Episode 410: Building Real Estate Freedom with Jens Nielsen

Speaker A: Do you want your business to grow faster? Are you open to new and out of the box ways to drive revenues and increase value? How do you imagine the most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders double, triple or expand their businesses tenfold or more? The answer is deals. This is a weekly podcast featuring conversations with business owners, executives and leaders as we reveal behind the scenes details that give you, our listeners, the confidence to pursue your own deal driven growth. On this show we discuss a huge variety of deals, everything from, from large, complex mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, joint ventures, strategic alliances, real estate, affiliate and sponsorship deals, franchising and more. My name is Corey Kupfer and I've been supporting deal driven growth for businesses for over 35 years. As a successful entrepreneur, professional negotiator and attorney, my goal is to help you strategize, plan for, find and complete deals that will help your company grow faster. Welcome to the DealQuest podcast. Let's get started. Jens Nielsen is a commercial real estate investor, operator and business coach in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After a 27 year career in IT and telecom, he transitioned to a full time real estate investor and helped build a portfolio of more than 2,700 apartment units and over 100,000 square feet of industrial real estate. He's raised over $10 million in private capital and uh, has firsthand experience navigating acquisitions, operational scaling, investor communications and market downturns. Uh, what makes Jens perspective unique is that his focus is on what happens after the deal closes. He believes many businesses and real estate operators struggle because they can't find deals. Not because they can't find deals, but because the business becomes too dependent upon the owner. Today, Jens works with entrepreneurs and operators to improve execution, leadership and scalability. So growth creates freedom and instead of chaos. Well, Jens, listen, I, you know, anybody who listens to this podcast knows, uh, you know, we'll hear it on my final question about my highest value in life being freedom. So, uh, that part of your bio definitely resonates. I love that you have this interesting background in going from it to, to real estate investing and now continuing to invest but also doing some coaching and consulting of, and leadership, uh, stuff with folks. So. But before we get into all that, I want to take you back to when you were a little kid growing up, maybe 8, 10, 12 years old, because I'm guessing a real estate investor and leadership consultant and that kind of stuff, or maybe even it wasn't it back then. But you tell me, what did you want to be when you were a kid?

Speaker B: Yeah, that was absolutely not on My radar, that's for sure. The real estate. Yeah, I mean, grew up in rural Denmark, right. Grew up kind of in the countryside, you know, my parents were blue collar, blue collar workers, you know, and didn't really have much idea of the bigger world that was out there. Right. This is before the Internet. We had one TV channel in Denmark and then we could watch three German TV channels as well. So that was my exposure to the world. Right. And uh, we'd watched American Western on German television. It was dubbed into German.

Speaker A: So,

Speaker B: uh, what did I want to what in my early teens, what did I want to do? I think I was always interested in something, you know, technical, mechanical. My dad was very much like he'd fix anything or whatever, so I was interested in that. But I didn't want to be like an, a mechanic or something. So as I grew a little bit old, like electronics, Electronics started to gain my interest, Right. Building circuit boards and stuff like that. Right. And then that led, you know, that led into this telecommunication, it kind of world. I like the concept of building things, but you know, very quickly you cannot like build electronics anymore because it's integrated circuits that are impossible to work on. Right. So that's kind of where the start came. But really, real estate investing, no idea.

Speaker A: I love it. So what was your first deal of any type? Uh, maybe it was something early in your career. Maybe it was your first real estate deal. Maybe it was something way before that. You tell me.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it took a long time, right. So I moved to the United States 30 years ago, did the whole, worked for different businesses and so on. So it wasn't until 10 years ago, so we're talking 2016, that I bought my first commercial deal. Yeah, we had bought houses and so on, but anything investment, uh, you know, real estate investment. That was not until 10 years ago, I bought my first four plex in Albuquerque, New Mexico for $117,000.

Speaker A: Fourplex. Wow.

Speaker B: Yeah, imagine, imagine buying that at ah, 20, what, less than 30k a door. Right. That was pretty amazing. Wow.

Speaker A: I love it. So what had you, you know, so you had this long career in IT and telecom, you were doing that for a long time. What had you made the switch? What had you get into real estate in the first place?

Speaker B: Uh, after the intro you mentioned this thing about freedom, Right. So a couple of things started to happen when I grew, when I was in my 40s. Couple of things. My mother had passed at the age of 52 and I was like, man, I'm not that far away from 52 myself, you know, who knows? We have no guarantee of tomorrow. I like my job. I always liked my job. They were interesting. But I'm like, I'm going into work eight to five every single day, and I, uh, get a few weeks off. There's so many things I want to experience and still want to experience before it's too late, before I'm too old, right? So I wanted some freedom. I wanted to disconnect my time from my income. And the only way you can do that is by having assets that pay you money when you're sleeping and whatever, Right? And then real estate, you know, yeah, you can do it other ways to own a business, you can own, you know, dividend stocks. But real estate was the one thing that actually made sense to me when we started. It wasn't that hard to wrap my head around. Right, Got it.

