Life Balance in Real Estate Investing

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:00] What’s up everybody? Hey, welcome back to the show today I have my buddy John Nolan. He’s an investor fuel member, of course, because all of our guests are, and he operates in Oklahoma city market, and he left his corporate job after having to really, for family reasons, some other things that we’re going to get into today.

So we’re gonna talk a lot today about kind of lifestyle design, how you build a business that serves you instead of building a business. And if there’s anything left, you might get a little life to live. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today.

Professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. That real estate is just a vehicle to freedom. A group of over a hundred of a nation’s leading real estate investors from across the country meets several times a year at the investor fuel real estate mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also to come together as friends and build more.

Fulfilling lives for all of those around us. On [00:01:00] today’s show, we’re going to continue our conversations fueling our businesses and our lives. I’m glad you’re here.

Hey John, welcome to the show.

Jon: [00:01:17] Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike: [00:01:18] Good to see you, buddy. It’s actually a, it’s a little inside joke with you and I, but. We actually were in Yellowstone just last week, actually, just four days ago. We kind of parted, so it hasn’t been that long since we’ve seen each other. But, uh, that was a good time out there.

Right.

Jon: [00:01:31] That was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing on several fronts, but we really enjoyed it.

Mike: [00:01:36] Yeah, we went to, for those of you who are listening, we took a group of investor fuel members out to Yellowstone. And right now it’s, you know, early March. So we were snowmobiling and dog sledding and just kind of hanging out.

Of course folks like us can’t help but talk about business the whole time. We’re there anyway. Cause that’s, that’s what we do. But, uh, it was a good time for sure. So John, I’m excited to have you here and like hear your story and learn a little bit about how, you know, hopefully that people that are listening [00:02:00] will learn a little bit about.

Um, how to build a business around, I mean sometimes people do it from necessity cause you have some health issues in your family or whatever. I know you’ve had some of those issues, but some, whether you have those issues or not, it’s just important to forget. Like. That the, that the tail is not wagging the dog, right.

Where it’s so easy for us to get into business and put everything into that and neglect everything else. Family, health, all kinds of other things. Why we got into the business in the first place was freedom. And then sometimes that all gets thrown out the door because we’re just stuck living, deal the deal because we haven’t really scaled our business.

But I want you to kind of tell us a little about your, your backstory and, and, uh, you kind of, when you left corporate America and jumped into real estate. Okay.

Jon: [00:02:42] Yeah. Um, my backstory, a shortened version. I spent some time in the military. I was in the Marine Corps, got out, went overseas, contracted over there

Mike: [00:02:51] and in it stuff

Jon: [00:02:52] for a few years, came back and I worked for a pharmacy software company and did everything from development and training to,

Mike: [00:02:59] um,

[00:03:00] Jon: [00:03:00] administration.

When I left, I was the VP of it and was there for about 10 years. Opportunity came as a good transition time for me to transition, had some hope stuff going on with my kids, and, and I moved thought a consulting job would be a better fit. And so I did information security consulting for a little while, worked for a great company, amazing coworkers.

But as my kids, health stuff got worse and I just wasn’t able to commit 40 hours to them and that wasn’t fair to them. To ask them to, they would probably would’ve let me go part time if I wanted, but that wasn’t fair to them or the clients. Um,

Mike: [00:03:37] so about three years ago, I,

Jon: [00:03:39] along with my wife, decided I would go full time into real estate investing knowing that at that point he was going to be less than 40 hours.

Um, so that’s kind of how I led into fulltime investing. I did invested, I don’t know, three or four years before that part time, a little bit of flipping a little bit of rentals and yeah. [00:04:00] But nothing, nothing major up until then.

Mike: [00:04:02] Yeah. Yeah. What’s interesting is a, and I hadn’t really investing for like 12 years now full time, and I hadn’t really started talking about this until recently cause I’ve always, you know, I’ve always, I’ve always been a little bit down on corporate America because I like worked so hard to kind of climb the ladder and just kept like getting fired or a company files bankruptcy or things like that.

