In this video, I’m going to share my thoughts on the goals for 2022.
I’m not sure whether it’s possible to hit $50,000,000 this year, but I know that the real estate industry is changing rapidly.
Watch to get my thoughts on how to get there!
Transcript:
Brian Alfaro 00:00
The thing I always tell people is I like to plan in pencil. I don’t plan in pen because you have to definitely be adaptable because things are constantly changing, right? I mean, we got shocked in March of 2020.
Jamie Bounds 00:10
Hi Brian! Good morning!
Brian Alfaro 00:12
Good morning. How are you?
Jamie Bounds 00:14
Thanks for joining us. We’re great.
Brian Alfaro 00:16
Absolutely. Happy New Year.
Jamie Bounds 00:18
Happy New Year.
Chris Bounds 00:19
Happy New Year, man.
Jamie Bounds 00:20
A little bit about Brian. He’s been on our show before. So, welcome back. Brian is a multifamily investor. He’s a managing partner of Blue Oak capital and owner of Blockhouse Coffee, which is great coffee, I recommend you going if you’re in the area. He has been a part of over $100 million in real estate transactions, and his partners in an 827 units. So, welcome. Thank you for the introduction, Jamie. Chris, nice to see you all again.
Chris Bounds 00:50
Yeah. So, goal setting, or goal, like you wouldn’t get to 100 plus units, and two coffee houses, you don’t do that without having goals. And without having a good way of tracking and, you know, adjusting goals and pivoting with a wins, which I’m sure you had a pivot a little bit during the whole pandemic thing having, you know, your actual physical storefront. So, what are your goals for this year, 2022?
Brian Alfaro 01:15
Oh, man. So, I like to really set goals based on three different things. One, I like to set personal goals, you know, those are goals for myself things that I wanna do, because I you know, I think it’s really important for us, as you know, real estate investors or just business people in general, we have to be a little bit selfish.
Because if we’re not working on ourselves, then we aren’t the best version of ourselves, for our investors, for our clients, you know, for anybody we’re representing in a transaction. So, I always set personal goals, those are things for me, after that, I definitely set business goals, you know, those are going to be goals for our coffee shop, those are gonna be goals for real estate transactions, there’s gonna be multifamily goals. And then those are the two categories I kind of break those up into.
And then after that, you know, it’s really about setting goals that you can, there was, we’ve all heard the saying you can’t manage what you don’t measure, right? So I try to stick to that, you know, saying like, let’s put some goals on the paper that are attainable, that are measurable, so that I know whether I’m hitting those goals or not.
Chris Bounds 02:05
So, for 20, or for real estate specific comps, and that’s pretty much all for us we looking to do this year.
Brian Alfaro 02:12
So yeah. For us this year, we definitely would like to do at least $50 million in transactions for multifamily. So that would be on the acquisition side. So, you know, that could be anywhere from two to three projects, you know, if you’re doing a 20, $30 million deal obviously gets a little easier, you only have to do a couple of them. But, you know,
Chris Bounds 02:28
200 or 300 to 600 units, depending on your flexibility?
Brian Alfaro 02:32
Yeah, yeah, it just depends, you know, we’re under contract. Now for a 60 unit, that’s a solid 10 plus million dollar deal. So that’s one, we just need to knock out 40 more, right? So that’s our goal for, from assets under management standpoint. And then we also have goals for raising capital, and then also for investors in our database that we’re connected to people who want to partner with us people that want to put their money to work, but maybe not do the work themselves. So, we’d like to get to 5000 investors in our database, which would be doubling our database right now. And we’d like to be able to raise $5 million this year. Last year, we raised right around two and a half.
Chris Bounds 03:05
Of all of those, this goes into the follow up question, you know, what do you do to stay on track? So you mentioned investors in your database, also just raising money, too. And then you’ve got your unit count and transaction count. Sure. What is maybe two, or maybe three different leading indicator KPIs that you’re following? To fight like, you were I forgot the there was, there was a concept a while back where it was a baseball, I think they made a movie or –
Brian Alfaro 03:40
Moneyball?
Chris Bounds 03:41
Yeah, Moneyball, that’s it. That’s it when they realize like, the KPI was getting people on first base. Because at that point, the percentage of getting a run was just said, you know, significantly higher wasn’t just hitting balls, get them on first base. So, what is a leading indicator that are maybe two or three that you’re tracking?
Brian Alfaro 03:57
Yeah, for acquisitions, when you’re talking about that first goal, you really got to be underwriting a lot of deals. So, you got to be looking at a lot of properties, right? So whether you’re looking at multifamily or you’re looking at single family, if you’re not looking at deals, then you’re not doing your job, right? Because you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna ever, you know, find that opportunity to invest if you’re not underwriting deals.
So, you know, 2021, we looked at over 300 which is just kind of a funny number when you look at it that we got one at the end of the year, and we looked at 299 ish before that, but this it’s a numbers game, right? So you know, if you look hard enough, you turn over enough stones, you’re gonna find something, right?
People say, you know, “I can’t find a deal”, where I say, “We have to make a deal”, you know, you have to go out there and you have to actually not only find it but you have to get creative with how you structure it and how your business plan. So that’s one, we definitely want to underwrite X number of deals per week.
Chris Bounds 04:40
You’re looking at 5, 10 a week, which so I know that may be exactly a huge number to some people, but by looking at it, does that mean you’re doing a full underwriting analysis and every single one? Or
Brian Alfaro 04:44
No.
Chris Bounds 04:48
Like, “Hey, man just look at the area.”
Brian Alfaro 04:57
Some you know, when you did this sign-up, some of them you can look at really quick. And you can just go, “Nope, I don’t like that zip code”, right? You know, it’s very simple. And then some have a little bit more to it, where we have our analysts go in and actually plug in the T 12, plug in the rent roll, do a soft underwriting sort of what we call a first pass.
