10 years ago, this guy owned $0 of real estate, and today he's got a portfolio of about a billion and a half dollars. And he did that with no outside investors, just starting from scratch, one property after another, flipping, flipping, flipping, compounding until he built a billion dollar portfolio. He's also my brother-in-law. And I've known the guy for 10 plus years. I've been asking him to come on the podcast

and he likes to keep a low profile, but finally he agreed to come on and tell his story. And the story's a little bit crazy. He started off as a broker, ends up making a few million dollars doing deals as a broker, and then gets caught holding the bag when one of his clients, I don't want to say screws him over, but leaves him holding the bag.

And he ends up $15 million in debt.

And instead of his clients, I don't want to say screws him over, but leaves him holding the bag.

And he ends up $15 million in debt. And instead of declaring bankruptcy, he decides to try to pay it all back piece by piece by piece. He does. He pays it all back. And he ends up with a billion dollar plus real estate portfolio using a very specific strategy. So in this episode, I asked him how he did it to tell that story

and to explain the strategy and his approach to real estate because it's a little bit different than anybody else. So enjoy this episode with my brother-in-law, Sanjeev, aka the Rhino of Real Estate. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in All right, my brother, we're here.

Your story. what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off.

On a road, let's travel, never look.

All right.

My brother, we're here.

Your story's a roller coaster.

You have crazy highs, complete lows where you lose it all, and then rebuild back up 20

times bigger than the first time.

So I want to go into that story.

So today, you are sitting here. You've got a collection of real estate assets that you've built up over the last 10 years. That's now how big, roughly? A little about a billion and a half in total. A billion and a half. So 1.5 billion today. And that's really in kind of just a decade. So I want to go through the steps of how you got there.

So where did the career start? In the name of the podcast, my first million, right? Right. How you made your first million. Yeah. I, you know, for me it started, I went to law school, did an MBA. Did you plan to be a lawyer? You thought? I was full on set and being a lawyer. I went to law school, worked for a very famous lawyer, Mark Gargos, out of L.A.

We were working the Scott Peterson case, and it was very intriguing, you know, in criminal law. When I met my now wife, or my wife, she was very much against me being a lawyer. For some reason, she was always programmed that, you know, you're going to, you're going to do certain things to win cases. So we'd always talked about, you know, I'm going to work for a lawyer for five years and then I'm getting real estate. Okay. She goes, why do you need to, why do you need to work for five years? Why don't you just do it? You know, me thinking, I'm like, oh, wow, That's a different thought. Yeah, I don't have a good answer to that. Yeah. You know, so I ended up opening a real estate broker's office, went back to my hometown where I grew up, found out called Modesto, and opened up this, you know, real estate just broker's license. And I had a small 100-foot office and a phone. Start calling people trying to understand the market. And really, I think my first high came when I sold my first building. I called someone and actually, I needed to grow my office. And I called this person. I said, hey, what if I lease your office? Will you let me sell your office? He said, yes. If you lease it, I'll let you sell. So if you become a tenant, you could be the broker. You got it.

I never had a moment. Was that planned or it just happened to be that way? No, I don't know if it was planned. It was kind of just like, you know, sometimes you never ask, you never know, right? And so at that moment, I had asked, it was an older couple, and I sold the building for them quite fast, and I made 60 grant. and from there I started, you know, doing real estate brokers.

I started, you know,

doing real estate brokers. I started understanding, and I started meeting different tenants in

retail. You know, I was working for a jack-in-the-box, auto zone, DPRCO, different tenants that I

would help get them spaces for. Now, tell me, because today you're a real estate developer, but it's interesting, you started as a broker. I think many brokers want to become developers, and it rarely gets to the scale that you got to, right? What were you like as a broker? Are you just dialing for dollars? What were you doing? I mean, yeah, gosh, man, I would be knocking on doors. I'd be calling. And, you know, I learned early on that if you don't ask, you don't get, right? And so it was no real, like, shame in my game. It was kind of like, you know, it was just like, hey, I'll ask. And so, you know, oftentimes, we'd be going to anywhere, whether we go to an Indian party, whether we go anywhere, it's growing up, what do you do?

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