IAM1949 – CEO Develops Short-Term Rental Properties

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2022/04/08/iam1334-ceo-develops-a-short-term-rental-properties/

Transcription:

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Alex Jarbo Teaser 00:00

Is how does this apply to my business? Never put that tag on a book or any type of resource that this doesn't apply to my business because  more than likely, there's going to be something in the business book in the real estate, but whatever it is, you can apply to your business, whether it be tech or anything.

Intro 00:18

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:45

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what I like to call CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on finishing it out, fighting the good fight and closing out the job. I think just as important as it is to start something, it's even more important in how you conclude it or finish it out. So if you think of the different things that you can finish out, it could be everything from a project, it could be from a day, it could also be from a business in and of itself, and it can also of course be for the year. So when you think of finishing out, I want you to really think of these episodes because what we're going to really focus on is the last question that we really ask, which is defining what it means to be a CEO.

All the creative, innovative, and I think truly insightful questions that we received from this question is really what we want to highlight during the show. But of course, we want you to enjoy the entire episode and think about how you're going to finish things out and how you're going to finish things out strongly. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Alex Jarbo of Sargon Investments. Alex, super excited to have you on the show.

Alex Jarbo 02:17

Thanks for having me on, man.

Gresham Harkless 02:18

Yes. Excited about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we hear a little bit more about them, I want to read a little bit more about Alex.

Alex is a short-term rental developer and manager, and was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He served in the Marine Corps for four and a half years, where he was stationed in Washington, DC, a part of the Marine Corps Honor Guard. Thank you for your service. He left the Marine Corps at 22 years old to pursue his career as a real estate professional. He's the founder and CEO of Sargon investments, and 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. He is the host of the YouTube channel Alex Builds, where he teaches the ins and outs of short-term development and management.

Alex, appreciate you again for taking some time out being on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Alex Jarbo 03:12

Yeah, let's do it, man.

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Gresham Harkless 03:13

Let's make it happen then. So to kick everything off, I know I touched on it a little bit when I read your bio, but I wanted to rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Alex Jarbo 03:22

Yeah, absolutely. So I decided to get out of the Marine Corps again, like you said, when I was 22. I didn't really want to move back to where I originally was from just because I looked at different things investment-wise, and I settled on real estate and then sub niche to that. This is back in 2016. I had settled on short-term rentals. They were starting to become way more popular back then compared to right now, where they're like, just that's all you hear about when you hear about real estate investing. But moved here where I live currently, got my real estate license and we started helping different people buy and sell short term rentals.

It came to a point where I wanted to actually purchase one myself. I wanted to use my VA loan, essentially purchase like a duplex or a type triplex live in one of them, essentially house hack, but house type with short-term rentals. So, live in one of them and rent out the other two, but I could not find anything on the market. So, we just decided to build our first property, our first investment property.

I didn't have too much money at the time, but we ended up building a 900-square-foot property that ended up doing really well. And then one turned into two, two turned into six and then right now we're developing close to twenty right now. But yeah, I decided to take on investor capital, started with like friends and family and then right now we're just expanding really quickly, getting it in different markets and stuff.

Gresham Harkless 04:46

Nice. Absolutely love that. As you said some terms, I want to just drill down a little bit more on that term that says house hacking. That's basically when you live in one of the rooms and you're able to rent out the rest?

Alex Jarbo 04:57

Yeah, rooms or if it's like a duplex or a triplex where that's two or three units, the VA loan, FHA loans allow you to do that. That's what I was looking to do. But at the time, there was nothing on the market. There were things, but it was just way out of my price range too. So, I was really determined to find something or to get into the short-term rentals. I started managing other properties for people as well. That was pretty lucrative as well because I didn't have any, but I didn't have any ownership in the properties and I want it.

I wanted to have some sort of ownership in the property. So that's why after building that first one, that's where we developed. Then we built two more that I'm 100% owner. We started to develop, my balance sheet at the time was pretty maxed out. So, that's where I decided to take on investors. And, it's been a fun ride ever since. It's been a couple of years now or three years now.

Gresham Harkless 05:46

Nice. I absolutely love that. I appreciate you for sharing that story because I'm sharing your story because I think so many times you don't hear about all those steps and all those things. We just hear, where you're at in 3 years and been developing and doing all those awesome things.

We don't hear like the beginning stages of trying to figure out which property, trying to house hack and finding something that was a great fit so that you can move forward.

Alex Jarbo 06:05

Like the five-year overnight success type story.

