Forged In Fire
Hosted by Nate Pharmer-Eden and Cole Farrell, Forged In Fire is where real entrepreneurship meets raw, unfiltered stories. This isn’t your typical business podcast—we skip the fluff and dive straight into the heat of what it really takes to build, run, and grow a business. From late-night doubts to game-changing wins, we explore the trials, setbacks, and breakthroughs that entrepreneurs experience at every stage of their journey.
Whether you’re a seasoned business owner navigating new challenges or someone with a burning desire to launch your first venture, this podcast offers powerful insights and practical lessons for everyone. No sugarcoating—just honest conversations about what it takes to forge success through the fire.
Get ready to be inspired, learn from real-world struggles, and gain the tools you need to make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality. This is your front-row seat to the highs, lows, and everything in between. Are you ready to step into the fire? 🔥
Forged In Fire
Episode 40: Jonathan Greene's Journey From Attorney to Real Estate Investor
What does it really take to build generational wealth through real estate? Not flashy strategies or market timing secrets, but something far more foundational – something Jonathan Green learned walking properties as a toddler.
Jonathan's journey begins with childhood weekends spent at yard sales, where his attorney father would scout potential properties while young Jonathan hunted for baseball cards. These seemingly ordinary outings served as masterclasses in opportunity recognition, deal-making, and patience. By age 18, Jonathan had already co-owned dozens of properties through family trusts, positioning him with a knowledge base most investors spend decades trying to acquire.
The episode takes a fascinating turn as Jonathan reveals his professional evolution – from attorney to art professional to education administrator before finding his way back to his real estate roots. His candid discussion about building and subsequently dissolving a 50-person realtor team highlights a crucial insight: knowing when to maintain tight control versus when to delegate is essential for sustainable success.
Perhaps the most valuable takeaway comes when Jonathan addresses why so many new investors fail. "What they're lacking is reps," he explains, cutting through the get-rich-quick mentality permeating today's investment landscape. This emphasis on experience, consistent action, and persistence forms the backbone of his approach.
Jonathan also shares his personal turning point – answering a business call during family dinner and immediately recognizing the need for boundaries. This led to his nine-year daily meditation practice that now grounds his entrepreneurial pursuits and family focus. His "Don't Rush Life" philosophy, inherited from his father, provides a refreshing counterbalance to the frantic pace many entrepreneurs maintain.
Whether you're just starting your real estate journey or looking to refine your approach after years in the game, Jonathan's blend of old-school wisdom and modern investment strategies offers a blueprint for building wealth that truly stands the test of time. Tune in to discover how patience, persistence, and perspective can transform your investment approach and life satisfaction.
Forget what you've heard. Forged in Fire is where real entrepreneurs come to share the untold truths of success the late nights, the crushing setbacks, the moments that change everything. No fluff, just fire, ready to step into the heat and unlock what it really takes to build a business.
Speaker 2:this is where legends are made welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of fords and fire. I'm your co-host, nate farmarino. I'm gonna introduce my counterpart, cole.
Speaker 3:How we doing brother nate doing good man, how are you doing today'm?
Speaker 2:doing good, but I feel like I haven't seen you in, like I don't know. It feels like three years, man. Where have you been? What's been going on? Fill me in.
Speaker 3:Dude, the last couple weeks have been fun. So for anybody that doesn't know which is probably everybody my wife and I just took a trip to Missouri, went to St Louis and we got a puppy and there's a whole long story of why we went there, but it's been a fun adventure and so there's a 99% chance you're going to hear him in the background on this episode. So apologies in advance, but I'm going to do my best. But he's been a riot and no sleep. I guess that's just part of the journey, but anyways.
Speaker 2:I'm good. So what else is going on in your world? Congratulations on the newest addition to the family man. Things over here have been great, you know you've been off getting puppies and enjoying the world. Things have been on fire, but it's fine, I'm handling it. It's all good, I'm just glad to have you back, brother.
Speaker 3:Love it. Love it A day in the life. Well, look, I'm excited to be here. We have a really good interview coming up and before we get into that, I have one single favor to ask you guys, and that is if you can leave us a review. I don't care if it's a review in the comments, or if you can go on whatever platform you're listening to this on and leave us a review. That would be fantastic. This is what helps us grow, this is what helps us find more people and keep doing this. So please do that one small thing for us. It would mean the world. But besides that, sit back, relax, enjoy.
Speaker 2:This is going to be a hell of a ride. Today we have the honor, the pleasure and the privilege to talk to our dear friend, jonathan. Jonathan, he has done so much for the real estate realm, as well as tons of other businesses. He also runs his own podcast. It is Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing fastest growing podcast around. Man dude. I'm excited to bring him on. Jonathan. Come on stage, brother. How are we doing today, man?
Speaker 4:Doing well, guys. Good to see you and thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2:Oh, pleasure is all ours, man. So please tell us a little bit about yourself. What got you here? What brought you here?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I grew up with a dad who was an attorney, as was I. That was my first career, so I thought that meant I'd be doing a lot of hanging around the courthouse. But my dad wasn't really into doing courthouse stuff, so all he did was real estate. So from the time I was two on, we were walking dumps, going to yard sales, making offers on homes, buying investment properties. So I was learning how to landlord, collect rents and understand real estate from really the time I was two on walked hundreds and hundreds of homes before I was even 10 years old. So I kind of was learning through osmosis as I go in real estate. And then, of course, as I got older, I went the other way and went and started my career as an attorney. But I was always doing real estate. It's just that this was so long ago there was no internet. I didn't really think of myself as a real estate investor. It was just smart financial planning is what I was doing.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. So talk to me more about that Meaning. Like you started, you know, I guess a young age kind of in the world of real estate, just kind of being around it, let's say right, and then you pulled away from it.