I was kind of down on corporate America. But the truth is, is I, I definitely owe some of my success. And we’re going to talk about scaling here and kind of the case for scaling, I think a little bit, is, um, some of the success to taking some of the lessons you learned, good, bad, or ugly, you know, out of corporate America to just a corporate structure and the importance of systems and processes.

And obviously you’re a software guy, so I know you believe in that anyway, but kind of applying those lessons learned to a small business, which. Honestly needs to run just as if it’s a fortune 500 company. You don’t have those same resources. You don’t have those big teams, but it’s still a business that that needs to have the, that structure in place, [00:05:00] right?

Jon: [00:05:00] You, the fundamentals still need to be there. You still have to have the good foundation. And that software company I’ve worked for is a family company and they grew very, they were very strong. They grew very well, but they were, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but they would wait until they absolutely really had to hire somebody.

Before they will because just being cautious and things of that nature, which a long time, but we’ve taken a different approach to our business because I needed to scale it faster and it’s like you’ve replaced my income and then eventually my wife’s income and. When she left corporate

Mike: [00:05:36] work as well.

Yeah. So talk about that. So you, you, and we used to talk about this a little bit, um, before we started recording here, which is your approach to, cause you’re right, a lot of real estate investors wait until something’s broken or something until somebody leaves, let’s say, or until you’re, um, you’re kind of too far into the mix before they, you know, spend the money to recruit [00:06:00] somebody.

And then there’s another train of thought, which is. It’s an investment. And yes, they’re not gonna have a return. You’re not gonna have a return on an investment right away. But longterm, it’s a good decision. So talk about kind of that, you know, it’s intuitive to say it, but a lot of us don’t do it because we’re just, as real estate investors, we’re often kind of cheap and frugal, right?

Jon: [00:06:17] You know, we don’t want to spend the money, but we don’t see it as a profit generator, so we don’t spend it. Um. And coming from it. I completely see. I’ve seen that side. I mean, it doesn’t generate revenue, so it’s hard to get funding and I’m hard to get your budget set. Um, but yeah, we knew we wanted to scale.

We knew that I could not do this on my own. My wife still had her corporate job, um, which paid very well. Um, and we needed to grow. And so we thought real hard about do we hire an acquisitions manager first or do we hire. A lead manager, the coordinator first. Um, I was of the opinion very strongly at first, I needed a buyer.

I

Mike: [00:06:56] needed to get an acquisitions manager

Jon: [00:06:57] so I could make more money, buy more [00:07:00] houses, OSI, more houses to pay for a coordinator. And um, my wife, very smart. Um, she talked me through it and helped me realize that nobody needed to get the foundation set first.

Mike: [00:07:13] And

Jon: [00:07:13] yes, it was going to cost them more money. I’m upfront, but in the long run, getting that foundation was going to be worth it.

So we hired an equity, a Lee’s manager, and then after that we added, at one point we had three buyers, including myself. Um, later on down the road, a little over a year ago, had an opportunity to hire somebody, um, do it all here in the office. Brave girl, I’ve known her for quite a long time. You didn’t really have a need for at that point, but when you have an opportunity to hire someone that you know is going to be a great employee and it’s going to work hard, can learn, she didn’t know everything at the beginning, and that’s fine.

You take a chance on it and you, you, you put yourself out there, and that’s what we [00:08:00] did. And now she does pretty much all of our office work. And as well as managing our rental fleet.

Mike: [00:08:06] Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So let’s talk about a little bit about the case for kind of scaling. So when you, this is one of the, you know, one of the hardest things that a lot of people have is bridging that gap.

They can’t leave a good paying job. Now, the truth is, is like in my essence, I had a really good paying job, but I just lost it one day. I don’t know where, you know, twice actually, once I got fired and then once I actually left on my own the second time. But. Right? If the company, I knew they were about to file for bankruptcy and I was like, Hey, they’re not going, they’re not dying right now.

It took two or three years for them to die. But when you go through a bankruptcy process, usually, and this has as a retailer, so usually it’s just a lifeline towards the inevitable. Uh, but it’s just, you know, things get buttoned up. Like the hay days were over, let’s say. And the opportunity for me was over cause I was a growth guy.

