Lincoln: Good to have you here with me today.

JC: Thanks for the opportunity, man. Excited to be here at FunLunch and hanging out with you.

Lincoln: Yeah, good to have you. I mean, tell me about your business. Let's start there.

JC: Yeah, so my business has evolved over time, but it really started, like I was telling you before, by a dream of having a beach apartment. I thought that would have been really cool. And at that time, I was studying hospitality. So I went to hotel school to learn how to, you know, manage food and beverage operations and hotels. And at that time, my side job was teaching kite surfing on the beach, which for people that don't know it, it's a sport where you hook onto a big kite on the beach and you become like superhuman. You can jump 30 feet in the air. You can go at 25 miles an hour. It's crazy. So I was one of the first hundred people in the world to learn how to kite surf. And I was like 12 years old. I would always look up to these beach apartments. And like I was saying, my dream was, man, if one day I could make enough money to buy one, that would be the coolest thing. And that's kind of where it started.

Lincoln: And so now you have what, 30?

JC: We have about 30 properties. It's a combination of a lot of them are beach apartments. Um, all of them have million dollar ocean views. That's kind of like what I've been focusing on and we have anywhere from studios to one bedrooms, two bedrooms, three bedrooms. Now we started expanding to much larger houses. We have a house that's nine bedrooms on the beach. We have, A waterfront house that has a 100-foot dock in front of it, where you can wake up after you brush your teeth, open the sliding door, and go jet skiing one minute later. And we have a 6,500-square-foot penthouse on the beach that is all designed with like an Italian look and feel. So when you walk in, even though you're in Puerto Rico, you feel like you're in Italy. So I started transitioning into owning assets that are with a high barrier to entry for other people, which is kind of where I see the business kind of going for short-term rentals. And it's taking me in a really interesting path that I'm excited about.

Lincoln: So are you just primarily like, are you doing boutique hotels at all? Or is it just primarily like a single family residences that you're renting out?

JC: Yeah. So I, I, I tell you what I don't like, right? I don't get excited about cookie cutter hotels.

Lincoln: That to me is like a. So like a Marriott chain or you don't want to, you don't want to touch that.

JC: No, I'm a lifestyle guy. Like I've been on the beach. I worked on the beach for a long time. I like to live on my own terms, travel the world, do all these things. I think it's smart to design and to own real estate that you're excited about. When people tell me about multifamily, I think it's a great investment. It just doesn't get my juices flowing. When people tell me about even Airbnbs, I want to know what's unique about it. So I'm always searching for something that I would pay a lot of money to stay at, or at least pay a good amount of money to have value. So my combination right now, I have a portfolio of properties where the core mission statement of my company, it's a place on the beach for everyone. And it really started as, you know, like my family couldn't afford to like stay on the beach or even own a beach apartment. And the properties that I went after were properties that had million dollar ocean views, but that the price to rent it for the weekend was that like a family like mine could pay. obviously that that's still the core of my business so you can kind of see it almost like a class B multifamily where you know the working class can go and stay but I also have a good chunk of my portfolio that's diversified in more like this luxury assets so you could stay with my company for like $90 a night all the way to almost $1,600 a night

Lincoln: Oh, wow. Do you see any part of that spectrum performing better than the other? Or like, I don't know, where's your sweet spot?

JC: Yeah, that's interesting. It depends on the season. So you'd be surprised. Sometimes I've thought about, oh, maybe I should just focus on this like luxury properties. Yeah. But what's surprising is that, you know, it's like, Best way I see it is like when you go to a grocery store, right? You want to have options, right? You don't want to just have the Coca-Cola or the bottle of water or like the Red Bull. You want to have options. So what happens is the same customer can actually stay in a studio because they're traveling solo. Then they're like, oh, I really like Puerto Rico and this company really treated me really well, so now I'm gonna bring my family. And then what else do you guys have? So I can basically have that customer live inside my ecosystem and just buy from me because I have all the options. So depending on the season, the studios and the one bedrooms will carry the entire company. because something's happening where that kind of traveler is traveling more. And then sometimes the big properties like right now, the big properties are carrying the business. Right. And and that's really interesting. So having the combination is the way to go.

Lincoln: So in Puerto Rico, you know, I think I've been there once. I just stopped on a cruise ship, but I don't think I've spent a lot of time there. Is that I mean, do you get a lot of cyclicality in the weather like is there a rainy season where you're not getting as many visitors or is it sunshine and rainbows all year round?