Speaker A: Interesting. So one of the things that's interesting is, like, there are a lot of people out there that push real estate investment as passive investment. And then my experience when you speak to folks is like, if you think real estate investments could be purely passive from day one, unless you're just throwing money into someone else's fund or whatever, right? I mean, yes, at some point you can end up getting right money while you sleep. But most people I know in the space, uh, and certainly when we did our own, my own real estate investment, it's never truly passive, at least in the beginning, right. You got to identify the properties, you got to find them, you got to figure out the value in them. Even if you're hiring management, you got to hire management, Right? Talk to me a little bit about that journey.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think there's like, three types of investors. One is, as you said, you throw money at somebody else's fund, 100% passive, you have no control, and you hope that this operator is going to do well and so on. And this is the money that we have raised, right? That's one avenue. The second avenue is being like an owner, operator. Hey, you buy, uh, a few units, a single family home, fourplex, whatever, and you do all the work yourself. You know, it's next door and the toilet breaks, you fix it. The tenant has a problem, you deal with it, right? You can't really scale because you're going to run out of time. But, uh, absolutely not passive at all. That is, you know, a second job. I think a lot of investors burn out there because they're like, oh, my God, it's so much work, right? And they just, they don't really make that Connection. And then the third is really an investor, an active investor who as you said, puts together the deals, raises the money, and then asset manage the deal after closing. Right. So that's the category I put myself into is that third category. And it's not passive, but I'm also not the property manager. The property manager is the last job I would ever want to have. Right. You know, so we're managing the manager. We're managing to the business plan. Right? And that's how we can scale because we put people in place to manage. We manage that manager to that business plan.

Speaker A: Now, when you did your first four plex investment, were you in the other category? Were you running that or did you. And was it your own money or did you build like this model that you have now from first investment?

Speaker B: It was my own money. You know, me and my wife had been, you know, good job saving. So we had money to buy it. I mean we got some debt, but down payment, the. So here's the interesting thing, Corey. I was looking, I was living in a small town in Colorado then and I kind of looked around because people tend to start where they live, right? Is there something here that makes sense? We look there, I guess. Luckily no deals made sense where I was living. So I was forced, quote unquote, to buy out of my local town, actually out of state because I was in Colorado. I bought in New Mexico. Yes. That was four hours away, a three hour. No, I can't manage that. You know, four hours away from day one. I put property management in place and I think that saved my sanity because so, I mean, property management is a really hard business and as an owner you have to stay on top of it, right? But there was no way I could have because I already had a job and there's no way I could deal with it for a little while. Actually, it's a little funny for a little while. Me and a buddy own a small mobile home park out close to where we lived. And it was this thing, right? You were like having dinner on Sunday night and the tenant calls, there's some problem. You're like, oh my God, you got the time to find a plumber or whatever. I hated that, you know?

Speaker A: Yes, trust me, I get it. And even managing, I mean, we. Some years back we partner, uh, and I put together, you know, raised some capital and some small real estate investment funds and did some deals multifamily, uh, a couple of small condo conversions and uh. On the multifamily. Yeah, I mean having the right management in place was crucial. I mean, not only did I not want to get the call when the toilet was backed up, uh, or whatever, but also, you know, just dealing with tenants, I mean, even good ones, it just, it takes a lot and it takes a certain skill. And I remember, uh, you know, we had a guy who, uh, had the amazing ability. He was, you know, he had a small company. He was the most charming guy in the world until he didn't, you know, until it was. Until he had to be something else. Right. You know, with the tenants who are problematic. And we had buildings in the Bronx, and at that time it was sort of shifting, but, you know, you still had the risk of bad tenants coming in and dealing drugs out of the buildings and things like that and whatever. And it was certainly not. I didn't want to personally deal with any of that stuff, that's for sure.

Speaker B: Absolutely. It is. Yeah. It is very stressful. Yeah.

Speaker A: Love it. So, all right, so talk to us about the journey a little bit. Because obviously, uh, it's not, I think, most common unless you're talking about somebody who comes in just as a professional investor and raises to start doing deals with your own money. Right. And then some people move to the place where they're raising money on a per deal basis, Right. You know, in SPVs or whatever, and then maybe they move to a fund. Talk about your journey in terms of moving to the model you have now from that first personal investment you made.

