Rajan Chida's $37K Land Deal and 185K Followers

Quick Summary

Rajan funded the deal by flipping thrift-store shoes through college, netting four to five thousand a month and $7,500 in his best month. That bought a $295,000 rental on his 21st birthday, then half of a $37,000 land deal.

The land price isn't the lesson here. He built the audience before there was a calendar to fill, and he'll tell you himself he doesn't know yet whether it converts. So if you're weighing a build of your own, start with what the market data says a finished cabin can charge nearby, then work backwards to what the dirt is worth.

Key Points

• Renzo called with a $37,000 price on two and a half acres in the Shenandoah Valley and a financial model, and Rajan locked himself in a lecture hall for two days to learn development before going 50-50 on it.
• The land is subdivided into four lots, but they're building one cabin first and operating it for a couple of months before committing to the other three.
• He was at roughly 20,000 followers from the shoe business, somewhere around 60,000 to 70,000 three months before taping, and 185,000 by the time of the interview.
• Filming the build is what sourced the team: the contractor they hired found them through Instagram after seeing a video, Isaac French landed in Rajan's DMs, and Daryl Maxim of Finger Lakes Treehouse has been mentoring them through it.
• Two college kids with no W-2 income took about three months of Renzo shopping banks, plus co-signers, to land the construction loan.
• Their $60,000 allowance for well, septic and electric is running under budget on all three, with the septic and pump coming in around $15,500.
• Rajan walked away from a J.P. Morgan job in Dallas to do this full time, and says the development hasn't made a single dime yet.

Full Transcript

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Jeremy: I'm here with Rajan, who is sharing his story for the first time. He's building a ground-up development in Virginia at what, 23 years old?

Rajan: 22.

Jeremy: 22, started building while he's a senior in college, and has been sharing the entire journey online and building how many followers?

Rajan: Right now, I think we're around 185,000, but hopefully that number is going to keep going.

Jeremy: He's on a run though. What were you at like three months ago?

Rajan: Three months ago, I must've been at like 70,000, 60,000, maybe even lower. I'm not even sure.

Jeremy: Guys, so y'all are going to learn two things today: how to build a ground-up development with zero experience, right? I would imagine, like no experience. And then also some insights into how to grow a social following and the benefits of building in public.

So first of all, man, it's been fun. We've been hanging out the last two days and we played some basketball.

Rajan: It's been so fun. We got like two or three dubs in a row and then...

Jeremy: And then we got cooked. And then your foot was on the line.

But all right, let's go back. So, seriousness, you're doing some cool things and I want to learn about your journey and dissect. So where are you from? How'd you get into real estate?

Rajan: Yeah, so I don't know where to start. I'm originally from Reston, Virginia, just like 40 minutes outside of DC. Grew up in Virginia my entire life. Also went to college at the University of Virginia. So I didn't really move around as a kid or anything like that. I had a lot of friends from high school, from middle school, from even elementary school that ended up going to UVA, and built my community there.

Before the real estate stuff, in high school I came across a Gary Vee video. This was during COVID and my 11th and 12th grade were pretty much all online. And I had a lot of time to myself, obviously. I didn't really do much of online school. So...

Jeremy: Oh, COVID, right. I was like, are you homeschooled? Oh no, COVID. Forgot that was a thing.

Rajan: I mean, it was pretty much homeschooling for two years. But I saw a Gary Vee video. He basically said you can go to garage sales and thrift stores and flip stuff on eBay. I started doing that in about 11th grade, started selling everything. I just got my license. And then my senior year of high school, I just doubled down on selling shoes. And that kind of became my life for about the next four years.

Actually, I took a little bit of a break my freshman year because they didn't allow us to have a car on campus. So that year I was super bored. And honestly, I didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't fully enjoy the college culture. I was having a little bit of fun, but I always liked building new things. So my sophomore year, I made it my mission to rent out a unit, continue the shoe business. And two years after that, I was able to build enough capital to get into real estate.

So I met my mentor today, his name's Matt. He's a real estate agent in the Charlottesville area. And he basically walked me, held my hand like a baby, through getting my first investment property. And I closed on that on my 21st birthday. That was kind of my first experience in real estate, looking at deals, analyzing if a deal is worth it or not. And he kind of walked me through that whole process and the home buying process, getting a loan, all this other stuff I never knew about when you buy a house, like closing costs.