JC: Yeah, our season is, best way to look at it is, you have to think of like, think of a ski resort, right? Something like this, right? They're not all the time busy, right? They have a season where they have snow and they have to capitalize on that. So for us, the season is between December and then all the way through August. So September, October, November happens to be bad. It's like not the best. So we run a like 50 to 60 percent occupancy on those months. During the rest of the year, we have a very unique thing about Puerto Rico, which is we have two high seasons with like a middle season in the middle that it makes it unique. So when you look at a market such as, I want to say, let's say Calgary, right, where we live. So Calgary has a high season, which is summertime, it's the high season, and then winter's actually kind of like a low season. In Puerto Rico, we happen to have two high seasons, which is what I got really excited about once I kind of bumped into it, because I started looking to expand into other markets, and they don't have this. So this is one of the reasons why Puerto Rico will beat places like Florida, as an example. And you would think like, why is that? We have two high seasons. When in the U.S., in the tropical markets of the U.S., it's December and January and February, it is still a little bit chilly. So it's still not fully tropical for someone that's coming to escape the cold. And that's where Puerto Rico really shines because we have the whole six, seven months. It's pretty cool.

Lincoln: Gotcha. So where did you get the money to start buying these properties? Did you raise it from LPs? Did you just use your own money? How did you go out and get into this business in the first place?

JC: I was teaching kitesurfing, man. I saved a lot of money teaching kitesurfing. Kitesurfing is like a one-on-one coaching. An hourly rate for teaching kitesurfing is $125 an hour. And my courses were three hours long. And I got so busy that one day I woke up and I have 13 instructors working for me. And my margin was 80%. So I had a lot of margin and I just made a lot of money. I saved about $100,000 in about, I want to say five years. And I just, you know, started investing. The way I started investing was not the typical way. I started going after leases instead of purchases. And I really bumped into the strategy. I didn't actually mastermind it.

Lincoln: You know, it was more like… You fell upon it.

JC: I fell upon it, and then I just started, you know, investing that $100,000 into leases, leasing properties, with permission to sub-rent them or sub-lease them as a short-term rental. So the arbitrage was finding a property that I could pay $900 to $1,000 a month, but that the nightly rate would be like $200. So with like five to seven days, I would cover my rent, my obligations, and then the rest would be profit. I kind of use the same model that I have with my kite surfing business, and I'd apply to this with my own money, essentially.

Lincoln: Gotcha. And then you started purchasing the properties outright rather than subleasing, or do you still just sublease?

JC: So no, I subleased everything at first. And then after a while, I started kind of playing with numbers and I wonder, what if I just bought one of these? Like the one that I really think it's good. And it came out of necessity because when you're leasing properties, you're really at somebody else's mercy, right? And I started educating more. I was like, oh, I think I need to own something. So I owned one, I fixed that up, I refinanced and I took $151,000 of proceeds. And I was like, wow, what just happened? I wonder how many more times can I do that? And then I just started, basically, I rolled that money into another purchase and another purchase. Then I started learning how to do creative deals. And that's really where I think the secret is. Like, if you can be really creative with real estate, yeah, real estate is not… Give me an example. So I'll give an example somebody looks at this and says, okay, how can I get started in real estate with very little money? Okay, so Most people would think I have to go to the bank to get the money to buy a property I don't care if it's a hundred thousand dollar property or two million dollar property or even ten million dollar property So what I did is I said, instead of going to buy the property at right, I'm going to go and lease the property. And the reason is because a lot of people go after volume. I didn't really care about volume. I cared about the best of the best, right? The best view, the best location, and typically those properties are expensive. So I figured if I can position myself to be the first runner up so that when that property comes for sale I have the option to buy it and I have built a relationship with the owner where they understand that I'm very interested in having the shot to buy it. then at least I don't have to compete, and competition is not what you want. So I've been able to put myself in positions to buy properties, and because I've been able to develop great relationships with the condos, the owners, then I can start telling them about my creative solution, which is, hey, why don't you seller finance the property to me? Why don't we roll over some of that rental towards the purchase? Why don't I keep paying you the same that I've been paying you, uh, you know, in a seller finance situation, but you also take some money, uh, upon the purchase and I remove all the responsibilities and owner. So now you went from being a landlord to being a bank and you've seen how big banks are. Yeah. Right. So, and then I, I would also communicate, Hey, you're selling me the property for 250,000, but by the time this is all said and done, you really sell the property for 500,000. So when you learn all these things and you start communicating with the right person in the right position, you can make a lot of money with very few properties. And that's one of the main examples. I've done a lot of stuff.

