Apr 15, 2022
How does someone become financially free by age 27 using virtual assistants? In this episode my guest, Jonathan Farber discusses how he hires and uses VAs to outsource tasks that are not within the manager's skill set. Jonathan explains how he underwrites deals and trains his employees. He also talks about using quantitative methods to measure things like the number of colleges in an area, new hotel construction, and reviews of current hotels. Jonathan Farber is a side hustle real estate investor. He was able to achieve financial freedom at 27 and leave his corporate enterprise technology sales job to focus on traditional rentals, short term rentals, airbnb arbitrage and wholesaling, podcasting and course creation.
[00:01 - 04:22] House Hack Your Way to Financial Freedom
- How Jonathan started house hacking and found success by speaking to realtors and getting deals
- Reaching his financial freedom goal of $30,000 in just 27 months
- Different levels of financial freedom depend on how much money and time you want to spend
[04:22 - 14:48] Using VA’s to Scale Your Business
- How to utilize VA s to help manage and easily find underwriting sources and property acquisitions
- Quantifying everything is important for efficient processes and training
- Creating a process that can analyze an area based on 10 criteria is essential for furnished rental companies
- How AirDNA provides furnished rental companies with accurate data so they can make good decisions
[14:49 - 21:03] Monetizing Social Media
- How to turn down deals from brokers
- Always get back to a broker and provide feedback on deals
- Brokers respect estate investors who are serious about their work
- You don’t need to do everything – Stay in your area of expertise and buy skills and leverage in places you can grow
- The power of delegating tasks according to the strengths of others
[21:02 - 22:38] Closing Segment
- Reach out to Jonathan!
- Links Below
Tweetable Quotes
“So one thing that I always try to do is just make everything quantifiable and measurable. It's good for our processes, it's good for training VAs and it's also good for teaching students.” - Jonathan Farber
“Get help! What I have found is most real estate operators are great at real estate operating horrible at social media or marketing. So stay in your area of expertise, buy skills and buy leverage in places that you can just get better.”
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Visit Jonathan Farber’s website https://jonfarber.co and connect with him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanfarber1/ you can also follow him on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jonjfarb/?hl=en
Listen to his podcast Millennial Millionaire Real Estate Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/millennial-millionaire-real-estate-podcast/id1490528162
Connect with me:
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on. Thank you for tuning in!
Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Jonathan Farber 00:00
Just make everything quantifiable, everything measurable, it's good for our processes. It's good for training vas. And it's also good for teaching students because no one wants like a like a hazy, like, you know, maybe so I kind of look at it like that old adage, if someone can't explain it to you simply they don't know how to do it. You know? So if you ask someone, Hey, what are the five drivers of a market? What websites do you go on? What boxes do you need to check to see that this neighborhood is good for where you're looking? Most operators have no idea how to do that. They're just going off. Oh, a realtor told me this was a good area or, you know, I have another deal nearby and it's pretty good.
Intro 00:37
Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.
Sam Wilson 00:49
Jonathan Farber started investing when he was 22. And after a lot of experimenting and speaking with mentors and taking action, he achieved financial freedom at age 27 through real estate, specifically through Airbnb, and wholesaling. Jonathan, welcome to the show.
Jonathan Farber 01:04
I appreciate you having me on excited to be here.
Sam Wilson 01:06
Hey, man, the pleasures mind. same three questions I ask every guest to come on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? How'd you get there?
Jonathan Farber 01:14
Okay, I started in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a strategy that a lot of your listeners may know or maybe not house hacking. I was hooked. I was in a corporate job making pretty good money out of college. But I did not like it. There's a big layoff at the company. And I felt like I needed security. So started the house hacking year out when I lived for free that first month that was kind of like my lightbulb moment that this was possible. How I tactically started with that it was just really speaking to realtors looking at houses. I really didn't know what I was doing. But yeah, that was it. I started with House hacking, got my next deal, then went after that and just started to kind of roll them together. But yeah, it was hooked. And it was like, how many of these do I need to become financially free, my goal is 30, I was able to kind of get lucky and do it at 27. So that was the start house hacking multiple times in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sam Wilson 02:05
Interesting when you say your goal was 30, you meant by age 30. achieved financial freedom has that number, not your age number, but has the term financially free changed for you, the more success you've had.
