Jonathan Greene, the Team Leader of Streamlined Properties and a thought leader in the real estate investing space, shares invaluable insights from his journey in real estate, including the importance of building cash flow through strategic investments and leveraging knowledge gained from a lifetime in the field. He discusses the influence of his father's investment philosophy, the nuances of different asset classes, and the significance of adopting a mindful approach to real estate investing.
Jonathan emphasizes the importance of relationships in the real estate business, the potential of mixed-use properties, and the value of investing in oneself through self-improvement and mindfulness. The episode is rich with strategies for real estate agents and investors looking to grow their portfolios and income while maintaining a balanced and intentional approach to their work and personal growth, so make sure you tune in for more.
Key takeaways to listen to:
About Jonathan Greene:
Jonathan Greene is the Team Leader of Streamlined Properties, brokered by ΓEA⅃ , a multi-state team of professional, knowledgeable, and proficient real estate agents built to connect with clients who need agents to understand exactly what they are looking for. Streamlined puts client service first and maintains its core values and culture throughout every transaction and interaction. Their team values all of the participants in a real estate transaction and seeks win-win relationships where everyone walks away happy.
Streamlined has been a part of RealTrends America's Best Real Estate Teams two years in a row (2022 & 2023). Jonathan is also a thought leader in the real estate investing space. His podcast, Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing is one of the fastest-growing real estate podcasts in the world. He is a lifelong real estate investor, on-market team leader, and luxury agent, as well as a certified life coach and real estate coach. He hosts in-person and online real estate investor meetups monthly.
Connect with Jonathan:
To connect with Randal and learn more about passive investing, visit www.ridgelineig.com and follow our social media pages below!
Jonathan Greene, the Team Leader of Streamlined Properties and a thought leader in the real estate investing space, shares invaluable insights from his journey in real estate, including the importance of building cash flow through strategic investments and leveraging knowledge gained from a lifetime in the field. He discusses the influence of his father's investment philosophy, the nuances of different asset classes, and the significance of adopting a mindful approach to real estate investing.
Jonathan emphasizes the importance of relationships in the real estate business, the potential of mixed-use properties, and the value of investing in oneself through self-improvement and mindfulness. The episode is rich with strategies for real estate agents and investors looking to grow their portfolios and income while maintaining a balanced and intentional approach to their work and personal growth, so make sure you tune in for more.
Key takeaways to listen to:
About Jonathan Greene:
Jonathan Greene is the Team Leader of Streamlined Properties, brokered by ΓEA⅃ , a multi-state team of professional, knowledgeable, and proficient real estate agents built to connect with clients who need agents to understand exactly what they are looking for. Streamlined puts client service first and maintains its core values and culture throughout every transaction and interaction. Their team values all of the participants in a real estate transaction and seeks win-win relationships where everyone walks away happy.
Streamlined has been a part of RealTrends America's Best Real Estate Teams two years in a row (2022 & 2023). Jonathan is also a thought leader in the real estate investing space. His podcast, Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing is one of the fastest-growing real estate podcasts in the world. He is a lifelong real estate investor, on-market team leader, and luxury agent, as well as a certified life coach and real estate coach. He hosts in-person and online real estate investor meetups monthly.
Connect with Jonathan:
To connect with Randal and learn more about passive investing, visit www.ridgelineig.com and follow our social media pages below!
[00:00:00] Jonathan Greene: I cover all of New Jersey. I've invested out of state, my whole life, Florida, New York, California, mainly, but I know a lot about all the states just from all of my investor friends and researching markets.
[00:00:11] Intro: If you're a real estate agent earning 200, 000 a year, and you want to grow your passive income, this show is for you learn secrets to other agents use and hear from experts in our field who will guide you on your journey to investing in assets like apartment communities, so you can take your commissions and turn them into cash.
[00:00:31] Intro: Here's your host, Randall. Let's dive in.
[00:00:33] Randal McLeaird: All right. Welcome back. It's me. I'm in the dungeon still. This is the new office for our rehab company for RAM Capital Fund. We are putting together all the single family investment deals that we are going to put into that fund, that crowdfund that we've been talking about.
[00:00:46] Randal McLeaird: So we're launching it and I'm setting up the office. So anyway, got a great show today. Jonathan Greene is joining me. He is the epitome. And I say this in the show, of agents building cashflow. He's a real estate broker in the Jersey area, but he's been buying real estate all [00:01:00] over the country and got it from his dad.
[00:01:02] Randal McLeaird: We talk about the story of how his dad was buying and how he taught him how to buy real estate and buy assets. But we talk about his brokerage as well and how they're growing and things are focused on. So it's going to help you on that front, but also on the investing side, he's got a ton of, information and knowledge. You can tell he's done a lot of transactions. He's been in business for a while. And so I know you're going to get a lot out of the show. I realize I've been saying that a lot, but I always get something out of these shows and it's always good catching up with the guests.
[00:01:27] Randal McLeaird: So if you would go on rate, review, the show, wherever you're listening to this. If you could leave one word response, at least in the review, it helps us a ton with the reach of the show and get awesome guests, just like Jonathan. So let's jump in and talk to Jonathan. Here we go. So you are in Jersey, right?
[00:01:44] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. I have some connection to Jersey. I don't know what part you're in, but my sister-in-law lives in West Orange and we went up and visited. Yeah. And so I've been going around and now I think we're gonna go up there more often, oh, awesome. Very cool place. Yeah,
[00:01:54] Jonathan Greene: I lived in West Orange for two, Montclair for six, Corona for two.
[00:01:57] Jonathan Greene: I live in Mendo and Morris County now. I love it. It's just a little [00:02:00] quieter. My kids are older. Yeah. So one lives in an ADU and my back here and my other's, my son lives in Verona, but. Yeah, I know all those markets. Those are the markets we work, but my team covers the whole state. So I cover all of New Jersey.
[00:02:11] Jonathan Greene: I've invested out of state my whole life, Florida, New York, California, mainly, but I know a lot about all the states just from all my investor friends and researching markets. I'm in 1 syndication now. And, that's been the 1st 1 actually, even at this age, it was the 1st time I got in.
[00:02:25] Randal McLeaird: So how are you structured?
[00:02:27] Randal McLeaird: You have the broker side, it sounds and then yeah,
[00:02:29] Jonathan Greene: The brokerage is real. So we use real as an umbrella for us. My team was when I was at EXP, our team was as big as 50 agents. So it's just basically a mini brokerage inside a brokerage. We run like a mini brokerage. The only people that have contact with the brokerage are myself and my team success manager, and we manage the agents.
[00:02:45] Jonathan Greene: We averaged down in order to move to real, we went down to eight and now we're already back to 16 and now we're growing multi state. So we're going to open in Utah, California, Florida soon with investors in those areas who are licensed. And then we're going to be building off of [00:03:00] my meetups, which are the same as my podcast.
[00:03:02] Jonathan Greene: Start doing those around, that's the growth mechanism that we're working on now.
[00:03:06] Randal McLeaird: So you said you're targeting investors that are agents. Is that for the
[00:03:10] Jonathan Greene: growth? Yeah. For the growth portal for other states, like that's our niche. It's always been my niche, but in here direct on market in New Jersey, we work traditional buyer sellers.
[00:03:19] Jonathan Greene: We just know everything about investing. That's what I coach them on. I never want it to be like a full niche, but that's what we're known for. But I transact, only a million and up and regular buyers, sellers all the time.
[00:03:30] Randal McLeaird: Okay. So then when you're growing, you're talking about you're growing in other markets, you're looking for investor buyers and sellers or investors who are licensed.
[00:03:37] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Okay. Yes. Your agents coming on board for the brokerage side are going to be investors as well. Does that feed if you're buying out of state? Are you doing that with the intent of here's a deal machine that I'm also spinning up and these people are going to send me some deals?
