WS1251: Syndication of Short-Term Rental Development with Alex Jarbo

Short-term rentals have gained momentum especially since people are starting to travel again after the lockdowns caused by the pandemic were lifted. In this episode, we hear a very interesting take on syndication, specifically syndicating short-term rental projects. Alex Jarbo shares his unique short-term rental development strategy.

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Alex details how they are raising money for his short-term rental projects and how this business model can help short-term rental entrepreneurs to scale fast. He also details the importance of having a mentor, doing research, and building your team. Tune in now and learn more about this new take on syndication!

Key Points From This Episode:   

  • Alex talks about his background serving the Marines and how he got into real estate investing.
  • Alex shares that his first real estate property investment was a ground-up development.
  • Why does Alex choose short-term rentals and not long-term rentals like multifamily?
  • How did Alex scale his short-term rental business?
  • Short-term rentals are properties that offer experience in themselves.
  • How did a mentor help Alex to drive his business forward?
  • Alex details the short-term rental projects he is syndicating.
  • The challenges that Alex faced in the last twelve months.
  • Alex’s predictions in the real estate market over the next six to twelve months.
  • How does Alex prepare for a downturn?
  • Alex’s best source for meeting new investors right now.
  • The daily habits that helped Alex achieve success.
  • Ales shares that doing magic tricks is a unique ability that he finds useful in his real estate journey. 
  • How does Alex like to give back?

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“Everyone is gravitating towards short-term rentals right now because a lot of the cap rates are compressed right now.” [0:03:40]

“When I look at my goals and where I wanted to be at that time, the way to fast track that is through short-term rentals. I think that’s why a lot of people gravitated towards that in the last three years because they realized how many short-term rentals can actually make.” [0:04:59]

“I say Instagram-able properties is what you want. People are excited to stay in your house, it is not just a place where they are sleeping. The property is an experience in itself, outside of the city that they’re visiting.” [0:08:09]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Alex Jarbo on LinkedIn

Alex Jarbo on YouTube

Sargon Investments website

The Miracle Morning

About Alex Jarbo

Alex Jarbo is a short-term rental developer and manager. He was born and raised in Detroit Michigan. He served in the Marine Corps for 4 ½ years where he was stationed in Washington DC apart of the Marine Corps Honor Guard. He left the Marine Corps at 22 years old to pursue his career as a real estate professional. He is the founder and CEO of Sargon Investments and he has a goal of developing 650 cabins in the next 3 years. Alex holds an MBA with a concentration in Real Estate Development and is currently finishing a Doctorate in Business with a concentration in Leadership. He is the host of the YouTube Channel Alex Builds where he teaches the ins and out of short-term development and management.

Full Transcript

EPISODE 1251

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00

Alex Jarbo (AJ): When I look at my goals and where I wanted to be at that time, the way to fast track that is through short-term rentals. I think that’s why a lot of people gravitated towards that in the last three years because they realized how many short-term rentals can actually make.

0:00:13

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today. our guest has a syndication model that I don’t think we’ve talked about on the show before. His name is Alex Jarbo, he’s a short-term rental developer and manager. And while we don’t go into a ton about short-term rentals today, we do talk about how he got into this development business, but how you got into syndicating short-term rentals and developing them as well. I think it’s pretty cool to bit business model how he scaled the short-term rental model that so many people are gravitating towards right now. He’s a founder of Sargon Investments. He has a goal of developing 650 cabins in the next three years. Alex holds an MBA with a concentration in Real Estate Development and is currently finishing a Doctorate in Business with a concentration in Leadership. 

So, Alex goes through how he got to where he’s at but it’s really cool, you know, military background. He loves the cash flow from shot-term rentals but he wanted to do much bigger than most and he’s doing it. So, it’s really a cool story. I know you’re gonna learn a lot and be encouraged.

[INTERVIEW]

0:01:20

WS: Alex, welcome to the show. You are one of the very few short-term rental people I’ve had on the show who are actually syndicating short-term rental projects and developing, I would consider pretty large, you know, short-term rental properties. I think it’s a very unique business model that you have. I’m, looking forward to getting into that you know.

Tell the listeners a little more about who you are and how do you become a syndicator of short-term rental development projects? 