Jonathan Farber 02:18
That's like one of the biggest things I think people make a mistake with is thinking that financial freedom is actually their salary, when in fact, it's just your cost to live. So financial freedom is just based on whatever your cost of living is, you could live on $1,000 a month, or you could be a baller and live on $30,000 a month, whatever it is, you know, I make more money now than I've ever made. And I live in Colombia, my living expenses are like $2,000 a month. So, you know, it all depends. There's different levels of financial freedom where maybe like stage one that you just cover your living expenses basics, and then you can improve that scale that, do more things have a family, I'm a single person, I don't have a family, I don't have a dog, you know, whatever. It's just me. I'm just married to the golf game right now. So as long as I could join a country club, wherever I live, I'm happy. And as long as I could buy the best equipment and have the best coaches and all that, like, that's what I need. I wear the same shirt every single day. It's a shirt that I can golf in work in a workout in. I'm a minimalist, so I just like anytime I like that I can buy simple, I'll pay for it. So for me, if I can buy simple and time, that's how I'm achieving financial freedom. I don't cook I get every meal delivered to get all my laundry done for me, massage to the house. Anything you could think of to buy time I do it personal assistants, virtual assistants, I just want to focus on what I like to do what I'm good at. Now, at the beginning, I couldn't do that. But I had to buy more of that time and simplicity back. And yeah, same thing. Even when we set up a property in the US. I'm not there. I'm not the one finding and I'm not the one designing it. Virtual Assistants are doing the analysis of it, I give the direction I give the final review. But for me, that's financial freedom at my level, you know, I make more and more, but I just live on the same amount. If I needed more, to live on to be happier, I would just do it. I don't want to think about money. So it definitely changed. My original financial freedom number was like 2500 When I was living in Raleigh, and I was living like has it. But you know, I loved it. It was what I wanted to do. And I just I wanted to get to that number to leave it. But now it's you know, I want to go back to the US. So it'll be more, which is kind of why I was here over the winter. But yeah, so it changes for sure.
Sam Wilson 04:22
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you know, there's always that the idea that the more you make, the more you spend, and you know, there's that scope creep, that always just tend to like go along with rising income rising expenditures, rising lifestyle, and I just wondered how you combat that. And it sounds like you've done that fairly well. But yet at the same time protecting the things that it's most valuable thing to all of us, which is our time. So tell us about your use and scaling your company with the use of VA s I mean, I know this is virtual assistants. I think the new term is virtual professional, whatever it is, you know, you've done this and we've talked about this on this show, you know pre easily but I love hearing real world stories of hey, this is how I've done it. Here's the mistakes I made. This is what I've done, right? Walk us through especially, I mean, as you're acquiring underwriting sourcing property, I mean, that's a pretty robust system. Talk to us about that.
Jonathan Farber 05:14
If anyone has questions, just feel free to hit me up all my socials, I'm sure I'll be linked in the show notes. I probably hired trained and kept or fired probably about 100 Vas in seven years. Could be more could be less. But really, what more than one a month? Yeah, I mean, you know, now we have like eight that are just like, you know, with us, I would say that's the number consistently across everything between property management, acquisitions, social media, personal assistants, and then just filler tasks for our communities and things like that. But you know, for me, it's like, I would love to always try to, you know, at the beginning, I was thinking, I'm not gonna have enough work to give a VA, that's the complete wrong mindset. If anyone is listening to this right now, you're just you couldn't be more wrong. One, you can give a VA an hour work a day, you could say, I'm gonna pay a va $6 an hour, one hour a day, to just analyze deals that get sent to me every single day, you know, I need to film loom videos and do step by steps of how to do it. They can't just do that for you. They need instructions. But that's anyone you know, you needed instructions to when you were figuring out how to buy a house, you couldn't just wing it, and a VA can't do that either. So that's where most people go wrong. But for most people going wrong as far as like the setup, it has to do with just not thinking that they have enough work for one, if there's anything that can be done on a computer or a phone, or any editing anything, just like digital, it can be done. So for me, I started small it was just with small tasks, things that I didn't like doing I wasn't good at doing and just scaled it from there. It's easy. Just starting with like, for real estate, for example, podcasting. You know, like, we got our podcast production down to about $12 An