[00:03:49] Jonathan Greene: No, it's more we're trying to grow like the growth of our meetups and the podcast across other areas so that it can become like this kind of since mine's about the mindful approach to real [00:04:00] estate investing. So we're really trying to push this like different attitude toward real estate, which we can definitely talk about, which is just stuff that I've learned how I grew up and make it a little bit more.
[00:04:10] Jonathan Greene: Attainable instead of the doors mentality and, or get in now by now, instead of being patient New Jersey is a hard state to invest in. So I do very well, financially, but that's not the focus. I think that's why I do so well. So when I do an expansion, it's really to grow.
[00:04:27] Jonathan Greene: Part of the business that will eventually trickle back and make a lot of sense. But some people might not see it in the beginning. I see it though. Yeah, because they like to help people. This is why you have a podcast so you can get stuff out there so people can hear it. You don't know if someone's gonna listen to one thing and that could change your life.
[00:04:42] Jonathan Greene: That's why podcasts are so cool.
[00:04:44] Randal McLeaird: I agree. I agree. I'm a big podcast nerd. Me too. I listen to him all the time, man. Me too. So I had a good conversation with Erin Bradley. I just say her name just so that when this episode airs, people can check that episode out as well. Basically, she, it's a very similar thing.
[00:04:58] Randal McLeaird: She was talking to me about the [00:05:00] go giver mentality and the go giver book and then, paying it forward, not expecting anything, but really give three times more than you ever expect to receive or something like that. Yeah. And so I wonder, just hearing you talk about, you're doing well financially, but you don't think about it.
[00:05:12] Randal McLeaird: And therefore that is why you think you're doing so well financially, right? It's like this circular loop or
[00:05:17] Jonathan Greene: I've been fortunate. My dad came from nothing and he built all of his money. He was an attorney. Like I was an attorney, but he built all of his money and assets in real estate. He made it fortunate for me, but I never took that for granted.
[00:05:29] Jonathan Greene: And I've taken that into my own businesses. So it is a little bit easier for me to say Oh, I don't have to worry about it. Cause I've made, I've been doing this since I was a kid. So I've, I know what I'm doing with money that way. But I think. That with anybody, especially even on market agents or people who work a sales business, I said, the more sales hungry you are to close a sale, the less likely you are to close it.
[00:05:48] Jonathan Greene: Cause they can tell and modern clientele, smart buyers, they have more stuff. They're trying to build a trust factor with you that you can't, when you're have commission breadth or you're just trying to close the deal. So for me, [00:06:00] I'm trying to teach everyone can you pump the brakes a little bit and think long term?
[00:06:04] Jonathan Greene: Say you work with someone for a year and they decide to move to Pittsburgh. This happened to me like early in my career and I wasn't mad. And everyone's oh, why aren't you mad? I'm like, they decided to move to Pittsburgh. They're moving to their family. What? What do you mean? And then I stayed in touch with them and still in touch with them.
[00:06:18] Jonathan Greene: And I got referrals from them. Not because I was every time I talked to him, I was like, Hey, in case, someone I didn't have to ask for them. So the way that I've Design everything that I do in real estate off market on market is I'm driving traffic to come to me instead of chasing traffic. So maybe I have less intake, but every time I've had, either paid or done strategies to bring in intake.
[00:06:41] Jonathan Greene: No one can keep up with the intake because most of it's garbage when it comes in So I don't like bishing through the garbage for stuff I just like someone to go into my dms on instagram and say hey I've been following you for a year. I want to use you, you know as agent I want to buy a million dollar property like that's a better use of my time And that's to what we were saying the reason I can give [00:07:00] everything away for free At all times is because 99 of the people aren't going to put it into play So I could tell every strategy that I do in real estate and almost no one's going to actually go and do it And if somebody does great, they can put their own spin on it But i'm not it's not like i've created some brand new thing that nobody saw I'm doing what my dad did, i'm doing what he taught me when I was five years old I just think like technology makes it looks like things have changed but really not much has changed in real estate You still have to find the asset evaluate it Figure out where you can make money on it and decide if this is something that you actually want to hang on to or trade.
[00:07:36] Jonathan Greene: Yeah.
[00:07:36] Randal McLeaird: Okay. A lot of things that I want to ask you. One, commission breath. Never heard that. That was hilarious. So yeah, commission. Okay. So that's a good one. You can smell it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They can sense it. I smell it on you. Okay. So one thing I wanted to ask when you're hiring agents and when you're just dealing with people in general and sales and the environment that you work in, do you feel, and this is a conversation again, I've had with people.
[00:07:58] Randal McLeaird: Do you feel like your approach is of a [00:08:00] genuine person who's trying to help, who stays in touch with that couple that moved away over time? Do you think that is innate in you? Or the successful agents who have that type of success, that's their personality? Or is it a learned trait and you can actually learn that and get better?
[00:08:16] Jonathan Greene: You a hundred percent can learn it because it's not innate for me. I'm not a people person. I'm really good with people and I'm a really good coach, but I've had to fix my skills to match what I wanted to do. And over time, as I became more mindful in my life, it made it much easier for me to be a better coach because I stopped with my own ego and stopped trying to do things like my original team.
[00:08:38] Jonathan Greene: My first team had my name in it, then my second team had myself and my partner's name in it. And when I created this team, the first thing I thought was I'm getting my name out of the team. Because I want it to be an entity that exists that everybody can be proud of. Not that they like, always look up at the signs and they're beholden to my name staring over them.
[00:08:56] Jonathan Greene: And I think, Running a team I've changed. I've had four different [00:09:00] teams and this model is much more holistic and mindful in its approach, but it's different when my last, it's really the same team, but my last iteration of this team, we were getting leads from Zillow. We were on Zillow Flex and we're getting like 300 leads a month, which everyone thinks sounds awesome.
[00:09:14] Jonathan Greene: No one can keep up with that. I don't care how many agents you have. So what I did was I was hiring agents to keep up with the lead flow, which means I wasn't hiring to like my standards anymore. We just had too many leads. And you'd be surprised that real estate agents can't keep up with like more than five leads.
[00:09:28] Jonathan Greene: It's not an exaggeration. The good ones can, but that's like a very, want tree ripened leaves that are ready to go right into a fruit salad, and that's not the way it works. It takes a year to two years of just constantly, really, being friends and trying to understand what people want in order to earn the trust.
[00:09:44] Jonathan Greene: But everyone wants this too soon philosophy, so they're like, oh, they didn't want to go out today, so they're good, I'll never call them back, and it's like, Then you call them two months later and they bought a house with someone else. And so the reason why I changed really the whole focus is Zillow's percentage that they were charging on flex went up.
[00:09:59] Jonathan Greene: So I got rid [00:10:00] of them, fired them. And then I realized I have all these agents who aren't working, like they're not a culture fit. So I got rid of them. Baby birds
[00:10:07] Randal McLeaird: with their
[00:10:07] Jonathan Greene: mouths
[00:10:07] Randal McLeaird: open.
[00:10:08] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. And honestly, some of them were good people misplaced, aggression for what they wanted to do.
[00:10:14] Jonathan Greene: Like we're saying, they thought it was going to be easier or they thought they could do what I do or they could build their own team. Good luck. They don't know how much that it costs or how much training and how much we've put in over, eight years of building teams to understand how the backend services work and what agents need.
[00:10:27] Jonathan Greene: I felt learning to be a leader going back to your point is just about identifying all the ways that you've screwed up. And if you can't do that, you're never going to do well. And my journey is like a journey of self awareness that I've just learned a lot about myself and I'm very confident in my ability.
[00:10:43] Jonathan Greene: So some people think that it's arrogance and it's not. It's just I'm comfortable with what I'm really good at. I'm also comfortable with what I'm not good at. And if I'm not good at it, I'm going to bring someone in to do it. So I don't have to do it. I don't like to clean, so I have a house cleaner.