Speaker B: Yeah. So it took a few years, Right. Started, uh, out with, uh, I think in the first year we bought. We actually bought three properties. We bought two fourplexes and 11 unit, you know, but then we were kind of out of money, right? Because, hey, uh, you know, Cass Cast, you know, gets tied up and, you know. Yeah. So at that point we're like, there's two avenues here. One is we wait, we improve those properties, we refinance them, we pull some cash out and we do the next thing. But I had like. I was like, no, I, you know, I didn't have 20, 30 years to do this. Right. I had a little bit accelerated timeline. So it's like, how do we go from being an investor to actually start creating a business out of this by bringing in private money, Right. In the syndication type framework. So we started in 2018. So, you know, roughly two years less than two years in, we found a larger deal, which was, first one, we needed some capital for 38 units. I couldn't do it by myself. So I just talked to a couple of my friends and say, hey, uh, are you guys interested in doing this together? Right. So that was my first kind of like experience in putting a deal together with other people's money and so on. Right. We still have that deal. What's that?

Speaker A: Let me just stop you for a second there, because this is a question I'm always interested in. I've done it myself. It is a jump when you go from using your own capital to other people's money. Not only in the ability to go out and raise it, but now you got to deal with investors. And even just the psychological, like there are some people who just never would do that because, you know, there's a lot involved in being responsible for other people's money. You know, it's one thing if you lose your own money, Right. That's not good. But there's a whole different dynamic when you lose other people's money. And many people start with friends and family where there's other implications in relationship. Right. Talk to m me about sort of that psychological piece of it and the willingness to do that. And like, how did you deal with that? Were you concerned? Like, what was that journey for you to decide to do that and get comfortable doing it it or would do it maybe even if you weren't comfortable?

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you never take that lightly, Right. Because it's people's hard earned money and you are responsible for it. So the way I think, the way I looked at it was like, well, first of all, I'm putting my own money alongside, so I'm risking my own funds. Uh, I'm telling my investors, like, there's no guarantees here. This stuff could go, we could lose it all tomorrow. Right. They need to understand the risk in there. And then also, you know, the other thing I've learned over time is don't put all your money into one deal. Right? Because I mean, we have one deal we made 350% return on and another one we lost investors money. Right. Because it was the wrong time to sell and had some problems. So it goes from, you know, fantastic to not so good. Right. But if you invest enough, you land somewhere in the middle that looks good. Right. So there's that psychology around it. So I like the investors that put money into multiple deals because, you know, they spread the risk and hopefully it works out.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But, uh, yeah, the psychology of that has always been interesting because I feel like, you know, I wouldn't do a deal up front if I wasn't comfortable and confident when I did it that this is going to work out. Right. Why would we do a deal now, the market changes and things impact it. Right. Um, and I also had, I had an early experience in that because that 38 unit I talked about, we were five people that came together to buy it. Two of my friends, and then I had my broker partner and one of his friends. There was five of us did it. One guy is a doctor, he could care less how things are going. The other guy was, he wanted more control than he had because he was sort of passive, whatever. And he was freaking out every time I send him the financials, like, oh my God, what's going on? Why are we spending money here? Blah, blah, blah. After hearing him for six months, freaking out, I was like, maybe it was even longer. I was like, all right, I love you, you're my friend. Why don't I buy you out of this investment? Because it's going to help me sleep at night. It's going to help you sleep at night. So I bought him out and that damn deal is returning like it is such a cash cow right now. I don't tell him because I don't want to upset him, but, you know, but so sometimes you do get those investors and I think if you out there raising money, pay attention. Day one. Are these people like before you even raise money from, are they nervous? Are they concerned? Are you like, you convince them to do it. That's not that they have to come to you willingly. Right.

Speaker A: And you know the uh, the old joke, and there's some truth in it, is that often it's the smallest investors that are the ones who are the, the most high maintenance.

Speaker B: Yeah. That's why we, you know, typically try to do from accredited investors who have a good net worth and good income so that God forbid something goes wrong, that's not their last dollar. Right, Right.

Speaker A: So were you raising, uh, do you still raise per deal or have you put together a fund? Like when. How's that evolved?

Speaker B: Yeah, so we, we've always done per deal just because it seemed a little bit too complicated to put a fund together because then you have to start identifying properties and try to put lump them together and so on. Right. Always been per deal. Yeah, that's more work on managing. You know, I think we did 30 some deals. Right. So it's, it's always more work managing but never the fund structure. I am working with a client now. He's doing a fund on the debt side. So he wants to raise debt so that he can use that debt for his own projects and also for like fix and flip loans. And so on, it's a little bit different. That's not single asset, but it's a different structure. Right. But always per deal so far.