episode, we did a daily podcast for 250 shows. So I didn't know how to edit. But all I wanted to do was do the video, but we had VAs doing the guest outreach, the editing, the production of social media, the only thing I wanted to touch was the actual conversation with the person to build relationships. And I love that, but I didn't like the other ship. Same thing with real estate. I don't like analyzing deals, I just like relationships, creating content, you know, building systems, coming up with a better vision, that sort of thing. But you know, the day to day I don't want to be on call. That's just not what I want to do. It's not a good use of my time. So what I would say for anyone is start with one task that you understand how it works, that you can just come up with a checklist of the steps film a loom video loom we use 20 times a day in the business, we don't have meetings, we just do loom videos, it's the best thing ever. And just walk through the steps. And when you walk through the steps, you can just send that to a VA as far as where to find them two places, very simple, where you can go with an agency. So you can go with Upwork, which is free and then just paid per job. You can go with online jobs pH it's best $50 a month, but the talent is awesome. And there's tons of little bells and whistles that you can tweak to find candidates. And then if you want to pay an agency, which in a lot of cases, it could be a great thing hit me up, I have a whole freebie on it, just of all the agencies that I recommend to we have guides for all this stuff. But you know, there's 24/7 us virtual assistants, there's bolay, and they can do the training and hiring and interviewing for you. They'll bring them to you. And they're still like maybe $10 an hour. And some of those are US people or it's maybe $20 an hour for higher skilled work. But these people are impressive. And it just became a game for me of how to get more stuff that I don't like doing off my plate and how to use my time better. But all that stuff can be outsourced. I remember on BiggerPockets once I love Joe Fairless I mentored for him, but someone on his team commented on one of my bigger pockets post once and I was like Hey, has anyone heard of outsourced deal underwriting? I really hate the process. And I got crushed. This was like four years ago, I got crushed all these keyboard warriors coming out of the woodwork. One of them was Joe's friend on Steam. And they were like it's that's just stupid. It's not possible. I'm like, You're stupid. You think Bill Gates skills, that company doing everything himself? He's got 400,000 employees. Do you think Jeff Bezos is screwing bolts together in a factory? You don't understand business, you need to scale with people, systems, processes operations. So like, Yeah, I mean, hey, I'm a solopreneur. But I love having just outsourced contracted labor. I don't want employees either. But you know, there are people that are competent can do these jobs. I mean, it gets me fired up. It's just funny, but it's just like, do it. So that's what I would say start with one task, a small simple task. It can be creating a banner for your Facebook group, or your Facebook profile, or Instagram posts. If you want to grow your social media. We just hired a full time social media manager. I started with one task on social media create banners for my Facebook groups. And I was like, that's kind of cool. I don't know how they did that. But it just scales and then it's like you figure it out. So but hit me up and ask questions. Again. I'm really into So I love it.
Sam Wilson 10:00
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great way to build, like you said, wanted to offload tasks that you don't need or should be doing or want to do. I mean, that's the thing is it's not even, I think it goes beyond even one to do. It's even what's the highest and best use of your time. You need to focus on, you know, revenue, creating value, creating tasks inside your company, not creating banners for Google, or for your Facebook, whatever group you were talking about there. So that's really, really important. I love that. How have you strategically, I mean, there's a lot of art in underwriting deals. And I think that's maybe where you got the blowback, right, where it's like, oh, like, there's as much local knowledge, there's as much interfacing with the realtor figuring out, especially if you're doing Airbnb properties, what the demand generators are, like, how do you overcome some of those more subjective things in underwriting a deal, and then teach someone else how to do that.
Jonathan Farber 10:55
So one thing that I always try to do is just make everything quantifiable, everything measurable, it's good for our processes. It's good for training vas. And it's also good for teaching students because no one wants to get like a hazy, like, you know, maybe so I kind of look at it like that old adage. If someone can't explain it to you simply they don't know how to do it. You know? So if you ask someone, Hey, what are the five drivers of a market? What websites do you go on? What boxes do you need to check to see that this neighborhood is good for where you're looking? Most operators have no idea how to do that. They're just going off? Oh, a realtor told me this was a good area or, you know, I have another deal nearby and it's pretty good. That's bullshit.
