The Entrepreneurial Wealth Building Spirit of Austin Zelan Riding the Waves of Crypto and Cars

Bud Evans:
0:02

In this episode of the Aim High Podcast, I'm speaking with Austin Zellin. Austin is a serial entrepreneur who's diversified his investment portfolio beyond real estate into areas like Bitcoin mining, exotic car rentals and private jet charters. Austin shares his journey from exploring various career paths in college to becoming a successful investor by leveraging different opportunities and learning from his failures. He emphasizes the importance of taking risks, diversifying investments and surrounding himself with the successful people to accelerate his growth. Austin's story is a testament to building a robust financial position and avoiding the return to corporate life. He showcases the significance of strategic investment and entrepreneurship where we provide real estate investors with the tools to achieve generational wealth. This is the Aim High Podcast, episode 73. Hello everyone and welcome to the Aim High Podcast. I'm your host, bud Evans, and today I am here with Austin Zellin. Austin, we're going to take this in a different direction. Normally, we're a real estate podcast, but I want to show people what they can do and how you actually wound up in real estate, because it's quite an impressive story.

Austin Zelan:
1:03

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to share it. Real estate is definitely a big part of my portfolio, but I also didn't start there, so I'm happy to share that journey and when it started to make sense for me finally.

Bud Evans:
1:14

Yeah, if you wouldn't mind just running me through like where you started, because you're a big deal.

Austin Zelan:
1:21

Thanks, man, Thank you. So I kind of tried everything. Honestly, I found that I was talented at several different things at once, and so even back in college I didn't really know where I wanted to take it. At first I wanted to be a doctor, then I wanted to be a therapist and I wanted to be that. But eventually I settled on okay, let me get a general business degree and see what I can do with that Now, at the same time I found out that there was a program in my university that I could just take night classes, meaning my whole day was free.

Austin Zelan:
1:48

So I was like okay, why don't I start doing something? I actually started out doing like some network marketing for a very brief amount of time, but that experience got me a marketing job at a startup, Warned to have the startup for a little bit and used that experience to get into Microsoft. Now, this whole time I was also investing on the side, so I was day trading and doing different things to make money outside of my job, and eventually that really took off, especially once I launched my trading software. That was like my first business move. Now, because I was making more money outside of Microsoft, I was able to leave that and focus fully on my investments.

Austin Zelan:
2:25

But I came to a realization pretty quickly that if I made one mistake or something got changed, like regulations changed or something got banned or removed from the US, or we were like if anything changed, really I would be only one step away from going back to Microsoft or going back to some corporate job, and that scared me so bad. I was like, oh man, I should probably diversify a little bit. I should probably diversify a little bit and build like a little hedge around myself or something to protect me from having to go back to corporate. And I really saw it visually as like I was in this investor status and I was building a financial moat around myself to protect myself from having to leave this place that I like to be.

Austin Zelan:
3:05

So I started investing into literally anything that I could find that made even the slightest sense and that started with like oil wells and Bitcoin miners, mine, some other coins down in Arizona and different places of the US. I started a bunch of online stores Walmart, Amazon, Shopify, Facebook marketplace, all of them. So I did just a little bit of real estate at that point. And also we went into like exotic car rentals and private jet charters and just anything that made sense and over time some of them dropped off because they just didn't work. But I've built this portfolio now of stuff that has worked and that has allowed me to stay as a full-time investor and now I really see the value in real estate as a long-term play for myself. So I needed to quickly replace the income at the beginning so I was focused on more high-risk stuff, but as far as long-term value, it's very hard to compete with real estate.

Bud Evans:
4:06

Also, I have to say there are a lot of flippers, a lot of wholesalers, that get into real estate, but very rarely will you ever find a billionaire wholesaler or flipper. For the most part, you have to have buy and hold assets. So I'm more curious about what brought you down the line, because the amount of experience that you had before you ever thought about getting into real estate is opposite exactly what I teach, which is jumping to real estate, get a bunch of stuff going on and then pull yourself out of the game, replace yourself in the business and then move on to other things. How did that work out for you with the Bitcoin mining and the airplanes and the exotic cars? Tell me how you started each one of those businesses up, if you don't mind.