Jeremy: Take a step back. What the hell is shoe flipping? Or what's it called? It's called shoe something or other.

Rajan: Yeah. So a lot of people think of it in different ways. And I think the most common way that people see it is like the hype shoe market. So people will buy like hype Jordans or hype Nikes and hype Adidas, and they'll buy it at retail and they'll sell it online for a profit.

I had a completely different business model and I was selling everyday wear shoes. So it's your generic Nikes, generic Adidas. I was buying it at these thrift stores when they were on sale in bulk for around $3 to $5. And then I'd sell it on eBay for about $30 to $35, after shipping and fees and everything.

Jeremy: And you were like cleaning the shoes. I've seen your video. You were out there scrubbing them. You were taking nice photos of them.

Rajan: Yeah. I was a one man show and that was probably to my detriment. I probably should have outsourced it. But I would wake up at 8 a.m. every Sunday. I'd drive up to Northern Virginia from Charlottesville. I'd hit a couple of stores, and then I eventually got some local suppliers, and I'd drive back on the same day because I would have class on Monday.

Jeremy: You'd hit a couple of stores. You make it sound like you were going in there with a mask on.

Rajan: Yeah. I hit like eight to nine stores. It was a grind. But what good came out of it was I actually got to see my mom every single weekend, because the last stop was right next to my house, and big mama's boy. So I would go home after my last stop and she'd have like coolers worth of food. So I saved a lot of money on food those three years. I'd just drive it down to UVA, and then every weekend I'd bring it back.

Jeremy: How much would you make? You'd hit eight stores a week. You'd sell them. Your margin is $30 a shoe. How much did you make per month or per year doing that?

Rajan: Yeah. So it was pretty cyclical, and it wasn't $30 per shoe. eBay takes a fee and then you pay for shipping. So it's maybe like 15 to $20 per shoe. But at scale, yeah.

It was really cyclical. So I'd say my best month would have been like 7,500. That was my last semester, or my second to last semester in college. And I was probably averaging netting around four to $5,000 a month. Maybe to a lot of people that doesn't seem like a lot of money, but for me, when I was in college, that was so much money. And stacking that over five years and saving every penny allowed me to be aggressive and buy that first investment property.

Jeremy: So tell us about that first deal. How much did you save? How much did you put into it? How much did it make you or lose you? I don't know.

Rajan: Yeah. So I had about $115,000 in a Fidelity account. It was split amongst cash, and then I had some in an IRA, and then a lot of it was in stocks.

And then I bought the house. It was $295,000. I put 20% down, so it's $59,000, and then plus closing costs. And we had to repaint the walls a little bit. All in, I was about $68,000.

So I got like 7.5% interest on the loan. I was very privileged. My dad was fortunate enough to, he guarantored the loan.

Jeremy: Co-signed it?

Rajan: Yeah. Either co-signed or guarantored the loan. I think that's what the name was for it. And I was able to get a really good rate on it. I still fronted all the cash, but that's why I was able to get approved for a loan like this.

So the property itself, the numbers on that, the monthly payment with mortgage and insurance and property taxes was $1,850 a month. And then I was charging $2,250 a month. So it was a pretty good margin there. And then I eventually got a property manager and he takes like 8%. So it's cash flowing about like $100 to $200, but then you have a big expense and it'll probably...

Jeremy: It all goes away.

Rajan: Yeah.

Jeremy: So it's safe to say, I would imagine you got into real estate thinking long-term wealth, right? Like this is a good place to put my money. But then you probably realized, all right, well, this isn't quick money, I guess.

And this, I want to get into what you're doing now. Having some long-term rental experience, what made you want to get into the short-term rental and the development side of things?

Rajan: So it was actually my partner Renzo. Renzo is like a wizard when it comes to development. He's been obsessed with development for the last two years. He interned in Austin, Texas. So we both interned our junior year summers in Texas. I worked at a bank, Renzo worked at a development firm in Austin, and I was in Dallas.