So you know, originally with this, I was following Neil Bala. He's awesome. I would say more into Airbnb and furnished rentals just for the returns, Neil is amazing. He's, I would aspire to be like, Neil, but in the short term space, Neil Bala he has virtual systems run his multifamily business. He's got a couple of US based managers, and then a lot of his operations is run by vas. But yeah, as far as like, how to underwrite a deal or analyze an area, it's, I mean, it's really just coming up with that process. So for me, as far as like analyzing, and this is furnished rentals and Airbnb ease, we have a process to just scan areas off 10 different criteria. So it's like how many drivers are there in an area as far as colleges, natural attractions, parks, hospitals, new development, new hotels, things like that. So we have maybe like five to seven of those drivers that will form in an area. And what we ideally like to see is, you know, new construction of hotels. So we'll keep all that documented, and kind of just like a step by step sheet if we're looking at a new area. So how many new hotels are being developed? How many reviews of the current hotels have called the hotels and see how booked they are in peak season, speak to the person see if you can get a room for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, a lot of times, you can't, then we have a process to look at comps in the area, we'd like to find the top 10 comps in any area to see what they're charging per night. And for how long? If their calendars blocked off? We'll reach out to the host and see is it blocked off? Because you're staying there? Do you have an off platform booking? Or is it an extended stay guests? And from there have a good enough? And then we also have a deal with AirDNA where you know, we have a country license, and we can look at a lot of the revenue and you know, that's just basically got a good data scraper. It's probably equivalent to like, what's that multifamily tool?
Sam Wilson 13:22
Coaster?
Jonathan Farber 13:23
It's equivalent to costar? Yeah, exactly. So between those things, and obviously there's some more detailed to it. But we just want to have a process that's measurable. Are there multiple hotels? Are there attractions that have over let's say, 100 reviews? Are there other 10 other really good Airbnbs in the area that you can model and comp and look at their calendars? And then from there, what's their DNA, say? And then running the actual numbers on the deal? They can all do that. What I usually do the one thing that's not I would say as measurable and this is just a little thing is that usually you can't really measure like design elements. So if I say this house is nice looking or you know, it's designed well, that's tough to quantify, you know, we couldn't go through it and say, Do you think the finishes are within three years old? Does it have quartz countertops? Does it have laminate? You know, is it well kept in front? To me, that's not worth it, I will still go through the pictures of any property that gets reviewed or submitted. And I'll vrna those at the beginning. And then those will go off. If I favorite a property, it'll go off to VA, and then they'll look at it and they'll do the analysis. But the analysis doesn't take that long. It just again, going through a checklist and then we'll talk to a broker then we'll talk to a property manager, and we'll get a feel for the area. And then usually if we need to, if we want to get a property under contract, we'll offer first and then someone will go see it. And then you know, that sort of thing. It's not need to see it first before offering which I know is a little different than other people.
Sam Wilson 14:49
Right? Yeah. I wonder well, there's a question that goes along with that. Do you get blowback when you make an offer before you see it?
Jonathan Farber 14:56
No, honestly the thing that I see no and this is just like a tip that I had to learn, and I think a lot of beginners get wrong is the only blowback I see working with brokers is just ghosting them when they send you a deal. You know, like people think, Oh, I'm gonna hurt the brokers feelings if I see a deal that's not good. And I don't want to tell them that, like tell them that, like they need feedback. I was like I don't want to hurt their feelings, that's bullshit, let them know the numbers don't work, send them back the analysis if you send them back the analysis and tell them why they'll actually respect you more because now they know you've healed criteria, but just not responding though. But brokers I found they it's the opposite. They respect us so much more. The second we start making offers they're like this person is serious, not another tire kicker you know, as estate investor. So any deal we send them or pre approval or lending docs, we send them a screenshot of our bank statement showing we have cash, we're ready to go and then when we get a deal within 24 hours it's sending back why I like it, why I don't like it. And let's keep moving you know, that sort of thing. Tactical dynastic,
Sam Wilson 15:59
absolutely love that. Talk to us. One more thing I want to highlight here before we have to sign off, which is monetizing social media. That's something else that you're known for. And a lot of people especially in the commercial, real estate's bass really struggled just getting content out there. But talk to us about what that means for you and how you do it
Jonathan Farber 16:17
First thing, and these aren't like strings attached, asked if anyone is looking for a social media manager. I just did like a round of hiring. And I have like probably eight that were great, but I just there was one that I had a better connection with. So I can recommend and introduce you know, your listeners, are you. I'll probably just make a social media post about the next week. But yeah, if you just DM me or say like social media manager, again, one of my assistants can tee that up again, not me because it's just great to have that you know, but we'll do it because it's good value, but they were great people so get help. Like, what I have found is most real estate operators. They're great at real estate operating horrible at social media, horrible at marketing, like it's just cringe. So get help, like stay in your area of expertise, so stay in your area of expertise, buy skills and buy leverage in places that you can just get better.