[00:10:56] Jonathan Greene: Some people would say oh, why do you have a house cleaner? That's bougie. I won't clean. [00:11:00] So I prefer to have a clean house, I like doing laundry, so I do my own laundry, because it's a kind of zen thing for me. But anything right now that I don't like to do, I have someone else do and that's a who not how principle.
[00:11:12] Jonathan Greene: It's just like I, and that's what when you bring in agents, you're trying to train them a certain way. But instead, now I've learned that you have to look at each one individually because they all have a different disk profile and say how is Bob going to react to a bucket of sales?
[00:11:27] Jonathan Greene: Probably not. They're not built for that. But is there better resources for them where they can do it? I'm an introvert and I crush it at real estate. And everyone thinks you have to be an extrovert to be good in real estate. You don't, you just have to figure out what your own skillset is and be honest about it.
[00:11:42] Jonathan Greene: So you don't have misplaced anticipation from clients. People know what they'll get from me and I will deliver it because I'm staying inside my own box of what I know I can do and not trying to go outside.
[00:11:54] Randal McLeaird: Awesome.
[00:11:54] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. Sorry for the soliloquy.
[00:11:56] Randal McLeaird: No, I, for me again I hear, and one, [00:12:00] I love the confidence level.
[00:12:01] Randal McLeaird: And you said, people think it's ego, but no, it's you've come one with yourself. So I want to keep going down that path because I know a lot of what you talk about is mindfulness. And so one, what started the journey? How did you even come upon this? Was it recent? And what kind of tips can you give other people who are looking to.
[00:12:19] Randal McLeaird: Explore their own, get the ego out of the way,
[00:12:21] Jonathan Greene: yeah, there's a distinct moment. I had gotten my license, so I was about three or four years into real estate. I was on to my second team with a partner and we were crushing it. Like the team was going really well, but it wasn't the way that I like to run a business.
[00:12:38] Jonathan Greene: It's hard always working with any partner, but I remember I was sitting at my dining room table in Montclair. And one of my kids like asked me at the time like they were trying to ask me something I was getting a call from a client because I had terrible boundaries at the time and I was like Oh, I have to take this.
[00:12:52] Jonathan Greene: This is important. And right when I said that I just wanted to collapse my life I realized that I just told my child that some stupid thing [00:13:00] on a phone was more important and literally within a week. I Basically gave the team to my partner left the business for a year Drop my license, so I couldn't do business.
[00:13:09] Jonathan Greene: I did it on purpose and I just went inward and all I did for a year was I actually created my first podcast during that year was a podcast on parenting and I just all I did was read books. I read 100 books. I was like in full self growth mode and I think. Yeah, I wanted to cut the shit about myself and that's really what it was.
[00:13:27] Jonathan Greene: It's not like I, I was always like a very good person and mindful to a certain point. Like I wasn't like rude to people or anything. I wasn't like working on myself though. I was just going through life. It's hard. My kids were still young. Now they're older. They're 22 and 20. But it's just a lot and you're going through a business where you want to succeed, but then you allow no boundaries.
[00:13:47] Jonathan Greene: So people are calling me from six in the morning to 11 because I would answer. Yeah. I was good at scheduling, but I wasn't good at boundaries. And the things that I adjusted were how I view myself, how I value my time, what I'm willing to give to [00:14:00] others. And lastly, especially in real estate, who is worthy of my time.
[00:14:04] Jonathan Greene: And a lot of people weren't to be completely honest because they were bullshit. So it's not a good use of my time to work with. Let's like. If someone comes to you and they say Hey, I might use you as an agent, but I might use someone else. Do you want to show me some houses? Old me would have been like, yeah, I'll just beat them out.
[00:14:20] Jonathan Greene: That's a terrible use of my time. I only want to work with people who are 100 percent want to work with me. If at some point they decide they don't want to, that's their choice. But i'm trying to attract people who already know stuff about me I don't do listing appointments against other People think i'm crazy and I don't go on off market appointments If anyone else is there if I show up to look at a house off market and there's wholesalers there I just tell them.
[00:14:42] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. Thanks. I'm gonna leave I just want to let you know Ask everybody in the room if they have a proof of funds on their phone right now If they can't show you a proof of funds on their phone, they don't have cash So everyone who has cash can open up their phone and show you the bank with more money than this house is worth.
[00:14:56] Jonathan Greene: So I'll do it for you now, but if you ask them all, [00:15:00] I guarantee they won't be able to, I'm going to leave. And then I just leave. Sometimes they call back. Sometimes they don't. And again, other people can look at that as some type of weird arrogance, but I'm just straightforward and honest. And also my team coined this phrase for me because I always used to say it.
[00:15:15] Jonathan Greene: I say the phrase, I literally do not care about everything, and it's misinterpreted as I actually don't care about things. It's just that I don't care about all the minutiae and dumb stuff that everybody else is worried about. So when I say it, I will leave, and I'll never think about that house again.
[00:15:30] Jonathan Greene: It makes no difference to me. And that's part of the kind of journey, is just like, Believing this stuff. I've always said this is a we'll see what you think about this But I've said that your biggest power in real estate in any part of real estate is your ability to walk away And once you know that you have all the power Because I'll just leave and I'll never think about it again.
[00:15:51] Jonathan Greene: There's another deal. Yeah, exactly. Everyone's Oh, there's no inventory in New Jersey. I'm like there's not a lot of inventory on the market, but we live in the densest state. So how can you [00:16:00] think there's houses everywhere. Yeah. Go figure out how to buy them. That's a difference with on market off market and how they're really all the same thing.
[00:16:07] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Okay. So I didn't know we can talk about that, but yeah, very similar situation happens here in every time. So I used to. Self source all of my own deals, marketing spend was through the roof. And so that was the business that we're doing for the last 10, 12 years. And then I got into the similar situation.
[00:16:23] Randal McLeaird: I was like, I'm shutting this down. It is not the lifestyle I want, things I want dealing with all these things. And so now it's funny. We went and bought a house from a wholesaler and same thing. I show up and there's 20 people there, turn around and walked out. I was like, this is insane. And then those properties stay on the market and then they keep calling me back.
[00:16:40] Randal McLeaird: No. They
[00:16:42] Jonathan Greene: also don't know. So I was a prosecutor for seven years and a criminal defense attorney for three. So like negotiating real estate is funny to me. No one's going to prison, there's no victims. So I will do time clocks on stuff when it's my deal, obviously never for clients, but I'll say this is my offer today.
[00:16:59] Jonathan Greene: I know you [00:17:00] don't have any other offers. So if you use my offer. To try to get other offers. My offer is going to go down and I'm the easiest transaction. Cause I know what I'm doing. I don't wave stuff, but I'm not going to be a pain in the ass. And they always try it. They're like, oh, we really don't like that.
[00:17:15] Jonathan Greene: And then when they come back, they still want that offer. I'm never going to give it to them. It's going to be 10, 000 less. And if you take more time, it's going to be less because that's me being an investor and they actually get offended. I push the way that I think of every time I make an offer for myself on anything is that.
[00:17:31] Jonathan Greene: I'm pushing a giant bag of money across the table to you. If you don't want it, I'm not just going to leave it there because that's stupid. Someone else may come and take it. So I'm going to take my money back. But while you're deliberating over whether you think you should take my really good offer. I'm going to take some of that money and use it for something else.
[00:17:48] Jonathan Greene: So they're not going to be the same amount when I push it back on the table, because you should have taken it when I gave you the opportunity. And that's just regular business, but people get up all in their feelings and, then they lose 20, 000 on a [00:18:00] deal that they should have just taken because it was, honest and straightforward and told them what was wrong with the house.
[00:18:05] Jonathan Greene: They just didn't want to accept it.
[00:18:07] Randal McLeaird: Okay. I love all of that. I want to stay on. I want to get into the investing side of things in just a minute. Let's stay on the mindfulness just for a minute, because again, it sounds like you had the ability to go for a year, go inward, read a hundred books.