So, um. What a lot of people in that situation, they’re like, you know, I’m not saying they’re necessarily [00:09:00] living paycheck to paycheck, which I think the average American is, but you don’t have a ton of, usually a ton of a savings to kind of bridge that gap. So a lot of people, they know they’re here and they know they want to get over here and they, it’s just to bridge that gap between the two things is the hard part.

And truthfully. So what happens is a lot of people, they go to a weekend seminar and they think they’re going to start investing part time. You were doing some of that too, right? You, you bridge the gap. But a lot of people, they just never have the time to treat it like a real business and therefore that part-time hobby can’t offset your income.

So just talk about kind of the, the case for scaling, like how to get in business and scale quickly so that you can justify that leap.

Jon: [00:09:45] Yeah. Um, for me it was, we worked backwards. We knew what kind of income we needed to replace. Um, and we worked backwards from there. Um, but then we also knew that I didn’t want to just replace the income that I was making.

Um, I wanted to do better.

[00:10:00] Mike: [00:09:59] Right.

Jon: [00:10:00] I’m somebody who. Well to a fault sometimes wants to do everything bigger and better. It’s the way I am. I don’t appear competitive all the times, but I am very competitive, especially with myself. And that’s why I ended up running the marathon when I shouldn’t have. But that’s a whole, that’s a whole other story.

Um, yeah. We knew what kind of income we needed to replace, and so we backed into our numbers and talked to a number of investors here in Oklahoma city, knew what the market was like. And kind of just went backwards into that. Yeah.

Mike: [00:10:36] So let’s talk about, let’s talk about, and you, uh, you know, for that is true cause a lot of people don’t really understand.

They just like, well, I’m going to do go do deals. But if you know your average margin, you know, if you’re going to wholesale versus an average margin, if you’re going to retail, you can say, okay, well. You know, to make $100,000, here’s what I need to do, right? You can kind of back into, okay, I’m going to, this overhead is going to cost me this much.

Um, [00:11:00] lead generation is the important part, right? This is going to cost me this much. And so, I mean, I would advocate, I’ve been coaching and mentoring for a long, long time. There’s so many people that. If you say, Hey, it’s going to cost you just make it up $4,000 in advertising to buy a house, and in order to hit your goals, you need to do three a month.

So you need to spend $12,000 hit your goal. And they’re like, Oh yeah, I get it. I get it. And then they’re like, yeah, I just started my advertising. I started with $2,000 and you’re like, well, you’re not gonna hit your goal. Like there’s no magic that’s going to like somehow come into effect that’s going to replace math, you know, at the end of the day.

And so people just like, they just kind of. Do you know, don’t invest in, you talked about investing in people. You also have to invest in advertising, right? To help kind of feed that funnel.

Jon: [00:11:42] Yeah. You need to invest in advertising. You also need to invest in yourself. And there’s a lot of people that go to Rayos and yeah, there’s some, you’re investing your time into the and stuff, but you need to do more.

Invest in yourself. And I will never reader, it just I, I couldn’t do, and I’d fall asleep. It just [00:12:00] bored me. Yeah. The last. Three and a half, four years. Um, I use audiobooks books. I drive

Mike: [00:12:05] a lot. Um,

Jon: [00:12:06] so it’s not physically reading, but I, I use that a self development time. I do think that they can best refuel for self-development.

I promote with my employees self-development. I’ve started doing some. Life mentoring, coaching with some of my employees and just on topics that they would like to improve in. And once we understand our numbers better on how I make decisions. Sure. Let’s go. Let’s do it. Let’s analyze some deals. Yeah.

Right after this, actually.

Mike: [00:12:36] Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. That’s a, that’s the, one of the things I struggled with for a long time is when you, when I first started as a business owner, we kept kind of the management close to the vest. Like, we’re just, you know, I, I. Yeah. At that time I was still fairly young and naive.

We got some level of  out of a small amount of business maturity that’s happened over the years here. But you know, you just, people tend to, when they’re a small business, I think a lot of investors are like this. Like, I don’t [00:13:00] share my financials with my team, or. Yeah. But what happens is you end up having a, there’s kind of two sides of the story, right?