0:01:44

AJ: Yeah. So, a little bit of background about me, I served 4 and a half years in the marine corps on tour. During my last year in the military, I decided to learn more about real estate. And I sort of grabbed it a little bit more towards short-term rentals.  I contacted a couple of people that I’d watch, some Youtube videos about back then in 2015. And  I was just very interested in short-term rentals. A lot of people I was contacting had, like short-term rentals saying, like the Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. And one of the people on the that ran one of the Youtube channels had helped me sort of finding different markets too. I wanted to move, I was pretty dedicated. I’m originally from Detroit, Michigan. I didn’t want to move back to Detroit so I’ve decided on Asheville, which, is where I currently live.

And I got my real estate license. help people buy and sell, and I realized a lot of people, either moved here for the short-term rentals, but a lot of people were already like bad that I was helping was already purchasing and selling short-term rentals. So started looking for a property to purchase with my VA loan that was almost like I was looking for like a duplex or a triplex where I could live in one and rent out essentially like house hack, but with short-term rentals.

So I couldn’t really find anything on the market at least I wasn’t that was in my price range at the time. I just decided to my very first property that we that my very first and investment property was a ground-up development, custom-built grounded up development, which is usually not the way that that goes. But, we started with that first one, and then we built 2 more right after that. Then, after the 2, I was sort of pretty capped out on my finances in terms of the loans I could get. So I took on my first investor, which was a joint venture deal, and then a couple more investors that would get joint ventures. And then it got to a point where I realized I just sat down and I was like what’s the best use of my time, because, like a lot of times I’m stripped like  I was driving around looking at 30, 40 properties, just to purchase one piece of land.

It just started to get a little bit more intense. So we still do like the development of like 8 to maybe 6 to 10 cabins with like a joint venture structure, with maybe one or 2 investors. But right now we sort of spread switched over to syndication model, where, like we’re developing these boutique resort communities that we rent out on Airbnb and VR view and of the other short-term rentals sites. But yeah, that just came from what’s the best use of my time and the best use of my time is developing like these 40, 50 unit cabin communities in the mountains right now, where I can raise money for these projects.

I mean everyone’s gravitating toward short-term rentals right now because a lot of the cap rates are a little bit compressed right now.

0:03:56

WS: Yeah, that’s awesome. First I want to say thank you for your service and I appreciate that. I just always want to honor those that have served and am grateful. But you know you talked about before I get into that, I want to ask you why did you start to focus on short-term rentals? Not, you know, not like this moment, as far as in the market cycle, and everybody focusing on short-term like you just said.

But why did you gravitate in the beginning to short-term rentals versus say buying that triplex, fourplex with your Va loan and just running them out long-term? What was about short-term rentals for you?

0:04:25

AJ: So I was just looking behind you, we have a lot of similar books on our bookshelves in terms of real estate. So I sat down and probably read, at that time like at this point, I probably read over 100 real estate books, but at that time maybe about 30 or 40 real estate books. Only one of them was geared towards short-term rentals because there were there wasn’t really too much information out there on them. What I realized was like reading the multifamily books, reading the flipping books, reading the single-family, house long-term rental books, the cash flows were like you’re lucky to get anywhere between 3 to $600 cash flow per property.

What I was seeing on the back end of like some of these people who I was reaching out to the types of cash flows they were getting, it wasn’t even close it was like owning 5 to 10 single-family houses compared to owning one cabin. So that’s what, when I looked at my goals and where I wanted to be at that time, I was like the way to fast track that is through short-term rentals.  

I think that is why so many people have gravitated towards it in the last 3 years is because they’ve realized how much these short-term rentals can actually make, especially the unique ones like the ones that are cabins, A-frames, or some type of that are unique in terms of like the design if they’re like condos or something. So people, just really cat out of the bag like the cash flow phenomenally, and that’s what. And right now it’s like with there being like a shortage of inventory and a lot of people coming from like the long-term rental side who are saying, “Hey, I just want like a 10% cap rate. I’ll be happy with that.” I don’t think that’s what prices have been driven up a little bit. But yeah, just the cash flow tasks.

