No Risk, No Freedom: Real Estate Investing Lessons From 250 Doors and Business Ownership

Jimmy Johner (00:00)
Because money is buying freedom. That’s all it is. It’s buying freedom. And then learning how to spend that money to either give yourself more freedom or

or spend it to try to grow something else that is risky that might give you even more freedom. It’s all about that risk. just to encourage people to take that step and don’t get analysis paralysis and make the cold call, ask the random person for advice, spend the money on yourself. If you’re broke and you get a little bit of money, you don’t need to invest it in nothing. You need to spend it on yourself and get educated.

Quentin (00:35)
Yeah.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited to be here today. And you know what excites me, because we got someone new that we can look through their experience and learn. And listen, I don’t want to try to tie this person down. I think he can talk a wide range of real estate, a wide range of strategy and approaches. And so of course, we’ve been talking. I got some things I can throw out there, but I’m going let you hear things from

Jimmy Johner (02:19)
Thanks

Quentin (02:37)
his mouth and understand what he’s involved in and his experience, what he’s trying to grow and who he’s trying to help. And so I am super excited to introduce you all to Mr. Johner. Mr. Jimmy, how you doing today,

Jimmy Johner (02:52)
I’m good Q, hope you are with us as well.

Quentin (02:54)
man, yes sir, I’m doing good, man. Doing great, glad to be here. Glad to be here with you, sir. And I’ll be honest, man, I am the type. I like to dive right in. So I would love to know what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into the space that you’re in, maybe something like the motivated factors. But then also, man, tell them what part of the world you’re in. People love to know where people are geographically. So what you’re up to, origin story, and where you are.

Mr. Jimmy said, you got the floor,

Jimmy Johner (03:25)
Okay.

Yeah, man. So again, excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. I’m based in beautiful North Carolina on the coast. It’s a rainy, nasty day here, so I’m happy to be inside talking to you. The origin of where I am, I’ve just always been a super gung-ho, jumping with both feet and trying to bite off more than I can chew and figure out how to chew it kind of guy. A partner and I started into the real estate industry from an investment perspective in 2016, 17, 18 timeframe.

⁓ turns out that was a great time to get in. it didn’t feel like it at the time, but, it was a great, great time to get in. And, our main focus is like, it, it primarily was, ⁓ value add multifamily. ⁓ most of our properties that we, that we own are 18 units and above. And, we’ve got about 250 doors or so, ⁓ that between, between apartment building and storage, industrial storage. And, and yeah, man, that’s just been our main focus. we try to stick to.

Class B to Class A workforce style housing, not so much the high end, but more of the workforce style to be able to provide some quality homes like workforce, workforce, ⁓ median income people.

Quentin (04:37)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah. I love it, man. I love it, sir. ⁓ Thank you, man. Thank you for kind of telling us what it is that you do now. ⁓ What’s like, give me a little bit of the origin story. Like, what brought on the passion of real estate? Like, how did it strike you? Like, how did it get you passionate about it?

Jimmy Johner (05:43)
So, mean, what really got me passionate about it is I’m a little purple book guy. I read Robert Kiyosaki when I was 20 years old and started to try to wrap my brain around what it meant to be wealthy and how to not work for the man for the rest of my life and all those things that you think you’re gonna tackle when you’re 19, 20 years old. ⁓ And I really just am a firm believer in the average of who you surround yourself with.

Quentin (05:56)
You get extra out here.

Jimmy Johner (06:08)
everybody I looked around and saw it was wealthy, whether it was personally or on TV or on social media or Congress or whatever it was, they all owned real estate. And, you know, I just got to thinking one day that, you know, I could certainly try to do that. I’m not a brain surgeon, but I certainly think I could start buying some real estate. And as I kind of just continued down that path, ⁓ I learned what type of real estate I wanted to get into and I learned quickly what type I did and didn’t on both sides, you know.

⁓ And really that passion just came from, you know, really wanting to like be financially free. And that was like this big elusive thing that I’m still chasing today. ⁓ I don’t feel as though I got it figured out. I feel like I’m still trying to figure it out every day. ⁓ we’ve been successful in what we’ve got so far. ⁓ you know, again, driver is just like being in the local area. We invest a lot in our local area. Again, we’re in the Carter County, Morehead City area in North Carolina.