Lincoln: So I love it. Sorry.

JC: What's the name of your firm? My company's Capital Jet Set.

Lincoln: Capital jet set. Yes. So what is it? What does the future look like for capital jet set? What is the next five ten years? Look like for you.

JC: Yeah, I think that the market is evolving right now and you know when people think of short-term rentals I think as of this podcast a lot of people are You know, you're looking at what's happening in the United States with regulation and even it's happening in Puerto Rico and when you think of short-term rental, I think one of the Many things that come into your mind, it's like, okay, am I going to get regulated? And I've gotten regulated myself as of like last week in one of our properties, right? So the way it's going to evolve is that we're going to not focus so much on leasing properties, and we're going to be very picky in the properties that we manage. So right now, we are focusing on properties that if we're going to lease them, we're leasing them from owners that are very hands-off, out-of-state, where we can have at least a 40% margin. If we're gonna manage a property, the property has to generate over $150,000 of gross revenue a year, and it has to be a unique property with an out-of-state owner as well. And the reason for that is because we're mitigating the risk of regulation. So what that means is when we're leasing property, we actually have a clause in our contract that says, if regulations kick in, we're no longer tied to that contract.

Lincoln: Oh, interesting.

JC: Which is pretty cool, right? And we negotiate that upfront. We have a lot of little clauses like that. And if somebody wants to look at our contract, I'm happy to provide it to your audience. It's a one to two payer, very simple. But right now it's going to get us out of a lease because of regulation. The way we're moving into the next five to 10 years, which I'm really excited about, is to get into the hotel market, but not in the cookie cutter hotel, more in the lifestyle boutique hotel. And there's a lot of reasons for that. One of them is because I think the Delta or the Alpha, in the hospitality business that you cannot really do on a lot of other types of real estate assets is to get a really high rate for a nightly stay, right? And what you don't want is you don't want to be compared. You want to be so unique that there's like a one-year wait to stay at your hotel. And that's all I think about, right? So as we're moving forward, I'm already thinking, I have to go boutique, I have to go lifestyle. I'm going to leverage my experience with kite surfing and all that tourism background that I have, because I was doing an experienced business before, and I was getting paid a lot for it per hour. and I'm gonna implement that into the boutique hotel so that when you go out there and you say, hey, I wanna go to Puerto Rico, I could stay at the Hilton, I could stay at all these hotels, or I can stay at this really cool hotel where I'm gonna meet artists, yoga instructors, kite surfing instructors, I'm gonna go and do snorkeling tours, we're gonna do like barista, coffee, and you're gonna pay more for that because it's gonna be hard to get into that hotel. And that's the great position in where I can find cheap assets that I can buy creatively or a very low entry point. And through the experience, I can take $150 a night room and I can charge $500. I could charge $1,000 a night. Just to put in perspective, are you familiar with the Amman hotels?

Lincoln: I've heard of them, but I haven't stayed in them.

JC: Yeah, so an Amman hotel is like a 20 to 25 room hotel that rents for $1,500 to $5,000 a night. So they only have 20 to 25 rooms and they get to charge this much because it's experience exclusive and the rooms, when it sells as a real estate asset, the last Amman sold for $2,000 a key. No, sorry two million dollars a key.

Lincoln: Oh, yeah. Okay.

JC: I was gonna say Yeah, it's sold for two million dollars a key So when you look at that, you're like, okay, there's something here, right? You can really pull levers in this hospitality assets to make like really tremendous returns

Lincoln: Yeah. Do you ever worry about, so are you planning on just staying in the Puerto Rican area? Are you going to expand into other areas? Just outside looking in, it's almost like I would be worrying about self-sabotage, right? The more properties you build, You know, you're kind of pulling them away from your other your other assets. Yeah. And what do you get? How do you think about that?