0:05:48

WS: Okay. So it’s really that simple. I mean, you notice just more cash. flow. But tell me about then the process of just being able to scale it, right? I mean it sounds like I don’t know too many people, or maybe anybody that can think of right off that scaled the short-term rental business where they’re developing a $10,000,000+ project right around short-term rentals. Speak to and it’s interesting that your first project was a development, you know, and maybe you can start there. Why was the first project a development? And how did you know that that was something you could tackle to where you scale, and then move into scaling to syndicating these same types of deals?

0:06:23

AJ: Yeah, I didn’t want to purchase a property that that was just a normal that I could just put on the short-term rental sites, which still do pretty well right now. And all the properties that were either cabins or something unique about them that would do well as a short-term rental were just way too expensive compared to. I had a builder friend who ended up building my first project. We had like just figured out like price per square foot and everything.

Our first project was an A-frame. It was like a 900 square foot, A-frame that grossed like $81,000 last year, and then netted like 50 grand. So, that’s sort of why I gravitated towards the development side was that it was like at the time we could build them cheaper, and even right now, it’s obviously things have gotten way more expensive with Covid and stuff with like both labor and cost of materials, but it’s there’s no inventory for short-term rentals right now at least in the hot market. So it still makes sense to develop the short-term rentals over just purchasing 

0:07:12

WS: Did you, you know, like even that first project, or even to now, but especially that first one, how did you know or have confidence in what the land was, you know, the value of the land was and knowing that “hey, we can go build something with things that are happening with materials and material costs or shortages. Where did that confidence come from to say you know what I’m gonna buy this land, and we’re gonna move forward with developing this?

0:07:35

AJ: Yes, so my first one was around like 2017, which I when I started looking for the land. I leaned pretty heavily on my real estate agent, and this is what I always tell people is to figure out what an acre goes for in your area. We’re developing more rural areas maybe about 15, 20 min away from the city. But we also live in an area that people are used to driving so like It’s a driving city or airport, it’s not really that big. So they’re comfortable making that drive, especially like we’re known for like hiking trails at waterfalls and stuff. So people are used to driving 45 min to an hour to even get to these locations.

Figuring out the price for acre is a big thing starting off and then figuring out like press for a square foot with your builder. And then from, I keep saying unique properties, but, like deep properties, what’s gonna you market your property very easily on the short-term rental site. So I say Instagram-able properties are what you want, people who are excited to stay in your house, where it’s not just a place that they’re sleeping where the property is an experience, and in itself outside of like the city that they’re visiting.

0:08:30

WS: Nice. That’s something to think about right there – Instagram-able property. But the unique property experience, I like that versus just the surrounding, the things that you can’t change, you can change that property. You mentioned you started driving around, you’re looking at 30. 40 properties or more, you know, just to buy one. But there’s really this best use of time issue right? What is the best use of time.? How did that change? How did you change that to where you’re not driving around looking at 50 properties to buy one? What happened there?

0:08:57

AJ: One was, I mean, I got a real estate development mentor to sort of help me really focus on what my goals need to be, where I need to be, what I need to be doing right now, to where I need to be at, maybe in a couple of years. When you start purchasing some of these larger parcels, I mean it there aren’t as many of those on the market, like say, maybe one to 5 acres. So like I mean take, for instance, like there probably be at any given time, 3 to 400 of those like acre to 5-acre parcels on the market compared to like at what we’re purchasing anywhere between 40 to 100 acres right now, there’s only maybe like 60 of those on the market.

So a lot of the time, I’m looking at, I won’t even drive out to the property without doing my research on the computer and what that looks like is. We live in the mountains where we operate in mountains. So we’re looking got how steep the land is through our county website, and then they have certain parameters that determine if we’re going to be in something called a steep slope ordinance or protected ridge ordinance that we usually don’t build in because it takes way more time to get extra permits, and then it also costs more to build the foundation where we’re building at a certain elevation. So that’s one way to completely like just decide if we’re gonna, I’m even gonna drive out to the property.