Gresham Harkless 06:09

Exactly. They say the secret to overnight success is it takes 10 years, right?

Alex Jarbo 06:13

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 06:14

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you touched a little bit upon how you serve and work with your investors, your clients. I wanted to hear more about that and to hear more about your YouTube channel as well, too, and how you're serving the clients there.

Alex Jarbo 06:26

Yeah. I mean, real estate. So there's a lot of like a hundred books behind me. Half of those are about real estate investing, but when I first started, there weren't too many things on short-term rentals. On top of that, there was absolutely nothing on short-term rental development. Now there are a couple of YouTube channels out that are phenomenal that I've learned so much from. But I wanted to detail my process because like in real estate, real estate development, especially like mistakes mean money. It's not like a couple hundred dollars, it's thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars.

Real estate development, it's you don't know what you don't know. I wanted to start detailing that was for me, but also for other people who are wanting to go through this. I know for a fact that people are wanting to get into short-term rentals. I talked to investors every single day, every single week that are looking to get into short-term rentals, but the cap rates are so compressed now because cat's out of the bag with how lucrative short-term rentals can be right now and you're also competing with people who also want to live in these properties as well.

Like people who are maybe moving to the city and everything. And just development is just the route that I felt was the best way. But again detailing every single step through my YouTube channel and then also if people are wanting to do it themselves and have some money saved up, we also have the investment side of my company as well.

Gresham Harkless 07:44

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Do you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself, the business, combination of both. But is it your ability to see that opportunity, but also bring that to fruition in different ways for people to invest and to engage.

Do you feel like that kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Alex Jarbo 08:03

Yeah, that's definitely the secret sauce is again, the high barrier to entry, but also the high barrier to development. But also having the eye to be able to develop properties like these unique properties and everyone's going to be a little bit different. I'll tell you, I'm really good with the structure of looking at land and being able to place houses in my head and seeing that interior design is where I lack, I have people that help me with that. My wife is obviously one of them, but yeah, that's probably our secret sauce is right now is like, developing these unique properties.

And just keeping a finger on the pulse of what's up and coming. Different countries and stuff have different forms of architecture and stuff and bringing that into the mountains into the beaches that we're investing in. That's been very powerful. I'm giving away my secret sauce here, but that's definitely what's set us apart as these unique properties.

Gresham Harkless 08:51

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate you giving away that secret sauce. It's just me and you here. So no worries about it. So, that makes so much sense.

I think being able to, of course, I imagine cultivate a lot of the things that make us unique, that ability, that talent. I imagine all those books that are behind you are probably not all collecting deaths. I imagine you've probably been learning a lot about the industry, about certain things that probably helps you sharpen that also to speak.

Alex Jarbo 09:17

Yeah, and it doesn't even need to be a real estate book, whatever business anyone is listening to is in. Right now I would say, just keep it in the back of your mind when you start a new book of how is this going to apply to my business? That's probably a nugget. A really good nugget is, whether it be an apartment book, whether it be a general business book, always keep that in the back of their mind.

If you're listening to or reading a book is how can I apply this to my business? Always constantly be asking yourself, how does this apply to my business? Never put that tag on a book or any type of resource that this doesn't apply to my business because more than likely, there's going to be something in the business book in the real estate, but whatever it is that you can apply to your business, whether it be tech or anything.

Gresham Harkless 10:00

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I almost feel like a lot of times the innovation that happens is not necessarily creating something completely new, but taking something from one industry and bring it into another industry. A lot of times you see that innovation and that trailblazing happens as a result of that.

So, you might've already touched on, this, but I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO hack. It's a little bit more of an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Alex Jarbo 10:26

Time blocking is probably going to be the biggest thing, man. It's literally choosing one thing a day. It could be the same thing over and over again throughout the whole week or a month or whatever. Or it could be different things, but it's just one thing that you focus on for three hours a day, and putting that somewhere in your schedule where you're not bothered by the phone.

The phone gets kicked out of your room or your office, everything's turned off. You're not checking email. You're literally focusing on that one thing. For me, it's content creation right now. It's the YouTube channel. It's stuff like this. I look at this as content as well. It's doing podcasts actually.

I absolutely love doing podcasts too, but just time blocking about three hours a day is the magic spot right there. I do take breaks every 45 minutes, I'll step away maybe for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and go back and forth. That just works for me.