JC: Well, I think about it this way right now. If you want to buy a condo in Puerto Rico or anywhere, you can do it. You don't need me for that. You can just go there and do it. The problem with that is it doesn't generate the alpha, right? It just generates like a. Very low return. And you really need to find a property manager. As wages are going up, the property management costs are going up. So the owner's really not making that much money. So what's happening is a lot of people are hesitant, especially out of state, to invest because they're investing in the strategy we were doing 10 years ago, which doesn't generate the returns anymore. So, for me, I look at it more as like, I know that's not generating yield anymore, because I can see it every day. And I see now how the customers really want unique spaces that are larger. And just to give some really good nuggets, if you're going to invest in a short-term rental, you want to go and buy a house or a condo that has four bedrooms at the minimum, ideally five, and up, because at that point you can pretty much charge whatever you want. And you don't need that many stays in order to make some really good returns. And I'll give you an example. We have a property that's nine bedrooms, and in the month of December of this year, it is vacant 80% of the days. Yeah, this property is going to make about $31,000. It's just one house in one month. Wow. And it cost us, our costs on that house are about $5,000. We bought it creatively. It was an operating property. So you just bought a business.

Lincoln: So you can have a 20% occupancy rate and still make money. Incredible returns. I mean, it's 6x you know, turn on investment on that market.

JC: Yeah, typically the high-end market, when you think of the San Regis hotels, when you think of the Amman hotels, they're not necessarily running at 90% occupancy. In fact, you don't want to run a 90% occupancy. Yeah. Because if you do, you're not really attracting the right customer and you're not charging the right amount. So the San Regis like to run at 50%, 60%. occupancy. They don't want to be full. It doesn't feel right if it's full and your rate would be really low. So I think that's where it's evolving. The one thing that's really important to say is that Puerto Rico has the best incentives for hospitality. And we can go into that if you want.

Lincoln: I'd love to. OK, I'd love to. Well, there's there's tens of hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars flowing into Puerto Rico for tax reasonings. I'm sure that is a benefit to maybe international LPs, but I mean, talk to me about how you think about that side of your business.

JC: Yeah, so one of the things you mentioned is like, hey, are you worried that you're gonna oversaturate the market with product or supply? And what happened is what's surprising is Puerto Rico competes with the Dominican Republic and with Mexico because you have a choice of where you can travel. You hop on the same plane. The airplane does the work and it takes you somewhere, right? And you wanna be warm and you wanna be in a beautiful beach. It happens to be that Puerto Rico is the only one out of those three that's a United States territory. So what that means is that you're not required to have a passport. And you and I travel and we're like, oh, passport's not a big deal. But you would be shocked. The working class of America doesn't necessarily have passports. So for them to go on the tropical destination holidays, they would have to go get a passport, and that's really cumbersome. So in Puerto Rico, you just go with your driver's license, and you can hop on a cheap Spirit flight, Southwest, 100 bucks, 150 bucks from the East Coast of the United States, and be in Puerto Rico from Miami, two hours, New York, four hours. So a couple movies, and you're in Puerto Rico. And if you're in the cold states, you escape the cold in four hours, with no password for cheap, it's a tough proposition to say no to, right? So what happened is, but because we are a U.S. territory, our costs for labor are much more similar to the U.S. in comparison to the Dominican Republic. So as an example, it's not the same, but in Puerto Rico, minimum wage right now is about $8.50, which is very low, but nobody gets paid $8.50. Now we're at $12 an hour. Some people are getting paid $15 an hour in Puerto Rico. And we're in Dominican Republic. Somebody will make like 30 bucks a day, right, for labor. So that is our competition. So what happened is, and the reason I'm saying that is because on one side, Puerto Rico has labor is more expensive. But it has this advantage of proximity to the U.S., the relation with the U.S., the no passport, cheap flights. But Dominican and Mexico have like 50,000 rooms, where Puerto Rico only has like 15,000 rooms. So we are under supplied like crazy. So what happened is the government decided, how do we make it so attractive that it would be a no-brainer to develop more supply, right? So it's kind of like, if you've seen Alex Hermosi's book, The $100 Million Offer, he says, make an offer so great that you'd be stupid not to take it, okay? So the government sat down and they said, let's make an incentive law that is so significant that you're basically stupid not to do it. So what they did is they said, okay, if you take the risk on Puerto Rico, considering the wages are higher, and then we're competing with Dominican and Mexico, we will give you a tax credit of 40%, so 4-0, 40% of your total investment, including the first year of operations, So, I'll give you an example. Right now, there's a hard rock coming into Puerto Rico. It's going to be a $500 million investment. And by the way, there is no cap on this. So, if you go and build a hotel, whether it be a $1 million hotel to a $500 million hard rock, the government's going to issue you a piece of paper that's worth 40% of the total investment. So, they're going to get a $200 plus million tax credit. which is going to lower their cost basis, you know, to 60 cents on the dollar. What? And that's tax free. Right. So now you're like, OK, where else can I find that? And then you go in the market. You're like, well, nobody else has that. OK. You're like, I'll do it just for that. And they're like, no, no, it's still not enough. Let me give you some more. You're like, really?