Speaker 4:So are you back in it now?
Speaker 4:obviously, and what does that look like? Yeah, I never pulled away from it. It's just, you know, people choose primary careers and now with the internet, everyone calls a side hustle or whatever. But back then it was just making money for your future and my dad was teaching me how to make money. He taught me about stocks when I was 14, opened a stock account, taught me about money literally every day, because that's all he talked about in the car was money and real estate. So I never really stopped. I went into careers. I was always doing real estate on the side and I was never really a high volume real estate investor.
Speaker 4:I've owned a lot of properties but I never set out to count my doors, or I've never even known how many doors I've had, because it never made any difference to me, because I didn't grow up in a time where all that was out there. I was just doing kind of millionaire next door stuff. That was just what my dad did. Nobody knew what he had or what he did, but that's just what we did. So I've stayed connected to it.
Speaker 4:And then about 12 years ago I got my real estate license. So I've had a big business as a real estate agent and that helped me kind of get back into investing. But I was investing, flipping, my whole life buying rental properties and, just to your point though, before I was 18, I had already owned 20 or 30 properties in trust with my dad. So he was a smart planner, he had worked for the IRS, so I was walking properties that I was part owner of at 14, 15 years old, learned how to collect rents. I knew all the tenants and, as I grew up, and eventually, when my dad passed away when I was 33, my sister and I took over those properties, sold some of them, and now we've sold pretty much most of them that we had and repurposed them, but we've done a lot of different things in real estate over the years.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, holy cow. Age of two, almost like born into real estate, walking units, collecting rents before you could, probably before you were even fully out of diapers. And then I'm so sorry to hear about the passing of your father, age 33. But then you and your sister acquiring or taking on that was what was in a trust, and then trying to figure out what you guys wanted to do with the business. So let's dive in just a little bit deeper to try to ask this question here. So what were some of the struggles, what were some of the trials and tribulations that you and your sister had to go through? And maybe you want to talk, even before your sister came on board, to what it was like from a teenager just hitting 18. Heck, maybe you even want to go to. Oh man, I'm a part owner, I'm 14 years old, I'm collecting rent. Are these adults even going to pay me money? I don't know. You let me know what some of these struggles were.
Speaker 4:Well, my dad was a really smart guy. He figured out ways to teach me things without being annoying about it. So you know, in between all of the car rides where we're talking about real estate, you know he's reading me dirty jokes from a dirty joke book. You know asking me anything just having fun. And then the next sentence would be like well, here's some information about stocks. So even when I was, you know, trying not to listen, I was still taking it in. And because I knew the tenants, I started to learn what was happening as I got older. You know, first I just thought cool, we own a commercial building. There was an electronics store in it. So every time we would go, all I cared about was I was going to get an Intellivision game. You know this is way older than you guys, but like these games suck, but they were amazing at the time.
Speaker 4:They weren't like they look now, but like. So I was being a participant in rent collection, but for me I was getting a video game and then I was going, you know, to get a turkey club after with my dad, because my parents got divorced when I was two. So my dad was a weekend parent and he was always waiting for me at school on Friday and we took off to Westchester from Brooklyn every single weekend. He was never late and he never stopped talking about how I could make my life better. Like I said, even when I tried to deny it, I eventually realized how much he knew.
Speaker 3:I mean, I knew all along.
Speaker 4:but it's like you know, you never want to listen to your parent. And then you know you read some book and you're like, oh, look, how much this guy knows. Like you know, oh, rich, at Porta, my dad already taught me all of that stuff before.
Speaker 3:Love that. I have so many questions, so one I have to ask. You said you sold a lot of your properties that you owned. I'm sure people are sitting here listening, going like why did he do that? So why? What's the reason behind that? And I'm sure there's a bigger purpose.
Speaker 4:So, kind of you know, tell me about that a little bit, yeah it's a good segue into how I learned how to collect rents and what the money meant. So, as I was growing up, a lot of those properties I would come home as I got into college. After high school, I would come home in the summer and I would work for my dad for part of the summer collecting rents for all of our renter properties. And the way that he presented it to me is well, here's the ledger and I would look at the ledger and then most people would be four to six months behind, because my dad was a really nice guy and didn't really, you know, he just wanted to help people and he would collect whenever you go over. And he said well, if you can get the rents up to date, you can keep half of whatever you collect. So me I'm thinking, oh, more video games, more snacks, like I'm going to do this. And I was like you know, I had started trying to do it when I was younger, but when I was in college is when I figured out this payment plan thing. So I put a few of them on weekly payment plans because they said well, I spend the money during the time, so I would just show up weekly because I could drive then and I would pick up partial rents. So my dad was like, oh, this is actually working. We didn't get them all back up because my dad didn't really wasn't a stickler as a landlord. But that kind of helped me figure out what it all meant.
