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That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. Today on Radical Personal Finance, we're going to talk about financial independence and how quickly you can get there if you use the concept of synthetic equity and find the right timing on an opportunity. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, encouragement, and inspiration that you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets. I am your host. Thank you for being with me today. Today, we're going to tackle that financial independence in 10 years or less nut. It's a hard one. Probably don't talk about it enough. Today, let's do it. As I have done shows in the past about that little 10 year or less statement that I have there in my little slogan for the show, I've emphasized that there are a number of different ways that you can get to financial freedom in 10 years or less.

I use the term financial freedom intentionally. I don't use financial independence there, although I do believe that you can become financially independent in 10 years or less. The paths to get there are generally going to involve a very high extreme savings rate. If you can save 70 or 80% of your income, you could reliably become financially independent in about 10 years or possibly through the growth and sale of a business.

That also can be done in less than 10 years. Many successful businesses are able to build and grow and sell out in less than 10 years. Now, none of these strategies are without risk. Entrepreneurship is risky. There's no guarantee of success, but neither is there any guarantee of anything in life.

I don't use financial independence in my slogan to say financially independent in 10 years or less, although I do maintain it's possible. I use financial freedom. You can choose what financial freedom means to you. You can define what financial freedom means to you. I've done entire shows where I've talked about some of the different stages of financial independence and financial freedom.

I've talked about different meanings, but that word freedom simply implies liberty, financial liberty. I often associate that term financial freedom with the idea of being able to live life on my own terms, being able to do the things that are important to me when I want to do them.

I don't define it as having a job or not having a job, having a business, not having a business, having enough money in the bank to pay my bills for decades or not. I define it more as a mindset, an ability to live life on your own terms. I believe that financial freedom is absolutely achievable for anybody in 10 years or less.

Is this just some fun idea or is there actually more meaning behind it? Yes. I want you to have a sense of self-control, a sense of autonomy, a sense of decision making. One great way to get there is through the use of various approaches to business. I don't think that everybody should be an entrepreneur.

I don't think everybody is prepared for that or has the emotional makeup. But I think there are many ways where if you'll open your eyes and look around you, there are many ways that you can use resources that are at your fingertips and find an opportunity that will help you to build the life of your dreams, to live that rich and meaningful life now and experience the financial freedom that you desire in 10 years or less.

My guest today has done exactly that and she has used something that I term the concept of synthetic equity. This is not original to me. But the idea here is can you find a resource that's being underutilized and bring additional value to it and use somebody else's assets to build your own wealth?

Can you use somebody else's money to build your own wealth? The textbook example that I use is the concept of property management and that's exactly what this show is about, although it's property management in a different format. The idea is you can become a wealthy real estate investor by owning and renting out your real estate units, whether they're houses, condos, whatever they happen to be.

You can do that. But that's going to involve a lot of financial capital to actually own those units. Now when you own those units, you generally are going to be managing them and you're going to be earning profits from them. But what if you don't have any money? Can you get into the real estate business and experience the benefits of property ownership if you don't have any money?

The answer is yes and you don't have to go out and do a no money down deal. You can get involved in the real estate business if you can develop a skill and expertise of property management. If you come in as a property manager and you can find clients, you may have the opportunity to manage their properties, take a percentage of the rents and have the benefit of real estate ownership without having to put up the upfront money.

You can benefit from the growth of rental rates as your rates go up. You can benefit from a nice property based upon being able to rent it out. And although you're going to be doing substantial work for that money, you'll be able to benefit from some of the aspects of real estate ownership, some of the ways that it's not a constant everyday amount of work.

And it's all synthetic. You're using other people's equity to pull your own profits off. So my guest today is Ziona McIntyre and Ziona has an interesting story where she did exactly that, but she has done it not with traditional rental houses. She's done it with Airbnb and she's done it in a remarkably short amount of time.

I met Ziona when I was at Camp Mustache Southeast 2017 in Gainesville a couple weeks ago and we sat down for about a 20 minute interview, which I will play for you in just a moment. Sit back and listen and recognize that Ziona has built for herself a plan for financial freedom in a remarkably short amount of time.

And you can do something similar, maybe with Airbnb, maybe with something else. When I bring you ideas and business ideas, things like that, you need to recognize that these are all culturally and time dependent. Some things might work where you are, some things might not work. Some things might work in 2017 that didn't work five years ago and that won't work in five years.

