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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Jens Nielsen, who shares his journey from a career in IT to becoming a successful real estate investor. Jens discusses the importance of understanding adversity in real estate, the significance of community impact, and the value of building strong relationships in business. He emphasizes the need for a positive mindset and the role of coaching in personal and professional growth. The conversation concludes with Jens offering insights on how to connect with him and the importance of vision in achieving success.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Jens Nielsen (00:00)
What is harder.The other adversity are like choosing the wrong partners and getting into bed. I mean, not literally, you
that you don’t, once things start getting tough or difficult, you realize, man, I don’t have the same values. I can’t maybe trust these people and so on. That’s really hard, right? Because you can’t just, you know, walk away and say it didn’t work out. I mean, you have deals, you have invested monies and stuff like that.
Quentin (01:58)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. I know I say it all the time, but I think by now, know, the excitement is genuine because you know, I love talking to people and getting to see things through their lens. And so today is no different. I have someone, fantastic guest, started out in apartment investment, started small, went to large.shifted to industrial. So this person know how to go across SF planes. And I believe he’s going to give you a ton, a ton of good knowledge, good nuggets today. So I am truly proud to, I’ll use this line. I don’t use this line all the time, but what did it say? They say, present to some, introduce to others, because some of you may already know of some, but present to some and introduce to others, Mr. Jens Nielsen. Mr. Jens, how you doing today, sir?
Jens Nielsen (02:50)
I’m doing well, Q. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.Quentin (02:53)
Absolutely, man. Thank you so much for being here. You could be anywhere else in the world. You’re supposed to be here with us. And so I want to dive in. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. I would definitely love an origin story, if you’re OK with that. We love the hero’s journey. And then where you are in the world, geographically, we would love to know that as well. so Mr. Jens, sir, you have.Jens Nielsen (03:16)
Oh yeah, thank you. Well, as we discovered during our pre conversation, we actually used to live in the same part of the country. I am originally from Denmark. I moved to the United States 30 years ago, started out in Maryland, did the, you know, went to school, got the, the IT degrees and so on. worked in IT and telecommunication for my whole, whole career. I, I, um, 25 plus years.and moved around, stayed in the Maryland area for 10 years until one day my wife came home and said, I can’t stand it anymore. There’s too much traffic, there’s too many people, it’s too crowded, as you can probably relate to. And then we decided to move out west and west to us meant New Mexico. Now that’s not just a random place because it’s a small state. It was a big state, but sparsely populated because she had some family out here and stuff. So we moved out here 20 years ago, actually.
Quentin (03:53)
Yes, sir.Yeah.
Jens Nielsen (04:14)
And I was still in IT, worked in Albuquerque. Um, and then we moved to Colorado. We lived in Colorado for awhile. And then during the pandemic, we moved back to, New Mexico. So we’ve been in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the last five and a half coming up on six years this summer. And the, the transition into the real estate started like 10 years ago, because I realized, you know, it’s my mid forties. I didn’t want to do real estate for the rest of my, sorry.I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life. So I wanted to find a way to decouple my, my income from my time and real estate after, you know, searching around and stuff, real estate became the vehicle that’s that made sense. and started like 10 years ago, investing in, ⁓ in apartments down in Albuquerque. So that’s, that’s very quick, you know, in a few minutes, a little bit about me and my, story there.
Quentin (05:59)
Absolutely, man. Love your story. Find it very encouraging. And so as you was talking, I was writing down your resume a little bit, right? So moved to the US 30 years ago from Denmark, worked in telecommunications for 25 years. Wife had family in New Mexico, so you moved there 20 years ago. And then you found out you wanted to transition to real estate 10 years ago. And I know you just said it, and I kind of reiterated to you.Because I tell my audience this all the time, that destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning like when you track your life and you track the moment, each destination, each stop has kind of made you who you are today, right? And so I would love to know throughout your journey, throughout these different transitions, what has destiny revealed to you about yourself? Has it revealed that, you know, that you have great consistency, that you have good discipline, that you’re good at systems like…
What has Destiny revealed to you about you?