Speaker 4:And then as we went forward, the properties again, they were held for so long. Some of these properties we owned for 20, 30 years. When we got to the pandemic, people were overpaying for everything and it was just time for us to cash out. My sister didn't really want to be in real estate anymore. So all the properties that we owned together, but for just a couple, we kind of just cashed out because the deals were too good to pass up and I've never been a big 1031. They were held in trust, so the tax differential was really fine with the timeframe, so we just took it. The intent was to repurpose the money right away, but because of the market I've really held on to it, invested in a lot of other things longer term assets and figured out what I wanted to do, and I still have the stockpile of ammo for the deals if they ever show up. But I'm with. I'm tough, so I only like a really good deal love it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I love this. And you just opened the door to so many more questions. First question so, thinking back then, what was the strategy and how you guys were acquiring these units? Uh, and were they primarily just all single family where you duplex tries and then, with that, were you doing any value add? And if so, what was the team structure like? Are you in there swinging hammers now because you're like I want to learn my hand's dirty. Fill me in.
Speaker 4:No, I mean, you're looking at a person who does not do construction and doesn't like to, but the reason why is really a who, not how, principle. I'm not good at it and I don't like it, so why am I going to do it? You know, my dad was that guy. My dad was lifting stones. We had bulldozers in our backyard. He was like building you know golf holes in our back. I'm like what the hell are you doing? Why do we have a bulldozer? He's like this will go to how we bought properties. He's like well, I knew this guy.
Speaker 4:You know it was an estate. He was a wills and estate attorney, so we would just get random stuff because he would barter instead of fees. He's like I like that bulldozer, I'll do your estate if you give me that bulldozer. People are like what am I going to do with a bulldozer? Sure, take it. So we just had so much house. That's how we bought properties. We went to yard sales nine, ten a weekend me, my two step brothers, my half sister, all in the car with my stepmom. We're all screaming like why are we doing this? There's good stuff at yard sales, ps in the 70s and 80s, like you can get really good stuff.
Speaker 4:And there was sports stuff, baseball cards. All I wanted was baseball cards. It was like I was like the original gary b, just looking for any collectibles. So at every yard sale I figured out later my dad was making an offer on the house. Because why else do you have a yard sale unless you're moving PS to people who are looking to get into real estate or people who follow Gary Vee and see how he flips either furniture or cards?
Speaker 4:My dad was doing this with houses. He knew that the time was right. They're doing the yard sale for a reason. But he wasn't pushy. He was enough to ask hey, are you selling soon? I'll make you a cash offer. That's fair. We can just work it out. You don't have to go through all this stuff with realtors. Again, there was no internet, so it was even a little harder. There's no pictures, so it was different. He bought a lot of houses like that, but my dad wasn't tied to one asset class. I mean we mostly owned single family homes and condos, townhouses for rentals, but he just bought some weird stuff too. I mean, I still owned up to.
Speaker 4:I still owned a couple weird stuff, things that he bought. He would buy strip malls, random pieces of land behind golf courses, Like he really did not care if he thought there was value in the deal and it looked good to him. He.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. I love the thesis. One of the other things I want to jump into is you talked that he held this in a trust and you said that he structured it very smartly, did a certain way for taxes and I guess you know, just for survivability, et cetera. So for people that hear this, they go okay, cool trust. I've heard that, but like, what does that mean? How does it work? Can you shed some light on like, when should somebody use a trust? And or how does it work?
Speaker 4:Why Can you shed some light on like when should somebody use a trust and or how does it work, why, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, if I look at myself, I haven't used the trust as well as I should. I now have everything in my own personal, you know, living trust which is important to keep away for your, for taxes, for your kids or if you happen to pass away. My dad just made and he wrote them himself because he was an attorney, so these were not like ironclad agreements, but we understood them and I think that my dad really did them to put the real estate away from him. He again, like I said, he worked for the IRS before, so he was smart about taxes. He was trying to defer, kick the can, like people say, for a 1031. He just wants to kick those taxes down the road to a time where there are no taxes. And that's really part of it, and I think part of it for him was empowerment.
Speaker 4:He was, just like I said, very smart. He wanted us to know that we own assets, that we're a participant. That's why he brought us to all the buildings if we were on vacation. He's like hey, you see that we own that. I'm like, huh, you know what are you talking about. I'm like it's like a taco hut. He's like, hey, you see that, we own that. I'm like, huh, you know what are you talking about. I'm like it's like a taco hut. He's like, yeah, we own it. You know, they pay us rent and this is how it works. I'm like, all right. I'm like, what's that thing upstairs? He's like, yeah, our you know our co-owner. He lives up there. You and my dad was a, you know, he was a person who all of his friends came to to do, you know, deals together. So we just owned weird stuff. We owned like some triple net Arby's and Carson City, nevada, with one of his friends.
Speaker 4:We would go out there and it's like oh okay, you know, I don't know why we own all this stuff, but it's interesting and he helped a lot of his friends that way. He's just a really nice guy. But yeah, he was just somebody who liked the art of the deal, I would say, and he wasn't afraid to acquire assets and just let them sit around and do nothing.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I love this so much. This is that part of the show. Now, I'm notorious for this. Pause, stop, rewind, play this whole thing all the way back, because so many gems, so many nuggets have just been dropped. This resonates deeply with me.
