From idea to reality: Slim Geransar’s story

It was November 2021 at 6:30 am, and Slim Geransar was walking his dogs around Brookfield Place, Lower Manhattan, the same route as always when he decided that morning would be the day he made that phone call.

The call ended.

Geransar invested an initial $10,000 in a software company based in Pakistan to help launch his real estate investment website, Rei Litics.

The day carried on as usual. He dropped the dogs off at home, went to the gym, and entered the office. But Geransar's mind was ticking.

"He didn't tell me until he came home that night, which is so unlike him. Normally, we'll talk about things. I think the energy he had, was just that snowball effect of taking a risk. He came home, and he was nervous, but he was so excited," announced his girlfriend of six years, Halie.

“That's the thing with Slim. He can be nervous, but he'll still move forward when he knows it's in the best interest either for himself or for someone that he loves."

Geransar's story illustrates the financial and emotional challenges many entrepreneurs face as they take on one of their biggest challenges: starting a new business. And the question for Geransar, like for so many, is, can you turn a passion into profit? Everyone hopes they can, but only some do.

It was a dark, windy night, weeks after the transaction, when Geransar gave in to the temptation of his phone. His thoughts had stirred him wide awake. Is this whole idea even going to work? Geransar was lying on his stomach, with his left elbow propping him up. His shoulder kissing his cheek. His right hand searching away on his phone, desperately trying to keep the light away from his partner, Halie.

Was all of this worth it? Look, I'll figure it out in the morning. Just get some rest. I'll be fine. Geransar rolled over. Back the other way. And the other way again. Another idea flashed his eyes open. His mind would cede power to his phone once more. It would be a small fact that when you open your phone in the morning, you realise how anxious you were. But you laugh. You know that at that moment, it allowed your mind to rest.

"I like to run through walls. I've gone too far to give up now. I'm too deep to give up without giving it a fair shot. I've already put the money down, and I need to give people time to at least try and play around with the website," Slim said with a smile.

New York State has 2.3 million small businesses, making up 99.8 per cent of state-wide businesses. As of 2022, 4.1 million people are employed by small businesses, representing 48.1 per cent of all employees in New York State. But that only tells part of the story. Only 10-20% of online businesses are a success, with many failing within the first 120 days.

"Persistency. You need to be optimistic because it's not always easy. I also think you have to be a little bit obsessed with what you want to accomplish in terms of solving something because that is what keeps you thriving, even in the difficult moments," said Rosario Casas, Co-Founder and Partner at BC Partners tech, and also a mentor at We NYC, a program that provides mentorship to women entrepreneurs getting started in New York City.

Lack of planning and research and small business failure go hand in hand.

"People realise they need more money than initially perceived," explained Shane Snipes, an associate professor at CUNY and degree coordinator for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

"They start looking for that money, and sometimes that can be discouraging if they have very few connections or find meeting and talking and saying things or refining what they're repeatedly saying a challenge."

"Whenever you're looking at research or trying to clarify an idea, you must figure out who's in the space already. You also need to be thinking about markets and how big the market you're planning to enter is. Will you be going into a market worth $100 million, or will you go into a market worth $100 billion because one will allow you to grow to a lot larger size than another?"

Geransar felt confident that he had set himself on a path to success. Although happily working full time since 2014, running the Amazon account for a company that sells small kitchen appliances to significant retailers, he'd always had a vision about real estate investment and was determined to grow his business on the side.

Geransar spent long days and nights researching in any free moments. He was desperate to find a route to set him aside from the rest and make real estate investment fun and attainable for everyone.

"I have a problem of doing and then thinking. Excitement is the word I'd use to describe why I risk many things. And because I believe in it," Geransar explained.

When the going gets tough, negative thoughts arise: is all this worth it? Geransar takes solace in reminding himself why exactly he's putting himself through all of this stress in the first place.

Geransar has worked hard all his life. Born in Iran in 1982 during the Revolution, his earliest memories are of his mother making noises to shield him from the constant bombing around them. In search of a better life, his family emigrated to Australia when he was six, where he grew up 2 hours north of Sydney.

Although he's never considered himself the entrepreneur type, his curiosity has driven him to create things. At 18, he was a tech-savvy teenager who enjoyed playing video games, which then turned into a desire to build computers for gamers. Soon after, he founded Next Generation Computers.