But what happens is that you have people that don’t really understand the struggle. So they just think, well, I’m doing all the work and they’re making all the money. It’s like, ah, you don’t really understand that how much money I’m making. Exactly. And part of it is you don’t really understand how the P and L flows, like you don’t really understand all the expenses, all the risk.

I’ve got insurance on all this stuff, like all these things that just add up. Right?

Jon: [00:13:26] Yup. And then how the P and L in your, uh. Balance sheet can look great. The cashflow is a completely separate game.

Mike: [00:13:36] Right.

Jon: [00:13:36] And if you’re not balance, if you’re not managing your cashflow, then it doesn’t matter. You’re going to get stuck in a spot where you can’t pay somebody.

And that’s not that fun. So yeah, we don’t, right now, we don’t share our full financials with them. Um, but with her, she wants to, it’s my position as manager. She wants to understand why sometimes I’m saying, yeah, I’m going to keep that with mr rental or. [00:14:00] She may see one go, I think this is going to be a good rental for you to keep.

And I go, are you crazy? No, no, no, no, no. Not for me.

Mike: [00:14:07] Right?

Jon: [00:14:08] So we’re going to go through that so she can learn. And um, I think it’ll be good. But we really, really work on investing in the people cause for us to continue growing. It’s not just me. I just bring me more and more out of the day to day.

Mike: [00:14:23] Yeah. So you talk about, um, you know, investing in yourself and kind of like basically could be coaching.

It could be, uh, like you said, audible, like listening to books, consuming books and content. Um. Could be podcasts that you listen to. You know what’s interesting to me is I, uh, obviously do a lot of stuff in real estate. I’ve always listened to a bunch of real estate podcasts and watch videos and stuff.

And lately I’ve, this is kind of crazy, I didn’t do this a long time ago, but it kind of broadened out to listen to a lot of like kind of business type stuff that’s not necessarily real estate related. It’s not real estate related at all actually. And it’s, it’s just a different [00:15:00] perspective. It’s refreshing.

And honestly, I learned so much from, and I’ll just tell you, there’s this up. Podcast called business Wars that I’ve been listening to lately and it is amazing, and it’s my right now listening to. Uh, the one that’s actually going right now, which they can’t keep up with me, that I’m not putting them out fast enough, is, um, Starbucks versus Dunkin donuts.

So it kind of pits two companies. So there’s another one I’m listening to, which is an older one. So when, when the, when I’m done with those Starbucks versus Dunkin donuts, I’m going back to an older one, which is Southwest airlines versus American airlines. But a lot of these stories are like three or four hours long.

They usually have like 30 minute segments and there’s six or eight of them. And it’s just fascinating to hear, you know, it’s. It’s a little bit of a biography. Some of it is, some of it is probably made up cause they don’t know the whole story. But I guess that’s how all, you know, movies are anyway, even if it says based on a true story, it’s like loosely based on, yeah.

But, um, you know, just to hear the decisions that may, that were made, the struggles they went through, like they almost collapsed and then they came roaring back. And [00:16:00] like those things are really just huge lessons learned for any business. I was a checkout business Wars, if you haven’t heard

Jon: [00:16:05] that yet. Yeah, I’ll check that out.

And that made me think of a shoe dog, Phil Knight.

Mike: [00:16:09] His autobiography. Yeah, that I,

Jon: [00:16:11] that was a very, very long book. But man, hearing about the struggles that he went

Mike: [00:16:17] through,

Jon: [00:16:17] that made me feel good because some of those are this, we’re trying to grow, so you need capital, so we can’t, you can’t just replace your income.

You have to be more so you can grow and invest back in the business. Um, yeah, his book was great. Elon Musk’s biography, if you haven’t read that, that is very, very interesting to hear how we’ve

Mike: [00:16:39] got out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’d advocate. So you’re obviously an investment member of investor fuel, and one of the things, you know, I know we both believe a lot in surrounding ourselves with, uh, with people that are like us or people that hopefully are even ahead of us.