And another thing, too, is making sure, for people who are actually wanting to do this themselves, or if they’re looking at purchase property is the drive up to the property is very important. You don’t want your guests to be driving 20-30 min down a gravel road, and you like you might see a listing, and you’re like this is absolutely beautiful like why is it probably that way below market or whatever. More than likely It’s probably going to be the drive because you don’t want your guests to be annoyed by the time they even get to your property. A lot of times they’re driving to you at night, it’s gonna be a new area that they’re not used to. And so, once I decide to go out and look at a property, that’s the first thing on my mind is like what’s the guest going to be thinking about what as they’re driving to this property.

So a way to give way to fix that is just to invest in property that’s off of like a double lane state maintained road, a paved state-maintained road. And then you can put in your own road like we’ll put it anywhere between like quarter mile to half a mile of road to get to the house.

0:10:54

WS: Nice. Now that’s some great things to think about, and I want to get into some of those specifics in a moment, too, about just short-term rental, some tips, that you have. But, can you share an example of a deal you’re syndicating, maybe, or some things that to consider, maybe the listener’s thinking about syndicating, you know some type of short-term rental or this is intriguing them. Speak to maybe a current project, or a past project that you syndicated, you know, and what that looks like? You know the type of land maybe? What type of buildings are you putting on their homes, or what are you building? 

0:11:23

AJ: For the people who are listening, just under, like on the syndication side and raising money for development in general, like just understanding that there is more risk involved like especially with like with coming out of Covid now, we’re at least like things settling down a little bit where like things can go wrong like if there is more risk there, but there is more reward that’s I mean that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. But when it comes to the syndication side, we’re raising the capital just like normal syndication. I’ve leaned pretty heavily on the multifamily model to establish what we’re doing here.

Our very first like, I guess larger joint venture that we did was a $2,000,000 project, 6 cabins right next to each other, and we’re the investors had put up almost all the capital, and it was just a trusting, just with multifamily or anything, just making sure that your investors trust you that even if they’re accredited, just making sure that they understand the process upfront. You need to understand the process, and that comes from under like if you need to get a specific permit with the county like we need a specific vacation rental complex permit with our county that took about 3 months.

So just really making sure that you understand what your county or city requires for short-term rentals. That’s probably the most important thing when it comes to syndicating deals like this – being upfront with your investors and telling them, “Hey, it’s gonna take this long to develop these projects. Are you comfortable with that like having your money tied up there?”

It’s not like a multifamily project where it probably will cash flow right out of the bat. Or even if you’re updating some of the units most of the units are still rented out or something. It’s not like hitting the ground running with stuff like that. And we do invest in properties where like it’ll be like a cabin, and maybe there’s like 10 to 15 acres attached to it or we’ll make have plans to develop another 10 cabins decks to it. That was more like a break, even thing where our holding is. We do break even on the holding call for the whole development project. Before we started this interview, it was very creative and every project was going to be different

0:13:18

WS: Yeah, it’s just such an interesting model. You mentioned, like, maybe only 60 properties like that on the market. That’s what like, you say 40 to 100 acres. Roughly, I mean, is that like nationwide? Is that like in a certain area with that you’re looking?

0:13:29

AJ: That’s within our county.

0:13:31

WS: Okay, in our county. 

0:13:34

AJ: Yeah, which is still a lot I mean that’s a good number. But again, as I would say, 70% of them are in that steep slope ordinance that we’re talking about. And then we also have plans on getting, the beauty about the mountains is you can drive an hour in any direction, and you’re in a completely different market like an hour and a half for us is like pigeon forge Galenberg, the Smoky Mountains and stuff. So we do have plans on getting into other markets that I’ve identified, that I believe are up and coming. Asheville’s very competitive right now in terms of both properties and land. 

Yeah, we do have plans are getting on to other like mountain markets that are within an hour and a half to us, which I mean there’s probably about 10 of them. And then we’ve looked at 2 of them that have decided to go into. 

0:14:12

WS: Awesome. Speak to maybe the market selection there. You know, how do you know that it’s a market that you’re willing to go buy, you know, 100 acres in and start developing for short-term rentals?

0:14:21

AJ: Yeah, I forgot where I heard of it but people like views, and people like being up top. Like they like being high, like, say, like in New York, like you go to a sky rise, and you like looking down and like like looking at like a scenic view. So you when I invest in a market that’s pretty scenic. I’ve realized mountain communities, and this is maybe excluding the West Coast, but mountain communities, mountain cities, are a little bit less seasonal than say, like beach towns. Beach Towns like say like if you’re looking at the coast in North Carolina like in the outer banks’ suit. That’s a little bit more seasonal than saying here in the mountains. We’re a year-round market. 