Jens Nielsen (06:58)
Yeah, was a great question. It has probably revealed that I have more influence than I thought I had because I was, you know, I was the IT guy, right? Working, working behind my computer and I would just like, you know, ⁓ do whatever job was put my way. And I never thought I was much of an inf, had much of influence, had much of like entrepreneurial spirit. And once I started getting into this, I realized that, I can actually.Quentin (07:06)
Mmm.Jens Nielsen (07:27)
Influence people to get on board with me to see my dreams and move forward in that way, right? So that was a that was definitely a discovery cue to kind of go that way But you know, but I also have great discipline I mean even after I work for myself, right? I’m still at the desk at eight in the morning, right? and I stay work all day and so on and and Systems and processes from my IT career, right? But I think that influence piece was probably the one that stood out most when you asked that questionQuentin (07:55)
Yeah. I love that. I’ve never had that answer before. And I absolutely love that because, and I picked this one up from another guest, every one of us have a brand in this our character. It’s who we are. And it makes sense that throughout your life, you’ve actually been building your influence little by little. You becoming proficient in just being who you are. And so I love the fact that it revealed to you the impact that you can have on others. AndThe way you say it to me, you say it from a humble place. It’s not like a braggadocious place. It’s not a place of, know, like, you know, it’s from a very humble place. And so never heard that answer. And I’m glad that you are aware of that because that gives you the opportunity to affect so many different lives in so many different ways. So I appreciate that. And so I would love to, cause you know, sometimes people just want to show the success at the end of the journey without showing the journey itself.
And so I would love to know as you was building to success, have you faced adversity? And if you have, how does adversity look in your world that you had to over?
Jens Nielsen (08:59)
Yeah. Anybody who says they haven’t had diversity or adversity are definitely lying.Quentin (09:05)
⁓ huh.Jens Nielsen (09:08)
Yeah,think, you know, I think there’s two types of adversity that we’re going to encounter. Like one is this, the stuff we invest in, the things that we do, does that work out or doesn’t it work out? Right. So there’s physical, there’s challenges with the stuff that we work on. And then they’re kind of adversity in the relationship we create or the systems of the people we surround ourselves with. Right. One, our heart adversity, the other one is self-adversity, if you will. Right.
So if you talk about the hard adversity, know, yeah, there was some early properties that we bought that had all kinds of unknown physical defects, right? You plumbing problems, roof leaks and stuff like that, right? You can tend to, you can solve those problems if you have enough money. just, you you, you invest the money to fix up the problem and so on. mean, at some point you may run out of money, but at least this relatively easy to solve those types of problems.
Quentin (09:58)
I’m going it.Jens Nielsen (10:05)
What is harder.The other adversity are like choosing the wrong partners and getting into bed. I mean, not literally, you know, like doing deals with people that, that, that you don’t, once things start getting tough or difficult, you realize, man, I don’t have the same values. I can’t maybe trust these people and so on. That’s really hard, right? Because you can’t just, you know, walk away and say it didn’t work out. I mean, you have deals, you have invested monies and stuff like that.
Quentin (10:14)
Hopefully not.Jens Nielsen (11:09)
Right. So that becomes.a big challenge, And you know, something that I’ve learned a lot from. So now I definitely spend a lot of time getting to know well on the physical side, a lot of time on the due diligence on the partner side, a lot of the time of getting to know those people and understanding who they are. Right. And so
Quentin (11:26)
Yeah. ⁓ man, you hit on the subject. I’m going come back to it, but you hit on the subject that I love to talk about, but I love to close the show for whatever reason when talking about relationships. So we’re going come back to that, but I’ll give a little teaser because I love what you said, you know, like getting into, you know, kind of bed and getting into rhythm with people. We always talk about community here. We talk about community being calm and unity. People have unity of the same, pushing the same vision forward. But we’re going come back to that because I think you’re going have a lot to say probably about that.But let’s do this. Let me ask you this. What is the next real goal for you? What are you looking to solve at scale next?