Speaker A: All right, And I want to get into some of the more of the consulting and client working and do. But before we go there, what did you do to learn? Right. Again, you're an IT guy, right? So now you decide you want more freedom, you're going to get into real estate. You know, we hear all of many, many examp of people who move into real estate. They're very successful. We also probably it's less touted, but there are examples of plenty of people who get in and, and it's a mistake or they don't do well. What did you do to. To. Or was it something you were following like in terms of the ability to analyze deals, know what to look for, not only in terms of cap rates and pricing or whatever, but, you know, just all the other intangibles that come in on what make an investment in real estate successful or not. How did you get educated on that?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, so logical thinking, right? From being an IT in it, right. So I was always analyzed. So I started out by just reading every book I could get my hands on, listening to, you know, 10 years ago, there weren't nearly as many podcasts. But listening to podcasts and learning and then asking experienced people. So I remember when I first got started, you know, read some books, and I was like, who do I know that's doing this? Right? And for people listening, this is not this massive complicated thing. You just start with the knowledge you have, you educate yourself, and then you start looking at the network of people you know, that can help you. Right? So I called up my friend Gates and I was like, hey, you know, I know you invest. I don't know how this works. Can I buy you dinner? And can you walk me through it? Right? And that led to us going from we had a shared interest in something else to this. And, you know, he said, well, this is how you do it, on the back of a napkin. And, uh, you need to call this guy up. He's going to help you. He loves to work with new investors and so on.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And I think the key thing was, you know, yeah, I had some spreadsheets and plugged the numbers in and so on and so forth. It's not that complicated on a small deal. And I took action, right? I took action because once you take action, you learn, you buy this $150,000 fourplex and two months later, the Water heater goes out.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's like, well, here's $500 or whatever that used to cost. The main sewer line or water line broke. Well, here's a couple of thousand dollars. Like, oh, okay, that's the shift. Excuse me. That's the stuff that happens that's going to throw you off.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah. And obviously, if you didn't know this before, you've. When you ran your projections, you budgeted for repairs and maintenance and capex digitally. Digitally, you know, funds and reserves and whatever. But yeah, it's uh, interesting. So have you. Has it been mainly in New Mexico that you continue to focus or you know, did the investments expand out of there?

Speaker B: No, it's kind of. And I think maybe I didn't quite finish my last thought. Then once I wanted to go into like the private equity, the syndication space, I then joined, you know, like coaching, um, group program because I wanted to, I wanted to learn the bigger game and I also wanted to get around more people that were doing that. Right. Um, because I was living in a small town, you know, well, not many people were doing it. So that forced me to travel. I would travel to these different conferences and they're like my knowledge started growing a lot, uh, in that way. Right. Back to your question. No, we started out in, uh, Albuquerque. This is convenient. But once I got involved in this group I was just referring to, we started investing in other states. Right. Because where were the deals? So we've done that. My most fantastic deal was in Phoenix. We bought at the right time, we sold at the right time. We did a deal outside Atlanta that also went really well. And then I ran into. I met this guy at an event who is up in Pennsylvania and had been doing this for a long time. So him and I started partnering. So we bought stuff in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, actually New York, upstate New York and so on. Right. Um, just because this was where we could get access to it. So it's been all over the place. I still live in New Mexico. I travel of course to the properties. But you know, we have a team that's on site to dealing with the day to day. Right.

Speaker A: Okay. And you still own properties, right? You still.

Speaker B: Not as many, but yes.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So you've sold a lot of more. Okay. And what had you move more? Because I know you, uh, know the bio talks about something that we talk about on the business side all the time. And Michael Gerba's E myth is like an entrepreneurial bible around this for more operating businesses. This concept of, you know, working on the business, not in the business. Not having the business be dependent upon you. That applies across industries, not only in terms of real estate, but it's, you know, I'm remember, entrepreneurs, organization. That is like a fundamental principle of. That's what everybody's trying to do. Right. And you're right. I mean, many business owners struggle with that. So what had you. I mean, obviously it sounds like, you know, you mentioned the geography and you got management involved even in your first deal. But it sounds like, you know, you've had that kind of sort of mindset and understanding, and maybe it comes from that desire for freedom. Right. Because obviously, you know, so talk to me a little bit about sort of that journey and then how you work with folks around, you know, that concept and helping them build their own.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, I think I want to. Yeah, it's a great question. I want to. I mean, yeah, I absolutely love the E Myth. Right? Now. I didn't work. My first job was for a smaller business. Everything else was large corporations. So systems and processes were in place because otherwise they would never have gotten to that scale. Right. Sure. It was already there. But what I realized in my. When I, you know, moved up to manager, interior level and executive level and stuff, I realized that it was my responsibility to make sure my department or, uh, my group was running well. Right. I had a lot of freedom. But it's still at the end of the day because we were running payroll systems, financial system, HR systems. That stuff had to be up and running 24 7. Right. 365. So we had a lot of responsibilities for creating high quality, robust systems, uh, IT systems. Well, that doesn't happen by accident. Right. You play. You put a lot of planning in there. You put a lot of redundancies and emergency plans, everything else in. So it came natural to me to put plans in place and systems and processes in place so that when we were installing large systems, we would not be guessing. We were doing it according to the plan. Right. That was how I operated. And I thought that was normal. Then I come out in the. Into the entrepreneurial world and it's like, oh, my God, everybody's just by their seat of their pants, right?