Although Geransar knew this wasn't his true passion, he had lit the fuse for hard work. He would trail around school halls where there would be fairs selling specific computer parts and take the newly acquired parts home to build the machines.

At age 25, Geransar left Australia for Sweden with his girlfriend at the time. He ended up living in a town of 5000, not speaking the language and having no friends or family there. Finding a job proved difficult, so he started a business where he would create websites and promotional pages. After doing that for a short while, Geransar packed up for the States and got the job he has today.

"I've had some entrepreneurial spirit in me, but not in the sense that some people label themselves on Instagram as being in the entrepreneurial life. It's not such a buzzword to me, to be honest."

"I'd just love to create something for myself and prove to myself I've created something that's helping others."

Geransar has lived in three states: California, Oregon and New York. These experiences told him that the best opportunities to invest in property lay outside these places, in other states. But more important than his experiences, his girlfriend, Halie, talked it through with him.

"When you're new to something, you're very nervous to do things. I told Slim: Babe, it's going to serve you so well if you're able to diversify your portfolio, and then he just took a leap of faith and really trusted in himself," explained Halie.

Geransar decided Indianapolis fit the bill. His research had guided him there: the average home price is $221,019, 51% below the national average. An astonishing 8.7% of properties in Indiana state had vacancies. Slim had done his homework, and this was now the time and the place.

When Geransar saw this single-family home in Indianapolis, it was immediately apparent he'd come across something special. This was the one. This is it—the start of my journey. Slim rang the property manager. They'd gone with another offer.

It was September 1st 2021, at 9:57 am, and Geransar was working at his office in Lower Manhattan when he got a phone call.

The other competing offer fell through, and Geransar had one last shot at the property.

"I'm not going to go a cent higher," Geransar announced, pacing up and down the office floor.

They accepted.

Engulfed in his jubilant thoughts, Slim wanted to text his girlfriend. No, no, no, don't. Just surprise her when you get home, he would continue to say in his head. In the end, he settled on a message. I've got something exciting to tell you.

Geransar's thoughts wavered from his work again. The last few months had been emotionally exhausting for him, with simultaneous feelings of pandemonium and gut-wrenching agony. The quest to buy his first investment property had been far from plain sailing.

But, Geransar's thoughts weren't on himself in a time of great personal success. He'd just taken a drug, and he wanted more of it, and he wanted it for everyone.

How can I help other people have that same feeling? People who had no idea about real estate investing? How can I help people because it's such a significant investment? What if I could create a platform that guided these people through the process? Geransar had sown the seed in his mind for his website.

"After [he'd purchased] that first property, I remember when he came home, and he was so energised and excited. I'm so inspired by that because he was very, very reluctant to make big, bold decisions prior to that," said Halie.

Months of studying books, podcasts, and web articles on real estate in every hiatus he had from his day job showed Geransar one thing: everyone had a different opinion on where to invest. People unfamiliar with the field needed more transparency online to get a start.

These thoughts were realistic, and there was a gap in the market; Slim's research told him so.

"There are competitors out there that are very stale and professional. I want this platform to be like your older brother, that's holding your hand through the investment process, helping people understand how to invest, not just, here's the data, go for it." Looking out the window of his 800-square-foot apartment in Downtown Manhattan, he could see why.

"The biggest challenge in New York City is you can't buy real estate. In the normal world, no one, in reality, can buy an apartment, rent it out and make money from it." Geransar explained.

The passion began to arrive again in his thoughts. What if I could create a platform that objectively looked at the market? I could help people to consume the data, make rational, intelligent decisions, and, more importantly, help them avoid making costly mistakes.

"Investing in real estate has risks and can be complex for most people. So the way he's doing it is a novel approach to simplifying that process, making it easier for people to make the decision that they want and manage their own risk when investing," explained Stephen R. White, founder and managing director of LeanMastery Incubator, a personal business coach to Geransar.

"Other people should feel this same way I do about real estate investment. It shouldn't be just for institutional investors. It should be for everyone, for anyone," Geransar announced.

The language and tone of the website are the features that Geransar hopes will draw people in and help them feel at ease with the often monosyllabic world of investment.

The opportunity for new and old investors in property is only growing.

Although home price growth might slow to 0% in 2023, according to Goldman Sachs, others suggest it is a slightly better investment time than predicted.