Quentin (06:46)
Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (07:06)
about two hours up the coast from Wilmington. Most people are familiar where Wilmington is. ⁓ And you know, our area’s growing big time. ⁓ There’s a big problem here with affordable housing as there is in most areas, especially in rural areas like we’re in. ⁓ We’re in a very touristy area, so inflation’s a big deal. It’s not cheap to live here, but we have to have locals. I’m a local, so I wanted to support that cause. And you know, we’re fighting every day to try to keep it as affordable as possible.

So that’s what drives us on the day to day. That’s our core principle surrounding what we do. ⁓ And we fight it every day to try to stay that way.

Quentin (07:36)
Yeah.

And thank you, sir, man. Thank you again for adding that component. And listen, I was actively listening as you was talking, I was writing things down and I’m a little flared for the dramatics. And so as you was talking, I’m writing because I want to make a statement to you and then I want to ask you a question, right? And I do this pretty much every podcast, but you you said you are a jump in both feet type person. You like to jump in and listen. I’ll jump in and I’ll figure it out.

Um, started this journey 2016, 17, 18. Um, really guys, you know, you, you focused on like the value add, um, 250 doors. I believe you had, you said you have class B workforce, um, listening to Robert Kiyosaki, like so many other people, you know, listening, reading him kind of got you going. Um, and you just believe putting yourself around the people that you want to be that kind of got the things that you want was a big motivator and you wanted to be financially free. mean, that’s.

That’s name of the game, right? We want our money to give us options so they can give us our freedom, right? And so I love it, man. I love your journey. And I kind of regurgitated those things back to you because I always say destiny has no wasted moments, right? I as we’re going through the journey, momentum is building to the people that we are today. And we borrow from the journey. We borrow from the hardships. We borrow from the success. We borrow from the lessons. It reinforces why we do what we do. And so I would love to know, Mr. Jimmy.

Jimmy Johner (08:42)
Yep.

Quentin (09:06)
Throughout the journey, man, throughout the moment, what have it taught you about yourself? Has it taught you resilience, discipline, innovation? Like what has the journey taught you about you,

Jimmy Johner (09:17)
Yeah, I mean, think it’s taught me that, you know, you without there is no reward without some risk. And that, that sounds cliche, but that, mean, that really is like by definition, if you’re not able to, jump in with both feet and figure it out, you know, you, you become stagnant and you’re never going to have real success unless you take some sort of a risk. If you’re just normal, trying to fit in and get a job and do what everybody else says, then you’re

gonna just be like everybody else. So the only way to like, what I’ve learned about myself is, is I tend to get more done when I put myself in uncomfortable situations. Whether that’s financially uncomfortable or, you know, from a societal uncomfortable position where I put myself in front of people that I don’t know or that have more money than me or are way smarter than me.

So I’ve just learned that about myself and I’ve learned that the more I put myself in that situation, the more opportunities there are.

that are put in front of me. again, that sounds cliche. And if you’re anybody on this journey that’s halfway in the same realm that I am, ⁓ it never seems like there’s enough. And one thing that that’s taught me in the last couple of years through this is like being able to sit back and smell the roses sometimes can be very difficult because you don’t ever feel like you’ve actually accomplished enough. ⁓ And that’s something that you battle with, kind of like what we spoke with is

Quentin (10:58)
Mmm, yeah.

Jimmy Johner (11:17)
through the financial journey of this financial freedom. It’s hard to nail some of that stuff down and it makes you realize that you do have to stop sometimes and realize that you’ve done good but you still got a lot more to do but you can still sit back and smell the roses every once in a while. So that’s definitely what I’ve learned about myself in the short term and I really look forward to the next 10 years on what all that looks like because again, I’ll look back in 10 years and realize how much more I’ve grown and how much more I’ve learned.

Quentin (11:43)
Yeah, yeah. No, man, I love it. And you’re right, it is cliche, but it is also truth. And I tell you, another thing it is, is actually neuroscience at the same time. So there’s a part of our brain that doesn’t even get tapped into unless you do something hard and overcome something difficult. And so it seems like you’re always tapping into that part of the brain and you don’t get there unless you overcome a set of obstacles.

Jimmy Johner (12:09)
Yeah, and you

get analysis paralysis. You know, I’ve dealt with a lot of people. mean, and I’m sure everybody that’s listening can, they know people that are like, ⁓ I’m going to start that business. They know 10 people that have said that and not a single one of them have done nothing, you know? So it’s taking that extra step and actually taking action. And that’s what I really learned, you know, listening to, you know, Grant Cardone and all the other guys that are super hype, you know, then they’re over the top a lot of the times.