And if that is even remotely attractive, then we will go in as the operator and we’ll dig in to see if we even like it. So we can sort of churn deals out, you know, much more quicker versus if you were to go through all 300 with a fine tooth comb, you would not you would not make it you’d be doing that all day every day.
Chris Bounds 05:25
No, no. Okay. Any other leading in the future?
Brian Alfaro 05:29
Yeah. And then for us, it’s, you know, we talked about being able to raise capital as well. So the amount of investors that we’re adding to our database on a monthly basis on a quarterly basis, you know, how many new people are falling into our funnel? You know, some we’re spending a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot, a lot of effort on marketing and showing people the power of multifamily and why partnering with us is a good idea.
So, you know, in order to get to 5000, you could start to reverse engineer that like, “Okay, we need 2500”. You know, there’s 12 months in a year, so you need to be adding about 200 give or take two soft math per month. Okay, well divide that by four weeks, you need to be adding 50 a week. Well, then how do you get to 50 a week? Okay, well, you need to be adding X number per day. So, how many meet-ups can you attend? Whether they’re yours or somebody else.
How many social media posts can you do? Whether you’re on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, sort of generate those leads. So, that’s the real question you have to ask yourself, as, you know, what’s your funnel? How big is your funnel? And how do you get people in your funnel?
Chris Bounds 06:20
Yeah, yeah, love it. Any tricks that you have? So, 2020 is a good example or even 2019, where you have goals that you realize, like, whether it’s circumstance, or like, whether you control it or not, something happens, you get derailed. How do you that reset?
Brian Alfaro 06:43
Yeah, you know, the thing I always tell people is, I like to plan in pencil. I don’t plan in pen, because you have to definitely be adaptable, because things are constantly changing, right? I mean, we got shocked in March of 2020, not only in our coffee shop business, but also in retail and real estate, right?
Who would have known that we would have seen such a inventory shortage and such a demand for product both in the commercial and the residential space, nobody would have saw that coming. If you and I did, Chris, we probably would have bought a lot more real estate than we did two years ago, right? So, what you have to do is you have to plan a principle, pencil.
And I think you have to stay flexible. So, if you’re- I think you have to evaluate your goals, if not monthly, quarterly, you know, one of my tricks, or secrets, I guess you’d like to say is I like to look at my goals every day, because we’re not perfect. We’re human beings, there gonna be days you and I fall off the cliff, you know, fall off the tracks, Chris, where maybe we were supposed to work out but we didn’t. Or we were supposed to underwrite a deal, but we didn’t.
Or we’re supposed to call a new investor but we, you know, something didn’t happen, right? But if we look at those goals, every day, we can remind ourselves like, “Man, I didn’t hit this goal yesterday. I really need to make sure I stay on track”. And if you’re consistently not hitting that goal, maybe you need to take that goal off your sheet. Maybe it’s not the right place at the right time for you to actually be working on that goal. And you’re over committing, right?
So, constantly evaluating your goals, whether it be monthly or quarterly or even semi annually to go, “Okay, here’s where I started the year. Here’s where I’m actually going”. And adjust your goals. I always like to say you should rig the game to win doesn’t mean set attainable goals. But you do need some small victories in there to sort of motivate you, you know, accomplish some easy things so that when you hit those bigger goals, which are more challenging, you have some small wins under your belt to sort of give you that motivation to keep going.
Chris Bounds 08:10
Yeah. Did you follow Us?
Brian Alfaro 08:14
I’m familiar with that. Yeah. I’m actually reading traction right now, but I’m not done with it.
Chris Bounds 08:17
It’s okay. I think we talked about that in Orlando.
Brian Alfaro 08:21
Okay.
Chris Bounds 08:21
Yeah. Well, I mean, some of the stuff you’re saying. So, you mean, you definitely know what you’re doing on this front. But some of the stuff you’re saying, you know, I’m picking up from ELS traction.
Brian Alfaro 08:31
Great book.
Chris Bounds 08:32
Everyone wants to check it out. Any final thoughts on goal setting or productivity tips for someone who just wants to crush it in 2022?
Brian Alfaro 08:41
Yeah. Great, great question. Appreciate your asking, Chris. I think just set some attainable goals. But also, I always tell people aim high because even when you miss, you’re still above average. So yes, it’s kind of a mindset thing like with multifamily, right? It’s like people are like, “Oh, I wanna buy, you know, one house this year”. Like, no. Set it for five, set it for 10.
And even if you miss and you buy two, three or four, you’re still way above the one you were originally planning on expanding, you know, buying so I would say push yourself a little bit stretch, you know, you got to get uncomfortable in order to find success in this business. So make yourself uncomfortable intentionally. And then just like I said, you can’t manage what you don’t measure should just be you know, looking at your goals all the time, and try to time block. I know that’s a big thing in a lot of real estate books for both realtors and just business people.
You know, the one thing is a great book by you know, Gary Keller talks about time blocking a lot, you know, you can’t really manage your day. Again, it goes back to setting your goals. If your goals aren’t on your day, I think Gary talks about putting your goals early in the morning, you want to be one of the first things that you do throughout the day, so you can have those wins because we all know that our productivity falls off as the day sort of goes throughout the day. So, you know, do your stuff early in the morning, set your goals, put them on your calendar time block them and just enough to plan in pencil. That would be my big tips.
Chris Bounds 09:52
Yeah, love it. Love it. Well, thanks, Brian. Look forward to seeing how your latest project rolls out and connecting again here in the near future.
Brian Alfaro 10:00
Thanks Chris. Thanks Jamie.
Jamie Bounds 10:02
Bye Brian. Great hearing from you
Brian Alfaro 10:03
See ya.