Lincoln: What else is there? Selling me on Puerto Rico here, man.

JC: So and there's a way those tax credits come. So if you're wondering, how does that work? So the way it doesn't work is that if you bring in a proposal, they're not just going to write you a tax credit. You have to see it through. And you actually get the first third after the first year of operations. So they'll issue the piece of paper. Imagine they cut it in three pieces, right? The first third goes in month 13 after you open. The second piece comes in the month 27. after you opened and the last one comes in the month 30 something, right? Does that make sense? Yeah. And that way you see the product through because they want you to keep operating. But that's not enough. They said this offer is good, but it's not stupid good. So what they did is they said, What if we created an ongoing benefit? And the ongoing benefit, they said, hey, what if we bless that entity with a preferential tax rate of 4%? Okay, so typically corporate tax rate in Puerto Rico starts at 18.5% and it can go up to 25 to 30%. So when people think Puerto Rico is a tax haven, it is, but for certain things. It's not for anything, right? So that's why you really want to study this incentive law, because it's like they want rooms. They want, you know, solar. They want a lot of these things. So the 4% corporate tax rate, what it does is it makes your EBITDA, your profit, a lot larger, which makes your assets a lot more valuable, right? Because now you're not paying all this money in taxes. You're saving a lot of money in the corporate tax rate. But that's not enough. That's still not good enough. So what they said is that, hey, since you're buying these old properties, these locations that you have to create value, we're gonna discount property tax by 75%. So property tax is a huge one, especially in real estate. So we only pay 25% of what it would be in the US, but that's still not enough.

Lincoln: And are these grandfathered in or like for just right now for the time being until they Or is there a term date on these laws? I'm going to get there. OK.

JC: That's the punchline. OK. So 75% on taxes and property tax, 50% discount or exemption on municipality fees and construction fees, which is a big one. And tax distributions, LPs would love this. Tax distributions are tax-free. So what that means is if you're getting a 10% IRR or a 15% IRR or 20% IRR, there's no tax on that money. And that's huge because I don't know which any other investment.

Lincoln: On my K-1, it won't come through as ordinary income?

JC: Yeah, no. So the way it works, this is really important, the way it works is that The government of Puerto Rico wants investment to stay in Puerto Rico and they'll say as long as the money is utilized and it stays in Puerto Rico, whether it be a Puerto Rico entity that an LP can create, so if you're an American citizen, and you want to create an entity, you should create a Puerto Rico LLC, which you can do over a website. It takes a few minutes. You loan money to that entity, which is going to be a hospitality entity, okay? So now you're in the hospitality business. So now when you have ordinary business expenses and you know this stuff better than me, there's some things that you can write off through that entity. Any money that that entity gets is tax-free. The moment you flow that money to wherever you flow it, if it's Switzerland, Germany, Venezuela, or United States, then your local government will tax it, right? So, it is tax-free as long as it stays within Puerto Rico. My suggestion is to consult with your CPA on how you can utilize that entity as part of your hospitality strategy. But guys, that's not enough. He said, this benefit will last for 15 years and it can be extended for another 15 years. So, what I just explained will last for 15 years and yeah.

Lincoln: Wow. That is incredible. Are these laws new or when do these come out?

JC: They've been around for about five years. The thing is that the word is sort of out, but it's not really, a lot of people are, the early adopters really cashed in, and now people are coming in now, and you have to pay a little bit more for assets, but yeah, if you go to Puerto Rico and I show you around, it'll surprise you that the law is still going for the next 10 years, and it'll last for another 15 to 30 years to whomever buys assets So what I'm telling people is there's a window right now and you need to look at Puerto Rico because you can own a piece of Puerto Rico and you should own a piece of a hotel in Puerto Rico. There's no question about it. The lifestyle play, the cash flow play, the appreciation play, it's awesome.