And by sheer chance, I went up to Austin to visit another friend and we reconnected. We were high school friends and we played tennis together. And I reconnected with him in Austin.

Jeremy: Doubles partners.

Rajan: Yeah. We were doubles partners. He was better than me, I'll give him that. But we were a pretty good doubles team.

Renzo is one of the smartest people I have ever met. And we reconnected in Austin. And even then he was telling me about development and how he worked at this development firm. And he was saying, man, these guys are not much smarter than I am. I think I can go out and do this.

He pitched me, he taught me about Live Oak Lake. So Live Oak Lake is one of the premier short-term rentals. It's basically the blueprint. And Isaac French was a great inspiration for him. And he taught me about him. And I started diving into it a little bit, but the conversation kind of fizzled out when we went back to school for our senior year.

And I originally was actually going to do a fix and flip with my other roommate. And a deal fell through in Charlottesville and I was super bummed out. We were about to close on a property and someone else picked it up the day before we would close.

And then in November of 2024, Renzo gave me a call and he said, hey man, I got two and a half acres in Shenandoah Valley. He pitched me the idea. He was like, it's $37,000. Here's the financial model. And I don't have enough money to front it. Do you want to go 50-50 on this?

And at this point I have pretty much zero development experience. I'm kind of trusting Renzo's insight on it. And I'm like, you know what? I kind of told him I'll think about it, but I was kind of bought in already. I locked myself in one of the lecture halls for two days and just learned all about real estate development that I could. And after two days, I was like, screw it, let's do it.

And we got the land under contract. We had about a 60-day study period where we could back out for any reason. So we did soil tests. We did a bunch of other analysis on the land to see if it was actually feasible to build the project that we wanted, and eventually closed on that land in January of this year. And it's kind of just been up from then.

Jeremy: Yeah. And I love that. I love hearing Isaac's story. I've had Isaac on my Short Term Rental Pros podcast, but definitely an inspiring story. And it's cool to see people taking action off what they see online.

So Renzo found the land, pitched it to you. What did he think? He had the development experience. He found the land. You had some cash, but did he think that you had something else that you could bring to the table?

Rajan: So at that point, I didn't know how much I could offer besides the money, because he was just so light years ahead of me in terms of knowledge. He had built the whole deal. He was working at a development firm. And he kind of just gave me 50% of the pie. And I don't know, for whatever reason, why he trusted my intuition or whatever.

Jeremy: Did you say, I'm going to do the marketing, I'm going to start telling the story, I'm going to build the brand at that time? Or that hadn't even crossed your mind yet?

Rajan: It literally never even crossed my mind.

Jeremy: Had you done social media prior to that?

Rajan: Yeah. So I was still building up a following through the shoe business. And at the time, I can't even remember correctly, but maybe around the time I had like 20,000, 20 to 25,000 followers. And all of that was a shoe community, nothing related to real estate. I'd made a couple of real estate videos about my investment property that had done pretty well, but pretty much 98% was just about shoes and just documenting my journey to getting to like 15K sales a month on eBay.

Jeremy: So you were building that in public?

Rajan: Yeah, I was building that in public. And I kind of sort of fell into this marketing role almost on accident.

So when we got the land under contract, I don't even think Renzo knew I was going to go make a video. I just went out to our land and I was like, we just got this land under contract for $37,000. And this was, I was making a shoe series and it was like day 50 something. And all of a sudden people see land instead of shoes, what they usually see. And it was like, I just got this land under contract for $37,000. Me and my high school friend have a great vision.

And I kind of just told them Renzo's vision. At this point, I still wasn't super educated. I think this is going to be like a recurring theme. Renzo is like the lead and I'm kind of, he's Batman and I'm kind of just tagging along.

Jeremy: You're learning, but then the audience is learning with you.

Rajan: Exactly.

Jeremy: Which I think is why they buy in, because you're like, yo, I don't really know what we're doing here. We tried to do this, we bought a wood chipper and it turns out we couldn't fit the actual wood in there. Plus that's just really heavy. Yo, so next time you should probably get someone to do it from the start.

Rajan: Yeah. So that first video just...

We tried to do a survey. It didn't work. There's too many stories to count. We spent $500 to save $500 and then ended up having to spend $1,000 extra.