Quentin (12:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (12:36)
But taking everything that you learn from all these different people that’s really free information that’s available on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and listening to Brandon Turner and all the guys with bigger pockets. I was involved with that a lot back in the day when it was first growing. yeah, mean, just not having that analysis paralysis and you will be light years ahead of everybody else that you know.

Quentin (12:56)
Wow, man, I love it, sir. I think you’re so, so spot on. I want to bring up a word, adversity, right? Because if you’re in business, your business owner sucks. If you’re just doing life, you’re parenting, whatever you’re doing, adversity shows its head, right? So would love to know how has adversity looked in your world and what have you did to overcome it or just embrace it?

Jimmy Johner (13:21)
Yeah, I I really think just embracing it is the thing that you have to do to, I’m not big on rumination. think, you know, ruminating on things that are wrong or things that went wrong or whatever is just a, is a, is a spiral down a rabbit hole, you know? So, you know, adding, adding, adding different things, different people, different products, different opportunities in front of you. I mean, it’s just going to continue to allow you to expand on whatever it is, you know, like you said, if you run into hard times parenting, like if you’re a good parent, you’ll figure it out.

Quentin (13:50)
Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (13:50)
If you’re passionate about business and you take it serious and you understand the financial risks and you keep at it, you’ll have adversity job things pop up that are wrong. I mean, have stuff that pops up that’s wrong every day and you just got to stay positive and move through it. ⁓ There’s room to be negative and to sit back and reflect, but not to ruminate on it. know, stuff happens and you move on and you learn from it and that’s it. again, that’s like a, hear that all the time about

Quentin (14:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (14:19)
things that go wrong are lessons learned and I can’t express that enough. you know, I’ve learned a lot through fail. I’ve got businesses that have failed and ideas that have failed and ideas that I’ve wasted money on and this, that and the other. But if I never did those, I wouldn’t have learned to not do it, you know? So.

Quentin (14:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no,

absolutely, absolutely, sir. And then speaking of embracing it and moving on, let me ask you, what’s next for you, What’s your next goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next? What’s on your agenda, man?

Jimmy Johner (14:49)
So our big, my big thing right now, in addition, my real estate is kind of like my side gig, for lack of a better term. My day-to-day money, I own a marine infrastructure, like heavy civil contracting company here in North Carolina. We work all over down the East coast and we’re just, I’m working day in and day out on scaling that company from where it is now to where I want it to be. We’re looking to be kind of a, know, Southeast slash nationwide contractor.

Quentin (14:54)
Yeah.

Gotcha, yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Johner (15:18)
mainly focused on government, state, local municipality work and like the, like again, that heavy civil bridge stone grading work is what we do mainly. ⁓ And then, know, our big thing with that is again, I like to surround myself with great people that includes my employees and part of the mission of Carter and Marine from the very beginning has been like an employee owned company. So over the next five to seven years, we’ve got some financial goals that we’re trying to hit and then our goals are then sell that company back to the employees.

Quentin (15:26)
watching.

Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Johner (16:27)
That’s really what we’re focused on. ⁓ I’m a big, big fan of Alex Hormozi, who I’m sure most of your guys have probably heard of. He’s not big into real estate necessarily, but he’s big into scaling companies. And I’ve recently started getting involved with his crowd and wrapping my brain around how to scale a company. And that’s just been our focus. I love growing companies. I like starting stuff from scratch. I’m wide open. I’m scatterbrained. I make sure to employ a team of people that can kind of take everything that comes out of me and organize it.

Quentin (16:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (16:57)
And

I’m just the big pusher. I’m the guy in the background screaming, go, go, go, go, and putting people in place to try to get stuff accomplished. So that’s what’s next. And in the meantime, we’re hoping to continue to buy real estate. I’ve got a partner of mine that we buy all of our real estate together for the most part. As this market continues to change with interest rates and taxes and…

Quentin (17:07)
Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (17:23)
Inflation and all the things like, know, owning any type of asset is going to be ⁓ a win if it’s bought correctly, of course. And you know, what I tell a lot of people is from an educated perspective, of course, but if you’re thinking about getting into real estate and you’re like, I’m just waiting. People have been saying that for 25 years and they wish they’d have bought it 25 years ago. So if you can look at a piece of real estate and you’re pretty confident it’s going to be worth more money in 10 years, then there’s probably a pretty good chance you should buy it.