Austin Zelan:
4:49

Yeah for sure. So for me, I was in a position where I had just left my job, so I didn't have a W2 to buy real estate and try and use that as income. So I really had to buy it as an investor and that meant 20% down minimum. So in order for me to buy something decent, at least in the places that I was looking, I had to come up with at least 100,000, 150,000. So I didn't really want to start off my investment journey doing something like this. Now I knew about wholesaling and flipping and stuff like that. Flipping does take some cash. Maybe there are some ways to do it with little cash, but for the most part it does take a lot of money, even if you make mistakes, which I probably would have as my first time, I would have needed more money. So my option was like, okay, I can wholesale, and I think I actually even took a course on wholesaling because I understand the process. But it just didn't really click with me. So what I did was I used that money to invest into as many different things instead of all-in on one thing, because my logic was if I really want the best chance of success, I don't want to go all-in on one thing and hope it works out. I would rather separate that investment amount into five or 10 different investments and if just one or two of them work out, as long as the wins are much bigger than the potential losses, I would still be on top and I would also learn which investments work. So next time I could just double down on those things.

Austin Zelan:
6:15

It first started out with Bitcoin mining. It went really well actually. That was like way back in the day, that was before, even like the pandemic and everything. We were mining Bitcoin, the oil wells, same thing also back then. I would say some of the more successful investments were the exotic cars in the planes. But to get started in those, I had the choice between putting $20,000 down on a Lamborghini and renting it for $1,500 a day, or potentially putting down $100,000, $150,000 on a house and maybe making a few thousand dollars a month. So it was the cash on cash return made a lot more sense with something like exotic cars.

Austin Zelan:
6:52

Yes, it's high risk, yes, you have things that could happen to it, but if I wanted to initially build up some capital and then buy real estate with it, I had to go that route and I was willing to take the risk. I was very young and luckily it worked out. But then I started working out or working into more like larger scale investments, so I started buying equity in some companies. I started buying equity in planes.

Austin Zelan:
7:17

What we do with the airplanes is a fractional ownership model, so we bring together investors 50, 100k each. You really, to get like a really beginner jet, you only need about a million dollars down. So you put a million dollars down, you could have 10 investors at 100K each and they would each own approximately 10% of it. It would be a four to $5 million jet. They put a million down, we get a finance and they're doing maybe like 250 to $400,000 a year net. So it's a great return. And on top of that, you're still paying off the asset every month because we're servicing the debt.

Austin Zelan:
7:55

And it does actually get more interesting than that where, once the plane is paid off, we could sell it. Now we have 5 million cash and we can put that as a 20% down payment on a $25 million jet. So everybody that was in the first one gets grandfathered into the next one. Now, instead of owning 10% of a $5 million jet, you own 10% of a $25 million jet. So the math really works out, especially in a long term model, and I like the similarities between private jets and real estate because it is a physical asset. You don't have some crazy teenagers driving your car like you do with exotic cars, it's professional pilots. Everything is covered by insurance Most of the time. We're buying them once they've depreciated to a certain point. That way they're not really depreciating much more after that. The one benefit you have over jets with real estate is that it tends to appreciate overall. But we have had that happen with jets if they're in high demand and we have a model that people like they do appreciate for sure.

Bud Evans:
8:54

Right. How did you raise the capital in order to buy it? Did you use your personal funds or did you go out and find corporate sponsors or private money?

Austin Zelan:
9:04

So we just partnered up with people. We did like a JV, so we had a couple people come together, we all put the money down and we financed it.

Bud Evans:
9:12

There's a lot of maintenance that comes along with that. Obviously, you factored all that in. So what was your actual ROI on your first jet?

Austin Zelan:
9:20

The first one was around 30% a year, so that one it didn't have a ton of maintenance, but we do set aside money for maintenance every month. We have basically two things securing us from potential huge maintenance costs. Number one is every hour that the plane flies we set aside some money for general maintenance costs. Whether we use it or not. It's set aside Now it builds up when we actually do need something. It's applied towards the maintenance. Then, secondly, we have like engine overhaul reserves. Maybe you know what that is, but basically every 4,000 hours or so the plane, the engines have to be rebuilt and so we set aside money again every single hour, because we have engine programs on them, we set aside money to overhaul those engines and then, when that time comes, we never have to do a capital call or anything like that, and we've actually been profitable every single month with every single jet, so we've never lost money.

Bud Evans:
10:15

Outstanding model. I love the fact that I get to talk to you simply because you're a serial entrepreneur and have been. So let's talk about the exotic cars, because I'm sure that there are a lot of people who are sitting there going. I don't know how profitable that is, but a couple of things. First, it's got to be, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. Second, you get to try some really cool autumn veals for every once in a while.