Speaker 2:Being a father of two beautiful children myself. I want to be able to do the exact same type of thing. I want to be able to pass down this legacy. I'll take my son with me. I am not handy, don't give me a hammer, but I take him with me to be able to show what it looks like before, what it looks like after, and I introduce him to the folks that actually did all the work, because it wasn't this guy Doesn't matter. With that being said, I kind of want to go to this next segment where I want to know what does it look like now? What is the family structure in terms of what you guys are investing in? What does it look like now in terms of I know you sold stuff off through COVID. Are you now acquiring again? Are you sitting on a lot of cash? What does the vision look like?
Speaker 4:Yeah, what does the vision look like? Yeah, starting last year, I finally opened my eyes to real estate syndications. I think before that. You know whether it was ego. I think I know everything. I can be a driver, I want to be active. I realized like I'm getting kind of old, like I don't really need to be around the scene of all these flips all the time, and I also realized from you.
Speaker 3:Know, I haven't when I flip.
Speaker 4:I have a project manager, my best friend, because she can be on site If I'm on site every day.
Speaker 4:I'll fire everyone because I just have a very low tolerance for stuff that happens that's not their fault. You know, like the tile didn't come on time. I'm like, oh God, the whole thing. I'm like very regimented so I only show up to my flips like once a month if anybody's lucky and they probably don't want me there. Like once a month if anybody's lucky and they probably don't want me there.
Speaker 4:So I started to kind of put that on into my personal life, especially because my sister wanted out on the investments, so we weren't buying as many things together. We used to do a lot of short term rentals together, but again, it's just a high volume of intake for her because I was more of the hey, I'll evict our tenants, I'll handle some of the stuff. But she handled the day-to-day of tenants and short-term rentals. So because of my podcast, I started interviewing so many syndicators and I was like, well, I didn't really know about this when I was growing up. This sounds pretty awesome.
Speaker 4:And by doing reading Hands Off Investor by Brian Burke and kind of doing a deep dive on, like, hey, what do I need to know? I need to understand the operator, I need to know who I trust, then I'll focus on the asset and for me I really focus hard on the debt that they have for the syndication. So for me I don't have any interest at all in being a multifamily landlord. I would rather just jump into a pile of peanut butter. I just don't want to do it. I don't want to deal with the tenants every day. I didn't want to do it when I was younger, but I was getting half the money. I don't even want the money from it. It's just not for me. So by finding multifamily syndications, I've been able to put myself into multifamily as an asset class and also cities that I'm interested in, without having to do anything, and the only thing I have to do is check my ego at the door and trust the people that I did the due diligence on to do right by me.
Speaker 3:It's such an awesome way to explain that. We talked to so many people that have no experience with this that are thinking about it, and that was like such a great clip of here's my experience how I got into it what I watch for, so that is fantastic. I have another total random question behind you. I see some awards, slash tombstones and instead of talking about syndication which I'm sure we'll get to I have to ask about them. Are they related to business or anything like that? Are they separate personal stuff?
Speaker 4:Those are all realtor stuff. Okay, one of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I ran big teams.
Speaker 4:I've done a lot on my on market business, but I ran a team as big as 50. And then eventually fired everyone on the same day, just because you know.
Speaker 4:Being a realtor and real estate investing totally separate businesses. When I got my real estate license 12 years ago, I realized that, like I know a lot, realtors don't know anything about real estate. Right, let's just be honest, most realtors don't know shit about anything. I don't care if they're upset because the top 1% or top 5%, they know a lot and they're great, but the rest, like you, have to work harder to understand real estate. So if you're thinking like for investors, if you want to invest, you better have a realtor who invests and understands all the dynamics of what you're doing. You can't like go buy a short term rental with someone who's done residential real estate for 25 years and doesn't know the metrics and what you need to do to add amenities. So it's kind of silly.
Speaker 4:So those awards came because I'm just really good at real estate. I'm not even a people person, I'm a terrible salesperson. I'm just good one to one and I'm very capable of saying no. So I think that you're you know, the biggest ability you have in all parts of real estate, whether it be investing or as an agent, is your ability to walk away, and I freely walk away from deals clients because I don't want to waste my time on people who don't have the same kind of input as I have into the equation.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So many things again resonate with me. I agree wholeheartedly. Now I've got to ask before getting rid of the entire team we'll try to use that term to make it a little loose. Did you at least attempt to try to use that term to make it a little loose? Did you at least attempt?
Speaker 4:to try to train them to think more like investors. Yeah, yeah, no, we did great as a team. I mean, we were on real trends. You know, three years in a row we did a lot of transactions, high volume. But realtors people become realtors because they want the independent contractor status. But brokerages again, I didn't run a brokerage, I ran a team under a brokerage.
Speaker 4:Brokerages actually make it almost like you're not independent. They're like oh, you're free, but also use all of our stuff so we can have all of your information in there. So the problem is that people become independent contractors again so they can be independent. So you can't really tell them what to do, nor do they really want to do what you say. So even when you dangle all of these fire leads from Zillow Flex in front of them, their capacity to do is just not high enough. I have an unlimited capacity because of my dad. Like there's nothing. That's ever too much for me, because I'm very regimented and scheduled. I'll just figure out a way or I'll say no, and the ability to say no is important because it helps me keep what's in there important. So I'm looking at you know, I would teach them have a top 10, top 20. I had a top hundred at a time when we had so many leads, because if you only have an hour, you better focus on the top 10. You don't focus on the randos at the bottom of your funnel. So, yeah, I think we did great training.