[00:18:21] Randal McLeaird: That's a lot of work on yourself that not many people either will do or have the ability to take a year off of income generating. To do I don't know the best way to phrase that, but what's advice you have for somebody who may not have a
[00:18:33] Jonathan Greene: year to do it slow down. The thing that people think when they want to make more money is they need to go faster.
[00:18:39] Jonathan Greene: It's never true. Cal Newport just came out with a book. It literally just came out yesterday and arrived called slow productivity. The only way to go faster is to start by going slower. Because you're fast, your car's going all over the road, it doesn't make sense. You're not planning what you're doing right.
[00:18:53] Jonathan Greene: So my journey in mindfulness included a whole ton of meditation. This is not an exaggeration. I've meditated [00:19:00] every day in the morning for, I think, seven and a half years now. And people are like, how's that possible? It's that's the first thing that I do. I'm very regimented, but that sets the table for every single day.
[00:19:10] Jonathan Greene: So for other people, it's making the bed. You've accomplished something. I don't really care about making my bed because I'm single, I'm divorced a long time ago. So I don't really if my bed's made, it doesn't make me feel better, but I'm always going to meditate and read in the morning. And that's how people think Oh, I'm not a reader.
[00:19:27] Jonathan Greene: I can't read books. But if you read 10 minutes a day in the morning, you'll finish one book a month minimum. You'll probably finish more because every book's not war and peace. Some books are only a hundred pages. But there's this like defeatist philosophy that I don't have time to do anything.
[00:19:40] Jonathan Greene: And a book like Miracle Morning, that's one of the greatest books ever written by Hal Elrod. It's a little bit corny because it's like kind of a story about these two people, but that book will change anybody's life. It's an absolute guarantee and they have a version for real estate agents, but I actually like the regular version.
[00:19:55] Jonathan Greene: And it's just about waking up earlier to get things done before your whole family is [00:20:00] awake. And that's where it is. And I still continue all this to this day because now I'm like sleep tracking and really trying to figure out what's going to make me most effective and I had to put limitations on myself.
[00:20:11] Jonathan Greene: I literally just a few days ago, I shut off my office lights at 8. I used to just work, I work, I wake up at six or seven and I just work. And sometimes it's 10, so I don't have a cut off. So then at 10, I'm like, Oh, I didn't do anything. So I'm going to look on my phone, but that's not a good sleep base for me.
[00:20:28] Jonathan Greene: So now I'm lights off out of my office at eight. And then between eight and 10, I can relax, watch TV, write, read also then. But at 10, I turning my lights out and that's it. I, I don't fall asleep right at 10, but I'm going to try and that's changing my circadian rhythm, which makes me 100 times more effective and again, is just the longer journey of that mindfulness journey.
[00:20:50] Jonathan Greene: It's still going and it just, it's. Other than my kids, it's the most important thing to like my life and my own, mental health and stability. Yeah,
[00:20:59] Randal McLeaird: I would second [00:21:00] that. There's, I don't know if Huberman, but he's been big. Yeah, of course. Okay. Yeah, I listen to podcasts like you like all the time and Huberman's on the list.
[00:21:07] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. He's there, but yeah, he talks about like morning routines and getting out and seeing sunlight first thing in the morning. And that's where the thing you mentioned, you don't like making your bed. And so I don't mind. Go ahead. Go. Yeah. I don't mean it like, Hey you're dirty. So you don't like, I don't make my bed in the morning.
[00:21:22] Randal McLeaird: My point is. You read in the morning and if somebody comes to you and says, I don't like reading or, Hey, I can't do that or whatever it is, there are other things that people can do that inside yourself may produce that meditative state that you're talking about. That's all I'm trying to get at. And for me, it's the same.
[00:21:40] Randal McLeaird: I don't make my bed, but if I get up and I go for even a walk in the morning first thing, or write a journal for my kids, then I heard a quote from Anthony Robbins and he talks about his morning routine. And he's if you don't have, I think it was on Oprah. If you don't have 10 minutes, you don't have a life.
[00:21:55] Randal McLeaird: And exactly. Yeah.
[00:21:57] Jonathan Greene: But everybody does have 10 minutes. Everyone's [00:22:00] just bullshitting themselves. Just like I was doing the same to me. I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to focus at dinner with my kids. Like you can not be that person. You will hate yourself so much when you're later. And I saw it all in one glimpse and I just stopped and I said, I'm going to reset my life.
[00:22:16] Jonathan Greene: It doesn't mean it's perfect, but like I run my life like a pretty tight ship. My schedule is like, Everyone makes fun of me for it, but I'm like, I'm always on time. I know when everything's set. I have showers on my schedule and people are like, Oh, why do you do that? You're not going to forget to shower.
[00:22:32] Jonathan Greene: I'm like, I need to know when I have to shower because I'm only, it takes me 15 minutes. So I'm not wasting any time in my day unless I'm choosing to waste that time. And then it's going to be more mindful time. Like you said, walking. I love walking. I try to walk like an hour a day. And my coach last week actually, cause I always listen to podcasts when I'm going.
[00:22:49] Jonathan Greene: And he said, this time, when you go out, don't listen to anything. And I'm like, okay, and now I'm getting even more ideas because I'm in growth mode. I'm always in growth mode. I want to build things that [00:23:00] create, long term income in different positions for my kids. And this is what it is. I love listening to podcasts when I walk, but maybe I'm going to do that only half the time now.
[00:23:08] Jonathan Greene: And that's. Being open to learning new things and growing is the only way you're going to get better in business. People are always like you start to coach someone in a coaching context, like in real estate, and then you ask them about their personal life. And they're like, Oh what do you need to know about that?
[00:23:22] Jonathan Greene: Just tell me how your personal life. Oh, it's a shit show. I'm getting divorced. My kids hate me. It's it's no wonder you suck at sales. How could you focus? Yeah. You have to clean up your finances and your life before you can be good at business. You'll never be focused enough to be good. And I think that's where I've cleaned that stuff up as much as I can.
[00:23:37] Randal McLeaird: I'm the same. Like I'll go for a run and I used to never listen to music or podcast or anything when I go for a run because that's when I get an idea and I, but I'd have my phone and I'd be. I'd have all these, okay, great idea. Number one,
[00:23:48] Jonathan Greene: I know I do it all the time. We're like series, not reacting.
[00:23:50] Jonathan Greene: And I'm like, God damn it, Siri, could you just get this, get it right. And you try to read some gibberish that you didn't say. And you're like, I can't remember what that was.
[00:23:59] Randal McLeaird: Yeah, [00:24:00] that's funny.
[00:24:00] Jonathan Greene: Okay. You
[00:24:00] Randal McLeaird: said something a minute ago. One, you're talking about investing, building brokerage, building that team out all around the nation.
[00:24:06] Randal McLeaird: So we can talk more about that. Let's transition into the investing side, but I'll finish the brokerage side with, what advice do you have right now? Agents 2024, growing their business, looking for new business. What is working for you guys that, that maybe somebody else could pick up on and use?
[00:24:21] Jonathan Greene: If you're a solo agent, go find the team, but When you're looking for teams, you're trying to find a team that's going to provide the real coaching and training and camaraderie and culture that you need, because if not, it's just going to be another one of these BS downline funnels that a lot of the cloud brokerages have where they just want you to go recruit for them and everybody makes money.
[00:24:40] Jonathan Greene: I don't care what my agents do in terms of recruiting agents. I could care less. I want them to make money because that's why they came to me so I can coach them. But you have to get in a situation that works and all teams are not built the same. They're not my team. All my agents get credit for their transactions.
[00:24:57] Jonathan Greene: That's actually surprising in the [00:25:00] industry. Most team leaders, not most, but a lot of team leaders take credit for all the transactions. So then you. Their numbers are bigger, but then you have an agent who's worked three years and has nothing to show for it other than the money they get the money, which is good.