Jeremy: I actually think I know the math. It was a thousand bucks. You could have paid to do it, but then you tried to do it for 500 and then ended up having to pay a thousand plus 500.

Rajan: Exactly. So it was 500 more than we needed.

Jeremy: But your people are learning through your mistakes.

Rajan: It's been pretty crazy. I made that first video and it blew up in Virginia. In Virginia, I don't know the whatever geography statistics, but a lot of people in Virginia were reaching out like...

Jeremy: At UVA.

Rajan: At UVA, in the Northern Virginia area, like, yo, what is this project? And I kind of just pitched them Renzo's idea.

And at that point, I didn't really know if we were even going to close on the land, because we had to come up with a construction loan. We had to finance the deal still. We bought the land in cash, but we still needed to get the debt to actually build the thing. So we didn't really know where we were going with it, but I knew at least that there were going to be eyeballs on it. And I was like, whoa, I don't know why so many people are watching, but I guess it's interesting.

And me and Renzo actually had a conversation, like, should we do this in public or not? The counties are watching. Someone could take this the wrong way. Development isn't seen as the most, it's not looked upon in the greatest light. I feel like a lot of people just think developers are super greedy and they don't care for the environment or whatever they think. And he was like, is this a good move for our brand?

And I was like, I think the world is moving into more of a social media sphere. And I feel like we can only benefit from putting ourselves out there. And I feel like we can make so many connections.

Jeremy: Yeah. What has happened since putting yourself out there?

Rajan: I can't even begin to...

Jeremy: This is where you're supposed to say, yo, we're here. This is the highlight. I'm just kidding.

Rajan: Yeah. Like I'm meeting Jeremy. This is crazy.

Jeremy: All right. Podcast over. That was all I needed.

Rajan: I guess we'll start from the beginning. So we actually found our contractor through Instagram. When we got the land under contract, we studied a bunch of properties in Virginia and one of them was this A-frame property, killer cash cow. Turns out in about five days, the guy that built the property was like, yo, I see your video. This is cool. I actually just started a contracting business. I'd love to come out to the site and see if this could be a potential partnership.

Turns out the guy also went to UVA too. So super young developer, he's killing it. He came out, he actually met my dad. We ended up shopping with three different contractors, seeing who has the best price. But I knew from the jump that I wanted to go with him, because not only has he built what we're doing, but he's also transitioned that into a short-term rental that's killing it. That's exactly what we want to do.

And in this space, all I've seen is if you just find someone that's done what you want to do, and you just tail behind them. That's what I did with Matt. He had eight investment properties himself and I kind of just tagged along with what he knew and just copied exactly what he did and it worked out for me. So I was like, why don't I just do the same thing over there?

Jeremy: Follow the blueprint.

Rajan: Yeah. So eventually we did a bunch of negotiations. We had to hit a certain price point, obviously we can't just have him at any price. And we got him, I think right before we closed on the land. So we got a construction contract with him, took it to the bank, and Renzo really spearheaded the debt financing for us.

So we closed, if I remember correctly, I think we closed on the land in December. And then we got our construction loan in January, but Renzo had been shopping around different banks for about three months. So we're two college kids, we have no W-2 income, and getting a construction loan, it almost seemed impossible. But we had a lot of workarounds, we had co-signers on the loan. We were very fortunate to have some good loan officers and someone that believed in our project, and we were able to eventually close on a construction loan around January.

And ever since then, right now we're almost done with the framing for our first cabin. So the way the land is set up is it's two and a half acres, it's subdivided into four lots. And we're starting by building one unit because we just want to have proof of concept, see if this thing is actually going to work out. And if it does, we operate it for the first couple of months and see if it goes well, then we'll build...

Jeremy: Two, three, four.

Rajan: Exactly. Exactly like the Live Oak Lake model where it's seven units, and just create a brand around it. And our brand is Royal Oak Retreat, because in Front Royal, Virginia, where our property is next to, there's a history of a Royal Oak in Front Royal. So we decided to name it Royal Oak Retreat.

Jeremy: I just thought of Live Oak Lake, Royal Oak Retreat.

Rajan: No, no, no, no.

Jeremy: That's okay. It's okay.