So have kind of. You know, gone down in the past. So we’re going down before, so you can learn from that. So even though, you know [00:17:00] Elon Musk and, uh, Phil Knight are not in our mastermind, for example, there’s a lot of people, it’s much more relevant, right? Because they’re in our subject matter. I mean, just talk about the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people, um, in terms of, you know, how it’s impacted you.

Jon: [00:17:14] Oh, it’s huge. Um, I’ve, I’ve really looked for a community of some time, um, to be involved with, um, since I’ve been in real estate full time. And typically what I’ve found is it’s either all newbies or a bunch of people that are very experienced that really don’t care about helping people that are somewhere in the middle or what not.

Um, so getting around people that are successful. But then also have some people that maybe are successful but not as successful as you. You know, having that good mix and everybody being able to work together share. That’s huge. Because so often I’ve met people at different conferences and such and yeah, they know a [00:18:00] lot, but they really don’t have any interest in sharing.

I’m not saying anything bad against that

Mike: [00:18:05] or against

Jon: [00:18:06] them. That’s their choice. Their time. Um, but I, for instance, our trip to Yellowstone, I picked everybody’s brain. We talked about business. And there’s some things that I’m doing that people are like, Oh wow, let me hear more about that. And I mean, it kind of made me go, you want to hear from me?

Oh, that’s kinda cool. I want to hear from you. Um, so being around people like

Mike: [00:18:27] that is, is huge.

Jon: [00:18:29] I’ve already made several personal friendships.

Mike: [00:18:32] Yeah.

Jon: [00:18:33] And so that helps both sides of the equation. I try to focus on my improvement, not just business, but some personal, some business. Um.

Mike: [00:18:43] Yeah. It’s like a, it’s like a, like you said, it’s an investment in people.

Like when you’re bringing people

Jon: [00:18:48] on your team,

Mike: [00:18:49] it’s an investment in advertising. Right. And I think even joining a mastermind, I mean, masterminds like ours are not cheap, but I think, you know, for a lot of people that come in, they get way more than [00:19:00] the costs back in value. Sometimes in real dollars and cents by like all of a sudden I, they’re doing deals with people or.

Defining something, but I, I think, um, it’s an investment. It’s kind of betting a little bit on yourself and betting on. The benefit that you’ll get cause it’s, it’s not always immediate. Uh, I think in RNs and sometimes we try to make an immediate people, like if you come in and we have discounts from different vendors and stuff like that, you might, it might actually depend on how much you’re advertising.

It might pay for your whole membership just by getting a discount or something that you didn’t have before. But I think a, there’s a little bit of a little bit of faith that has to go into it that you are, that, that that investment is going to have a great. ROI, but I think, you know, one of the benefits of a group like ours or you know, any kind of high level mastermind or group is that, um, if you can get to a point to where, and this is the culture we’ve tried to build in yet, I know, you know, this is where it’s based on giving, because people start to feel like, wow, I, I feel like I need to give more because I’ve gotten so much.

Right.

Jon: [00:19:59] Yeah.

[00:20:00] Mike: [00:20:00] And so sometimes you can’t, you can’t really get that at a REIA club and you can’t get it at a cause. The experience level is too low and you can’t get it at even a local event sometimes because usually it’s all local investors and they’re just not as open as they are when they get around a broader kind of national audience.

Right.

Jon: [00:20:16] And something, I know you won’t take this the wrong way. Um, but something I like about fuels, it’s not the Mike handbrake show.

Mike: [00:20:22] Yeah. I don’t want it to be the, my camera show. I just, yeah. I, I’m a, I’m not a, you know. I had no one. I couldn’t, I couldn’t sir. The cool thing about it is, it’s actually, it’s funny that you said that, cause I just did a video.

I just did something on that yesterday. But it’s not, um, it’s peer to peer, right? It’s like I’m there facilitating, but it’s not, I have, I have experienced, don’t get me wrong, but my experience is at the end of the day is pretty narrow compared to the think tank of everybody coming together. And so, you know, I just try to facilitate the.