Lincoln: I love it. I love it. All right, we've talked a lot about real estate. JC, just tell me about your personal life. I'd love to hear more about you.

JC: Yeah, so I was raised from a lower middle class family. My mom's family was farmers, coffee, cattle. My dad's family was a small mom and pop insurance company in a countryside of Puerto Rico. They got together, I'm the youngest of four kids, and maybe an oops. But I've always been very entrepreneurial. I remember as a kid, we had this, my parents gathered a little bit of money and we rented this house in an island. So one of the things that we do as Puerto Ricans is when we, and a lot of people do this, when they cannot travel to other countries, they travel within the country. So we would hop on a ferry and go to another one of the, Puerto Rico has over a hundred islands, which a lot of people don't realize. So we would hop into another islands. I remember my parents rented this house after saving a bunch of money for like a trip. And when we went there, we did this race back from the beach to the house on a bicycle. My dad said, hey, if you, whomever makes it first out of my four siblings will make $5. And I was like, what? And I was like, I don't know, five or six. And dude, I made it to the house like hours before everybody else, okay? I was so fast. So then fast forward, I always loved food. And I was actually a little chubby as a kid. I always loved eating. I was the kid that was opening the fridge and telling mom, hey, we gotta go shopping, you know? And that drove me into getting into a home economics class, because I figured that it's all girls, and I'm the only guy here. Man, if anything, I just get to hang out with a bunch of girls. This is awesome. So I got into this home ec class, because I love food so much, and I actually thought I was gonna become a chef, believe it or not. But while I was in that home ec class, I learned how to make a lot of things, and one of them was a carrot cake. And this carrot cake was fantastic.

Lincoln: I don't know if you love carrot cake. I love carrot cake. Carrot cake's great.

JC: So I make the best in the world. And I've been advertising it forever. So when I launch it, you guys gotta buy it. But I come home from making this carrot cake, I tell my mother, who's been extremely instrumental in my growth, because she's been empowering it for like forever. And I said, mom, you gotta try this carrot cake, it's awesome. So she tries it, she's like, hey, you know, you should sell this door to door. And I was 12 years old and I was like, oh, but how do I buy the ingredients? She's like, oh, I will fund it. So she was my seed capital, if you will. So she funds the ingredients. I think it costs us in ingredients like $20 or something like that. I make 20 cakes. And I'm like, how much am I gonna sell them for? My mom's like, just put $20. And this is in 19, I don't know, 97, 20 bucks was like maybe 50 bucks now. I go to door to door as a 12 year old and I sell out of these cakes in like a Saturday. And I have $400 in my pocket. And I'm like, what just happened? I'm like, mom, this is the best thing in my life. Let's do it again. Let's go buy some more ingredients. You put the money and I go sell them and I made money. She's like, well, That's not how it works. The way it works now, you take some of that money and you go buy the ingredients yourself. And I was like, oh, that sucks.

Lincoln: What a good mom. That is a good mom right there.

