The REAL System was created by Jorge Contreras to help you make passive income with Airbnb.
His story’s crazy.
One of his earliest memories was when he was seven years old and he was selling drugs with his dad. They lived in this little rinky-dink apartment which was constantly getting broken into because people knew his dad always had money on him.
Jorge didn’t know any better, figured all kids lived this way.
His dad ended up dying of alcoholism when he was 12.
The following year his mom abandoned him, so he moved in with his mom’s friend, Estella.
At 16 Estella figured she’d done her good deed and it was time for Jorge to move out. He’s been on his own ever since.
“One of my biggest drivers is when my dad passed away, I felt like I was in a state of survival, like I needed to provide for myself,” Jorge says.
“Like, I need to survive, I need to figure out how to take care of myself because no one is going to take care of me,” he continues.
“So while at community college I joined the salsa dance team. And my salsa partner introduced me to bachata. She showed me a little basic step. One, two, three, tap. One, two, three, tap.”
“And she’s like, ‘Yeah, you gotta check out this CD, just came out. It’s called Aventura.'”
“I just listened to the whole CD all in one day, and I just fell in love with the music,” Jorge recalls.
“And so I started watching the few YouTube videos that there were in 2007, I started practicing every day.”
“Three months later I sent a mass text to a bunch of my friends from my Blackberry phone and I said, ‘Hey guys, I’m going to start teaching bachata at my friend Yaneli’s backyard.'”
“So it’s like a brick wall and had my little CD and my little stereo and I started teaching bachata.”
“And it was like for free,” Jorge laughs.
“One of my friends showed up, and then like three people showed up, and then five people.”
“So I started charging $5 and then $7.”
“Then I started teaching at a dance studio and I met my dance partner, Leslie. And together we started the very first bachata dance company in the U.S.”
“We started the first bachata dance festival in Los Angeles.”
“And then I started the first bachata nightclub in the U.S.”
“And for eight years, I lived and breathed, danced, got to travel to over 25 countries, teaching, performing, even coaching other instructors.”
“And it was just a great chapter in my life,” Jorge explains.
“The problem that I saw with the dance business is that I built a business around me, and I felt stuck because the business only generated income when I traded time for money.”
“Yeah I was making over $200k, I had a high income, but I had no assets to show for my income.”
“And so I realized that if I stopped making that money, I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself or my loved ones.”
“I needed to do something different,” Jorge decided.
“And that’s when my wife and I started taking personal development courses.”
“Then real estate investing courses, and then I became a student at the Rich Dad company.”
“And my mentor taught me that the way to financial freedom was to tap into the existing equity from the first property I had purchased and then go and leverage that to buy more.”
“And so that’s what I did,” Jorge says.
“And I had long-term tenants in those properties.”
“But then I came across a bigger opportunity in 2016: Airbnb. I switched from long-term tenants to Airbnb, and each unit went from making me $1,500 a month to $3,500 a month.”
“It was my goal from there to retire my wife from her 9-5.”
“And that’s when we launched seven subleases, added an additional six figures, and now we’re making over $200k in passive income without literally ever visiting these properties in person because we automated all the operations within the business.”
“In 2017 we became financially free.”
“By 2018 we were millionaires.”
“I was so happy, jumping up and down. But then like three days later, I just felt empty. I had this calling to go help other people. ‘Share what you’ve learned all these years.'”
“And that’s really what keeps me feeling like a million dollars every day.”
Quite the backstory. I kinda like this dude.
But I think Airbnb as a business model is on life support.