Uh, the members, and obviously Stinson does too. We all just try to kind of curate the [00:21:00] conversations and connections and stuff like that so that people get what they need. Because what I can offer from my experiences is narrow. But when I can connect people with other people that I think would help, um, it’s, the value is much bigger, right?

Yeah,

Jon: [00:21:13] it is. There’s so much, there’s so many other things that come out of fuel for me personally. You know, that

Mike: [00:21:18] they all

Jon: [00:21:19] very purposefully put in there, you know, such as the. Being intentional with your goals and being accountable. I have time to get up every quarter and talk in front of everybody being vulnerable, being vulnerable for me, a former Marine, that’s not easy.

I don’t want to keep everything close. But, um, when you are able to open up and share, and that comes with the go giver mentality, everybody’s wanting to help. So it’s okay to expose you for us.

Mike: [00:21:47] Yeah. Yeah. Um, you talked a little bit about, uh, we talked up front about kind of building a business around your life.

And, you know, I think, um, a lot of people are, once you jump into real estate, you [00:22:00] know, we’re kind of like in this, uh, there’s a, there’s a little bit of badge of honor lately around hustle, like hustling hard, and, you know, we all work hard when we have to. There’s no doubt about it, but it’s not, you know, there’s, for me, um.

I work hard, but I don’t go on social media and say, just put in another 90 hour week man. Or like, you know, sometimes people are bragging about the hustle instead of the results from us. And I think, uh, you know, there’s, there’s something a little wrong there, you know, thanks to Gary V for. Convincing everybody they need to work their face off and be proud about it.

But you know, I think nobody hears her.  is not willing to work hard if they have to, but that’s not the goal. But I think what ends up happening is people get caught up in that and we start to, cause, I don’t know, I don’t know about you. A lot of us grew up with very little like my, I grew up pretty poor in the grand scheme of things.

And some people like, it’s like the. Celebrate the struggle cause they’ve always been in it and it’s like the goal is to get out of it. But [00:23:00] anyway, some people end up building a, uh, if there’s anything left after they’ve built their business, then that’s their life. Right. And they’re just like, man, I can’t do that.

I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that. Instead of building. A business that kind of serves them and serves the lifestyle that they want and the freedom and flexibility. So talk a little bit about that, cause that’s, that’s kind of why you went out on your own. Just talk about the importance of building your business around, uh, serving you.

Jon: [00:23:25] Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, um, one of the reasons why I left was because of my kids and appointments. Um, I have three kids. They all have major medical issues and they’re all great kids. They’re, you know, they’re not, we’re fortunate that they’re not more dire. Medical issues, but they have a lot of appointments.

Well, an employer wants you to be there. Typically

Mike: [00:23:47] that’s how they make it there, right?

Jon: [00:23:49] So that’s where it started, was being able to take the kids to multiple appointments every week. And at one point, we were having to fly up to New York every [00:24:00] two weeks with one of my daughters to see specialists. Um.

Yeah, it’s real expensive, but it’s also a lot of time off. Yeah. And before that we were fortunate to be able to have a lot of flexibility in our work and, but then with the transition that wasn’t there. So we had, I had to build everything around that, um, as the kids go through their ways of having surgeries or appointments, um, there’s times that I can just like guys, um, I’m not going to be here.

Um, you’ll have the show. I have my rehab coordinator, I have my acquisitions manager, I have my property manager. I have all these people in my team that embrace what my goals are for me personally. And that’s being able to leave whenever I need to. So that’s been a very, very key aspect is when I’ve built my team, I’ve built them around people who aren’t selfish, that want the whole team to grow, but also realize.

I want to be able to step out [00:25:00] and leave for a month. If I need to write a piece that I still email, I still have access to text. I still have access to email. Not completely gone, but, um, we spent a lot of fun traveling as well. We have a cabin in Colorado, um, that we go up to three or four times a year. Um, we have satellite internet up there, no cell service and the satellite internet basically you can use  and that’s it.

Nothing else is going to work cause it’s satellite and that is my happy place. I have my wife there, I have my kids there. They can go out and play where I have 17 acres and I can just relax. Wonderful. Um, we can go on trips like we did the Yellowstone. Um, I am able to go to fuel four times a year, um, and being able to then take these blocks and he trumps the time in my calendar.