JC: So then I started doing that, started making some money. Then I started washing cars in my neighborhood and selling carrot cakes. Then I bumped into learning how to kite surf, like I had mentioned before. And I really sucked at surfing, boogie boarding, basketball. I sucked at so many sports. I was a really good baseball player. But in kite surfing I was a natural. Typically it takes about 10 hours to learn how to kite surf. It took me 15 minutes of explanation. With a sport that was like in its inception. So then I read a book called The Four Hour Work Week. It changed my life. Tim Ferriss changed my life. He said that if you create a muse or a business that can fund your lifestyle, you are basically financially free. And at that time, I didn't have any expenses. The other cool thing that my mom did is she told me, hey, from that money that you're making with the karaoke business, if you save a dollar, I will match it with another dollar. And my mom, by the way, my mom was, raising four kids, my dad was jumping out of a bunch of jobs. My mom was making basically most of the money in the family. And for her to do that was a lot, but she wanted to incentivize me to save money, which I think it's extremely important. It's like right now, people don't understand the importance of having like a safe, like savings, right? People talk about, oh, you shouldn't invest anything, you shouldn't save anything. I disagree, I think you need to have some savings. At least it makes me go to sleep at night a lot better. So dude, my mom matched me a dollar, so I took her all the way to $1,000. And then she's like, done. You're gonna break my bank. But it really helped me save money, which fast forward is how I saved $100,000 from my kite surfing school to start my Airbnb business, right? What happened is as we transitioned into this kitesurfing world and the book, I was like, well, if I could make this kitesurfing business fund my lifestyle where I neutralize my costs, then I can travel the world, which is what turns out a lot of my kite surfing students were rich people, a lot of fund managers, a lot of business owners that had no time, and they would come and learn from me and my school, and they couldn't believe it. They're like, you get to do this for a living and make money, and by the way, you only work seven months out of the year because that's where the season was, and then you travel for five months, How much money do you have? And I'm like, you'd be shocked. I don't have that much money. I just don't have, I don't have costs. So then I realized that you can actually live like the new rich, which is what he talks about in the book. The new rich is not the one that has possessions and whatever. It's more the person that can really do whatever they want and can travel. So I found myself traveling to exotic places like Mauritius Island, snow kiting in Utah, snow kiting in Alaska, winning snow kiting competitions. So I did a lot of really cool stuff. And I remember at that time, I was thinking, man, this is not really my potential, right? This is just a stage in my life, which I think is also really important. that life is stages, right? And it's sequence. So for me, I was very conscious at that time that I wanted to do more, but this was an opportunity that I had at that time. It's like a basketball player, right? Do you do basketball when you're 40, or do you just do it between 20 and 35, like as an NBA player, where you're in your prime, and then you go do business later on, right? So I chose that path, forever grateful for having done that. But then doing little things in the meantime to position myself so I could get into the game, which was real estate. Because when I was 12 years old, my mother took me to a real estate conference. Believe it or not, Donald Trump had a conference in Puerto Rico on how to invest in real estate. No way. He wasn't there himself. He sent some people out there. But I learned all the strategies on how to do real estate. And I don't know, this is one of the beautiful things about kids. They think everything's possible. I was there looking at it. I'm like, this is easy. I can do that. If that guy Donald Trump can do it, I think I can do it. So I started kind of like learning real estate. So I've been learning real estate since I was 12 years old. Love it. So I have what, 25 years of learning so many strategies. So now I'm implementing a lot of that stuff that I learned. Another really cool thing, I got to go back to that hotel last year. where Dina Jetty was, Pace Morby, Jerry Norton, a lot of the big real estate guys that are in the education space and creating communities. I was there with them and I happened to be the first speaker at that event. which was a really like kind of like an emotional moment that it was such a full circle moment that I went to that same hotel when I was 12. I saw these guys speaking. And then fast forward now, I was the one speaking and telling people about Puerto Rico tax incentives, hospitality, Airbnbs, lifestyle investing. And it was really cool. But at the same time, I think that, yeah, for me, the biggest thing about me is like who's Juan Carlos is somebody that's I want to say it's charismatic, excited, curious as hell, thirsty for knowledge. Really, I'm in the pursuit of my potential. I'm also in the pursuit of adding as much value to as much people as possible. I'm willing to try things that are extreme, such as flying through mountains. and or buying a $10 million hotel. Yeah. And I know that for any of those things, it's all possible as long as you prepare and you have a really good team and you bring that excitement to other people, because at the end of the day, people want to be part of something. And I want to, you know, create that. So.

Lincoln: Love it. What advice would you have for somebody who's, you know, just starting out in this industry or are thinking about getting involved?

JC: Yeah, I think try to be unique. Try to find something that excites you. and really follow it. Because, you know, even for me in the last few years, I've started to think about, oh, maybe I should diversify into doing this. Maybe I should diversify into doing that. But I realized that I'm really an expert in one thing. And I should just focus on that because I generate much better returns on that. And it excites me, gets me up in the morning. I get excited to go into design meetings. I get excited about picking marble for a hotel. I get excited about listening to other people that are like pursuing what I'm pursuing because I understand it and it's not that much work. So to me, like the other day I was in Old San Juan. I was inside a 500 year old building, right? And I'm walking through it, and I remember the guy that took me there, he's like, dude, you're gonna do this on like a Sunday? Like, you work on Sundays? And I'm like, it's not work, bro. Like, I can't even believe I'm getting paid for this, right? So I would say that, and just be unique, have fun with it, not like, you know, don't take yourself too seriously. Like for me, I'm trying to like think more that way. Just really find people around you that are excited about this movement. I think this movement, a lot of the big companies and the institutional companies are seeing a lot of value. And there's a really big opportunities for people that want to create these spaces. and the returns can be astronomic because it just requires an artist to come up with this. So that's really what I'm doing is I'm trying to gather myself around as many artists as possible, musicians and like, because that's really where you generate the returns. If not, you should just invest in a REIT, invest in a multifamily and call it a day, you know? So just follow that and I think you'll be okay.