Austin Zelan:
10:40

Yeah, definitely. So one caveat that I would say with this is you have to make sure that you've got everything really solid and buttoned up, because there are operators out there that are shady and they will do stuff. They've even done stuff that has screwed me. A car gets given to somebody who didn't sign the waiver or didn't provide proof of insurance or something like that, and eventually it comes back to you and you have to pay whatever if the car gets crashed. So that is one negative aspect of it. Now the second thing is you have to have insurance coverage yourself on the car. If you do, you're protected for the most part. Thirdly, it's best if you just buy the car cash, because if you don't have any stipulations with the financing company, it can't get taken away, because I've seen some crazy stuff happen in this industry and a lot of guys they're just leasing cars and then releasing them through a rental company. So the operator makes a huge difference, making sure that they're doing everything properly and that you're protecting yourself on your side as well. But the math does work out really nicely. As an example, it's not like a prediction or projection or anything, but the ballpark figures that I use is I can buy a Lambo like the last Lambo that I bought I put 20K down on. So if I put 20K down, my monthly payment is $20K I think, 4500 on it, something like that so 45 hundred dollars a month. That thing rents for 1800 bucks a day it's a Eurus. So if I rented for 10 days a month, which is only a third of the month, I'm making 18 thousand dollars. Now I'm gonna have a 50 50 split with the operator usually. Sometimes they'll do 60, 40, 70, 30 depending. And Even if I just keep half, I made nine thousand dollars. I paid my 4500 for the car. I get to drive the car for 20 days of the month and I pocketed another 4500 Right. So even if I was just breaking even every month, it would still make sense because I'm making my car payments and after a certain amount of time that car is gonna be paid off.

Austin Zelan:
12:45

And Again, we're buying these cars at a certain point in the depreciation curve where they're not going down much further. So if I bought the car for I think that one I bought for 250,000 or something it's not gonna go down much further I could probably sell it in a year or two for 220 230, because you have something very unique that happens with exotic cars as opposed to luxury cars my BMW in the last two years it's like half it's worse right now and just plummeted in value because it's a luxury car and those are the people that are really getting screwed in the whole depreciation inflation thing like. But exotic car owners a lot of times they hold their value and there's proof of that. If you go and look at like car websites where you can buy cars, if you look at cars that are in good condition, something like a Lamborghini Huracan for example, you'll see they depreciate from about 300,000 to maybe 200,000 or so 220 and then they don't really go down past that. It's Once it settles at that 200k. The demand is so high below 200k that as soon as it dips below and somebody just picks it up, it's just unheard of to buy one below that value.

Austin Zelan:
13:56

So my logic is if I can find one that's already around that value Is in good condition or decent condition and the amount of wear that I'm gonna put on it and miles that I'm gonna put on it Isn't gonna significantly change that I could probably sell it for right around what I bought it. So if I can Use that money coming in. I'm just breaking even from the rentals and paying off the car. At the end of the day I'm gonna have $200,000 in my little piggy bank called a Lambo and once I sell it I'll have that in cash. So of course I haven't had Many months where I break even if it's like really slow or rainy or snowy or whatever. It does get a little slower. But for the most part, if you have a good operator, you should be doing at least 10k a month. 15k a month. We've had months where 20 25k a month is not unusual.

Bud Evans:
14:47

Yeah, we're not talking toro here, so what kind of operator are you talking about?

Austin Zelan:
14:52

So just be an exotic car rental place. There are many of them. Many of them are not good, but as part of what I do is now I educate people on how to do this. So I have, like my list of trusted vendors that I work with All over the country and actually we've started our own exotic car rental company as well, because we were unhappy with some things with other vendors and people have the choice now if they want to work with that vendor. Some people love them, some people don't, so we gave people another option and we have locations now, actually in New York and we're launching Scottsdale in Tampa right now. So the idea is people can franchise from us, use our model, work like we have a way to get them cars and then they're able to rent out other people's cars. Or, if they just want to be participant, they could buy their car and then give it to one of our operators and it'll be run within our organization Awesome.

Bud Evans:
15:47

Yeah now. So we've gone through a couple of different ventures that you've gotten into that have been profitable and successful. Give me an example of something that you've done, because One of the best experiences I've ever had have been the ventures that failed miserably, mm-hmm. So what is something that you could provide from your history that Shows other people that you know what? Yeah, you make mistakes too.