Quentin (17:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (17:53)
You know, again, with an educated performer in the background, of course. But I mean, that’s, you know, that’s, kind of our big focus is just to continue to buy either multifamily or industrial storage. I think there’s a huge market for industrial storage in the future, especially in higher income areas. And yeah, I mean, and then to move into some property development in the near future. So.

Quentin (17:57)
Yeah.

Love it, man. I love the mission, the final mission of Cardamom Arena, how you laid it out with the employees having buy-in, right? With the employees really being empowered. So I’m going to love asking you this question, When you hear the word relationship, what comes to mind to you? Because it seems like to me, just listening to you, you care about people. care about affordable housing. You care about the people that’s connected to you. So when you hear relationship, sir, what comes to mind?

Jimmy Johner (18:46)
Man, that’s a great question. So what comes to mind is some sort of a like-minded goal with good intentions surrounding that. And I think having good intentions towards other people is, you can really get ahead in life. You can get taken advantage of in life too. And nobody’s perfect on either side. Like I’ve messed up with relationships and I’ve done people wrong when I shouldn’t have and all the things. But trying to do is…

Quentin (18:55)
Mmm. Mmm.

Jimmy Johner (19:14)
good as you can towards the people that help you on your journey is part of a relationship, whether that’s romantic or business or platonic or whatever it might be. ⁓ you know, just, I’m a huge proponent of trying to get people that aren’t necessarily, I’ve got a gift of being wide open and some people call it ADD, right? I think that’s a gift. I don’t think it’s anything negative. I’m wide open all the time. And I know that a lot of people aren’t like that. So,

But if they’re really good at something else and can help me on my journey, I want them to get rich too, if that’s the goal. So when it comes to the employee stuff, like you were mentioning with Carter at Marine, that’s super important to me because if I can make 10 people a millionaire, which that’s been a goal of mine for a long time, is to make 10 other people that I know millionaires. If I can make 10 other people a millionaires, I’ll make a lot of money in the meantime. So that’s where I’m at. know what, I’m very money driven, because I think that

Quentin (19:47)
Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Jimmy Johner (20:12)
money can impact a tremendous amount of change. ⁓ Anybody that says money isn’t important, I think is ignorant and ⁓ respectfully so. They’ve either never had it or they don’t know how to use it for good. Obviously it’s very evil in ways if you don’t use it correctly and that’s with anything. But I think that there’s a lot of good can come with the right people with the right amount of money. ⁓ yeah, mean, that’s why my mission is what it is, is to just have people join me in the…

Quentin (20:15)
Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (20:41)
in the path and create wealth, what create wealth and enjoy it with your family and be able to spend this short time on planet earth and enjoy it, you know, so.

Quentin (20:50)
Yes,

I love the way you answered that question, sir. I often say community is common unity, right? It’s people who are doing a common goal together. And actually, my dad, who was a very wise man, he sat me down one day and he said, Quentin, have you ever seen a tree eat its own fruit? Look at him like that. What are you talking about? So he asked me again. He said, have you ever seen a tree eat its own fruit?

Jimmy Johner (20:58)
That’s right.

Right?

Quentin (21:16)
I said, no dad. I said, I never seen a tree eat his own fruit. And he was saying how relationships are actually intended for people to take advantage of them. You are supposed to grow something useful for them and they should be able to come and pluck and eat from the fruit. He was like, now you can put boundaries around the relationship. You can put boundaries around a tree. Everybody don’t have to bum rush the tree and eat the fruit. They can have to go through a gate or go through a boundary to get to it. But the very nature of us.

Jimmy Johner (21:39)
Yep.

Quentin (21:45)
What we do is to extend it to other people to help them, to help nourish them. And then there will be other people that have helped nourish us. We can go eat from somebody else’s tree. So we don’t have to eat from our own tree. We grow it so people can eat. But when you’re in community, people are growing so you can come and eat from them at the same time. And that’s the ecosystem. So yes.

Jimmy Johner (21:49)
Yeah, that’s right.

Right.