Speaker 4:But what happened for me is I just realized I didn't want to run a team anymore. I was doing a decent amount of the business. I'm still friends with very many of the agents and as I go into this next iteration which I don't know when this comes out, but I can't say what's happening but something cool is happening I'll probably be back in with them. But you know, being an agent is hard.
Speaker 4:Being on a team is hard because you have a double split and if you have leads you have a triple split. So just think of it this way If you're on a real estate team and this isn't a lot of businesses, you know they pay me a split, they pay the brokerage above us a split and then they pay Zillow a split when they're doing those leads. So what looks like a $12,000 commission? You know, maybe they get four grand, so they have to do a higher volume than I needed to do. So I understood it. So over the years I figured out hey, what do I want to do? And that's what. The next iteration is coming very soon.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. I have so many questions I want to poke into there, but we will wait until that happens and then we'll have to have you back and go through it.
Speaker 4:It's entrepreneurship, though, Like I mean, this is what you guys talk about, so you know, for me it's just the next evolution of not being under someone's thumb, so people can probably figure out what's coming.
Speaker 4:It's just I need, I I've learned I don't want the control in investing and I've learned in the brokerage real estate business. I want all the control because the way that I do business I personally think just makes real estate better. I'm very transparent, I'm honest, no bullshit. I try to be friends with all the other agents but I just don't take crap from people and I think that real estate investing and the on-market business least transparent business that you can ever be involved in. Everybody's just shifty and if everyone just be straight up and talk and be collaborative like the real real estate investing world is, it will be a lot easier.
Speaker 4:All of us in the investing world. As you were saying before, nate, it's a lot smaller than you think. You always know people who know people. Everyone has the real estate license. Every 19-year-old and every soccer mom and every grandfather everyone's got a license. So people are like oh, I'll just recruit at my mommy and me class. No, 61% of those people are realtors. Some of them do a lot of business, some don't, so it's not as easy now to just do the business. So I'm trying to take control and do it my way, which dovetails with the investing part of what I've been doing my whole life.
Speaker 2:I just got to put a pause in this real quick for all of our listeners, and I'm hoping that you guys have picked up on all of the cues. I hope that you guys are understanding what's happening. Every single one of our episodes thus far if you've been rocking with us since the very beginning, I'm hoping you followed this trend. Not a single investor or entrepreneur that we've talked to has ever sat stagnant. Everything is always evolving, everybody's always pivoting, everybody's always forward motion and upward mobility. So I'm hoping that you guys are driving this home, as you guys are sitting there thinking the next step, that it's okay to pivot, it's okay to change, it's okay to shift with the economy.
Speaker 4:Just think in the next step that it's okay to pivot, it's okay to change, it's okay to shift with the economy. Just make that step, make that jump. So I'm sorry, let me get off my soapbox. Yeah, well, let me jump in on that because I know that's. You know your audience is like hey, a lot of people are probably thinking like, oh, you know, should I leave something that's steady? There's something called runway, you know, and we talk about it with real estate investors all the time, when somebody should leave their W-2 to go do their passion. Well, it's when you have enough runway, plus two years.
Speaker 4:To me, like, don't do it too quickly, don't sign up for fire movement and think that you're, you know, 21 and you're, oh, I don't want to work a real job anymore. You don't have any money. You know, you haven't built a career, you have no reputation. You have to do these things to get there, and some people can do it both ways, but you don't need to jump too quickly. But for me, I love what you said and I love what the podcast stands for, because everyone says like, hey, when are you going to retire? Like I'm old, I'm like why?
Speaker 3:would I retire.
Speaker 4:What the hell am I going to do?
Speaker 3:all day.
Speaker 4:You think I'm just going to sit around and do nothing. Well, I like real estate. I'm never going to stop doing real estate. There's a 0% chance. I'm just not doing active real estate, not swinging a hammer. I'm not managing the tenants, I'm backing up and building teams to do better.
Speaker 4:But again, before you get there, when you jump into something new, you got to really go. You know, all in and that's what I've done. You know, I was an attorney for 10 years, then I was in the art world for six years, then I was in education university education for three years, then I got my real estate license and through all that I've been investing and then I found the podcast and now I just do what I like. I've been on time freedom, you know, since I left being an attorney and that coincided with my dad passing away. Since then I've just been running businesses and trying to figure out what works, and when something doesn't work, I just scrap it and do something else, because I get bored, you know, and if I'm bored, the business isn't going to be good.
Speaker 3:It's like if I can't sell the business, then I'm just going to close it and do something else. No-transcript. Um, there's so much else I want to dive into. However, I don't want to hold you all day here. So, nate, do you have any questions before we jump into our next segment?
Speaker 2:My question is Jonathan, are you ready? Because we have a surprise for you.
Speaker 4:I'm always ready. I told you, just throw stuff at the wall and I'll just grab it.
Speaker 3:Love it All right. So here's what we're going to do. We have six questions that we'd like to ask every guest and we're going to do our best to keep quiet and you can answer very succinctly. You, you quiet and you can answer very succinctly. You can answer at length whatever you want to do, but we're just going to kind of hit you with them and see where we go. Let's do it All right. Number one what separates top performing?