Rajan: No, it's all right.

Jeremy: I mean, it's okay. I see he's commenting on your stuff. You're shouting out, giving credit where it's due.

Rajan: Yeah. So even crazier than that. If we found the contractor that way, pretty much every single big developer in the boutique space in Virginia has hit me up in the DMs. Isaac French himself has hit me up in the DMs. We have some crazy mentors. One guy I want to shout out, his name is Daryl Maxim. He runs Finger Lakes Treehouse up in New York.

He's done a bunch of development and he's been in our corner just mentoring us through the whole thing. I sometimes hop on the phone with these people and I'm like, I feel like I don't even deserve to be on the phone with these people. These are people whose net worth is like eight figures, seven figures. They've done the thing. And yeah, we have a lot of eyeballs on our project, but we haven't made a single dime from the development yet.

Jeremy: Only in the red.

Rajan: Yeah. We're only in the red right now.

Jeremy: Hey, but that's part of it. They've all been in the red too.

Rajan: Yeah. And I guess that's our advantage about being super young.

Rajan: Me and Renzo are both 22. And these older guys are just doing it for free. They're super helpful. The people we hop on phone calls with, and they just, for an hour, for two hours, I feel like this is a consulting call that people would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for. And these people are just doing it out of, I don't know why, but I guess they see something in us that they see in them.

Jeremy: They're buying into the story. And I think people love stories. And you guys obviously have a lot to prove out, but good at storytelling, that's a start. And good at storytelling in a modern way. I've been with you the last day, I could tell, everything needs to be as quick and punchy as humanly possible. No wasted second, no wasted breath.

So you've had mentors reach out. What would have been some other cool things? And also, to peel the onion, why do you think people have been captivated? What have you been doing and why has it worked? At least from a story, we'll see what happens to the house.

I think that you only have 365 days. That's why I tell people, the product, these short-term rentals, and I've got 20, there's 365 days out of the year. It's not like a t-shirt that you can sell an unlimited thousands of. You really just got to fill up your calendar for the highest price possible. But we're not there yet.

What have you done to this point to get mentors to reach out, to build a following? What's been the secret sauce there?

Rajan: I think it's a combination of things. I think mainly it is, obviously, taking on this project. As a college student, I think it was super unique. I personally haven't seen any other college students that are developing property, at least out in the public like we are.

Jeremy: Drinking beers, though.

Rajan: Yeah, I guess. I don't know.

Jeremy: You've sacrificed some beers, right?

Rajan: That last semester, I don't know if I sacrificed a couple of beers. Maybe I sacrificed a couple of videos for beers.

But yeah, I think doing it as a college student, I had a huge college following before I started. And then when I started this real estate thing, the college following just exponentially grew. People were just confused. How are you doing this as a college student? And those were all my hooks. I'm developing a cabin as a college student.

Jeremy: Dang, what do we do now? I'm a recent college grad. How long does that last for?

Rajan: I've been playing with it. I'm like, I'm a 22-year-old building this cabin. I just graduated college building this cabin. You play with the hooks. You test the hook and see what hits. It's literally A-B testing. And then when one hits, you ride it out. I say the same hook until it doesn't work anymore, and then you try again.

Jeremy: So I'm a 28-year-old washed up former someone who can dunk, who can't really dunk very well anymore.

Rajan: Oh my God. Klay Thompson form.

Jeremy: Yeah, but good form.

Rajan: Good form.

Jeremy: Is that the hook? Is that going to stick?

Rajan: I mean, yeah. I mean, who knows?

Jeremy: Seems a little wordy for me. I don't know. Living in New York City in Dumbo, Brooklyn. This is my office hours right now. That's the point of this. I'm trying to learn the hooks.

So you experiment with different hooks, and you realize that you were unique, and you still are unique. Figure out what's unique about you and tell that story, or lead with that. So is that like the first peel the onion back, is what's unique? What's unique about what you're doing, and lead with it?

Rajan: Yeah, exactly that. And I think people love the series aspect to it. So I started a series. My first series was getting to a certain number on eBay sales, and people watch that like a TV show. And then this new series is getting our first cabin built, and people want to see the progress.