Speaker A: It's in their head. It's right.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So I started seeing that. I was like, oh, my God. Then I got really curious, right. Uh, E Myth, Ah, traction about eos and all this stuff. And I was like, okay, well, somebody had thought about this before. It's all documented. Well, the problem is the business. The visionary business owner is not reading those books or they may be, but they're not implementing it, right? And as I alluded to before, this partner that I have up there in Pennsylvania, great guy, he's a visionary, he's a people's person and he had built, uh, a rather large portfolio, but he was just in it every single day. I said, all right buddy, let me help you get structured, right? I basically said, I'll do this quote, unquote for free because you're my partner and you've been very generous to me. Let me do this work with you so I can learn it, you can get more organized, right? That started my journey towards, and this is, you know, years ago, right? This started my journey towards trying to use the skills I'd learned in my, my long career and put that into small businesses, right? That's where it started. And then as I started learning these things, right, it's like, oh, well, every, uh, the more and more business I started seeing the same problems and I would apply and I was like, okay, well now I have enough skills, I can go and actually sell my services to somebody like starting small, right? So it's been really fun because I worked with gyms, I worked with property management companies, bakeries, a law firm, an auto shop, right? All these different businesses, they all have the same problem, right?

Speaker A: Let's take a break from the show for a minute so I can tell you about an incredible resource my team and I have put together for you. Secrets of Deal Driven Growth. Creative ways to grow your business even in Challenging Times is a powerful ebook that helps you take DealQuest podcast episodes and apply them to your own life and business. This is the ideal tool for anyone looking for creative ways to grow as deal makers. And you can get yours now. It's as easy as heading to coreycupfer.com workbook and downloading your copy. While you're there, you can also consider joining our dynamic deal driven community of founders, experts, small business owners and entrepreneurs. Now back for the show. I run a growing but still relatively boutique law firm, right? And I've know I've had my own entrepreneurial journey around that. And you know, we are systems heavy and I'm not in the business. You, uh, know, I've got a great team or whatever and I, I'm out there, you know, developing business nail high level strategy and structuring. And then you know, I got systems and people who execute and implement. But you know, but it was a journey to get there, right? And there is, you know, for me it's always interesting because there is the external, what I call the external journey, which is like, you know, just the learning and the execution, implementation and putting the systems to figure out what you got to do. But there's also an internal journey piece, right. That I think some folks never get by. Like, no matter how much information or education or systems or consultants or they bring in, unless there's an internal shift, right. If you can't give up control if you're a Michael manager, if you don't trust people, if, you know, whatever, if you don't use the systems that somebody else put in for you. Right? So talk to me a little bit. When you work with these companies, is that your experience? That that's the biggest block or opportunity is that visionary, uh, person and how.