Austin Zelan:
16:10

Oh, yeah, definitely, I've made a lot of mistakes. Actually, somebody asked me the other day I was speaking at an event and they're like, how come you're 27 years old but you have as much experience as a 72 year old? And I was like, what's cuz? I made as many mistakes as a 72 year old. I've definitely made more mistakes than Wins, but they did teach me a lot and I would say, every single one of my online stores.

Austin Zelan:
16:33

First of all miserable failure, like every, and they're pretty expensive. You'll pay 50k to get a store set up and Somebody will set up an online store and source products and run it for you, but I haven't had any success with that at all whatsoever. I've had some failures with the exotic cars, again working with an operator who didn't check all the boxes, and I've I've had some losses there that happened. I've had some stuff happen with Airbnb arbitrage. For the most part, it was good, but I did do some arbitrage where it just didn't pan out as expected, or one recently we just got kicked out of because the HOA Told us that we're not allowed to Airbnb there, even though the owner said we could, and it was just like this whole thing, right. But yeah, a lot of interesting things are happening in this space and I'm trying to think of some more like big failures.

Austin Zelan:
17:31

I would say, yeah, the biggest ones were definitely the online stores and, of course, with any investment, if you're too risky with it, you risk losing. So I would just say for people who are maybe considering different investments just use that strategy that I gave. Split it up into multiple investments, because you never know which one is going to work out. It doesn't matter how good the numbers are, it doesn't matter how good everything pans out Like. You have to diversify into different things, find something that works and then double down on that thing, because if you just do one by one, your first three, four, five investments could be failures. I think you'll never invest again. And luckily I was able to invest into a bunch at the same time, so I saw the winners at the same time as I saw the losers, so I wasn't discouraged.

Bud Evans:
18:58

If you're not failing, you're not learning right. So having those couple that really kick in the butt really keeps you moving forward.

Austin Zelan:
19:07

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and it's always a valuable lesson. And sometimes it's not obvious, you got to dig for it a little bit. But once you learn the lesson in that investment, you can apply it to your whole portfolio. And that's the type of stuff I would say. Failures are actually more valuable than wins, because you get to benefit from that failure for the rest of your life, as opposed to a win. Okay, I picked the right investment and I made a bunch of money one year. And now what? Okay, I have to find another investment. But with the loss, you learn something that's going to guide you for the rest of your life.

Bud Evans:
19:41

Right, Great point. Now let's roll into. Now you've got all these successful companies. What are you investing in, specifically in the real estate industry?

Austin Zelan:
19:52

For the most part. Right now I own companies that do real estate, so for me that's the most interesting, and my whole portfolio has shifted into acquisition and mergers and stuff like that, because I've realized that I don't like as much as I like being a CEO. I also don't like it, so it's not for me. I would like to be the strategic owner and come from that perspective, and so I buy into companies that are doing real estate. Right now.

Austin Zelan:
20:25

One of my favorite projects is a company up in New York. It's actually the same guy that we did the Exotic Car Rentals franchise with, so we set that up. But he also has a big real estate development project. So we're doing like ultra-luxury cabins in the Poconos, I think Somewhere up there in those mountains in New York. That's closer. Yeah, maybe it's Poconos, we're back out, right, yeah, anyways, it's up there somewhere.

Austin Zelan:
20:50

So we're building like ultra-luxury cabins, like multi-million-dollar cabins for people that are coming from the city Manhattan it's like a thing a three or four-hour drive and they can stay in a super nice cabin. So that's one development. We also have a big development in Birmingham, alabama, and yeah, so I like to be a part of those projects, but I don't really want to be involved too much, so I just invest. I own equity in this overall company that owns all these other projects. So that's my biggest involvement in real estate right now. And then, of course, I have my personal rentals and stuff like that A little bit of Airbnb arbitrage, just like two properties. But other than that, I have my houses that I own and I rent out.

Bud Evans:
21:34

Listen, I had you on and I thank you when I'm done. Yet we've got the questions and, all but seriously, I wanted to show. The reason that I actually asked you to be on was what a serial entrepreneur can do and how you can develop other businesses and still find your way into this industry and create a position where you have assets that are appreciating. I'm going to ask you what is one thing that you learned as your wealth increased?

Austin Zelan:
22:05

I'd say, one big thing that I learned is that you have to always think bigger as your wealth increases. And what I mean by that is sometimes we get comfortable with one type of investment. Like I could have 100 exotic cars right now, or I could have come to the realization which I did is that why don't I just invest into something that's a little bit less accessible to people? First of all, there's going to be less competition there, but second of all, if I can manage to figure that out, I can make money at a larger scale.