[00:25:12] Jonathan Greene: But if you looked on the MLS, they'd have no transactions. And to me, that's no way to build a business. We have cuts, we have ways, but I'm here to coach them. So really teams are much more powerful than brokerages. Now, brokerages don't care about the agents, whatever a brokerage wants to say, they care about you when you come in.
[00:25:29] Jonathan Greene: And then the next month there's 400 new agents. They don't even know who you are. I left my last brokerage after two back to back 80 million years with like about 180 transactions for my team. Not a single person even contacted me. That will tell you all you need to know about brokerages. It doesn't matter what brokerage it is.
[00:25:47] Jonathan Greene: It's just they're just going on to the next person and trying to recruit anyone. It's a pulse thing. It's a low bar to entry in real estate. So if you want to learn, you have to find someone that you really want to be like. Or be a part of their [00:26:00] organization and do whatever you take and get on the team.
[00:26:02] Jonathan Greene: That's what I really think is. And then you have to work that you can't sit with, like we said, waiting for the honey to drip out of the tree is this doesn't work like that. Real estate is hard, but if you develop good systems and follow the tried and true techniques, you'll be okay, but they may not be the same as you thought, banging the phones and cold calling is not what works anymore.
[00:26:21] Jonathan Greene: And it's a terrible use of your time. So that's what I'm driving at. What is working right now? Yeah, so well for somebody like me social media works if you do it the right way authentic social media I think is an absolute goldmine without spending even a cent But you need to be doing it all the time without a cadence.
[00:26:38] Jonathan Greene: You don't need a social media manager. They're great, but you can tell when it's not the person behind the account. The way that I think of it as the same way I went back to that ILDNC, I literally do not care philosophy. I post whatever I want on my social media. I could care less what anybody thinks. It makes no difference to me.
[00:26:54] Jonathan Greene: And the majority of stuff that I post are just like stuff for myself. The fact that people read it is like, [00:27:00] interesting to me, and I'm thankful for it, but it doesn't change what I post. But I think consistency is much more important than actual quality of the content. Of course, if you post crap content all the time, you're not going to get anywhere.
[00:27:11] Jonathan Greene: But if you hire a company, who does oh, do you like this house or this house? Everybody knows That's not authentic content. They want to know who you are so that when they meet you, they're like, Oh shit, you're just like the videos that you post. Then you're 10 rungs ahead and trust, and people forget that someone could follow you for a year.
[00:27:29] Jonathan Greene: You'll never know who they are. And then one day they'll click a DM and they'll say, Hey, I want to buy a house. And they already feel like they know you. You don't have to do anything. So that's modern marketing. That's different. And then I would say people love to build these big email, lists, you click one button and then you're on some email list that you're like, how the hell did I get on this?
[00:27:46] Jonathan Greene: And they set all brokerages, sell all of our email addresses. So I put out a listing, I'm getting 19 emails in a morning just on, Oh, do you want to do postcards? That's terrible marketing. It doesn't work. Micro marketing is what works, which is you take [00:28:00] anybody who wants to invest in just say Montclair, they go on one micro list, Bloomfield, they go on another micro list.
[00:28:06] Jonathan Greene: My email list. My investor email list is 542 people right now. That's it. And I built it for four years and I move a lot of people off and I move people on, but no one knows how to sign up for it. Cause they have to get the link for me. So I've never tried to jam people into it. And my open rate 64 percent and click through rates like 12%.
[00:28:27] Jonathan Greene: So for anybody out there who knows the numbers, that's, it's pretty insane. The same thing with followers. I have less than 3000 followers on Instagram. I guarantee you I do a lot more business than people who have 200, 000 followers because all those followers are fake because they're buying them or they're just, trying to celebritize themselves.
[00:28:45] Jonathan Greene: But that doesn't mean that you're good at your business. Yeah. Does calling work? Not really. I don't even answer my phone. I don't know any of my friends who answer their phone. And when they do, I'm like, why would you answer the phone? They're like, Oh, I don't know. I thought it could be [00:29:00] someone.
[00:29:00] Jonathan Greene: Unless it's someone who's in my phone. I'm not, that's a bad use of your time.
[00:29:04] Randal McLeaird: My in laws get 20 phone calls in the morning, every morning. And I think really what happened, it was the health insurance guys. They like auto your warranties coming up for you. Like they just yeah. And then wholesalers obviously trying to do it.
[00:29:17] Randal McLeaird: Of course. Yeah. Great advice. Thanks for sharing that, because I agree with the authenticity on social media, and I've seen people do it really well, and some Be yourself! Yeah.
[00:29:25] Jonathan Greene: Because they're going to meet you. Isn't your whole goal to meet someone? To help them? It's like Realtors who have the picture of themselves 20 years ago, and then you show up and they're like, who's this?
[00:29:34] Jonathan Greene: Why is your mom here? It's no, it's me. Catfishing for business. Exactly. Exactly. You can't fake it. So here's one good point for you before we get to your next thing, because obviously we're on a podcast here on your show. The best way to know if someone who you want to know if they know what they're talking about is to listen to them on a podcast as a guest.
[00:29:52] Jonathan Greene: Because if they can talk for an hour, you'll be sold or you'll not be sold. And you'll know right away. If you see someone who has 250, [00:30:00] 000 or 2 million followers, and you've never heard them on a podcast, there's a reason for that. They can only talk in 30 second clips because they don't know anything. So anybody else will go on anywhere.
[00:30:10] Jonathan Greene: You can put them on a stage. They'll talk for an hour. Those people know what they're talking about. And I think that's why I love this medium. And I appreciate being on the show here with you because you can really see Guest host rapport, if they know what they're talking about, what the back and forth is.
[00:30:24] Jonathan Greene: Cause none of us are like going through cutting up a whole episode. So it sounds good. You're just taking out the background sounds of letting it roll.
[00:30:30] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Good point.
[00:30:31] Jonathan Greene: Very good point. I love it.
[00:30:34] Randal McLeaird: Okay. Let's move on. Let's do it. Okay. So you said something a minute ago that I keyed into and you said, you do it like your dad taught you to do it.
[00:30:43] Randal McLeaird: So break down how dad taught you to do it.
[00:30:45] Jonathan Greene: Yes. I call myself an asset hunter, which is unusual in this market. Everybody's trying to have something, use a spreadsheet or do a calculation to see if a property works. Just think of it this way. You're modern brand new investor, no offense to them, but they'll [00:31:00] tell you, Oh yeah, I looked at 30 properties last week.
[00:31:02] Jonathan Greene: I'm like, wait a second. How many did you see in person? They're like no. I didn't see any in person. I ran 30 through my online calculator. I said have you ever been seen a house in person? No, I haven't. I don't know. Have you ever seen a basement? No, there's no photos of the basement. How the hell do you know about a house that you can invest in?
[00:31:18] Jonathan Greene: If you've never been in the basement, that's where all the problems are. And that's the problem with social media investing makes it look easy and it's not easy. So my dad was somebody who just bought assets. We would go out every single weekend to 10 yard sales. My stepbrothers and I are always like, wow, why are we doing this?
[00:31:34] Jonathan Greene: It's can we just get a football or basketball or baseball cards we're looking for? And at every single yard sale, my dad made an offer on the house cash offer to the people cause he knew they were moving. He was just way ahead of his time. He knew everyone at the courthouse cause he was a lawyer and he started at the IRS.
[00:31:48] Jonathan Greene: He just knew people he would buy at courthouse steps all the time. Cash, weird properties. We own like just random stuff. He's Hey, we have this like a mini mall in Sebring. I'm like, [00:32:00] where's Sebring? It's it's in Florida. I'm like why the hell did you buy that? He's it seemed like a good deal.