Gresham Harkless 11:16

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you if you had another what I like to call CEO nugget, which is a little bit more of a word of wisdom piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell an investor, or if you hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Alex Jarbo 11:30

Yeah, I would say, man and this sort of touches into the leadership aspect of being a CEO because you're not the CFO, you're the CEO. I feel like the CEO is the leader of the company to be able to adjust the sales and push the direction of the company. Anything that happens in your business, that is like a criticism or anything that goes wrong, things go off the rails, that's your fault. You need to be able to take ownership of that. Then any business accolades that your business sort of accomplishes or whatever your definition of successes in your business, if you achieve that, that should all go to your team. The credit to that should go to your team.

So it's two ways. If anything goes wrong, it's your fault to figure out why that happened. So take an ownership of that. And then anything, any type of positive thing that happens in your business, that's all that credit should go to your employees, your contractors, whoever. For me it's my GC's and I don't have too many employees on my actual payroll, but I work with a lot of contractors that everything, same thing with my cleaning company, all the success I've had goes to them.

So that's from a CEO standpoint, that's the nugget I'd share with everyone listening.

Gresham Harkless 12:38

That's powerful. I think to me is just removing the me from the business and actually realizing how important it is to, as you talked about, even around the interior design, surrounding yourself with really phenomenal people that know their craft so well.

But also understanding that by taking on this endeavor, you are taking on the brunt of the responsibility and that those things don't go according to plan, and that's at your doorstep and you have to fix or. Do whatever you need to do to make sure that comes.

Alex Jarbo 13:05

And it's one big circle, man, is like when you start taking ownership of stuff is everyone you start working with starts doing the same thing too.

It's oh crap. Okay. He's doing that. She's doing that. And yeah, it builds your culture, especially when it comes time to step away from your company and focus on something else where you're not the CEO. Maybe you're just on the board of directors. You're building that culture within your company that like the taken ownership of everything inside of your company or community or whatever you're building.

Gresham Harkless 13:31

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So is that how you would define, being a CEO. I usually have different quote and quote CEOs on the show, but is that leadership piece of responsibility? Is that part of what your definition of what it means to be a CEO?

Alex Jarbo 13:42

Yeah, setting the vision is that and then obviously taking criticism or taking constructive criticism from your team because you don't know everything.

It's not your job to know everything. That's why you hire people.

Gresham Harkless 13:53

Yeah, I appreciate that. And going back to the high, the me and all those things that we get obsessed with, I don't know if you feel the same way, but I almost feel like to be a great leader, a lot of times you have to have the ego to believe that you can create something bigger, better and better but at the same time, you can't let your ego get in the way where you don't listen to other people.

Alex Jarbo 14:12

Yeah, it is a very fine line. Yeah, cause it's you don't want to come off as cocky, egotistical, but at the same time, it's you do have to have the confidence to go out there and achieve something. something, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 14:24

It's so powerful. Like you said, I love that, you have the ego, you don't become egotistical because you want to have confidence. But at the same time, you want to have that humility to make sure that you are making sure that as you steer the vision, you are paying attention to those blind spots that we have other people on our team protect us from.

Awesome. Truly appreciate that definition. Of course, appreciate your time even more Alex. What I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get ahold of you, find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Alex Jarbo 14:53

Yeah, so, the quickest way is probably going to be either LinkedIn. You guys just put Alex Jarbo in or on my YouTube channel, Alex Builds. If you guys are looking, we're putting a course together too that sort of touches on some of the stuff we teach on the YouTube side, but almost like a done for you type thing with workbooks and stuff that's going to be on our website.

If you guys are looking to invest with us, too, there's an investor portal through our website. That website is sargoninvestments.com, we'll be in the show notes somewhere. But if you guys go there, you can find the YouTube channel. You can find the wait list for the course we're putting together and then our investor portal as well.

If you guys want to invest with us, just fill out everything we have there and then you'll schedule, I'll schedule a call directly with me and then we'll talk about everyone's goals and everything, whatever they are looking to do.

Gresham Harkless 15:34

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And just like Alex said, to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too. I truly appreciate you obviously for all the work you do, time that you took today. It just reminds me everything of the quota is that you can see so much further by standing on the shoulders of giants. Everything that you've been able to do, everything that you're sharing and helping to arm people with the knowledge and awareness of what to do and what not to do is so huge.

So thank you for allowing us to stand on your shoulders for a little bit today and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Alex Jarbo 16:02

Thanks man. Appreciate it.

Outro 16:03

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a 5-star rating.

This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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