Speaker B: The visionary not letting go, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, visionary not letting go. Yes. And this is something I like to, you know as I send out my weekly newsletter. I like to talk a lot about that because this is the biggest. Well, not the. But one of the biggest problems that entrepreneurial companies have is that there's a strong leader, there's a strong visionary, created a business, and if they can't get out of the way of their next level management or whatever, their business will never grow. Because if all decisions have to go through them, if all like approvals and everything else has to go through them, they become this bottleneck, right? And they never have the. They're overwhelmed, they're stressed out, they're burned out, and their employees are just frustrated because like, oh my God, you know, I gotta ask the boss for everything. So that's one of the things, you know, this is where, where we come back to this, okay, Are you willing to give up some of that control? Right? It has to start with that mindset. Are you willing to give up? Are you willing to delegate and elevate your team so that your team can rise up? And because everybody's smart and want to do a good job, but you have to, you know, allow for, for that growth, allow for some mistakes, allow for that freedom that, you know, I guess, I mean, the accountability that comes, the freedom and accountability that goes hand in hand there and so on. Right? That's huge.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And, and so it's funny, the broker that I did my first deals with, we partnered a couple of deals. I've actually done some consulting with him because this gentleman, Wonderful guy, he's 81 years old now or something, he owns like a thousand apartment units himself, he's management company, he has these struggles to let go, but he's not going to be around forever. So I had a really frank conversation with him. It was last week. I said, all right, you need to find ways to start planning for succession. What is that going to look like? Right. And I think he's starting to get it. So there's going to be some opportunity to talk about that. But it's going to be very hard for him to give up control. He's still in the office every single day from you know, 7 to 6pm or whatever. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. It's fascinating for me again like I've been, I mean our clients are all entrepreneurial, growing companies. I see it over and over again. You know, I have my own personal journey and experience around it. And for me, like, I don't know, whatever reason I've been, I'm um, one of the folks who've adopted that. You know, like I'm um, I can't give away enough soon enough. But you know, it's just that's much more my personality and you know, give people freedom. Yes, you hold people accountable for results. But I've never been a micromanager and things like that. And in fact there's this thing, there's this concept, right. Where people look to delegate up so that they don't take responsibility. Right. And I'll often say to, you know, some of my folks, although at this point, you know, I have a lot of long term people so they've, they've sort of doesn't happen as much anymore because they know what I'm going to do. Like they'll come to me and say, hey, you know, Corey, would you look at this whatever. And I'll say to them, do you really need me to look at this? Like is there something specific you need me to look at? And sometimes they'll be yeah, yeah, can you. But, but can you just focus on this one thing? I really want, you know. Okay, great. But sometimes, a lot of times I'll just say no, no, I think it's you know, like I'm uh. Okay, good, send it out. You know, like, you know it's funny that dynamic. Cause it's not. A lot of it is from the top down. But there is this piece that is from. That's pushing upwards sometimes.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's a fear of like well, if I send it out it's on me. Right? There's that fear because if the boss said okay, it's his problem.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's so on. I heard what you just said there. I heard somebody say this exact same thing. And what he also said is, are you willing to give me part of your salary to solve this problem for you? You know?

Speaker A: Yeah. Love that. So, uh, talk to me a little bit. I mean, it sounds like you mentioned that you have. You're doing this not only in real estate, like, you know, you mentioned property management, whatever, but also auto, like all these different areas. You know, one of the commonalities, you said, there's a lot in common. And one of the biggest areas, I mean, we identified one. Right. The visionary, not willing to let go. But what are the other factors that come into, you know, the ones that successfully make this jump and are able to scale versus the ones who have more trouble?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, and I think it seems like you're living it, right? We get the owner or the visionary to step out of the way a little bit. Right. But we also get on a cadence of really. Well, what are the, uh, you know, first of all, it's like, what's the accountability chart look like? What are your metrics? What are your processes? Get all those basic things in place. And then we train and mentor and coach. You know, I like to coach the visionary, but sometimes they're not very coachable. So I like to go to one step, quote unquote, below, to the leadership team, and said, okay, this is how you show up to take responsibility, accountability, uh, initiative, productivity, all these different things. Right. So sometimes it's. They haven't really learned to be a true leader because their boss or the owner always took away some of that initiative from them. Once we can get the boss to the owner to back off, and then we can start leveling up that next level, it's really hard. But as the owners start realizing that, that starts creating that freedom because now they're not coming and asking a single question or so on. Right? So really look at that. Right. And also hiring the right people, because hiring the people that are, uh, they may not be an expert in your business, but they need to have the aptitude towards responsibility and accountability and growth. Right. That's. I'm more interested in hiring for mindset and capability versus a specific skill. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: If it's a doctor, I'll hire for the skill. An attorney. Right. But for something more generic, not so. Maybe not so much.

Speaker A: Right. Uh, yeah. Love that. So it's been interesting, right, because you've had, you know, and again, I know you still have real estate going on, but, you know, you had this it phase one, you had phase two, uh, the real estate investor, and now, you know, maybe There are other phases that we've missed, but at least phase three, you know, where you're doing this work with, uh, entrepreneurs and management teams, uh, you know, in various industries. I love when I see people evolve, especially when it's driven by the values that I align with. So, you know, talk to me a little bit about, like we talked about how you transitioned from IT into the real estate investment. What had you transition into? Doing this, uh, coaching and consulting stuff.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. So real estate doesn't take up my full day. Right. And it's business has, you know, as interest rates started changing and stuff, it was let. We. It was harder to find deals. So I wasn't as busy. Yeah, the real estate is, you know, giving income and long term growth. But two things. I needed something to do, you know, and it's nice to get the income from it. And I was like, I have all these skills. I've learned from the IT career now doing building this real estate. Let me help other people get benefit from it. Right. And I think as we grow a little bit older, there's this idea of like service and giving back and sharing our knowledge. Like, you know, you were sharing this podcast and guests on there.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: And then I was like super fascinated by this entrepreneurial space that I wasn't exposed to for so many years out of my life that there's so many people with so many fun ideas and things like that. Right. So now, you know, I live in a small town. There's like roughly 20,000 people here. But there's this, there's a business incubator here that I'm now involved in. Right. They are, you know, there's even an angel investing group here. They are, you know, all these different things. I run my own meetup because it's so fascinating. I love to hear what people are doing, you know, and you know, a lot of them got it going on. Others like, hey, it seems like I can give you some help and some support here. Right. There's just this curiosity and there's this level of like giving back and helping and so on. Right. So I'm just, I love it. Right. I do some courage. I do personal coaching too, for individuals. Right too. I love that because I've always liked to help level people up and coaching has personally helped me a lot. Right. So does that kind of, does that make sense? Does that kind of explain where I'm coming from?