We have our high season, which is going to be later summer. And then the foliage or the leaf season in October, November. But for the most part, we cash flow pretty good throughout the whole year. So mountain communities. you want there’s like 3 steps: it’s like you want to be in a cabin when you’re in the woods, you want a hot tub and you want to mountain view. And that’s sort of the 3 things that we look for. Obviously hot tubs are pretty easy, but the design of the property and then also some sort of scenic view.

One thing I always tell people that asked me that question is, you want a full-proof way honestly is to invest in areas that are close to a National Forest or a National Park because you already have a built-in audience that is already visiting these parks. I mean with Covid like the national parks, all like record numbers in the last couple of years, like, I think the Smoky Mountains alone sell like 20,000,000 visitors.

So there’s a shortage of inventory there in terms of like where people want to stay at. They might be staying in a boring hotel just to be able to stay in the Smoky Mountains. That’s probably the quickest way to answer that question is to look at that markets that are close to National Forest or National Park.

0:15:52

WS: Yeah, no, that’s interesting and 20,000,000 visitors last year, just in this Smoky Mountains. I believe that. I’ve been there many times. Speak to what’s been your biggest challenge in this type of business say in the last 12 months?

0:16:03

AJ: Yeah, this is a good question. I would say just putting my team together. The last 12 months, for sure are just finding good work. I trust my GC a lot, and just making sure that my team is able to scale as quickly as I’ve in my mind I want to. And so, the team’s a big one. And then essentially just talking to the short-term rental are a lot of the times, the people, the investors I am talking to, are interested in short-term rentals, but they don’t really know too much about it. Maybe they’re in self-storage, multifamily, mobile home parks, and they’ve invested in syndication deals, but they’ve never really invested in syndication for short-term rental development. 

So it’s sort of taking them, if they’re approaching me, taking them off of that and sort of explaining how the short-term rental model works a little bit. My team and then also just raising the capital. The capital raising has been a little easy but it’s just getting people to have that mindset switch for short-term rentals, cause it’s not like I can’t guarantee an exact number like every month is going to be a little bit different on the return. We’re playing around with different models right now, with class A, class B shares for the syndication stuff.

0:17:01

WS: What would you have done differently you know if you could go back, let’s say, you know 2 or 3 years or you would you say, in 2015 or 17, when you started? I mean what knowing what you know now, what would you do to do or do differently.

0:17:10

AJ: Just a mentor, I would have spent more time and what I realize is there’s a difference between a mastermind group coaching, one-on-one, and just a course. So initially I just started with a course that helped me out a lot. But I wish I would have like, on the research, to find a really good mentor and put down a reasonable amount of money to get that mentor, because, like knowing what I know now, that as long as you do your research on your mentor and that mentor is gonna pay for itself tenfold in the first couple of years.

0:17:37

WS: You’re investing in yourself.

0:17:38

AJ: Yeah, absolutely. That’s the most important thing.

0:17:41

WS: So much cheaper than a college degree. 

0:17:43

AJ: I have an undergrad, an MBA, and what I’ve learned from finishing up a doctorate, but what I’ve learned from my mentor Greg, I’ve mentioned in the in 6 months, it trumps anything I’ve learned in formal education.

0:17:54

WS: That’s awesome. Do you have any predictions out, Alex, for the real estate market, or and you can be specific to short-term rentals, say, you know, over the next 6 to 12 months? 

0:18:02

AJ: I like to tell people that the shorts are run on the market. I mean recession-resistant. I feel like is a term that gets thrown around a lot now. It’s important to think about stuff like that. but the rates don’t tend to move with the market, at least with the real estate market. So a good example of that is like in 2008 and 2009, the rates stayed the same for short-term rentals that luxury saw a little bit of a dip say, like any properties that were sleeping, maybe more than 12 people, 10 to 12 people more. But the rates tended to stay the same it’s like people just decided to, “Hey, I’m like the market was bad, the economy was bad. I’m not gonna, a couple’s, families were like we’re not gonna take an international trip this year, but we’ll still travel domestically.” So that’s what we saw was like the rates interchange.