But there are always, always opportunities around you. And so look for the principles of what people who are successful in a various endeavor do. Look for those principles and then seek to apply them in your unique context. Before I play the interview, advertisers and sponsors for today's show, sponsor number one is Paladin Registry.

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But they'll put you in touch and that'll at least allow you to start your interview process with a good qualified candidate. So radicalpersonalfinance.com/paladin or link in the show notes on your phone or radicalpersonalfinance.com. Sponsor number two today is YNAB, the You Need a Budget budgeting software. YNAB is awesome because it allows you to take the money that's in your checking account and systematically give each dollar a name, where it's going to go, what it's going to be spent for.

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It'll let you update and change your budget easily when things happen and don't go according to plan. Free 34-day trial of the software at radicalpersonalfinance.com/ynab. Ziona, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Yay, thanks for having me. So we're here at Camp Mustache Southeast 2017, which has been this really fun gathering of all kinds of people who are pursuing financial independence, who are financially independent, kind of have this early retirement financial independence theme in common.

I'd love to hear a little bit about your story. How did you come into this world of financial independence? What's been your journey up till now? I found Pete like 2011 and I just loved it. I latched onto the idea. Pete is Mr. Money Mustache for those who don't know.

Oh, sorry. That's all right. I'm just a bag. I think it actually goes back to my parents were always struggling with money and I just knew that I didn't want to take that path and I saw that there was other ways. So I kind of was always looking for a way out.

I was looking kind of like what you talked about. I was always looking for a get rich quick scheme. But I didn't want it to be a scheme. I wanted it to actually work. I saw a lot of things out there that didn't really work and I was a little bit scared that maybe there was no way to do it.

But then, yeah, I found things like personal finance books. I got really into Suze Orman and although now I think she's way too conservative, it was a really good start. Just get like a Roth IRA. Just get some basic stuff. But it wasn't until Mr. Money Mustache that I really blew it open and thought like, "Whoa, okay.

I can do what he did. I can be early retired by 30. I can really do this." I still hold the belief that anyone can do it within five years from like zero to like I think you can do it in a short period of time if you're creative enough.

I think a lot of people don't think that but I think it's possible. - So why do you think it's possible? - I just think there's so many ways to go about it. I think it depends on how much you're willing to give up. So it's like a different kind of struggle but you're struggling for a goal.

So for me, like we can get into this but I do Airbnbs, I do short-term rental. There was a point when I started doing that that I realized, "Wow, I can cover all of my housing expenses," which was my biggest column of expense, "through Airbnb and more. It can pay me.

So why don't I just let that take care of itself and then know that I can get there really fast?" In having to do that, I had to hustle a bit. It was like I was staying at friends' houses, I was dog-sitting all the time, I was doing anything I could do to rent out the space that I would normally be living in.

But I knew that that short-term struggle was going to get me there really quick. And I was like, "That's it. I'm doing it." So that was like my turning point when I was just like, "Okay, this is the thing that's going to work for me." - Okay, so you started with Airbnb just renting out your personal house?

- Yeah. So a friend of mine had done it for a year and he made $50,000 on his apartment. And so then I was like, "Whoa, I am listening." And that was in New York City and I thought, "Maybe that doesn't work where I live." And I was living in Boulder, Colorado at the time.

I still live there. But it was kind of perfect timing. I had a roommate and she moved out. And so I was at this place of like, "Well, I have all this furniture. I could just have someone come in as an Airbnb and try it. And if it doesn't work, I'll just get a roommate." And so it worked so well that I was like renting her room constantly.

And then I started renting my room too. And I would like go between the two. And then when that was too popular, I was like, "Screw it. I'm going to stay at my friend's house. I'm going to sleep on the couch. I'm going to dog sit now." So whatever I had to do to get out of my house, which is slightly uncomfortable, but it's like this is my path.

I know it. And there's a long journey since then. That was like five years ago, but it's awesome. - So what were you trying to accomplish? Because a lot of people would say, "Well, what's the point of having your housing expenses paid for if you don't have a house to live in?" Were you trying to save money or were you trying just to cover your monthly mortgage?