Jens Nielsen (12:02)
Yeah. So, you know, after 10 years of investing, like the goals have changed, right? Because my initial goal was to, I just need to get out of my W2 job and make enough income on the side or build a business, you know, that could support me. So I didn’t have to work in W2, which I’ve succeeded like six years ago, I left my job, right? So was able to achieve that. And then there was, you know, financial success and freedom first. But now it’s more about, you know, something that feelsvaluable and meaningful and impactful, right? Not just for me, but for the community and my partners and so on, right? And because I don’t need to do another deal, I want to do your deal because it’s exciting, but I don’t need to. So it has to be really attached. It has really connected me emotionally, right? And think we talked about earlier, I know now we are working on a project. I don’t know if it’s going to go forward, but we are doing all the due diligence on a…
taking an old warehouse and converting it into like a maker space for artists. And Santa Fe, if anybody knows, has a huge artistic community and so on, but it’s hard to find space here and it’s very expensive. So we want to try to create a space where makers can come in and do their, if they are, they can weld and cut and do all the dirty quote unquote work for that, or glass blowers or whatever. But also have, you know, smaller space for people that…
or a painter or other types of art, or maybe some gallery space. So that’s really exciting because it connects, you know, supporting the autistic world, but also creating a community, a space community come together, right? And it’ll still be profitable. I’m not doing it out of a, it’s ⁓ not a philanthropy kind of thing, but still those type of things, right?
Quentin (13:44)
Yeah, absolutely. I love that you can mean I wrote it down community focus, right? I love that your community focus. Once you mentioned the art space before, that was something that definitely piqued my interest. To me, it makes you it feels like you kind of want to be in the innovation space with other people, like pushing things forward and innovating things. And so I have to ask you this because I don’t think I’ve asked you to name your business. So I would love to know the name of your business. And I would love to know the meaning or the thought behind the name.Can we go there for a little bit? Because I did it next, but I think, talking to you, I just feel like this name means something. I don’t even know what it is yet. But that’s my question.
Jens Nielsen (14:11)
⁓ Push.Yeah, it’s
actually, it’s called, I mean, the way I brand myself is open doors, capital. So the idea here is like being welcoming and open. There’s more on the apartment side, right? Be welcoming and opening and creating great, safe, affordable places for people to live. Right. That was, that was where that, that came from. I know there are some companies out there have similar names, but mine has an S. It opened doors with an S.
Quentin (14:26)
Yeah.Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Appreciate that. And I see it, that on the apartment side, but also just thinking about what you’re doing for the community. I just see you swinging doors wide open for people and for the community to thrive. And so that’s kind of what I see as well. So I love it, So Jens, let’s get to this relationship word, man. I absolutely love how you talked about the entanglement of it all. Like you can’t just quickly.
remove yourself when you get into certain relationships with certain people. And so I would love from your perspective, how important are relationships to you within business? Has it served you well? How do you build them? Like, just give me your thoughts and philosophies around relationships, if you don’t mind.
Jens Nielsen (16:11)
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been in many different relationships. Some have worked really well and I’ve been blessed to be in others have created challenges and the challenges has come from not being aligned on the same goals, right? Not being aligned on the same goals. when, you know, when everybody’s making money, everything is, everything is fine. No problem. But when challenges start to come up, if you’re not aligned on the same goals, we’re going to start having conflict. We’re then going to lead to, you know,All kinds of issues and so on. So I would say, you early on I was just, Oh, here’s somebody there generally going the same direction as me. And it seems like I could make money by being partners with them or whatever. mean, that was kind of how I thought about it initially. Now I’m like, yeah, money is important, but if these are not people I enjoy being with, why in the world would I, would I. Invest with them or partner with them. And I just heard, and I was on another call earlier today and somebody said,
You got to look for the people that you can spend three hours with and it feels like it was 15 minutes, right? Somebody you truly enjoy being with, right? So the people I’m working with now are people that I enjoy. I would hang out with them. would go for food and have drinks with them and go hiking or whatever, other things with them. I mean, they don’t have to be my best friends, but at least they need to be in alignment. like, I feel in the, in, you know, the bottom of my heart that this is a good person that I want to spend time.