[00:32:04] Jonathan Greene: And that was the type of stuff, that he did leave for my sister and I, but he made a lot of great investments that, we figured out. And along the way, he taught me how to be a landlord because I would come home from college and even from boarding school, 16 on, and I would. Do collections for the rental properties and that's where I learned to be a conscious landlord and understand like I don't really love this, but he would come, I'd come home and see the ledgers and no one would have paid for 6 months because he was just nice.
[00:32:30] Jonathan Greene: He didn't need that money to survive, so he was really trying to help people and he understood them and talk to him and I was a kid. So I'm like that's stupid. Screw them. Let's go get their money. He's you want to get their money. I'll give you half of it. And so that's how I learned how to develop these strategies, how to get people to pay on rentals.
[00:32:46] Jonathan Greene: And then it did, I did eventually get most of the money for him and he was pretty impressed. So I got half the money at the time. It just meant a lot of video games for me. Give me one story on how you had to collect some money. Is
[00:32:58] Randal McLeaird: there any crazy stories in [00:33:00] there?
[00:33:00] Jonathan Greene: There's more one on a foreclosure which people like this one.
[00:33:03] Jonathan Greene: So i'm gonna give this one to you So my dad was foreclosing. We bought a house at courthouse auction. It was a great deal This is in westchester won't give the town but we closed the transaction the people were still in the house They were very old. We were not going to move them out But it came upon one to two years, and they, the house was becoming a disaster.
[00:33:23] Jonathan Greene: They live next door to somebody very famous. So that person was trying to help them. So we would go, they would come out, and we would talk, and we're like, it's been two years, can you help? They wouldn't go to a nursing home. Their family didn't care about them. At some point, eventually, the sheriffs, this is how they used to do it.
[00:33:42] Jonathan Greene: This is probably In the eighties, I think 1987 ish. 'cause I could drive because that's the end of the story. And so the day that the sheriffs eventually, after all this time would go and they'd move their furniture out and then they would padlock the door. That was the old way to do it. So we were doing it.
[00:33:57] Jonathan Greene: We felt terrible, but there was no option. [00:34:00] But my dad, he was a little bit of a scaredy cop, but when you had to do it, he would do it. So we were there. Everybody's, they're crying. The neighbor who's very famous is coming over. There's dogs running around. It's like absolute mayhem. And I drove, cause he was teaching me how to drive.
[00:34:15] Jonathan Greene: I was just 16. I got my first car. I'm like driving around. And the old guy who he's probably in his like nineties laid down in front of my car. I can't believe you're taking the property. And I was like, Holy shit. I was like, dad, we're in the car. I'm like, what do I do? What do I do? He's What do you mean?
[00:34:31] Jonathan Greene: He's just drive around him. I'm like, he's laying on the ground! I'm gonna kill him! I don't even know how to drive. He's Drive around go off the curb. It's gonna be fine. And this is if you think about my journey and mindfulness This was my dad. He was just like go with the flow.
[00:34:46] Jonathan Greene: We didn't do anything. We bought their house two years ago We tried to help them. They had to do it now because there also were so many violations on the house. It was unfit They couldn't stay there anymore. It wasn't our fault We weren't getting rent. So I drive to the side. [00:35:00] I, I maneuver around and then I go off the curb and I drive and we get to the stop sign and go, see, no big deal.
[00:35:09] Jonathan Greene: That's how I grew up. And it wasn't always like that, but figuring out how to deal with tenants taught me a little bit about empathy. And then I think after there was a period of time where I like lost that. Because I wasn't involved in the active management. And then I started flipping and stuff on my own and realized like landlording wasn't what I wanted to do.
[00:35:27] Jonathan Greene: So I never ended up holding a ton on my own.
[00:35:30] Randal McLeaird: Yeah, it is tough. And my wife is much more empathetic than I am. And yeah, I've turned her, I'm like, you can deal with the tenants because day three comes, you're getting an eviction notice, right? Pay the rent type of thing. If you don't.
[00:35:43] Randal McLeaird: You're yeah, two years is lenient. We have a few right now that we've let go. We're trying to help them out. And so now we're like foreclosing on a number of properties because it gets to a point, I got bills to pay too,
[00:35:54] Jonathan Greene: I'm nice up to a point, but again, I was a prosecutor for seven years.
[00:35:58] Jonathan Greene: I have a switch. And once the switch [00:36:00] goes off, I don't care. Not that I don't care about the person, but I've really tried to do everything to help you. Like now you're annoying me. And it's not about money. It's a principle thing. Like I own the property. It's not my fault that it was available at a foreclosure auction and I bought it.
[00:36:15] Jonathan Greene: That's not my fault. I can't cure the things that got someone in that position. I feel bad for it, but it's not my job to fix it. It's their families or their friends are supposed to help them. It is what it is. And I think investors get a bad rap, all over, but all the investors I know are like great people.
[00:36:33] Jonathan Greene: They want to help people. Maybe I just don't know slumlords cause I wouldn't be friends with them, but like all of my friends who invest, like we're all trying to do the best things, but yeah, you get to a point sometimes where you have to make tough decisions and sometimes they do involve look, I have to earn money on this.
[00:36:46] Jonathan Greene: That's how this works.
[00:36:48] Randal McLeaird: You were talking about something a second ago about social media sales and social media Kings, and where they're going on selling something, never looking at the basement. And I mean I've, it seems like that's gone up. I've always had a hard time working with wholesalers and [00:37:00] working with people just because, yeah, I hate them.
[00:37:02] Randal McLeaird: I do, they don't know the numbers. They don't know, they've never actually bought a house themselves. And so they look at this spreadsheet and they say, this is how it should look. And then you look at comps and it's say, so what are you doing now? How are you sourcing your deals that you're buying?
[00:37:16] Randal McLeaird: What's either the number one source, or are you going direct to owners, marketing, or you just have deal flow coming in because you've been in the business so long?
[00:37:23] Jonathan Greene: Yeah, no, because I'm in New Jersey, there's no deals. That's the absolute truth. Whoever's buying off market now is getting crappy deals.
[00:37:31] Jonathan Greene: I look at all of them, I don't like them, or people are outbidding me. Part of the problem is New Jersey is such a hot market, especially northern New Jersey. So I buy a lot on the MLS because I have access and I know a lot of the agents, they know I also invest. It's a straightforward approach.
[00:37:45] Jonathan Greene: I can get some and sometimes they'll tell me before, but I don't really buy a lot anymore. I think soon I'm going to start buying a lot more, but I'm much more if you just think about what I was saying before, You know about social media and people want doors to be like the thing but [00:38:00] nobody it doesn't matter If you have two doors and you're making ten thousand a month Isn't that better than having ten doors that make two thousand dollars a month?
[00:38:06] Jonathan Greene: But somebody who has ten doors is gonna be I have ten doors. I have ten doors. Nobody cares You're not even making any money Yeah, that's why it goes back to the asset hunter that my dad taught me. I want assets. So in New Jersey, the way to buy correctly is you're probably going to buy an even or negative cash flow sometimes, but you're going to windfall appreciation in a year to 2 years.
[00:38:26] Jonathan Greene: If you buy right, like people who bought in 2020. Just say around 500 grand, they're at least 750 right now on almost any type of property. It's an absolute no brainer. And that's the thing about real estate investing is people don't tell you that the house that you live in is your best investment.
[00:38:45] Jonathan Greene: Those are all been my best investments because I know how to buy. They don't tell you that you should buy condos sometimes because they can be good. They're a little bit safer. You just have to watch out for assessments. They push this more and more. Get a multifamily, get a 12 packs. Try managing a 12 packs when you're [00:39:00] like, don't know what you're doing.
[00:39:01] Jonathan Greene: You're going to lose all your money.
[00:39:03] Randal McLeaird: I had a guy on talking about buying condos and he's an investor, really shrewd investor in. He would go in and buy one, then two or blocks. He'd buy blocks of, and then take over ownership of the management. And then we're turning things around here, guys. And then end up owning the entire condominium.