Or what was your goal? - So I didn't own the house at the time. It was just a rental. But for me, I wanted to do what Pete did. So essentially Pete, or Mr. Money Mustache, he has this one blog that I love. It's like the 4% rule blog about like how much you need to retire.

And in that, he was talking about like for his family, they need 25,000 a year as expenses. And so to get that, they estimated they needed about 600,000 in stocks so that they could get the dividends and a paid off house. And so that was the goal that I took on because I thought, "Okay, like 2,000 to 2,500 a month, that's doable.

That's money that I could live off of." - Especially with a paid off house. - Yeah, totally. And so I thought, "Okay, let me take housing expenses out. So I don't have to think about that right now. Let's just work really hard to getting that 600,000." And so I was using Airbnb as a tool.

I was also doing massage at the time. I was a massage therapist. But I was just kind of like, "Okay, this is my hard goal. And if I can get there fast, then it's worth it. It's worth the short term struggle." - So then the point of renting it out on Airbnb was the income, which allowed you to...

You were saving the excess income over and above the rental payments that you were making towards your $600,000 goal. So then what? What'd you do from there? - Okay, so this is the gray area part. But I was like, "Okay, I want to get to the place where I can afford to buy something.

So for now, I need to leverage this more." So I went out and I rented another apartment that I didn't own. And I was renting and re-renting, essentially. So I would go between the three. So it was like whichever space was not rented, I was living in. So it was either that apartment or it was the one that I originally was in, in one of the bedrooms.

And I'd kind of do this cycle. So that was a little inconvenient, but it kept working. It kept growing. So it ended up turning into more apartments. And then eventually I was able to buy. And I knew I really want to be as in the right as possible. So owning was the best way to do that.

So that was the goal, for sure. - So during this process where you were working, right? You had a job as well? - No. So I had finished, I was in massage school. I had just finished massage school and I started a private practice. So that was something that because Airbnb was already working for me, I had the privilege of not having to go, "Oh, I need to go get a job at a massage like Envy or something." I knew like, "Okay, I have income already and I'm not paying housing expenses.

Can I just try to build my own private practice now?" So I was using multiple streams. And I had already been investing in Vanguard. So I had stuff to fall back on too. So it was kind of like, "Let's just try all this stuff and see what happens." - So where have things gone from there?

Are you still bootlegging apartments, breaking leases, subletting? - No, I'm trying not to do that anymore. Now I own four places. I'm buying a fifth one on the 20th. I teach people how to invest in Airbnb and I manage a bunch of properties for people. So instead of just like renting and re-renting, they actually know about it.

They come to me for it. So yeah, I probably have like 15 that I manage. - So the rentals that you're managing, how do you make that arrangement with the property owner? - Oh, it's so interesting. It's like people just started hearing that I was doing it. And so now it's just kind of built to this, is this like word of mouth thing.

And before, I don't know, yeah, I didn't have a website or anything. I just launched mine yesterday. And so now people can officially find me and all my social media is up. But before it was just really like Facebook or a friend of a friend. They just knew that I had been doing this Airbnb thing so long that they thought, "Well, I'm going to be out of town for six months, four months.

Why not have her rent it and let's just see if it does anything." So that's kind of where it's at now. I charge a 20% fee to do it, but I can get a lot of money for people. So it's a really good value. - What makes... I would guess it would be because a lot of people I think have space.

And if they knew somebody, "Hey, I'm going on vacation. I don't want to go through the hassle of setting up my Airbnb account. I don't want to necessarily deal with it. But I don't mind getting a little bit of extra money for my household. I'm traveling, why not?" And giving up 80% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

So if they know that they're busy and they're not going to go through the hassle, then it certainly can work well. Which by the way, I love that business model because it allows you to... I mean, what I call that kind of synthetic equity, using a resource that somebody else has, and you're profiting from the entrepreneurial endeavor without having to make the initial investment.

- Totally. - You're basically doing what Airbnb did. So the reason Airbnb has grown so rapidly and so massively is that they are providing the service that hotels were providing without the need for them to invest in physical infrastructure. And so then they have an opportunity to grow exponentially without the constraints of capital, without the constraints of construction, without the constraints of property management.

