Four years ago, Ricci Mandal’s life was at a low ebb. The former DJ and his partner were living in rented accommodation with barely two pennies to rub together after a failed business venture. Then Ricci’s sister paid for him to join the Property Investors Academy. Now the pair have bought a £1.1m house and are earning tens of thousands of pounds a month, thanks to his property exploits and her business interests. Ricci has also been able to retire his parents and fulfil his sister’s dream of living by a beach.
‘Do whatever it takes’
When Ricci took his first steps towards achieving a better life for himself and his partner, Perrie Sian, he reached out to Samuel Leeds on Facebook.
He remembers his message as clearly as if it was yesterday. “I said, ‘Samuel, I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for sharing all your videos and advice. I’m looking at getting started in property and looking for events local to me. Any beginning tips would be useful. Thanks.’
Ricci was taken aback when Samuel not only responded personally but within 15 minutes. The Property Investors founder gets contacted all the time and so the reply was brief.
“All he put was, ‘Stop looking for events near you and do whatever it takes.’ I thought he’d been quite direct, so I thought I’d be direct too and I sent him a picture. It was a booking confirmation of a free programme and I just put see you there.”
It cost him £1 to enrol on the event which was the Property Investors Crash Course. He brought his whole family along too, including his sisters. One of them invested in him to become a member of the academy as Ricci couldn’t afford the fee.
From that point on, his fortunes changed dramatically, he says. “Within a week of the advanced training I got my first rent-to-rent deal. That made £800 a month. I’ve got a second one which made £1,600.”
Suddenly, from being out of work and then being rejected as a delivery driver because he had no transport, he was financially free. His definition of that is simple.
“Financial freedom is when your recurring income is equal or greater than your living expenses. I’ve done it myself and seen hundreds of others do it. You can quickly cover your living expenses.”
The trigger for Ricci wanting to do something different with his life came after he left his job as a DJ.
“I went home one day, and it just felt a bit uncomfortable. I looked over at my dad and he was looking for jobs. He’d just retired, and I thought I want to do something to help.”
His mother had also recently had open heart surgery which he describes as a last-minute shock. Seeing her in hospital with tubes on her face strengthened his resolve.
“I didn’t want her to come out of this and to worry about money.”
He alighted on property as the vehicle for enrichment and went all out to achieve that aim, with the support of his family.
Persistence finally gave Ricci his breakthrough. He made 161 calls to agents to secure his first rent-to-rent before finally being given a ‘yes.’
Perrie recalls how he would make his calls from Costa as they didn’t have an office. She would drop him off and he would buy a coffee to last him the whole day. She was encouraged by his resilience.
“As soon as he got his first one and set it up, after that it was like clockwork. He was so confident.”
The deal that got him started was on two luxury apartments in Milton Keynes which he wrapped up in the same day.
The agreement was that the landlord would receive a guaranteed monthly rent and Ricci would also take over the maintenance of the properties. In return, he would be allowed to rent out the accommodation at a profit.
Having already earned £5,000 from passing on two deals in the same apartment block to investors, the fledgling entrepreneur then went on to scale up a deal sourcing business.
‘I said to my parents you don’t have to work any more’
Ricci has enjoyed phenomenal success in his new-found career which has not only benefited him and his partner Perrie but their respective families too, he says.
“After about a year of being on the training, not only did I help myself, I managed to say to my dad you don’t have to work any more. We retired my dad. Same with my mum and Perrie’s mum. Recently we said to my sister you don’t have to work any more as well.”
After seeing Ricci dominating with rent-to-rents and deal sourcing, his guru Samuel invited him to share his story at one of his programmes. That became a pattern with Ricci returning as a volunteer to inspire others to follow in his footsteps.
Perrie is successful in her own right, working in fashion and selling beauty products. It makes their average day extremely busy, she says.
“I’ve just turned 30. Ricci’s coming up to 30. We’re both in the peak of our careers separately and together. Ricci loves being with the guys at Property Investors and giving back by mentoring people.
“I have multiple businesses going on. I primarily work from home, but I have a very regimented schedule.
“I have my own fashion collection with a really successful fashion brand, so I get stuck into the designing. The other side of it is I create content, showing people how to style clothes through reels.”
She has around 500,000 followers on Instagram and is on the go ‘24/7,’ even thinking about new content ideas when she goes to bed at night to give value to her audience.