The fact is, real estate is a strong form of investment. Even in economic downfalls, real estate is a "physical asset with a constant value" that should be viewed as a "long-term investment opportunity."

As of December 2022, 54.7% more houses were on the market than the previous year. Very often, the best returns are outside of California or New York. Birmingham, Alabama, has the fastest-growing sales price at 24%.

The time is right to give people confidence, but it will take a lot of work.

"I think the concept is well articulated right now; there are some interesting things in his roadmap that could increase the value he's delivering to his end customer," White explained.

Geransar could not stop pressing refresh.

It was January 2023, and his business was beta testing, a period when a small group of the intended audience try out the website before release. Geransar had reached out to a Reddit Community entitled 'Real Estate Technology,' and the first responses to his survey on the website's performance were coming through. He was nervous. Would people like it?

"With the questions I posed in the survey, I didn't write what did you like about this platform? It was more, how did you find this platform? Did it solve any of your problems? Are you willing to pay for the platform? What didn't work as expected?"

What didn't work? Slim wanted this answer more than the rest. Hearing the positives is always flattering for anyone, but he was after results, which meant feedback.

"Everyone's scared of failing. So getting rid of the fear of failure doesn't happen. You realise that failure will occur in many different ways. Then you learn to have the fortitude to say: what did I learn from that," said Snipes, a professor at CUNY, who helps direct a two-year entrepreneurship program.

Geransar asked the testers to rank the amount of data on his website from one to five. One being too little and five being too much. He was desperate for three. His primary initiative with the website was having the right amount of data.

The response was overwhelmingly three. Still, people suggested improvements, and Geransar relished the feedback, as always.

"He [Geransar] has a good sense of what he wants to accomplish. Each week, when we set him what needs to be done, he executes it efficiently. He takes coaching well. And he's very open to iterating through that changes that need to be made, and very open to feedback," says White.

LeanMastery is a platform Geransar has been using to help develop his online business. What separates LeanMastery in Geransar's eyes from other incubators is that it holds him accountable to specific time frames, which is imperative when launching a business on the side, and offers valuable insights into the start-up world.

"I'm making minor adjustments constantly, so it still has that unique, consistent feel. So it's not just the boring, same old stuff,” said Geransar

"I think people will find him very trusting as a founder representing the company. I think early adopters will be buying because they believe he relates to them. In other words, he's building a product that matters to him that he can speak to personally. They're going to like that his knowledge and relatability make them want to lean into the product," explained White, regarding the forecasted success of Geransar's real estate investment website.

While hearing and acknowledging feedback from LeanMastery and surveys, Geransar uses other social media platforms to spread his message and to continue reaffirming his passion before the website launches.

Driving through Oregon, visiting his girlfriend's family, Geransar parked at the side of the road. He pulled out his phone and opened TikTok, and pressed record. Pointing at a house on the corner of the street, he announces: see this property in the corner over here. Had I kept the property, rented it out and sold it now, I would've made an extra $200k. There's so much opportunity to make money with real estate. I love everything about real estate investing. I've been helping many friends and family get into it, and my goal is to help you land your first real estate investment deal.

Pleased with himself, Geransar puts the phone down. It took multiple attempts to get the video right.

Geransar has been using TikTok to share his love of real estate investing for over a month. He uses it as another tool to see who's interested in the space.

"The attention span people have on TikTok is three seconds. If you don't get their attention soon and get straight to the point, it's a mess. When I record something, I blabber on too much, so I rerecord sections and try to be quick and straight to the point."

"I started with TikTok because I thought it's going to reach a younger audience, people eager to get into real estate, but they might not necessarily have the funds."

Geransar hopes to use it as an educational platform but understands it is only sometimes what people want. But, he still has seen positivity from sharing his love of real estate. It's almost a reaffirmation of why he has put a sizeable amount of money into his business.

"I've had very positive comments, saying thanks for sharing, and if someone is willing to hit the follow button, that's validation that I am providing enough content for them to want to see more content from me. That's number one."

The website is still in its testing phase, but with so much positive feedback, the hope is to expect the full launch at the end of June. But according to Halie, to those who know Slim, the launch isn't going to be the moment that unleashes the most pride.

"It's going to be a huge accomplishment. But I think it was taking those initial steps which he had such a sense of pride doing because he'd been so reluctant to do it before. I think that's an even bigger step than the actual launch itself," explained Halie.