And obviously, there's little things that go into it. So I have videos that I record in the lecture hall. We recorded today. You have little things in the background that keeps people's attention.

Jeremy: So funny. It's like you have LeBron highlights in the background.

Rajan: It's whatever brain rot stuff.

Jeremy: It's kind of sad that we have to play the game this way to get people's attention.

Rajan: It is kind of fun though.

Jeremy: It is fun. It's fun to play.

Rajan: Yeah, we're just like, what stupid stuff can we do? It's so fun.

There's some people that can literally just put the camera down and just talk to the camera, and they have such good diction and such good speaking ability. I don't have that. So I got to play around, switch on a different angle every single line, have stuff in the background. When I'm at the site, those videos kill. It's like the cabin in the background. Setting is everything, in my opinion. The first three seconds, what you say and what's in the background, is huge.

But I'm still learning the game. I was on a run of getting 5,000 followers, 7,000 followers every single day. And then those hooks started to die down. So now I need to reinvent, be like, what's the new hook that's going to get me back on that trajectory again? So it's a fun little game. You got to run the highs as you run the lows.

But I've loved every second of it. The last four to five months have been surreal. I can't even believe I quit my job that I was going to go work in Dallas, Texas at J.P. Morgan. And it was a very tough decision for me because I recruited pretty hard for the position. And I was like, no, I want to do this full time. And content is so up and down and cyclical. It's not guaranteed. This construction project is not guaranteed. But I was like, I can't do this when I'm a little bit older. Why not just do it now?

Jeremy: And I think, well, we talked, because there's some other variables that you're dealing with uniquely. Obviously building anything new, you got to get permits. But in your county, it's also a little bit of a process to get a short term rental license. So essentially, you have four lots. You're building one. You're building from scratch. You don't know what's going to happen.

Rajan: Exactly.

Jeremy: But what do you know that's going to happen? You're going to gain experience. You're going to build in public. And there will be people who respect you no matter what. You don't know what they are, but opportunities are going to come. I think one of the opportunities, for example, this weekend, is you're doing a collaboration with someone.

Rajan: Pretty big, yeah. I mean, I'm doing a video with Phoebe Gates. And she just recently launched this pretty big AI startup and just happens to be Bill Gates' daughter too. But she's really making a name for herself. And I'm super excited. Tomorrow, I get 30 minutes. I get to slice in 30 minutes to make a video with her. But I'm super excited because people have different creative eyes. And I want to go in there and see what's her opinion on the way I style videos, because I feel like it's very different then.

Jeremy: She's obviously seen what you're doing, which it is funny. We walk around and you were getting recognized at the gym. One of the guys we played against on the street in front of my building.

And something I joke about with my friends, or not joke, but notice with my friends who do social media, is people have different avatars. Different people who vibe with them, which for you, younger. The first two people we saw, younger males.

Rajan: Yeah. Indian. You can say it.

Jeremy: I don't know.

Rajan: But it is what it is. I'm Indian. I'm proud to be Indian. I have a huge Indian following, American Indian following. And they show so much love. So every time I see an Indian person my age in the Northern Virginia area, there's a pretty high chance they see my videos, and I get stopped a lot.

But I love it. If they are going to take the time out of their day to show me some love, I have to show it back. I'm so grateful for it, because I'm not owed anything. It's so nice.

But yeah, my friend Dylan called and I told him I was with you. And he's like, oh, yo, I've seen his... I've seen he's... he's not Indian.

Jeremy: Yeah, he's not.

Rajan: But Phoebe Gates, she's not Indian. I don't think she is, at least. I'm not going to make any assumptions nowadays.

Jeremy: Oh my God. What are you excited for moving forward? What's in store?

Rajan: It's really just getting this first build out. I'm super excited to start this pre-booking campaign and really see if my style of content is going to actually convert to bookings.

So the way that Live Oak Lake and all these other brands have kind of funneled their audience into direct bookings is they built the audience on Live Oak Lake, like the brand itself. I'm kind of doing it in a different way where I've built our audience under my name, like Rajan Chida. And I'm not exactly sure. A lot of people in the industry say it's going to convert. And yes, I need to convert 365 people, or maybe half of that if it's a two night minimum stay, to get a full calendar. But we won't know for sure until we actually get this calendar out and the money starts coming in.