And then. Work, work around it.

Mike: [00:25:57] Yup. Yeah. And I think that’s, you [00:26:00] know, when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re kind of hard charging, like you just, you, you were willing to work hard whenever you have to. Um, again, I don’t think, I don’t believe that’s the goal. Um, it’s real easy to fill up time with a work around, and so we travel a lot.

Um. Sometimes people give me a hard time for it, but the truth is, is I work while I’m gone too. Just like you. I mean, I try to enjoy myself during the day or the activity, but then I go crank for a couple of hours here and there as needed. But you know, when I’m not traveling, I work hard to get caught up or whatever I have to do so.

But I’ve kind of built my business for the most part around being able to be more virtual than I was in the past. I mean, it used to be, I approved every deal we bought. I look at every house. I was actually at an acquisitions for a long time. And so it’s just like that didn’t provide the lifestyle I wanted and eventually was able to find a way to simplify that.

But what I found is a, as entrepreneur, like I’m, I’m kind of the, I’m the type of guy, and I know a lot of entrepreneurs are, is. If you’re not traveling or you’re not doing [00:27:00] something to go enjoy your life or have some hobby that you can tie into, then I’m just going to break shit just to fix it. Cause I need to feel like I’m busy.

And, uh, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are that way. But by forcing ourselves to say, Hey, we booked a trip. Like we’re going, it’s ha, it’s happening. And I don’t, nothing falls apart really. But I just filled up that time with something that I enjoy doing instead of something that I, you know, felt like I had to do

Jon: [00:27:23] in a joke that my staff has.

In January, Amy and I went to LA for on a few days a week, something like that. And the joke we came, when you’re gone, everything goes better. We get more

tongue in cheek. But it’s true. I mean, they, yeah, I have a great team. They, they do stuff well. Um,

Mike: [00:27:45] that allows us to do that. Yup. Yup. Awesome. Well, John, you talked a little bit about, uh, we talked a little bit about fuel here and kind of, you know, the road purpose of surrounding yourself with the right people.

Would you mind just kind of sharing a testimonial of what the group is, what the group is kind of meant for you and your business? So over [00:28:00] the time you’ve been as a member.

Jon: [00:28:01] Of course it’s been, it’s been huge. Um, and it’s lots of little things. A lot of times people look for this one big nugget, this big hunk of gold that’s gonna do it.

Mike: [00:28:09] It’s lots of little things

Jon: [00:28:10] and really

Mike: [00:28:11] it comes down

Jon: [00:28:12] to, um, the personal connections that I’m making with so many people, um, people that are known in the industry, like yourself, to people that aren’t known, but they’re doing great, um, in getting those little chunks of knowledge from them. And you were just interacting with them.

Um, it’s, it’s been amazing for us and we’re going through a transition and right now, and it’s very, eh, I couldn’t do it without it.

Mike: [00:28:42] Awesome. Awesome. Appreciate that. So, yeah, I think that’s a, that’s one of the things we try to convey in the group is like, we all go through ups and downs and we all go through good times and bad times.

I mean, that’s kind of the nature of our business. And. Cycles in the industry, your cycles in the market, all that stuff. And I think, uh, you know, we all know that, so [00:29:00] it’s helpful to have somebody there that kind of has your back and, and, uh, there’s people that are, that are crushing it right now. And there’s people that are not crushing it as much as they used to.

They haven’t a struggle or they’re going through some sort of transition. But I think that’s the value of the group is saying, I’ve got to kind of a family there to help me support me no matter where I’m at.

Jon: [00:29:17] Yeah,

Mike: [00:29:18] you just hit it right there,

Jon: [00:29:20] family. Um,

Mike: [00:29:21] I can.

Jon: [00:29:22] Reach out to a number of people. I can text him, I can call him, I can email him and jump on Facebook if I need something.