Yeah,

I think community is very important and that obviously comes with age too, you know, and if any of the younger people that might be listening, you you’ll learn a lot about community. I mean, I think that’s one of the most important things in the world is your community, whether that’s obviously your family is extremely important, but then from their extended family and your community and your school systems and your local facilities and all that stuff is so important. It’s so much more important than the…

The BS you hear on the news and all that. The community is extremely important and the relationships, that’s a great way. You gotta be careful about which tree you eat from. So that’s a great analogy, the way that your dad described that. I’ll have to use that in the future. But you gotta watch whose tree you eat from. You gotta make sure that they’re positive and they’ve got the right intentions. There’s a lot of gurus and everything else out there that are just trying to take money from you. Unfortunately, you’ll never get away from that.

but watching who’s tree you’re eating from and then just staying in your lane is something that I was told a long time ago, is staying in your lane and focusing on something and not getting the shiny object syndrome where you’re like, ooh, this is making money and then, ⁓ ooh, then this is making money and just stick to your lane and try really hard to stay focused and have those boundaries in business and if you work hard enough, it would be.

Ridiculous to think that you won’t be successful. That’s how hard you need to so

Quentin (23:31)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy, I want to ask you this, sir, before we wrap up, I want to ask you, is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Or is there any other words of inspiration, education, motivation? Like maybe you came in with a message on your mind that you wanted to make sure to do what’s got. I kind of just want to open up the floor for you to deliver that message.

Jimmy Johner (23:55)
Okay. Yeah. I I think we hit a lot of great topics. ⁓ I’d love to, to, I’d love, I could talk for an hour, you know, I’d love to be able to talk more about the nuts and bolts of things. If, ⁓ if, if somebody’s looking in a certain industry, if it’s a certain industry that is similar to mine in the real estate world that I could help with, of course I’d love to help them. but I mean, I really think like the financial freedom aspect and this, that elusive thing that you’re always chasing. I know we talked quite a bit about it. ⁓

You and I wrote about it on BiggerPockets several, several years ago about you get lost in the trenches of working so hard and you know, it’s, can, get to a certain spot that five years prior, you never would have thought you would have been that. And, know, watching that lifestyle creep and watching the other things so that you can actually achieve that financial freedom goal. And I always say that with air quotes around it for anybody that’s not watching in person, ⁓ because it’s a, it’s a very elusive thing.

and it’s something that’ll continue to change as you get older. It’ll continue to change as you grow a family. And it’s important to just keep yourself in check when it comes to that and making sure that you’ve got the right kind of goals in mind and have the right financial education to understand what that really means.

Because money is buying freedom. That’s all it is. It’s buying freedom. And then learning how to spend that money to either give yourself more freedom or

or spend it to try to grow something else that is risky that might give you even more freedom. It’s all about that risk. just to encourage people to take that step and don’t get analysis paralysis and make the cold call, ask the random person for advice, spend the money on yourself. If you’re broke and you get a little bit of money, you don’t need to invest it in nothing. You need to spend it on yourself and get educated.

Quentin (25:46)
Yeah.

Jimmy Johner (25:47)
Go to conferences, listen to these podcasts.

all those different things. Buy the plane ticket and go somewhere and surround yourself with people that are doing 10 times more revenue than you are and you’ll grow. Guarantee it every time.

Quentin (25:57)
Yeah.

Yeah. man, sir. I appreciate you, man. 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,

Jimmy Johner (26:11)
I think the easiest way would just be to reach out on Instagram. I’m on Instagram quite a bit. ⁓ They just wanted to reach out on Instagram. I’m happy to chat back and forth. ⁓ Q, I’m sure you’ll post that in the podcast notes if you’re able to. yeah, that’d be the easiest and fastest way to get to me.

Quentin (26:30)
Absolutely. Well, listen, let me say three things to you, First, thank you for your time. I greatly appreciate you coming on. You could be doing anything with your time, but you’re here. And as you said, we do what we do to get our time back. And so time is our most precious commodity. So thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for coming and planting seeds. I really appreciate you planting seeds, because that’s going to change people’s narrative. It’s going to course correct them. And so I thank you for coming and planting seeds.

Jimmy Johner (26:46)
Of

Quentin (26:59)
And lastly, man, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I appreciate you being on, sir.

Jimmy Johner (27:06)
Of course, Q. I’ll be on here any time.

Quentin (27:08)
Absolutely. So, listen, y’all heard Jimmy. His information is in his show notes. Please connect with him. But definitely make sure you subscribe here because we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Jimmy. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, you’ll have a fantastic day.