So my goal in the next couple of months is try to isolate, try to make Royal Oak Retreat its own brand, like its own asset that kind of almost runs without me, without me being the face. And that's going to be a whole nother beast to take on.

There's a lot of people in the boutique short term rental industry, and they film content a certain way. And it's just a bunch of drone footage and high quality footage. And yes, we're going to have some of that. But what I've seen is a lot of that style of content is being cycled out because it's so saturated, and there's so many properties that are just like that and they have the same style of marketing, that I feel like we can bring something different to the industry.

And what I think that's going to be in the form of is putting a face to the property's name. So it's going to be me and Renzo at the forefront. Like, here's who we are. And our mission is, we're making a health focused retreat. And our mission is for people in Washington, D.C., who are living that fast paced city lifestyle. It's time for you to unplug from that and go into the mountains and have a health focused couple of days, rejuvenate.

We're going to have hot tub, sauna, cold plunge. I'm trying to get complimentary health supplements along with people's stays. We want to have a lot more health focused amenities that we could possibly do. I know we were talking about the NormaTec and the red light mask. I think those could be great additions, because like I said, there's so many structures that are like ours, but it's all in the actual guest experience. We're talking about obsessing over the guest experience. How can we make that as unique as possible and really hit that on the marketing? So our marketing is health.

One of my friends actually just texted me. I'm not sure exactly what the number is, but she was saying like health real estate. I don't even know what the term is, but health real estate is projected to grow into almost like billions of dollars in the next couple of years. I don't know what that means, but I think we're in the health real estate industry, and hopefully we can be part of that growth.

Because what I've seen with AI and tech, a lot of my friends are building apps and a lot of them are crushing it, and a lot of people are chronically online nowadays and tech is the huge thing. It's tech, tech, tech. How can we become more efficient with AI? How can we get people to stay on their phones more and more and more?

Jeremy: Yeah. Phones more and more.

Rajan: I think Isaac says this, I'm copying him word for word. He literally says this exact thing and I agree with this thesis a hundred percent. It's people crave real life experiences.

Jeremy: For sure.

Rajan: I think the pendulum is swinging back away from tech, and people are, how can we get away from this? Because people are starting to realize, okay, there are negative effects of being, it's almost a second world, the technology industry. You have real life and then you have the tech world. So I think people are going to crave getting away from that, especially near fast-paced cities like DC. I think we have a real market to crush there.

But like I said, we won't know until we actually launch. Who knows if my audience is actually going to convert. But with a lot of people in the industry giving me a good ear, giving me a good shout, I'm pretty confident that we're going to convert pretty well.

Jeremy: Yeah. And I agree with that. I mean, that I'm going all in on. So I have a similar thesis, just a different way to go about it. And not saying, both ways can be right. And honestly, I think both ways are right.

For me, I do three families in one house. So as much fun as possible together in one weekend. That's really pickleball courts, pools, basketball hoops, movie theaters. But that's very much like large groups together.

On the flip side, you could do intimate wellness retreats. So I showed you a property earlier from my friends who have a property in upstate, which I actually did make a YouTube video here, pretty much where I analyzed their property and was like, yo, this thing's crushing it. And if I was looking to buy in upstate New York, this is how I would do it. But they're caking. And if you look, and I showed you, they're so intentional about their avatar.

And ultimately that's what you can control, is just like, we are so hyper-focused on providing the best possible wellness experience for couples or small groups in the DC Metro. If you do that, and if that group exists, which based off the research that your friend shared, that demographic is only getting bigger and bigger.

The question is, well, I'm curious, is your audience that demographic? And the thing is, if it's not, that's okay. But whose audience is that? If you're going direct marketing, I'm sure there's somebody in DC who was kind of a travel influencer focused on health and wellness. And I'm sure, given you have a profile, you're good at making videos, you can easily do a collab with them. So even if it's not your following, you still have a distribution and platform that can attract the right talent to then hit this avatar.

So only good things. Sure, you don't know, but there's things you're building right now. There's muscles that you're building that, regardless of how you flex them, they can come in handy and pick up the weight of this project.