I don’t really look like to look at Covid as a good gauge of how good short-term rentals were because we were all trapped inside of the country. So people were forced to travel domestically. So I don’t really see occupancy rates dropping after international travel becomes more popular again or at least people are more comfortable traveling internationally. But I do see rates dropping a little bit maybe about 10%. But that’s still like we were renting out before Covid, and we were booked out a 100%, and with pretty good rates. And I mean we did increase our rates for 2022, and we’re seeing people’s books still. We increase them by 20%. And we’re still seeing people book the cabin. So that might cancel itself out where it’s like we can charge more for the properties because of like people are comfortable so spending a little bit more now because of inflation, but at the same time, like people are going to be traveling more internationally. It’s going to be market-specific too. 

0:19:26

WS: Of course, and my next question is kind of two-fold as well, you know, as far as short-term rentals and developing, like you’re doing these larger projects, I love the scaling of you know it’s not just like we’re going and buying single-family homes, turning them in short-term rentals which I’ve met so many people have made amazing businesses doing that. I mean in a massive way. However, I love the scalability of “Hey, let’s go develop 100 acres and do a short-term rental business that way.”

I mean I could get on board with something like that. But I wanted to ask you when dealing with projects like that, how do you prepare for a downturn in that type of business model, you know, in short-term rentals? And what would you even foresee, maybe even causing a downturn on a short-term rental type development business?

0:20:11

AJ: I wouldn’t necessarily call it a downturn in terms of your city can one day just wake up one day and just say “Hey, no more short term rentals in the city or county.” I don’t think Ashville did it, where I grew up, Detroit did it. We underwrite the properties as long-term rentals. That’s probably the most important thing. That might be a little bit difficult with how competitive some of the properties are if you’re looking just to purchase. I think it’s important to at least say “Hey, can we break even if we were forced to rent this out as a long-term rental? And that’s a worst-case scenario. And there are different fail saves that we have in place for different stages of development.

So a good example of that is, I can go out, purchase a large parcel, any type of parcel, put in the work, get up to get the engineering done, get the plat and the subdivision, like the land subdivided, and get it approved to the county in any type of market. And,  if say like we’re in a downturn, I can then say like my lender doesn’t want to lend to me, or I just don’t feel comfortable with where we’re at in the market to actually develop this project. I can then turn around and sell that land as a land entitlement play to another developer who is probably maybe with would be like better position to do something with it.

That’s our first feel safe is like it would be a land entitlement play in the development schedule. And then so between that and then renting them out as long-term rentals, those are the two’s fail-safes we have. You never know with your city or county, what’s gonna happen with the rules? Things are getting better, though. I think with Covid, I don’t see any city or county sort of pushing it because I mean most of the city or Airbnb collects taxes for your property for your city already. So I don’t see any city or county pushing tax revenue away after Covid-19.

0:21:46

WS: That’s a good point right there. That’s a really good point. I mean it really goes back to knowing your county or city regulations realm.

0:21:51

AJ: If you’re interested in doing it yourself like just go out and not even call them, don’t even contact them just walk into the county and ask “Hey, can I talk to the head of planning, or at least his assistant, or something,” and I mean they’re there for a reason. They’re there to help us in the community so –

0:22:04

WS: Awesome. That’s great to understand, that you can just walk in there and talk to those folks and ask those questions. Do you do like RV parking as well on these projects or is that an option to increase cash flow or anything like that?

0:22:21

AJ: That’s a good question. So we personally don’t just because of the roads that we put in. I don’t feel comfortable like they’re wide enough and stuff, maybe, I mean the biggest road we’ve put in is still like 1,100 feet. But, there is a community coming up. It’s more like a hotel with maybe like 8 A-frames, and the A-frames are actually elevated on stilts, and the A-frames are literally all right next to each other. They’re almost touching. And you can park an RV under that. I think they are up charging for that so it’s essentially an RV park with like a hotel attached to it essentially. 

I started to play around a little bit with like how we can gain more revenue through the properties. Pet fees are a small thing that we do. We do allow pets, security deposits, but we were thinking about just getting with like local service providers, even restaurants, and offering either a discount to our guests, or like offering some sort of type of commission thing, or maybe like with like wedding planners or something with some of these bigger projects.

