries he he got told no by the same person four different times where he went to him he said hey I'm going to work for you for free I'll do whatever you want the guy's like no sorry kid not interested after the fourth try finally the guy was like okay you're persistent you're persistent I I'll give you a shot here come help me out with X X Y and Z and then little did he know or little did what came to fruition from that was with then less than a year he was doing a deal that this guy didn't want to do he's like this is a too small of a deal for me but hey kid you may want to do this deal and that was his first deal and that's what set him off on his path to success was having those inroads with the right person being the right place at the right time and understanding not only like access to the deal but what do you do with the deal and having the mentor and having the guidance and now having somebody who like understands it but it's like too small of a deal for him and he passed it along to to to him so I think just proximity putting yourself in proximity it's it's all proximity it's it's all people everything's people and business and proximity is hugely important you know it's like putting yourself in the proximity and being able to learn from the people you know who've done what you want to do and just go and offer to work for them and and and show value like you can't like you know I'm sure someone's going to watch this and and hit us up actually someone hit me up and make it through yes if they make it through that's awesome but don't just like you know don't send a message and be like hey can I work for you for free I'll do whatever you want like you got to stand out because like now that we're talking about this if you know who I don't know how many people will watch this video but it'll be a bunch and you know there's going to be a bunch of people will probably shoot you a message or shoot me a message and just with nothing more than like you know hey uh can I work for you for free and like that's not showing any real initiative like you've got to go above and beyond and really like you know if you're trying to reach somebody who has any type of like serious inbound um you got to go above and beyond but but in general like you and I are probably not the best people like I'm sure yeah you want to I do too like if there's you know the right person out there who could be who you could guide and mentor and who ultimately ends up being a huge asset for you and they're able to learn a lot it helps Excel their career like that's amazing but I feel like you know if people are going to do this they should they should go after people that are not popular they're not famous go after those people you're going to be much more likely to get a yes you're going to be much more likely you know you if if you're interested in a certain business you know go find the most successful business owners in your area in that particular Niche not the most successful person who is you know on a magazine or on TV or you know on uh has has a big big YouTube following or has a massive podcast find the people who are more under the radar but super successful and go ask them those are the people who you're probably going to be more likely to get a yes from what regrets do you have from your career and was the money worth it so I don't I don't really have any regrets business-wise um I mean I I've had a lot of failures um there's a lot of things I I've done that I wouldn't do again but I B business-wise specifically I've learned a lot from everything I've done whether it was good or bad whether the outcome was positive or negative I feel like I've been able to have a Learning lesson from everything throughout my journey so I don't really have any regrets business-wise um I really only have one regret in life and that was just not being able to spend more time with my mom you know at the end of her life um that's that's really the only regret I have ever and I tried to spend as much time with her as I could but towards the end she became pretty negative and I would leave you know hanging out with her and I just feel really bad cuz there was so much negativity and in hindsight I wish I would have realized like none of that negativity was about me it was about her being scared she didn't she was scared she she didn't have much time left and she didn't know how to communicate it and it just came out in a really negative way and um I wish I could have gone back in time and real realized like all this negativity is not about me she's just she's she's scared and she doesn't know how to communicate and I wish I wouldn't have taken it so personal what's most important in life for you that family family and friends and it's amazing because you're building these airbnbs that are really family oriented you've got jungle gyms and playgrounds and like a kid's Paradise yeah yeah I mean you know the the vision Behind These you know it's basically what I want to take my family to these properties would I want to share these properties with friends would I want to share these you know have experiences at these properties um that's that's how I build them out kind of with that vision in mind so I think that that's kind of what I was thinking earlier that is the final life cheat code yeah which is you know as much as we can have a lot of money and I think one thing to maybe we take for Grant is how much grind and suffering there was early on and how many reps and practice we all have to get in in business I feel like my 20s were pretty sad time me where I was trying a lot of things feeling frustrated a lot of time feeling doubted getting fired a lot but it was like ultimately okay well how do what's the cheat code of life and it's like all right how do I really enjoy this life and Building Things ideally maybe you want for yourself and also doing it with the people family and friends that matter to you yeah absolutely absolutely yeah and if I mean if you if you can build I've been fortunate to be able to you know like what what we're doing now with the Airbnb is is just building something for myself and sharing it with others and ultimately it's a win-win situation all around if you like hearing Mark's story you are going to love this video right up here we talked to a private jet billionaire to hear his story and we hitchhiked on his plane Uncle Noah loves you make sure you subscribe to the channel if you're not already and I'll see you out there pew pew

Channel: Noah Kagan

Views: 1,181,688

Keywords: #multimillionaire, #millionaire, #milionaire, #millionaireadvice, #billion, #startingfromnothing, #howtogetrich, #startedfromthebottom, #ragstoriches, #homeless, #serialentrepreneur, #businessstory, #success, #airbnb, #markjenney, #rvshare, #realestate, #realestateempire, #businessempire, #realestateinvesting, #millionairemindset, #airbnbempire, #americandream

Id: o2YgHTAHYbs

Length: 57min 14sec (3434 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023