Speaker 4:entrepreneurs or investors. From the rest of the crowd I would say reps. I mean, if you look at everyone out there, you know I sent out one post. I sent out one postcard to 10,000 people and I didn't get any deals. I don't understand why this works. Yeah, because postcards take eight months to work. There's a study on it. That's how it works. You can't send one out. So everybody, especially in the real estate investing world, what they're lacking is reps. They say, oh, I looked at 20 deals this week. I said how many did you see in person? Oh, zero, great, you did nothing. How many properties have you ever looked at in person? Three.
Speaker 4:You want to buy a six-unit apartment building in Indianapolis and you've looked at three houses in your whole life. You don't even know what's in the basement. You don't know what's in the attic. You don't know what to look for, you don't understand when a heating system's too old. You're going to lose all your money. So if you can take this and you can extrapolate it across every single industry, if you suck at your job or you wonder why you're not moving up one, you don't have enough reps or you're not trying hard enough.
Speaker 4:And I just to the point. I learned this in the government. I was a prosecutor for eight years and you don't get paid well, my first salary as a prosecutor out of law school was 25 grand. I worked my ass off. I worked 80 hours a week, 100 hour weeks and I steadily got promotions, because every time they said, hey, do you want to run a division? It doesn't come with any extra pay, but if you do well, you'll keep moving up and you will get bonuses. Yeah, give me all the responsibility. I wanted all the responsibility, didn't care about the money and because of that I got the money. And I think if everybody starts to think like that, taking internships for free, learning from people who will become your mentor, instead of saying, hey, could I take you to coffee, will serve you a lot better.
Speaker 2:Oh, I failed. I'm sorry. I'm supposed to stay quiet. I've got to say I was done so many of these and this has to be hands down the best answer to the first question I've ever heard, because it's real. It's raw, it's authentic and it's just what people need to hear. Just do the thing Like hey reps, put them in. You can't just do one time and then say, oh, it's not working, I'm gone Like oh my gosh, but that culture is like very prevalent and it kind of syncs with social media.
Speaker 4:You know, oh look, are you looking for a TikTok video to teach you how to do something, or do you want to watch YouTube Because it's a 42-minute tutorial on how to install the tile? Oh no, I'll just watch a TikTok. Okay, but that's not going to pass later. And that's the thing. People are short term thinkers and they need to be long term thinkers, which goes to what we were saying before about building enough runway.
Speaker 2:So that hey look.
Speaker 4:I'm good. I'm good. If it fails, I can just go back to my prior career. And that's another thing. If you do the prior career well and then you decide, hey, well, I'm going to go be an investor, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, you don't automatically get banned from going back. Like I can go back to being a lawyer anytime I want. You know. Like what are they thinking? Like you can't do it again. I mean, unless you like, burn the bridges and tell everyone to screw off. Like you have a career. It doesn't mean it's gone just because you go to the next one.
Speaker 2:I just because you go to the next one. I love this so much. I'll get to the next question. But to digress, I have this conversation with my son so much because the younger generations I call them microwave generations they want instant gratification. They want to just be able to take something, pop it in the microwave and have it done. We have this conversation about his grades. He's like hey, dad, I got my grades up.
Speaker 4:I've got an A so now I can just slack up. Absolutely not you, a different kind of smart. I like to question things. That's what an entrepreneur does. I don't like to listen to someone tell me what to do. That's why, you know, I'm lucky that I made it through college and law school. But you know, I like to build stuff. I'm only happy when I'm building stuff. I get bored once things are running well, because it's boring.
Speaker 2:I love this so much. Okay, now that we've taken up way too much time on question number one, number two what is a daily habit that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 4:It's a no brainer, it's meditation. It's a good backstory, though. About eight years ago, I was running a big team with a partner and I was at the table with my kids they were probably like 12 and 10 at the time, and I had bad boundaries in real estate. I was at the table with my kids they were probably, like you know, like 12 and 10 at the time, and I had bad boundaries in real estate. I was letting people call me from six in the morning to 10 at night. I wanted to be the best, so I was always answering. The phone rang at the dinner table and I said hold on, this is important and right. When I said it, I just literally wanted to jump off a bridge. I looked at my kids and I was like what is wrong with me? Like I, you know. So I literally that my my partner. At the time we were in a relationship. I broke up. I gave her the whole team. I said take all the leads, I'm out. I put my real estate license inactive, so I couldn't do real estate for a year, stop doing anything other than the properties, and all I did for a year was focus on myself.
Speaker 4:Learn stuff, dude. I did like 30 masterclasses in that year and I learned about meditation and since then I haven't missed a day. I'm on like nine years like on some app of meditation and it's imperfect, but I do it every day. I meditate and then I read every single day and I walk. I've really taken up the habit of aimless walking, which I was listening to it's Ryan Holiday says it a lot. He says you know you can't cure anything with a walk, but nothing's going to get worse by walking and I've really found solace in that. I look at nature. You know I'm listening to a podcast. You know there's just cool stuff out in the world where if you sit in your office all the day, you're just going to miss it. So meditation and I would say overall is just really mindfulness and a different approach has changed my attitude and outlook on life as a whole.
Speaker 3:Absolutely love that. So good. What is a piece of advice that you'd give to yourself if you're starting again? I know you touched this a little bit, but I'd do the same thing.