[00:39:21] Randal McLeaird: Like the exactly.
[00:39:23] Jonathan Greene: But so that principle is what I call clustering and you can do it with your friends in random areas. You can all buy on the same block or you can buy a two or three in the location. And when you do that, You set up a system that's unstoppable because one of you can flip and sell. Then you just created a large scale comp for the other two to refinance if they're all similar.
[00:39:43] Jonathan Greene: And it's all legal. You're just increasing the value in the neighborhood. It's like the per, there's this art collector, Daniel McRobbie, and he owns like 400 Andy Warhols. And then he'll buy one at an auction for the most that it's ever spent for. And somebody said why would he buy them?
[00:39:58] Jonathan Greene: He has them all. It's [00:40:00] like DumDum, he just bought the one and set a new price. Now his other 399 are all worth more. Yeah, he knows what he's doing. And you can do that with your friends by clustering them. What you're saying, buying the condos, taking over the association, upgrading, and now you've upgraded all of your units at one time.
[00:40:17] Randal McLeaird: That's I love that idea. So you call it clustering. And there's something you talk to your investors and your friends about. Yeah. Two years
[00:40:23] Jonathan Greene: ago, that was our term of the year. I have a friend named Ryan Goldfarb, him and his business partner, John Errico, they started buying in Atlantic city and now they own like hundreds of units there, but they can do whatever they want.
[00:40:35] Jonathan Greene: Like they can on purpose, buy something high in order to help other values. Like the thing that I like about it is you can do it with your friends. Like you can all say Hey, whatever Evansville, Indiana, just a complete example. I don't even know if that's a great market. I don't think it's like a super investor market, but if you know it, I know it because
[00:40:53] Randal McLeaird: my in laws live up close,
[00:40:54] Jonathan Greene: but say, I think it's close to Indiana university could be wrong, but if you and two [00:41:00] friends are like, Hey, let's all get, three bedroom, two bath houses on the same block.
[00:41:03] Jonathan Greene: Like you're already about to change everything. And I think when you do stuff together and you meet investors is where you realize that investing is always a relationship game. And that's really what I learned. I'm very introverted and I don't go to parties. I don't like going to events unless I'm speaking.
[00:41:19] Jonathan Greene: But I'm very good at one to one connection. And so I have a lot of really great relationships. And the way that I've learned is like masterminds are easier. It's not as like public and extroverted. It's we're all on the same page. And every investor will tell you that like they get deals from other investors because of their relationships.
[00:41:36] Jonathan Greene: And that's where people are really failing in all parts of real estate and honestly in life. We're in a loneliness epidemic because people don't know how to build relationships anymore because they're scrolling on their phone all night, which we're all prone to, but there's ways that you can do business that people don't think if you're a real estate agent and you've never done a deal and all you do is Go to broker opens and meet the other agents.
[00:41:59] Jonathan Greene: [00:42:00] You're going to seem like you're doing a lot, just as a brand new real estate investor, what should you do? Go to a meetup every single week or at least once a month. And by the end of that month, people will think you're doing deals and then you will start to do deals and you'll have people, Oh, look, he's here again.
[00:42:14] Jonathan Greene: What's up? Then they know your name. That's the way to success. Exactly. And people, even if you're scared, you have to get over that because you'll find that when you go to these, like a good investor meetup, everyone will tell you everything. They will unload all their secrets because all investors like to talk about themselves more than anything else.
[00:42:34] Randal McLeaird: I don't disagree. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good way to get in. There are many that hold their Most secret deal, like how I'm getting deals, at least this back in the day when I was like 2009, eight, when I was going to all these meetups, I wouldn't give away
[00:42:47] Jonathan Greene: like my number one contractor, cause then they're not going to work as great for me, but I have backups, you're still can.
[00:42:53] Jonathan Greene: There's lots of ways to help people without, tell, but like I said, you could tell someone, Hey, here's a system to do it. You could write it out [00:43:00] for them. They'll go home and put it on the side of a table and never use it.
[00:43:02] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At one of those very first meetups, I remember going in and going, how do I find deals, what do I do, and I was so green and fresh and didn't really know anything about anything. And one older guy in there looked at me and he goes, how are you marketing right now? And I was like, marketing, what do you mean? And he's man, if you're not marketing, you're not in business. Like number one thing. And it just stuck with me.
[00:43:23] Randal McLeaird: And I immediately went out, spent like five grand, found a deal. Anyway, that was the story. I pulled my phone up because I wanted to tell you something you mentioned in art and being a. A podcast nerd like, like me do you listen to Founders at all? No, I've heard of it though. Okay, so there's one on there about Joseph Devine and he's an art collector and they talk about his, and you mentioned this art collector, it was really good.
[00:43:45] Randal McLeaird: I was in the art
[00:43:46] Jonathan Greene: world for six years in between law and really teaching in real estate and I learned a lot about the consumption of goods and the perspective of value, which helps me with how is art valued? It just is you know [00:44:00] what I mean? Why is andy warhol worth, two million for this and somebody else is worth nothing it's really not objective.
[00:44:06] Jonathan Greene: It's subjective and real estate is more objective But you have to use data and if you know how to value it subjectively for yourself and use your own competitive advantages That's how you win if I know my town, and you study your town, and you go to development meetings, and this is the only town you want to invest in, and you go to the meetings where nobody is, and find out where the plan of development for the whole town is, read the master plan you're going to win, because no one else is going to do that.
[00:44:33] Jonathan Greene: But people are lazy. They don't want to do it. They'd rather go online, buy a program. For it to tell, I love bigger pockets, but they'll read an article on bigger pockets that says these are the top 10 markets to invest in. And they won't even think do I have a competitive advantage in any of these?
[00:44:46] Jonathan Greene: If your friend, your best friend lives in one, okay. You have a verified data that helps you. Now you have a friend, so your boots on the ground, just focus on that. It's these investors who are like. I'll invest anywhere if it's a good deal. [00:45:00] That's okay. You're going to buy Swampland and the Everglades because it looks good on a spreadsheet.
[00:45:04] Jonathan Greene: I hope not. You want to Somebody will sell it to you. Yeah. I'll go get that listing if
[00:45:09] Randal McLeaird: you
[00:45:09] Jonathan Greene: want it.
[00:45:10] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Now it's like where the intersection of opportunity and either ability or reality, where those two things actually meet. Okay. So how are you looking forward in 2024?
[00:45:22] Randal McLeaird: What are you focused on as far as asset classes on the investing side? Are you still sticking single family? Are you doing multi? You mentioned your dad bought a bunch of different random things.
[00:45:30] Jonathan Greene: Weird stuff. My favorite asset is mixed use. So commercial mixed use hybrid of residential and commercial. I like it because it's a diversified asset inside one asset class.
[00:45:41] Jonathan Greene: And I like it because it's actually a triple diversified asset. Cause you can. Get to say you have a 2 2, which is 2 retail spaces downstairs and then 2 apartments upstairs 1. Just because a lot of people don't know you can actually get an owner occupied loan and house hack that if the residential portion is 51%.
[00:45:59] Jonathan Greene: But on the [00:46:00] small scale, you have. Residential and commercial. So you already have a hybrid property, but then you can take one of those residential and you can short term or midterm rental it. And then you have a 3rd kind of opportunity principle that can make you more money. I like retail on the bottom because they usually stay longer or past the pandemic where a lot of people went out.
[00:46:19] Jonathan Greene: So I particularly like mixed use on Main streets. Because I think it got killed during the pandemic and now is a great time for people who are like, Hey, I always wanted to start that business, or you can get somebody like Verizon in there. That's a steady tenant. They're going to pay all the time.
[00:46:32] Jonathan Greene: So I like the steadiness of longer term leases. I like residential and I like the options that short term and midterm have given us to do. Even if you buy a multifamily, like I would for sure short term or midterm, one of those, no matter where I am in the country, it makes no difference. If you do it right, you'll do fine.
