Written in Partnership with Amir Bakian
“Fortune favors the brave.”
For Sid Sriram, this was more than a proverb; it was a challenge.
Sriram’s father, who migrated from India to the US with ambition and $50 in his pocket, taught him that the American Dream remains alive for anyone with the courage to pursue it. Ever inspired by this example, Sid would eventually drop his small-but-stable nine-to-five job in data science and go all in with real estate.
Due to the challenges of going into this market with nothing in terms of capital, Sriram leveraged debt to make his initial investment. This, naturally, came with considerable risk, and Sriram shares that he used every dollar he had to move to Miami and start delving into real estate while working a full-time job. The immigrant mentalities of hard work, dedication, and an all-or-nothing confidence helped see Sid through.
Sid Sriram shares one scenario where this make-or-break mindset was tested to its limits:
“One time, a prime investing opportunity opened up while I had already invested prior in two other spots. Basically, my money reserves were at an all-time low and my credit utilization was close to maxed out. The sane advice in that situation would definitely have been to let the opportunity pass and not pick up more debt,” he explains. “But I recognized the strength of the opportunity and ran the numbers over and over for it, and I decided to go against the norm and max out my credit cards and spend every last dime I had on this new property. It ended up paying off over time and I was able to make everything back and more.”
Through what he calls a confident mindset, one that focuses on the things that can go right and the things one can do to make it happen, Sriram was able to grow his business rapidly in just a few months. First focusing on real estate in December 2021, Sriram was able to project a gross income in the six-figure range a month by June 2022, with high margins.
Today, Sid Sriram also focuses on initiatives like courses that he hopes would help others like him approach real estate from a zero-capital angle.
“It’s really my background as an immigrant with less financial opportunities that inspired me to start this course,” he says. “Everyone knows that high-performing investments are generally limited to those who already have money because you need that upstart capital. I think that one of the coolest things I teach is the ability to get started with literally no money to your name by leveraging debt to make your initial investments.”
Sriram’s desire to open his real estate course to as many people as possible is also reflected in its price point, being priced at just $49 in a market where courses can easily go for hundreds to thousands of bucks.
“My goal really with this course is to take that kind of financial opportunity real estate provides and make it accessible to people of all backgrounds, not just those who are born into wealth,” he says. “As someone who has gone through all of it, I wanted to take the opportunity to share what I’ve learned to anyone who wants to learn and at an accessible price point.”
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