Speaker 4:The reason why is because my dad helped me develop a very um. I think some people over the years have thought I was arrogant, depending on what field they found me in, like as a trial attorney. Uh, if you don't think that you're badass, you're gonna lose every case. So I, the reason why I have confidence, or people find is because I know a lot, because I study a lot and I got the reps going back to the first thing.
Speaker 4:So I would tell myself not to change anything. You know, I think that we end up at these places. Everything in my life has been imperfect. You know, I lost both my parents at pretty, pretty young ages for me.
Speaker 4:But you know, this is just the track that I'm on, you know, and I think that I would tell myself just you're going to be fine, you know, and I think I am fine. I've been definitely had some lows, I've had some highs, but I'm a pretty steady person and I think you know being that person that other people know they can rely on as a gift to your friends and family around you. Like, oh no, rock solid, like that guy.
Speaker 2:if he says he's going to do something, he's going to do it. So I would just stay the course I love that.
Speaker 4:So what is your favorite business book? Oh so I read Main Street Millionaire by Cody Sanchez recently and I'm just obsessed. I went to Bigger Pockets Conference and she was keynote speaker. She's just absolutely exactly like you think she's going to be. So I read the book and I'm really into buying businesses now. So it's a real sidecar to what my iteration is, because I'm looking to put in other businesses to that. That's a great one. And then one of my favorite books that I've ever read, which, again, not that many people know about, is called the Wealthy Gardener by John Seforic. It's kind of a real estate book, it's kind of a mindfulness book, but there's not. No one will not enjoy the book. It's a very deep dive into why we do the things we do and what you can get out of them.
Speaker 4:It happens to involve gardening and real estate. It's pretty incredible. It's kind of like you know, like I don't know. It's then in the art of motorcycle maintenance, except that's like a real divergent two books in one type of thing. But yeah, main Street Millionaire was the one in the last year that really opened my eyes to damn. There's a lot of businesses owned by older people, and their kids don't want to run the businesses, but they're making a million dollars a year. Their kids are like look, I don't want to be a plumber, cool. Well, that plumbing business is never going to get beat out by AI. So if you want to find stuff that's not going to be beaten up by AI, it's trade businesses, things that can't be replicated, things that can be upgraded with technology, but the skills that people to do it can't be taken away.
Speaker 3:And those are the areas that I'm looking in for business by One of my favorite things about this podcast and hosting this is I get to hear everybody's favorite books and then, as soon as they say them, I go on Amazon and I just order them and it's such a thing so I love. You said I've not heard that one before. I have heard of the Gardner one. I'll definitely add that to a top priority. All right, what is your favorite part of I'm going to twist this answer, but like your question owning your business, owning your investments, owning what you do what's your favorite part of that?
Speaker 4:I mean, I think it's the ability to give it to my children generational wealth and building stuff. You know, the only reason I do what I do is so I can give more to my kids, because that's what my dad did. Ps, my dad came from nothing. My dad's dad was an alcoholic gambler. So be super sweet, get a Mustang and then three days later it would get repossessed. So you know, growing up my dad he built up a pretty good thing. I had a trust fund I'm not a trust fund baby because I don't come from that, but like we lived in nice houses, my dad like houses and cars. So I think that just kind of following through on that was something that I learned from him is just whatever I do is for my kids. I don't really need accolades or ever anything. I do the podcast because it's passionate for me. I don't get money from that, but I don't care about money.
Speaker 4:I like money because it helps me live. I try to earn as much as I can, but I don't care about money. I like money because it helps me live. I try to earn as much as I can, but I don't sit around nickel and diming my life. So you know, I think that's it in a nutshell is just trying to figure out you know where I'm at. Keeping myself on track and staying focused on everything that I do will go to my kids. So let me set them up the right way so they don't have to worry about it you them up the right way so they don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 4:You know, when they get older, love it. Wait, wait, nate, before you say anything, are you into cars, or was it just your dad? Uh, I'm not into cars the way that he was into cars I have. I mean, I like cars but I don't, I don't like have a car collection I have a nice car, but I don't, I don't, I'm not like a.
Speaker 4:I don't go to car shows, I like houses. But, ps, I don't live in big houses, I live in quirky houses. I always have I just because I like to remodel them. So I really play around with my house. They're downstairs doing work right now and that's pretty much a constant.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Okay, I asked that because I have a few obsessions, and it's cars, real estate, guns, and so you said cars. I'm like, oh, let me dive. So anyways, I digress.
Speaker 4:That was my dad, that was my dad's thing. He would, yeah, again, if you just I'll tell you a quick story because, cole, like you'll like this. Uh, my dad showed up. This is how you know. We're talking about how my dad bought stuff and he just showed up one day, uh, with this, with the silver porsche 911, and there's no, there's no, the mop tops off.