[00:46:47] Jonathan Greene: So that's my favorite asset. I'm really like more interested in commercial right now. And I like weird commercial. I just went under contract or should be under contract in a couple hours on this, just very small office building that I'm going to put my team [00:47:00] in and open a branch office for my brokerage.
[00:47:02] Jonathan Greene: And it's an oddity. And I had bought an oddity like this when I lived in Sarasota, because I get it from my dad. I like these weird buildings in Sarasota. I bought this. Just a one off building in an artist's colony. And we eventually turned it into a half gallery, half boutique. And this is something that I can adjust over time, but I like opportunities where I can use them if I want, because I'm always full of ideas or maybe I'm going to buy a franchise for something.
[00:47:26] Jonathan Greene: Just plop it into a building that I own. So I like those. I like industrial real estate too. I think it's absolutely much different than people think. Because if you look at industrial parks across the country, like what's going in there, that's where you go to do escape rooms now or these go kart things.
[00:47:42] Jonathan Greene: And that's low overhead. The buildings aren't going to fall apart. It's like self storage. It's just easy money.
[00:47:47] Randal McLeaird: Yeah.
[00:47:48] Jonathan Greene: So are you doing
[00:47:49] Randal McLeaird: a lot of those right now? Are you buying a lot of stuff right now or are you still So
[00:47:52] Jonathan Greene: during the pandemic, I sold off a bunch of old stuff that my sister and I own to just stockpile.
[00:47:57] Jonathan Greene: And now I'm slowly starting to deploy it into different assets. I [00:48:00] started with my first syndication with Drew Brenneman in Chicago, and that was like, I've always liked syndications, but I started to see, okay, this is great. I can put in some amount in here. With somebody that I really trust and I can just, get a good return and then get a windfall return if they do it right.
[00:48:16] Jonathan Greene: So I'm very interested in syndications. I'm working on a couple with a couple other friends, but I'm in the LP position. I don't want to be a GP at all. I don't want to manage that. I have other stuff to do. So I like those. I like buying these things and I, I still love flipping. I've probably, I've flipped a lot of homes in my life and I really like it and I go all in.
[00:48:33] Jonathan Greene: I do nice flips. But, my profit margin has to be a lot for me to do it. So it's six figures minimum. The last one I made about 200 and the buying was five 60. The market's tough here. Yeah, it was five 55 buy in one 80 reno sold for nine 35. That's great. I do that all day. But the problem in New Jersey with buying flips right now is that.
[00:48:54] Jonathan Greene: There's so many bad real estate agents that they're taking first time home buyers into dumps and saying Hey, you can [00:49:00] renovate this. And I'm looking at it as this is a gut Reno and their second hear them like, we'll be on in there at the same time or like at an open house. So I hear him, Oh, this is like 25 grand.
[00:49:09] Jonathan Greene: And you're like, are you fucking kidding me? This is like 120 grand and there's mold all over the basement. This is, you can't even get alone here because of the mold. They just don't know. And that to going back to one thing that we talked about with agents and investors, like 99 percent of real estate agents don't know about investing.
[00:49:26] Jonathan Greene: They think they do, but they really don't. Talk to an experienced investor. They don't know because all of us who were investors first before we got licensed always work with agents who didn't know anything. They didn't know what we want. They would just do a calculation and say that it's yeah, but what's the trajectory of this property compared to the others near it?
[00:49:41] Jonathan Greene: And that's where my team succeeds, where we're placing people in like a different idea of what investing is, including regular first time home buyers. People think like that's not an investment. Are you serious? That's the biggest investment everybody's ever made is their first home. Who else has shelled out 500 grand for something before that?
[00:49:59] Jonathan Greene: So you have to [00:50:00] think with an investor mindset. So we're training even first time investors. Like this has to be a good investment for you. This is your whole family's nest egg going in on this down payment for this property, it better be in an area that's going to appreciate. Or else what are you doing?
[00:50:12] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. You gonna lose money in five years and pay repairs? It's a terrible, prophecy.
[00:50:16] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. I mean my sister-in-law saw that firsthand up in Jersey when she was shopping for houses and they, man, I'd get a call or talk to her and it was like, yeah, this, or I'd hear it from the mother-in-Law.
[00:50:27] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. They were trying to do this and Mother-in-law's in real estate knows, the questions asked, the things to look at. We're like, they are bidding these things up like crazy and need a ton of work. They ended up with a great deal, but they had to pay cash for it. It was just
[00:50:41] Jonathan Greene: yeah.
[00:50:41] Jonathan Greene: Let me just give you an example on the New Jersey market for people. We're recording on March 7th. I don't know when this will come out, but two weeks ago I bid four clients on a house in Livingston, New Jersey, which is right next to West orange. It was a 1. 165 listing. We bid 1. 221. The automated value was around 1.
[00:50:57] Jonathan Greene: 2. I knew it was going to sell for more. I didn't [00:51:00] think we were going to be close, but we came in 35th offers. And we were 60 K over there's homes in Montclair. I just saw one this week that closed this week for 2. 2 million. It was listed at 5 million. So when people are talking about, Oh, this is how real estate is across the country.
[00:51:18] Jonathan Greene: Don't talk to me about that. New Jersey is a whole different breed and everybody's area is different. Real estate is local. You have to know your local market. So we have to do a lot of help with on market buyers to tell them like, listen, You're going to need to get smacked in the face a few times before you really understand that everything has multiple offers.
[00:51:36] Jonathan Greene: Everything goes over this list. Price means nothing. It's about what the value is, because a lot of people here list low so they can say, Oh, I sold for so high over asking. We do it differently. We're pricing at value. We still get multiple offers, but less because we're not priced low. Yeah, that's a good
[00:51:52] Randal McLeaird: solid.
[00:51:53] Randal McLeaird: Jonathan? Jono. Jonathan? Yeah, Jonathan. Yeah. Jonathan. Didn't know if you go by Jono. I got a lot of buddies that go, Jono! What's happening? Yeah, [00:52:00] I
[00:52:00] Jonathan Greene: probably did when I was younger. I probably had a
[00:52:02] Randal McLeaird: stint. Wealth of knowledge. You are the epitome of agents building cash flow. It is the I appreciate it.
[00:52:08] Randal McLeaird: When we talk about, or when I talk about, envision setting up the show. It was having conversations like this so that it's like you're an agent. You built a brokerage, you're successful on that front, but you've also been investing for a long time or investing first. And so I appreciate you sharing the information, your knowledge and jumping on with me and talking about it today.
[00:52:23] Randal McLeaird: I'm going to put all your contact info in the show notes so somebody can reach out to you. If you're looking in the Jersey market or if you just have questions about real estate in general, I would highly recommend reaching out to Jonathan again, wealth of knowledge. So it's been awesome catching up.
[00:52:35] Jonathan Greene: Yeah, man, I really appreciate you having me on the show. And yeah, I mean think of it this way This is agents building clashfield, but think of it What's the point of having your real estate license if you're not also going to invest you have all the access all the knowledge All the data and you're just going to sit there and watch all of your clients build all their wealth And you're not going to do it Get in the game.
[00:52:52] Jonathan Greene: That's why this podcast exists. Like you need to do it. You have the access and the competitive advantage. You just have to figure out how to do it. Do the [00:53:00] work. Go awesome, man. Thanks a lot.
[00:53:04] Randal McLeaird: Hey man. I appreciate you jumping on. Good catch. Absolutely. You too. Did you know that 80 percent of the agents we speak with got into real estate in order to gain passive income so they could obtain financial freedom and become work optional?
[00:53:16] Randal McLeaird: If you want to stay up to date, the best way is to make sure you're subscribed. So if you haven't done that, go ahead and do it now. We'll catch you on the next episode.