Because they're just jumping in to stuff that other people are already doing. Well, now you've taken that and you've jumped on the back of Airbnb. - Totally. All the middlemen. - And so now you're just taking your little piece of the pie of a completely synthetic made up business that you get profit from without having had to invest capital into, which is absolutely fantastic.

- Yeah, I mean, I call that like the try before you buy method for a lot of people. I'm like, "Hey, if you know people that want to try this Airbnb thing and they have a house, they have space, they're not willing to do it themselves, but they're curious about it, then reach out to them and just start managing for them." And Airbnb has set up this new thing where you can be an official co-host.

- That was what I was next going to ask you. So could you get your revenue directly from Airbnb or do the people just send you? - No, it's so easy. So they can just route it right to your bank account. It's so easy. And you can use your own login rather than having to log in through their account.

So Airbnb makes it super easy for co-hosts. And it can be a temporary thing. If they want to shut you off, they just change the setting. - So what do you do as an Airbnb property co-host/manager? What do you actually do for the owner? - So I will look at their ad if they have one or I'll make it for them.

So if they have one, it's usually not optimized. I've been doing it so long that I can go like, "Okay, you need way more photos," or, "These don't look that great," or, "Here's all these things that are awesome about your property that you're not talking about," just things like that that are important.

Also different ways to set settings for money. So you need a high enough security deposit that makes sense. You need to be charging per guest. You need to just... There's just different things. Cleaning fees, making sure that's a little bit more than what you normally would pay because sometimes it's dirtier than it normally is.

So just things to consider that I think a lot of people don't. And I know it right away because I've just been doing it so long. So optimizing, creating listing, doing all the guest communication. There's a lot of back and forth that happens with getting a guest ready. Answering all their questions, getting them how to get the key and all of the things for the house.

Then I handle all of cleaning scheduling. So that is one thing about Airbnb that's a lot to keep up is you've got to make sure you've got good cleaners and that they're going to be there on time and that they're going to make every cleaning. Because sometimes it's two times a month, sometimes it's like 15 times a month that you're getting cleans.

So you've got to have a good team for that. And then the last thing is handyman stuff. So just having a team of handyman that I can call at the whim if something needs to be fixed and managing that. So if you're in Dominican Republic and it's hard for you to get a hold of somebody, you don't want to know that there's this toilet flood happening in your house.

I just got to take care of it for you. You know, definitely stuff like that. So you manage how many properties now at this point? 15. And you now also own your own property. Yeah, it's going to be five. So you're closing on a deal soon. Yeah. Congratulations. Thanks.

So at this point you have a business that can pay your lifestyle, right? Totally. Actually, you know, if somebody wanted to just try out the whole management thing, you could pay your lifestyle probably with like three places. It's a lot of money. Wow. It depends. It depends. If you're mustachian, you could do it.

But lifestyle can be a very flexible term. Some people need $100,000 a month. Some people need $100,000 a year. And some people need $1,000 a month. Well, that's why frugality is such a beautiful muscle. Because the moment you realize you have this power, it's like you can adjust the barometer.

It's like, okay, now I get to live in the middle and that's kind of cool. And maybe I'm not eating out every night, but I could do it occasionally. If you need to shut that all down and live like the bare minimum, you know how. You know, you're like, nope, I'm cooking all my meals.

I'm not getting in the car. I'm not buying new shoes. And just do it temporarily until all of a sudden you have more money. So you know, it gives you that flexibility of not being like, oh, I have to go get a job tomorrow. It's like, no, you kind of adjust as needed.

And yeah. What to you is the benefit of not having a job? Oh my God, there's so many. I travel like five months out of the year. I get to wake up without an alarm clock every morning. I get to work from home. So there's zero commute. I get to work from Mexico if I want, you know, and there's just so many things.

I'm the owner of my time. I get to work at eight in the morning or, you know, midnight if I want to. So and there's days that maybe there's three days where I didn't want to work or yeah, I'm here at this workshop and I thought I'd get stuff done.

I'm not getting anything done and that's okay because I can work a hard day whenever Tuesday, if that makes sense. So when you work for yourself, you have all that flexibility and I think, you know, each person has its own, their own pacing. Like some people work really good for four hours a day and you can choose that and other people work in the nine to five.

I don't know. I don't do well in that. So it's like learning yourself and what you can optimize about the way that your body is and your functionality. Where are you going from here? I'm going to St. Louis from here. Well, actually I'm going to Savannah with JD. Let's be honest.