So let's say you do this, it goes well. You get booked out within three months, you're 60% booked out at the ADR you wanted to hit. What are you doing then? And how many social media followers would be, you're at 300,000 personally. And your Live Oak Retreat is at 25,000. Everything's going well. What do you do then?

Rajan: So me and Renzo have been thinking, we want to build Royal Oak Retreat, maybe almost times 10. So we have two and a half acres right now. We're thinking about 10 to 20 acres, it being lakefront, have a mountain view, if that's possible. We want to build the best property in Virginia. And that's really Renzo's vision. I'm kind of just the guy, I'm kind of along for the ride.

Jeremy: It's Renzo's world. We're just living in it.

Rajan: I truly believe it. His vision. I remember the first time we went to the land and it was literally just dead trees and logs. And Renzo went up there and he was like, I know what this could be. This can be something really special. And I looked at it and I was like, bro, there's not even a lot of vegetation here. How are we going to, what is going to happen here? But for some reason he just had this.

I think the reason our partnership works so well is because I trust him fully on the construction and development side. And on the flip side, he trusts me fully on the marketing and the management side. So he has a vision for a land and he can see how it can be built. And then I like to go onto the site and I will just pump out videos without a script. And he tells me the same thing. He's like, how do you just have a vision to make some of these videos? How do you get some of these ideas? And I'm like, they kind of just pop into my head. I really don't know how it happens, but maybe it's from me chronically doom scrolling and seeing all this other content, and it gives me the inspiration.

But I feel like I've gotten a really good feel on how to make my style of video for the project that we're doing. And it's obviously given us great network, great following. But that's why our partnership works so well. He trusts me to do my thing and I trust him to do his thing. And we have different skillsets too. So it's those two combined that just make us, I think, unstoppable.

So when I see Renzo has 10, 20 acres and he says that this can be something great. And I'm still trying to bridge the gap on the construction side, because he needs to be competent on the marketing side and I need to be competent on the construction side. Because he recently went to Japan on vacation and all of a sudden I have all the construction and this project management style to myself. And I'm in a negotiation for a septic system and he gives me a number and I start to realize, I have no idea. Is this even a good number? Luckily I texted him and he responded, yeah, just take that deal.

Jeremy: How much for the septic?

Rajan: It was 14, five flat.

Jeremy: Yeah, it sounds reasonable. So septic field. Does that include the tank?

Rajan: Yeah, but we need to, it's 14, five and then an extra thousand dollars for the pump.

Jeremy: So you got to go uphill.

Rajan: Yeah. It's like 15, five all in. And we think that's a pretty good deal. We have like a $60,000 allowance for well, septic and electricity, and we've been totally under budget on all three. So that's been pretty good.

But yeah, I think if I can get, I'm never going to get as good as him on the development side, but if I can get 70%, 80%, and he can get 70%, 80% on the marketing side, I don't know if there's anyone that can stop the two of us, because we're fully bought in on this. We just graduated college. We're all in on it. We've been at the site until 8pm, 9pm. We were chipping wood, making videos. I'm super excited for what the future holds.

Even if Royal Oak Retreat, let's say it flops, I think we've built such a good network and we've shown, at the bare minimum, that we can build an audience around a product. I think we're set up pretty nicely.

Jeremy: Beautiful. Well, I'm excited to see your journey. Where can folks follow you?

Rajan: Oh, where can people follow me?

Jeremy: Yeah. Where people want to stay tuned with what you have.

Rajan: We're on day, what day are we in right now? Day 70 something, 76, 75. So, Instagram, chida.rajan. And it's not cheetah like the actual cheetah, C H I D A dot R A J A N. And find our videos that we did and hit them with a like and hit them with a share. And me and Jeremy made some bangers.

Jeremy: We're going to see.

Rajan: Come on. Really good.

Jeremy: Come on, algorithm.

Rajan: Really good stuff. Connecting with you has been so fun. Thank you for hosting this. I don't know why you're taking time out of your day to spend time with me and my roommate over here, but it's been so fun. I've had so much fun here.

Jeremy: Thank you everybody for tuning in, and stay tuned to the next episode of the Short Term Rental Pros podcast. Let's go.