0:23:12

WS: Now, that’s interesting and we’re all trying to do things like that, right? Or how can we increase the income? So, tell me what’s your best source for meeting new investors right now?

0:23:20

AJ: Doing stuff like this, what we’re doing right now, podcasts are big, just getting our name out there. And the Youtube channel that I started the last year has been really helpful. It’s mainly structured around short-term rental development management. We have people that just want to do it, that approaches that are like, “Hey, we just want to invest passively,” and then we just schedule a call with them. They talk directly to me, and then we just talk about their goals and see what they’re they’re interested in doing. The money-raising side has been a little has been easier, just because people are gravitating towards short-term rentals right now. And there aren’t really too many people syndicating, maybe 2 or 3 other people. 

0:23:53

WS: What about some daily habits that you have, Alex, that have helped you achieve this level of success?

0:23:57

AJ: Yeah, Miracle Morning. I recommend that to anyone. I actually met Hal at the Bigger Pockets conference. I was like starstruck which I usually don’t get starstruck. But yeah, the Miracle Morning, the savers whatever it teaches in there, that’s what I do every single morning.

And then I’ve replaced the meditation piece with Miracle Morning, with just a couple rounds of the Wim Hof method which we were taught in the military to do before it even had a name. The Wim Hof method and Miracle Morning are the 2 habits that I practice every morning. Even if I wake up later, something I still do it like on the weekend or something.

0:24:27

WS: What’s the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

0:24:28

AJ: I was a magician for like 10 years prior to the military. I continue to do it in the military and I’ve continued to do it as a networking tool like at different events. It’s been the coolest icebreaker to do like a card trick or something. Like I’ve put some serious time behind this but what I’ve realized, what magic tricks has also helped me do is like connect specific dots and that’s sort of what I’m really good at is connecting specific dots, especially with some of the creative stuff that we work on with the short term rentals.

It’s funny, it’s like I was talking to like a good group of people, a lot of which have written the books behind me at the Bigger Pockets conference. It’s just like busted a magic trick, it wasn’t even like an investing question or anything. That’s a a weird thing to say. But I would say like learning magic, or magic tricks which I’ve read in a lot of like productivity books is a lot of these people, a lot of high achievers practice magic tricks.

0:25:20

WS: That’s interesting but definitely a unique skill set.

0:25:22

AJ:  I’ve never talked about that before. That’s funny. 

0:25:23

WS: How do you like to give back?

0:25:25

AJ: When I was in the military, I just volunteered man, the warehouse station in DC. I had a really good volunteering program with different different types of shelters. But also the Youtube Channel has been what I’ve realized the quickest way to give back, we’re just sharing my information for free. I would say, just providing the information through the Youtube Channel. I realized it’s the quickest way to reach the most amount of people that are interested in this.

0:25:46

WS: Alex, it’s been a pleasure to meet you and have you on the show. I love the business model, just even thinking through how to scale, you know, the short-term rental business and you’re definitely doing that. I mean you’re syndicating larger projects and and doing it much bigger than maybe by (inaudible) as far as around short-term rentals.

And so congratulations to you and your success taking just action right on the steps. I mean having mentors and putting those things in place so you can grow that business. Tell the listeners how they get in touch with you and learn more about you. 

0:26:14

AJ: They could look me up on LinkedIn My information, all my stuff’s there. The Youtube channel is Alex Builds. There’s a little treehouse, blue little treehouse logo, or they can look up the company. They can schedule a call directly through there by clicking on the invest now portal that’s going to be sargoninvestments.com. I’m sure we could put it in the show notes and yeah that’s that’s probably the quickest way to get in touch. If anyone’s looking to invest or have any questions, I’m an open book to this stuff that just click on the invest now, fill out the stuff, I’ll get the notification and I’ll reach out to schedule a call.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:22:08 

WS: Thank you for being a loyal listener to the Real Estate Syndication Show. Please subscribe and like the show. Share it with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget, to go to www.LifeBridgeCapital.com where you can sign up and start investing in real estate today, Have a blessed day!

[END] 

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