Jonathan Farber 17:11
So yeah, first off, social media is crazy. I started it originally with like Joe Fairless when I was like alright, syndication podcast, I gotta raise money, did the daily podcast for a long time started a Facebook group stayed super consistent. Now it's just trying to do more on everything and just trying to cultivate where the attention is, which two years ago was like Tik Tok, and I know Tik Tok. It's a weird thing. It's a kid's place. It's girls dancing. It's all this weird crap. But it's where attention is. So I just started going hard on tick tock, and again, it was simple tips. It was, here's how you find a realtor. Here's how you analyze a deal in 60 seconds. It was, you know, here are the five areas I'm looking at and why super simple stuff that like most operators with experience would roll their eyes at but the beginner or the person who's in their job that they hate is like, I love this guy, right? And within three months, that account hit 100,000 followers. Okay, so goes to 100,000 then all those people start going other places, they start touching other parts of your brand, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, other places that you can monetize. And just by having now I think about 150,000 on Tik Tok, maybe like, and again, I had 2000 followers on Instagram last year or a year and a half ago, this time, I had no tick tock a year and a half ago this time. Now, Instagram, maybe like 28,000 just from brands and affiliates and sponsorships alone, I make about eight to $10,000 a month just for making five videos just for a brand that says hey, shout us out. That's crazy. Or we'll have an affiliate link for a product that I already use, like AirDNA, or a course that I took on notion or productivity. I just put it in my bio, every couple of days someone buys it when they buy it, I get to 300 bucks. That's just for having a brand. I like money that comes in while I sleep. Rivets through real estate, if it's through affiliates, if it's through content, whatever if it's from cutting up clips of this podcast, these are gonna be 50 tiktoks Like literally what this is. So it's that sort of stuff repurposing, but yeah, I mean, then it's sponsorships for Facebook group sponsorships for podcast, AdSense from YouTube, all these things like we have a high ticket program for teaching. We have a low ticket program for teaching and then the sponsored stuff all because of social media. And again, I was adamantly against social media like two years ago I was like, That is so weird. Like this dude is trying to be an influencer. Now. I'm like, It's easy money, like it's money that you could just make.
Jonathan Farber 19:41
So I'm still scratching the surface. I have friends that are making 2030 $40,000 a month from like five posts. And I'm like, What is going on here? They have bigger followings than me but I'm like, why not just do that like take do that take that money invested in real estate like That sounds pretty Be good to me. Like, I know how the real estate works. Like I'm learning more about social media, but why not? And so my advice for that, I don't know when this is gonna be out. We're filming this March 15 2020 to make three tiktoks a day. It should be prioritizing your business. I have a calendar event on my calendar every day, make three tiktoks It doesn't matter what I'm doing. That is one of the biggest drivers for me financially. Anytime I don't make tech talk. I don't think about it. Like I'm not making money. I think about it. I'm losing money, right? Because even my video on Tiktok gets 800 views. That's 800 new people that see my face 800 people that could give me money to teach them we're invest in a deal or to bring me a deal or partner in a deal. You just you want attention attention is currency. It's like you never know who can help you with what. So social media I think he's a beast. If anyone is against it, get help hire somebody or just Buck up, start creating tiktoks or YouTube YouTube is phenomenal. We're doubling down on YouTube and Tiktok just for repurposing. There's so many repurpose potentials in those. And that's pretty much it.
Sam Wilson 21:02
I love it. Jonathan, thanks for taking the time to come on today and just share us kind of your behind the curtain secrets of what it is that you were doing, you know, scaling your business with the use of virtual assistants and monetizing social media. There was so many things in there that yeah, we're just absolutely awesome. So thanks for taking the time today to come on. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you. What is the best way to do that?
Jonathan Farber 21:23
Probably Instagram on social media, everything is just @jonjfarb. Shoot me an Instagram message we give away most of our templates had analyzed in Airbnb, we have a wonder comparison, we have a market comparison template, we have a furniture checklist. So we give all that stuff out just in return to hopefully get more followers on the stuff on the channels. So hit me up on any of those if you just maybe even googled my name Jonathan Farber real estate, we have a website you know, probably the last place I check if everything in our like thing. But yeah, we just tried to create content and our whole brand is you know how to get someone their first Airbnb deal in 90 days. totally doable. But yeah, all those platforms. So hit me up. I love interacting with people and seeing if we could help. Awesome. Thank you,
Sam Wilson 22:09
John, and have a great day. Alright,
Jonathan Farber 22:11
see you later. Thank you again.
Sam Wilson 22:12
Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast if you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen if you can do that for us. That would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening and thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.