They are competitive with each other, she admits. “I’ll hear Ricci sell a few deals and so I’ll be like now I need to get on my game and make enough commissions today to match him and that’s just healthy.”
At the same time, they enjoy talking about what each other is doing. “When Ricci is with Samuel and his team doing what he loves, he’s not on his phone. We can’t be texting all the time. That’s the best thing ever because when he comes home, he tells me about all the successes the students are having, or this person just started and they’re already financially free and I love hearing it.”
When they do spend time together, it’s quality time, adds Ricci. Last month (August 2022) Ricci and Perrie bought their dream home for £1.1m and are now refurbishing it to a high standard.
They have also repaid Ricci’s sister by buying a beach house in Brighton for £560,000. She will live there for six months of the year, providing her with a holiday home. The rest of the time during the winter they will rent it out.
Ricci says they managed to make the accommodation profitable straight away by having someone ready to go in before they completed the sale.
It is a remarkable turnaround for a couple who met through a mutual friend in a nightclub where Ricci was working as a DJ. At the time Perrie had just started out in her networking career after giving up her job.
The couple subsequently moved abroad with their business but were forced to return to the UK in 2018 when it failed.
“I had a tax bill coming up which needed to be paid. We sold every piece of furniture that we had in the house we lived in when we were abroad. All of that cash we created got us home, paid the tax bill and our first month’s deposit on a house we were renting. Then he came to the [Property Investors] event and everything changed from there,” says Perrie.
Ricci believes the environment of the academy helped him to make the switch from having no money to progressing as a businessman.
“It pushes you on and other people want to see you win – to pull you up and say you can do this.”
He also found satisfaction in helping other students. “When I got invited to that first programme, I remember meeting someone who was in a similar situation.
“Fast forward a few weeks and their situation had changed. That gave me fulfilment. [I thought] this is what I need to be doing now, showing other people this is possible and helping them to do the same.”
Perrie is also grateful to Samuel and his team of coaches. “If Ricci hadn’t gone on the academy, I don’t know what we would have done. Now it’s paid for itself hundreds of times over.”
Before her partner found success in property, she remembers standing in the kitchen of their modest rented home wondering how they were going to afford the next month’s rent. But leadership, she says, is built in the dip.
‘I had to make it work’
As the youngest of three, Ricci knew he had to make it work in property because his sister had backed him, and that meant putting in the effort.
“We do work hard but we live life on our terms,” he points out. And they are reaping the rewards in all sorts of ways. When one of Perrie’s sisters had to cancel a holiday to Crete because she needed to spend the money instead on buying a new car, they stepped in. Perrie and Ricci had booked a break and are now taking all of them away in October.
“They’re going to find out at the airport where they’re going. That exact thing is what money does for me. Yes, it’s great. You can buy what you want. We haven’t got kids yet. For us family is everything. We love to give back to our family,” explains Perrie.
Ricci is still amazed by how his life has changed. “A few years ago, I used to be in the room with Samuel at the training and he’d come over and help me. I’d be sat there thinking, there he is Samuel Leeds, and now I spend so much time with him and his family. It’s crazy how far we’ve come.”
After initially giving his services as a speaker for free, he is now paid by Samuel to talk about his journey in property and has partnered with him on the training side.
Ricci and Perrie’s target now is to buy at least two more properties by the end of the year. Ricci is also ‘hooked’ on Samuel Leeds’ mission to help people become successful in property.
“I’ve been through his process and training and hundreds of others have. It’s a proven process that works as long as you take the action. My personal goal is to keep on helping as many people as I can to change their lives.”
Ricci tips
- Don’t tell people what you’re going to do. Show them and then pull them up when you’ve done it.
- Be decisive. Say this is what I am going to do, and nothing is going to stop me.
- If you want to get started in business, don’t over think it but do look at the best, most likely and worst-case scenarios.
Perrie’s tips
- If you want to make a change you have to get up and do it now – not next week, or in a month or a year that turns into ten years and you’ve never done anything.
- When you’re successful it’s important to always celebrate those wins whether they’re big or small.
- Having the right people around you is vital to success. If you don’t aspire to be that person, don’t take advice from them.
Samuel Leeds’ verdict
“Ricci and Perrie started basically from nothing. Now they are property millionaires, making tens of thousands of pounds a month. Now we’re doing deals together as well. What they’ve achieved is huge.”
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