Speaker A: Oh, it totally does. And it's, you know, it's interesting because there's a lot that aligns with, uh, so what I care about and what excites me, and one of the things I've loved about my entire career, working. Well, except in the very, very beginning when I was at big law firms, but certainly since I've had my own firm, which is since 1992, you know, working with entrepreneurial and growing companies, it's that same thing. You know, it's not, I mean, listen, to some extent, the big firms that, uh, do 30 bond, the same bond deal over and over and over again, it's good business, it's repeatable business from big companies that pay a lot of money. But that's just not interesting to me. And I'm not saying we don't do things. I mean, we do a lot of M and A transactions and we do well. But. But it's in different industries or even, you know, within given industries where we do a lot of work. It's just, you know, there. Every firm's, their values and vision are different, but what's in common is that they're founders and visionaries and entrepreneurs and they've got this energy and they've, they've, you know, they built something, often from nothing. Sometimes, yeah, maybe it's next generation or it's, you know, they bought something, but still there's, they have this desire to, to grow and yeah, it's just like I want to be around that energy that's in alliance with my energy. I've been, you know, there's a reason I, I hung out a shingle at age 31 with no clients, uh, and left Big Law because I just more aligned with, you, uh, know, entrepreneurial journey and risk was more aligned with my personality. So I definitely get it. I identify with it. It's, you know, it's fun to be around folks, whether it's, you know, my clients or, you know, people I mentor or. Oh, and yeah, and you're right. I mean, listen, do, do we end up keeping top of mind and getting. I don't want to be disingenuous here. We, you know, this helps us keep top of mind. Does it get us some business? Absolutely. Do we get, uh, some business from listeners? Sure. Do we build great relationship with guests and sometimes that turns the business? Sure. I think you can have multiple purposes. And one of the things that I do get a huge amount of satisfact out of is being a resource and providing information to folks that help encourage them be more successful at entrepreneurial journeys and, you know, coming up with these cool ideas in areas that I had no idea be involved In. Or maybe it's a little industry. I know, but they're doing it differently, you know, building a business, employing people. And trust me, I get it. It's. I'm so aligned with that, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: That's cool. Right? There's a big world out there that. It's funny. Right. When the balloon expands, because we know more, we realize there's so much more we don't know. Right.

Speaker A: So, yes.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: This is like a total aside. But it's. It's sort of this parallel to. I joke about my, uh, my travel bucket list. Somehow, no matter how many places I travel in the world, the list gets longer, not short, because you learn about, you know, all these other places, you know, that would be cool to go to. That would be.

Speaker B: Where was the most recent place you traveled to?

Speaker A: Actually, I. Well, I mean, internationally, Uh, a couple years ago was. Loved the trip to Japan. That was. I hadn't been to Japan in years. I just had a friend who went to Morocco. I was there the year before. That was a great trip. And believe, uh, it or not, last year, in all the places I'd been in the world, I had never been to Hawaii. You know, it's so funny, uh, how you have these things where, like. I mean, I grew up in New York, so it was a little longer trip, but I've been in California for a decade. And how. I never went to Hawaii. Yes, that was cool. But, I mean, I can go on and on.

Speaker B: I love traveling. It's funny you mentioned Japan. We just got back from there two weeks ago as me and my wife went for our 25th wedding anniversary. So we just got back, so that was fun, too.

Speaker A: Oh, fantastic. Had you been there before?