Lincoln: What, you know, on the personal side, like what habits do you have that you feel like have attributed to your success, either personal or business?

JC: I think that for me, I have a thirst for, I'm always thirsty for knowledge. I feel like I don't know anything still, so I'm always watching a podcast, I'm always reading a book, I'm always trying to learn something from you, and I'm trying to go ahead and implement it as quickly as possible. to see if it actually works. So if you and I have a conversation and you tell me this is what I do, like just by being here in the studio, I'm already thinking, OK, how can I implement what I learned so I can see how I can really help my business, my partners, et cetera. So my superpower is definitely like I'm going to continue learning as much as possible to become an expert so that I'm getting prepared so that when my day comes, I'm not intimidated by the opportunity. I am prepared for the opportunity. so I can really tackle it on. So, I want to say that whatever it is that you want to do, if you pursue it and you just educate yourself, surround yourself with people that are like-minded, and you just always put yourself almost like a student, and then implementing stuff, because I think going to events is awesome, having conversations, amazing, but education without implementation, I think it's insanity, right? And for me, that's a big one.

Lincoln: I love that. Tony Robbins says something similar. He says, knowledge without execution is useless. But what did you say? Say it again. I love that so much. I think it's better.

JC: I basically said, education without implementation is insanity.

Lincoln: Yeah, I like that one better. I think it's better. It's the same message, but I think you topped it. Yeah. Well, that's incredible. Any sort of pet peeves that you have in business or in just life?

JC: One of the things that I it's a pet peeve for me is that I need to I can't stand still I don't know if this is a pet peeve or not, but I can't stay in one place Yeah, like if you tell me where do you live? I'm like I live in a hotel or I live in one of my properties and I live in many places because I need to go on like experience, right?

Lincoln: Well, because you actually, where would you say your primary residence is? It's in Canada, isn't it?

JC: Everybody asks me the same question, and I say, I don't know. You don't know. You know, it's funny. When I started my business, I had to move from one apartment to the other. So the way it worked was really interesting. One of my kite surfing students told me, hey, why don't we get an apartment together? And that was my first property. We leased it and after two months, he had to move out. And then I've always been like a life hacker. And I was like, oh man, I don't want to pay for this property, even though I'm making money. So he said, you should check out this website called Airbnb. This was three years after Airbnb launched in 2012. I listed the apartment that I was in, that I thought it was very cool, but I didn't know how great it was. And I got so many bookings that I became homeless. through booking. So I got so much business, I had to pack my suitcase, move out. And what's funny is I was so hungry for growth and trying things that I was willing to live out of a suitcase. I was willing to live like no one else so that then I could live like no one else later on, right? And today, I still live out of a suitcase, even though I have almost a $17 million portfolio. I think that's going to go up to like $21 million in a matter of a couple months. And I still live in a suitcase because I've always thought I want all these properties to pay for themselves. I want them to pay for my lifestyle. And I'm never going to change that. So I never want to say, hey, I have a residence in one place because I need for this business to work. I need to be mobile. I need to have experiences. And what's funny enough is that I've been following a lot of people that I look up to, and they're like that. You know, they are traveling, like, I'll give you an example, the Rio, if you've ever heard of a Rio hotel, so a Rio is R-I-U, it's a family business that has 110 hotels around the world, and the owner still travels, every three days he's on a plane, checking on his hotel properties. So I can see kind of a lot of similarities, and I don't wanna have just one residence, I wanna just be everywhere.

Lincoln: I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming in today and sharing your story and jumping into the weeds there with me. Really appreciate your time and awesome conversation.

JC: Thank you very much. Yeah. If anybody wants to know more about what we've got going on, you can find me on Instagram or under that J.C. Morales or I'm on YouTube under J.C. Morales as well. If we reach out, I'm open book, tell you all about what's going on, then maybe we can do some deals together.

Lincoln: Love it. Love it. All right, man. Thanks for the opportunity.

null: Yeah.