Speaker 4:I'm like what, what is this? He's like well, I got a deal. I'm like, what do you mean? You got a deal. He's like well, I got it from 20 grand. I got 20 grand. Like down, like you know, somewhere in Queens. He's like it's cash deal. I'm like, well, what happened to the roof? He's like, well, the guy told me the story. He was riding on the highway, tried to put down the roof and the roof blew up. So, just giving it away for 20 grand, I'm like I don't really want to know the rest of this, but you better get a roof on that thing. So, again, my dad would buy stuff if it's a good deal cars, houses, all day, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I love it, I love it, I love it. So final question in this segment and you can put this in whatever facet of your life that you would like to but what is something new that you've implemented that's helped drive your success, on both active or passive? You let us know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean I think it's giving up control. Like I said before, you know I've been a control freak. I still am. I'm channeling it the right way into businesses where it's important for me to be a control freak because I'm good at what I do, but I'm never going to know the most about multifamily or self-storage or mobile home parks, so why would I try and invest in those myself? And I think it's helped me kind of reduce.
Speaker 4:The thing that we all suffer from is like, hey, I want to get my hands in too many jelly jars and now I don't. I like having my schedule. You know, if I want to watch the NCAA tournament, I watch the NCAA tournament. I just put the other stuff that I have to do around that. So I think releasing a little bit of my control, especially when it comes to money and investing and trusting people whose full-time job is to find multifamily deals and who've done it before and have the ability to get deals with great debt and, in my opinion, very low risk even though real estate is really never no risk, I find it to be very, very low risk. So that's it for me and I think I've channeled that into other areas again, like not showing up at flips all the time, not micromanaging, and I'm going to try to do that in my next business as well.
Speaker 3:So good. This has been awesome. I mean just dialing back to the beginning, talking to you about how you got started, from your dad starting the attorney world, kind of growing up around real estate and then taking it on and kind of building different careers, but always keeping real estate on the side. Like I said, you had that person to lead you and your dad's one of your mentors, and then going into other businesses the things we talked about with trust, and I love I keep looking at it.
Speaker 3:I've written down the yard sales. I think it's such a cool idea of how we ran around and would make offers on yard sales, and I bring that up because everybody right now is looking for easy money, but there is no easy money. It's what can you do, what can you have a different, unique perspective on? And I feel like that is a very unique perspective and thing that worked for him and he capitalized on that, so I love it. So, jonathan, I have two final questions for you. One, do you have any final advice? And two, where can people find you and tell us about your podcast at the same time?
Speaker 4:Yeah, appreciate it. My advice is the thing that my original coaching company was called Don't rush life. It's what my dad always used to tell me when I was learning how to drive. I'll be driving, you know, I'm 16. Like I'm like I'm just fire, like I just want to get going, you know, and he's like, oh, you're supposed to make a turn back there.
Speaker 4:I'm like I start cursing like crazy, what's wrong with you? I'm like I missed the turn. He's like what do you care? Where are you going? We don't. We're not like going on an appointment. He's like just turn around, maybe we'll see a cool house when we go down the road and like occasionally we would. He's like look a yard, sound like this guy. You know. Like every single time I think he, he, he never would. Let me be mad. So that was really it. It's don't rush life. You have plenty of time. Again, you do have to focus and be present, because anything could happen to us at any time, but it's silly to rush through all the good stuff. That's why I go on walks, so I can just look and watch the grass grow, watch the clouds move. That's been really important to me.
Speaker 4:My podcast is called Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing podcast is called Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing. I'm at about 255 episodes I've been doing it for about three years, published twice a week. I have the biggest names in the game on and, honestly, when everyone asks me like, why do you do this? You don't make any money, it's independently produced, I don't have ads, I don't do anything, I just love it and I love coming on podcasts. That's why I was totally excited to come on with you guys.
Speaker 4:There's something about podcasts that I think is just. It's just open to everyone you know and someone can just catch and it's like it's just the fact that I can do that while I walk and taking all that information is crazy. So for me, just like this conversation is just like a couple of people just talking about real estate investing. So it's easy to find everywhere and I'm very easy to find Basically. My handle is Trust Green with an E at the end and most places that's on Instagram and the podcast and everything and my real estate businesses are all pretty easy to find. My hub site is TrustGreencom and that has a whole bunch of every time I go on a podcast, like when this comes out, I'm going to package it up, put it right onto my site in the speaker section and there's a lot of info there Because then you can see all all like I love going on shows, talking to guys like you, because it's just you know it's it's new audiences and you never know who you're going to interact with and what impact it could have.
Speaker 4:And the coolest thing about it is you can have an impact and never know it and that kind of makes it all worth it. I don't need someone to call me and say, hey, I heard you with nate and cole and it, you know, changed my life. I just assume, like someone's's gonna like this information, it's gonna help someone and if it does, great, totally worth it and also fun.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, Our brother Jonathan Green. This has been an honor, a pleasure, a privilege. I said that at the very beginning of this episode, not fully understanding what the heck we were gonna dive into, but you have taken us on a journey, brother. This has been fucking amazing. I appreciate you. I know Cole appreciates you and I know our listeners appreciate you. So thank you so much for your time. It's valuable, but you decided to come and hang with us, so thank you For our listeners that are out there. Please reach out to him, Check out his podcast. This dude is amazing. He's a fountain of knowledge who's been dropping gems for the last 45 minutes. I'm sure he's got some words of wisdom for you as well. So reach out to him, connect with him If you're driving, get home safe and, as always, we'll see you all next time on Forged in Fire. Take care everybody. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forged in Fire. If you enjoyed today's raw, unfiltered stories, don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us bring more real-world insights to entrepreneurs like you. Be sure to join us next time for even more lessons, struggles and breakthroughs on the road to success. Keep forging ahead.