Our group is great about giving, responding on Facebook, um, and helping each other. But, uh, you, you said family. That made me think of, uh, just before Christmas when we found out that Addison may need a spinal cord surgery came, which we’re still going through that path. Trying to find out,

Mike: [00:29:45] um,

Jon: [00:29:46] last time she had surgery, she had an open wound on her back for two and a half years, so her body wouldn’t heal.

Um, so that was very emotionally taxing on us. And, um, she’s still sleeping with like [00:30:00] blankets that fuel center when I found out about that. Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s not just impacted me. That personal connection has impacted my 10 year old daughter.

Mike: [00:30:11] Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Cool.

Well, we’ll definitely wishing her the best and he’s still going through some issues there. So, uh, thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing your, your time and your story with us today.

Jon: [00:30:23] Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Mike: [00:30:25] Hopefully

Jon: [00:30:26] be beneficial for somebody.

Mike: [00:30:27] Yeah, no, I think there’s a lot of people that honestly are.

You know, probably sh in a struggle on the outside, it looks like their business is going well, but they know that it’s, it’s a little bit fragile. All of our businesses are a little bit fragile, right? I mean, heck, we got this, all this coronavirus stuff going on right now, like  it just seems like the sky is falling, but it’s a, it’s more fear-based at some point.

You know, all this perception becomes reality just because of all the fear. So who knows how this is gonna impact real estate investing businesses definitely impacting the travel industry and professional sports now and everything else. So. Yeah. But the, [00:31:00] the good thing is I think, uh, you know, for folks that are listening to this right now, in every, uh, every kind of adverse, uh, thing that happens, there’s plenty of opportunity there too.

So you always have to be looking for, and not how bad it is, but like, what, with all this, uh, stuff that’s going on, where are the opportunities that, how can I serve somebody and benefit in the process and, and win-win situations.

Jon: [00:31:23] Yeah. And a lot of that’s mindset. I mean,

Mike: [00:31:25] for example,

Jon: [00:31:26] real estate investors, we’ve all had that person calls screaming accustomed because they got a postcard in the mail and people get upset that they paid so much for that car.

You know, take for how much money you make. How many people you helped every time you send out your mail or whatever it takes. And that’s also where a lot of it is, is helping people.

Mike: [00:31:44] Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, John, if folks wanted to get ahold of your reach out anyway or connect where it, where’s a good place for them to go?

Jon: [00:31:50] Um, best for me or, and Mr. Graham or Facebook on Facebook. I’m just John S. Nolan. No, H just J. O N S a. J. O N S N. O. L. E. N [00:32:00] on Instagram. The flip an it guy. Most people think it’s the flipping it guy, but with my T

Mike: [00:32:06] Barker, and I thought I was too. And so you just said that. I was like, okay. Oh, it makes sense.

Jon: [00:32:12] Those are the two best ways to get ahold of me. I don’t, I only check my email once or twice a day. Um, but, um, I check social media a decent amount.

Mike: [00:32:21] Yeah. Cool. We’ll have those links down below in the show notes here. So thanks again for sharing your message with us today and sharing your story.

Jon: [00:32:28] Well,

Mike: [00:32:28] thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course. Everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us today. Hope you got some good value out of John’s story here and kind of, you know, just the discussion around building a business around your life. Uh, I’m sorry, building a business that serves your life, right? We all aspire to have this freedom, then get caught up in the mix and the hustle.

Um, and so we talk a lot about that, or investor fuel mastermind. If you, if you’re. If you’re actively doing deals and um, whether you’re doing a deal deal or two a month or whether you’re doing hundreds of deals a year, we’d love to talk to you about the investor fuel mastermind. Next events actually coming up here pretty quickly, so we’d love to see you [00:33:00] there if it makes sense.

Just to check out investor fueled.com to learn more. If you haven’t already subscribed to the show, we’d love it if you subscribe to us on . ITunes, Stitcher radio, Google play, YouTube, anywhere where you are watching. Listen to this right now. Make sure you subscribe and if you could give some positive feedback, we’d love that.

So appreciate you. See on the next show,

are you an active real estate investor? If so, and you want to latch onto the power of surrounding yourself with over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate investors. All committed to building stronger businesses and living richer, fuller lives. You should jump on a call with us to learn more about investor fuel.

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