Speaker B: Never. No. I've been to Asia before, but not Japan, so.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that's. For me, that's a special place, you know, fascinating culture.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, it was a great trip. We loved it. Yeah. Awesome. All right, so anything else as we come before I ask you my final two questions? And I know this is a very broad question, but are there any particular sort of trends or interesting things going on? Whether that's on the real estate side, whether it's on the entrepreneur side that you're saying? I mean, you know, we're. We live in interesting times. I mean, it's funny because, like, there's so many conflicting things going on. Right. But it's one of the things I love about the entrepreneurial journey is that it keeps going ahead, you know, I mean, the stock market's been relatively strong. You've got all kinds of money out there, like, you know, dry powder and a lot of money in a lot of industries, yet some of them have been really shaken and effective, whether it's by, you know, tariffs or war or whatever. Right. I'm not asking to comment on the political side of it, but, like, in this environment, is there any, you know, anything particularly interesting or trends you're seeing or things that, you know, you think the listenership might be interested in here?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if we stay on the. Where we started on the real estate. Right. So as inflation rose in 20, 22, 23, interest rates started rising, costs started rising. That really created a lot of challenges around making profit on apartments and so on.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So we pivoted towards, like, industrial, light industrial flex space and so on, because there was a niche that we were able to kind of get into. So we haven't grown to this 100,000 square feet you talked about in the intro. Right. So we did some of that also. We actually kind of did a couple of things. Like we were like, let's get more local. Let's get a little bit more control over. Let's do something that's easy. And, oh, my God, it's so much easier to manage commercial than it is to manage, you know, apartments and so on. So we went back in there because we realized that there is a, you know, that's different in every market. Right. You're in California, it's probably, you know, demand is high, but Albuquerque, for whatever reason, very low industrial vacancy, like 2 or 3% for smaller stuff, you know. Yeah. The Amazon 400,000 square foot, that's not the business we're in. It's more like, you know, few thousand, 20, 30, 40,000 square feet. Right. But there was low vacancy there. Cap rates were high, meaning you could buy for relatively a good price and so on. So we went into that, and that's really a space I love because, you know, yeah, if the economy goes down the tubes, that could change. But generally, businesses, if you have, like, good businesses, like plumbers, electricians, those types of things, there's a huge demand for that, and they need some space. And if we can be the provider of that space, we are in a good shape. So that's kind of where I'm looking. I mean, we just sold the deal after 18 months and made a great return on that and so on. Right. So that's the space I like now. And we'll continue to focus on that, you know, um, but I'm becoming less active on the real estate. I rather maybe passive invest and focus on my. Where my passion is a little bit more on the coaching and consulting and so on.

Speaker A: Love that. Um, so on the coaching and consulting side, who's an ideal client? I mean, I know we talked about different businesses and entrepreneurs generally, but like, whether it's by size, by industry, by geography or anything else.

Speaker B: Yeah, no particular industry. No, not high tech or biotech, but, you know, kind of your average, average business that is easy, relatively easy to understand. I would say, you know, small. Maybe it's a million, maybe it's a couple million dollars of revenue. You know, that entrepreneurial business where the owner is still running a lot of it. Right. But the owner is like, I can't scale myself anymore.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So that's, that's the ideal business for me. Right. I've worked with solar entrepreneurs that need to grow. I work with people, you know, that have a handful, 20, 30, 40 employees. That's kind of, uh, the niche there.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I'd love to work with them because I can still get access to the owner and start changing the mindset of the owner versus, you know, huge corporation where the owner or the CF CEO is way up there.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Great, great stuff. So people want to find out more about what you're doing now, whether it's on the real estate side or on the coaching and consulting side. Where should they go?

Speaker B: Just go to my personal website. Is my first name J E N s last name Nielsen N I E L S EN us Jens Nielsen us There's a link to book, a quick intro. Call my phone number, my email is on there, you know, and while I, while I advocate hiring people, I'm just myself, so I'm easy to read that way, or LinkedIn or so on, you know.

Speaker A: Excellent, excellent. So, Jens, obviously we sort of previewed a little bit of this because we talked about freedom a little bit already. But my final question on the podcast is always about my highest value in life, which is freedom. And for me that means everything from freedom around the world for people, from oppression to why I've been an entrepreneur for decades and haven't had a boss. What does freedom mean to you and how does it impact your life and business?

Speaker B: For me, it means that I can go and put time into the things that I find valuable and interesting. Right. I will work hard, but, you know, Friday rolls around. I'm going to take Friday off and I'm going to spend time with my wife or go and ride my bike or ideally is you know, traveling back to my home country, visiting with family or meeting them somewhere. Right. And those are the things the last 10 years has allowed me to do because I did make the shift, you know.

Speaker A: Love that. Jens Nielsen, thanks for being such a great guest on the Deal Quest podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks Corey. I have a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Thank you for joining me on this episode of DealQuest where we help you understand how deal driven growth can be your ticket to freedom. If you are interested in finding out more about my law firm, the services we provide to entrepreneurial and growing companies are across industries all over the country. And my partner Brian Meegan and I and my amazing team just head over to cup4law.com that's kupferlaw.com and if you want to follow more of my content, head over to my LinkedIn page where I post regularly. I'm Corey Kupfer until next week. Wishing you the freedom and financial prosperity that I know your Deal Quest will bring.