Austin Zelan:
22:32

So that went from exotic cars to jets and now businesses, and so that was the transition for me and it also levels up your circle. So I was in a certain community, if you will, of investors, entrepreneurs, when I was investing into exotic cars or when I started investing into jets, and that, like, really opened a lot of doors because people are like, oh, now you're playing at this level. And then, after jets, I went into businesses and they're like, oh, now you're playing at this level and people will just reach out to me like you get new business opportunities. And it might seem a little scary to make that jump because you're comfortable with that smaller thing, but the larger thing opens, the bigger doors.

Bud Evans:
23:09

Completely understandable. That's awesome, man. Thank you very much for putting that out there, but let's go on to the serving, for these are the same four questions that may help someone who is just starting out achieve new heights. So what is the thing that keeps you motivated?

Austin Zelan:
23:25

For me, I have certain financial goals, but I'm also involved with several nonprofits when we do like leadership, education and youth development and stuff like that. I'll work with John Maxwell and his leadership programs and stuff. So for me, that's what I'm really passionate about and I want to set my businesses up in a way where I can be super involved with all those things. I can travel with them. We've traveled internationally with John and I have some stuff here locally that I work on in Seattle and I'd love to dedicate the majority of my time to that, which I do. I dedicate a lot of time there right now, but I think if I can set up my businesses in a way where I have somebody managing my whole portfolio and I have minimal involvement, I could do a lot more things over here.

Bud Evans:
24:11

It's funny, isn't it? You're like I'm going to work towards this and then, when I get there, it's okay, I can stop. No, I can't. I got to do something, you continue on.

Austin Zelan:
24:20

Definitely All right.

Bud Evans:
24:23

What is one thing that you learned that completely changed your mindset?

Austin Zelan:
24:27

I learned the impact of having the right people around you and sometimes the thing is it's very deceiving.

Austin Zelan:
24:35

I know like I've heard it a million times like your circle is your whatever.

Austin Zelan:
24:39

Like if you are surrounded with five million areas, you'll be the sixth one, all that stuff I've heard it a million times. But I came to a real realization of that within the last like year or two, because I thought I was surrounding myself with successful people but I really wasn't and they were like mildly successful but I didn't realize like it has a huge impact just because of the frame of mind that they think through problems with. So if you're faced with a problem and you're worth one or two million, you're going to think about it differently than somebody who was worth a hundred million. And just being able to see how those people think like I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to be around people like that just to learn a little bit about their thought process and if I can figure out their problem solving process, I can solve my problems in the same way that they do and that means I will get to where they're at much faster and that's accelerated me in business more than anything.

Bud Evans:
25:30

And network is your net worth and the other five people you hang around with. I got you and that's right now that. What tools do you use to keep yourself on track?

Austin Zelan:
25:41

For me, it's just sticking to a schedule. Really, I don't like to get super high tech because sometimes I see them as a crutch oh no, my app didn't work today, I'm behind schedule. No, the way I see it is, I have I use like time blocking and I'm I try to be as efficient as I possibly can with my time and I have certain times of the day set aside for certain things and I don't deviate from that and that keeps me on track more than anything. And then it's just like learning how to pivot very quickly. If you can learn how to pivot from one thing to the next very quickly, you'll be on time and you'll get things done.

Bud Evans:
26:19

Awesome, Austin. If you had to start all over again, what's one thing you would change?

Austin Zelan:
26:27

I would just take more risk, because I think that I was so scared of going back to corporate that I took things a little bit conservatively and although I did diversify into many things, I think if I did, if I just doubled every investment that I had, I would be in a much better position than I am right now.

Bud Evans:
26:45

All right, Austin. If somebody wanted to reach out to you, how would they do that?

Austin Zelan:
26:50

The best way is through Instagram. It's at Austin's Ellen A-U-S-T-I-N-Z-E-L-A-N. I post most of my stuff there. It's a lifestyle page, but you'll see some business sprinkled in here and there, but the real reason that I'm building my business is to have the lifestyle that can support the nonprofit projects and all the things that I'm doing there. So that's what you'll see there.

Bud Evans:
27:13

Fantastic, all right, austin's Ellen, thank you very much for being on. I appreciate your time.

Austin Zelan:
27:19

Awesome. Thank you All right.