We're going to go do some fun road trip because I don't have a flight home yet and then I'm going to buy a last minute ticket. I'm going to St. Louis to furnish my house. So I'm going to write about that. A lot of people are asking about the steps of getting a new house and I thought it'd be fun to like post a list of all the things you have to buy and you know, just all the steps.

Right. So I think that'd be a fun process. What about your financial independence journey? What are your goals from here? They've changed a lot because I consider myself FI now. Like I am working, but I like it and my places already make more money a month than I need to live off of.

So I consider myself good to go. Yeah, I had a year, maybe like two years where I was only working five to eight hours a week and I was considering myself at five then. And then, you know, I, this is magical thing that happens when you're financially independent and then you just have all this free time.

People want to give you jobs. They almost like don't get the concept. They're like, well, can I pay you to like move this thing or can I pay you to like watch my dog or can I pay? It's like money just happens and business opportunities happen. You meet all these people and then sometimes it ebbs and flows.

So I'm in a flux now where there's all these opportunities to like share what I'm doing and build a little business around that. But I think in a minute I might scale back a little bit and do less. So maybe I'm going to do less property management and more just investing and writing about investing.

And you get to choose that. What do you do with all the free time? Oh, what do I do with the free time? When I was like only working eight hours a week, I had to figure out a purpose. I was kind of in this weird, like floundering place going like, oh, is this going to be in my life?

Like, what do I do? I'm not like producing. And I was thinking that I was finding my value in that. And that was a weird place to be like, oh, if I'm not productive, then I don't, I'm not, I don't, I'm not worth anything. And that's, that's funny. And so then I had to get down to like, what, what is important to me?

And I realized like, it's really about the people in my life. And I decided that like the meaning and the purpose of my life was coming from just being available for people. And so it was like, if somebody wanted to talk or if they wanted to go on a walk in the middle of the day, if they were going through a breakup or grief in their life, like I could be there.

If somebody just needed to like move or they needed to take their dog to the vet and they were stuck at their job, like I could be there. And it was just kind of nice to be like that friend that everyone knew was available. And so that was like a place that I was getting a lot of meaning at that time.

And you know, now I'm doing other things. I'm teaching people and whatever. But I think just relationships are really important to me. So that's it. So your brand new website is ziona.mcintyre.com. I'll link to that obviously in the post for this episode. Any closing words of advice or perspective that you'd love to give to somebody who's out there saying it sounds so easy, Ziona, but frankly, I'm struggling.

I think it's like only the individual knows what they really need to be doing in their life. And I think it's about finding the things that you really have, that you're really drawn to, that you really desire and spending time just doing those things. And if you're not happy in your job, I just feel like quit it.

Go part time, do something else because you really will have all these other opportunities if you trust that you like open and make yourself available for it. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks. Take Ziona's information and take her story and as I said at the beginning, look for the parallels near you.

It may be Aaron B&B. It may not be. It may be something completely different. But recognize the concept of what she's done, which is to say, "I have some assets around me. How can I take these assets and make them more productive? How can I take them and bring additional value to these areas such that I can earn some income?

Who needs what? Who has a service that they need?" A lot of times when you're dealing with something like Airbnb, the benefit is that people don't want the hassle. And one major thing that you can do to build a strong business is find things that annoy people and solve those problems.

You can get paid very handsomely for that effort. Thank you for listening to today's show. If you would like to support me and if I've solved a problem for you or given you an idea that was worth some money, come on by and pay me for it. You can do that at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.

Also please, if you haven't done it yet, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/survey. Fill out my quick, it's about 20-second, six-question demographic survey. I've just gotten the initial batch of results back from that. Very, very interesting. I have to really process that data and consider because it was very different than what I thought it would be.

So I've got to figure out what it means. I'll share that with you soon. I'll share the results of that survey. But I want to make sure it's very accurate. So the way that I make sure it's accurate is if a broad representative sample of the listening audience goes to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/survey and fills that out.

Please consider doing that, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/survey. Thank you all for listening. Be back with you soon. Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert, or live event unforgettable? Let Sweet Hop take your game to the next level. Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best premium tickets at stadiums, arenas, and amphitheaters nationwide.

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