Quentin (17:40)
Yeah, love that man. Like I said, you know, we always talk about relationships here and I told you, know, community is common unity. I also feel like healing happens in community, you know, because when you with just a holistic ecosystem around you, you start to heal financially, you start to heal physically, you start to feel ill mentally. Cause again, you just described that not only are we doing business with each other, we’re doing life with each other.You know, and of course it has its boundaries. Like you said, everybody don’t have to be a best friend, but how can the two walk together unless they agree? And we need to agree on just more than finances. There had to be some kind of moral compass that we agree on. And so I thank you. Thank you so much for giving me a perspective on that because we love to talk about the relationship aspect of business and life here on the podcast. And so, Jens, I’m going to ask you this. Is there anything that a topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about?
Or, and I guess, is there any words of inspiration, education, motivation that you want to give the people? So any topic of any motivation we would love to hear.
Jens Nielsen (18:47)
Yeah. mean, for people out there that are listening and they, you know, they have the dream or they go and then real estate investing is for them. Right. And literally like me initially, was the dollars in the sense. And it was that, well, here’s a way to create some financial freedom or passive income, whatever that is. What I didn’t realize is that just because you can maybe look at a deal and underwrite it and so on. If your mindset is not there, if you’re.Just your outlook on the world and things is not in the right space. You’re going to do it for the wrong reasons. Right. And I mentioned, know, I’ve been in some partnerships I came into for the wrong reasons. All that being said, what I think is so important is that we don’t only work on our skills, our hard skills, like underwriting, capital raising, whatever it is. Let’s, let’s make sure we work on our mindset and our soft skills and so on.
When I started out in this business, you know, initially I was just figuring it out by myself. But then I realized when I came to a point of scaling and wanting to lead my job and all these things, I didn’t have the courage and the, the ability to make those moves myself. So I hired a coach, you know, that I’m still working with six years later, because I knew that that was the next step. And I got so excited about the work and the help and the
Influence that that individual had on me that I decided to go out and get the training and everything else, right? So I became a coach, you know, five years ago and just the ability to help people grow their business or improve their relationships or their health or their happiness or whatever their community involvement is much more important to me now than it is ⁓ to do the real estate investing, if you will. So that’s something that I’m super enthusiastic about and
I think any successful business leader or owner or investor or entrepreneur needs both the technical skills and then the soft skills and so on. So that’s, think, what I wanted to share.
Quentin (20:51)
Absolutely, man. Great message. One word I thought about when you was talking about how you got excited about working with the coach, accountability. That’s a word that I really thought about and that I talked to people about. A coach will hold you accountable. And if you are working on these soft skills, start to hold yourself accountable. so accountability can just change and shift everything. so, Yans, man, I appreciate you, sir. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, sir?Jens Nielsen (21:21)
The best way is my personal website. So it’s my first name J E N S and then last name Nielsen N I E L S E N. So that Scandinavian spelling. So JensNielsen.us then go there and there’s a little, it pops up with this little vision building worksheet I’ve created. It’s a little ebook or worksheet that people can download. And because I think anybody who wants to change their life, vision is first, right? It’s not goals, it’s vision, the clarity of what the life you want to create.So they can download that and then they can look at, you know, ⁓ my real estate page and other things. And there’s even a link there to book a free call with me if anybody want to learn more about, you know, investing or coaching or mentoring or whatever it’s, whatever seems important to them.
Quentin (22:07)
Absolutely. Yens I thank you, sir. Let me say three things to you. First, I want to thank you for your time, that you could have been anywhere in the world, but you chose to be here. So thank you for your time. I put a premium on people’s time, and so thank you. Also, secondly, your story. Thank you for your authenticity. Thank you for your integrity. I even will say, and I say this, the gift of your vulnerability, sharing things from your perspective. I think stories have a way of planting seeds in people.And we don’t know when that seeds want to grow, but we put something just there to be here inside of them and somebody come and water it and then it just grows into something they didn’t expect. And so I just thank you for your story. Lastly, I want to say thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. So Jens thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate you.
Jens Nielsen (22:55)
Likewise, this is lot of fun.Quentin (22:57)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Jens looking at show notes, get in contact with him, check him out, get to the website, get that vision building, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I keep promising we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Jens. So sir, thank you so much again. And to everyone else, you’ll have a fantastic day.
