Growing And Learning In Life: A Guide To Faith And Adversity With Jonathan Rivera
Life is an opportunity for all of us to progress, growing and learning through lessons learned. In this episode, we listen to someone who has done just that and triumphed through adversity. Chad Burmeister is joined by the executive director of The Podcast Factory, Jonathan Rivera, where they discuss faith and adversity. Jonathan shares his story, from his start as a blue-collar worker, losing everything as a real estate investor, and triumphing over adversity to get to where he is now. An inspiring story that you should not miss.
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Growing And Learning In Life: A Guide To Faith And Adversity With Jonathan Rivera
I've got a cool guest with me who's in the podcasting business. The Podcast Factory is the name of the company. Jonathan Rivera is the Founder and they've been at this for years. Before that, Jonathan was in real estate and lead generation which is near and dear to my heart. We're going to dig into Jonathan's story. Jonathan, thanks for investing some time to be on the show.
Chad, thanks for the invite. I hope we can entertain your readers and make this memorable. Lead me to where we need to take it.
What we try to do in these conversations is that everybody goes through the ups and downs of the rollercoaster that we're on called life. What I try to give to our readers is that glimmer of hope and silver lining that no matter what you're in at this moment or what you'll be in tomorrow, the next day or the next year that people have been there, done that and make it through the other side. I like to start by going back to when you were younger because a lot of times, you have an unfiltered view of the world when you're a kid, whether you're playing baseball, playing in the sandbox or whatever it is you're up to, the passion that you live in your childhood is who you were created to be. I drove by my house in the neighborhood that I grew up in, the tree is 40 feet tall and we planted that little tree. It was neat timing to ask this question going back to East Jamison place. Go back to then, what were you passionate about and tell us a little bit more about when you were younger.
I'm a little strange because I don't remember a lot from when I was a kid, but I'll share a memory that my grandmother shared with me that I think is so funny. I remembered it after she told me but I didn't remember it on my own. She was telling my wife and my son about it. I guess I should have known it back then. We would go down to Puerto Rico in the summer and visit grandma, auntie, the family, the cousins and all that. Mom and dad had babysitters while they worked their tails off to provide for us, but I showed up over there with a suitcase full of toys because I was a little kid. Kids are playing with toys.
I immediately proceeded to put up a table and sell all my toys like, "Neighbor, kids, everybody, I'm selling toys." I guess I should have known back then and here's what we added to it. I took some of the money and bought like Tang or Kool-Aid and so I started selling toys and then recycling some of that money and selling Kool-Aid or whatever we were doing. I’m like, “I did what?” I do remember that a little bit and I should have known back then that I was supposed to be an entrepreneur. Had I thought about that, maybe I wouldn't have spent years doing blue-collar work straight out of high school and I would have been further along, but that's one of my favorite memories that my grandmother shared with me.
It's like the paperclip challenge where you start with a paperclip and trade up. Do you remember the end result of all that effort? Did you buy a house or a car? What did it lead?
I bought candy and more toys.
Thinking back to that "lemonade stand” or “toy stand" in your case, I think you said it relates to you being an entrepreneur. Tell us more about that. How does that tie in that situation and other things that you did as a child?
What it illuminates for me is the need to create value. That's been something that I've carried my whole life and I didn't realize until much later on. As I told you, I was a blue-collar for nine years. I was an electrician working in the hot Florida sun, melting away the summers and working on buildings. There, I was putting value in by being good at my craft. It was an excellent journeyman. They used to let me do the panels, the control rooms and all that. I was honing my craft when I was there. I was putting value into that. The problem with that value exchange is that it's weighted towards a company and towards the people who are building the building and all that. It wasn't going to benefit me much in my life.
Realizing that I love to create value and bringing that into the world of business has served me well because we've been creating value for years. The more value we create, the better life we get to live and the better impact we get to make on everybody around us. We're going to talk more about this. I don't want to get off on a tangent. I'll throw it back to you. This is more in line with my purpose, who I'm meant to be, and all the things that you talk about on the show.
I love that because it makes me think of a guy that worked with us at Riverbed Technology in the Bay Area years ago. He was in real estate and then real estate bubbled in 2007 and 2008. He called us up and said, "I want a job in technology." We're in the Bay area, a better place for technologists. He had to take two 2 or 3 steps back. He was the CEO of his own real estate company and he went in as a business development representative, doing cold calls and setting up appointments. It was humbling. He had to drive two hours from way North Bay down to the city. Two hours there and two hours back. Yet, he knew that that was something that he had to do because it was where the world was headed. He knew that his skillset was good at talking to people and relating to people.
Long and short, he made a good career out of it and he's been in it for many years. He was promoted as a manager. It's hard when you're in the lane making $30 or $40 an hour as a journeyman. My best friend's dad was an electrician and they own their own company in Colorado, so I worked in the summers doing that so I know what you're talking about. It would be easy to get into that lane and not leave it. Kudos to you for figuring that out because that's sometimes difficult to do. Let's talk about the tough stuff. There's probably a point in there maybe when you made the transition. Share something that at that time was painful where you go, "This is a mountain that I have to get over," and then now looking back you say, "That was amazing that happened to me in my life."
I want to jump right on where you left off because I did that electrical work for nine years. My mom passed away and I started questioning everything like, "Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Why am I even doing this? Is it because my parents told me to go get a trade?” I started questioning everything. My parents were blue-collar as well. Nobody went to college in my family. That was why the path was, "Go, get a trade," because trades get paid well. I thought there was another way. The only path that I saw forward was real estate. That was it because real estate in America is supposed to be the great equalizer. Watch any 3:00 AM infomercial and they will tell you. That's exactly what I did.
Growing And Learning: The only path forward was real estate. That was it because real estate in America is supposed to be the great equalizer. Just watch any 3:00 AM infomercial, and they will tell you.
I was watching TV late at night, saw Carleton Sheets' No Down Payment, and proceeded to spend my entire paycheck for the system. I got it and it sat on a shelf for a couple of years until I couldn't take it anymore. That's when I started diving in, reading and learning. I ended up quitting my job. I didn't have anything. I had one paycheck and you talk about $30 an hour as a journeyman. When I was in, it was $15 in a band and I was lucky to have it. I didn't have any money and savings. All I had was a dream to get the heck out of this place. I got my real estate license at a weekend. I decided that if I could sell real estate, I could make money and learn the business while I was in it.
I took that and within three months, we were buying our first property. We were going to collect rentals at that time. We got a rental then we got another rental and so on, but this is around 2007 and 2008. You know what's going on. We accumulated about $1 million in property and then we're starting to try to flip out of them because rentals are the slow road to wealth. we see all these people flipping properties and making big paychecks so we get in on the game.
The market turns. We get stuck holding property. Everything crashes. I lose my house. Dad loses his house. We're like, "Holy cow," then the voice starts, "You shouldn't have done this. Who did you think you were? You need to go out there and get a job. Who did you think you were trying to be a big shot?” All that negative talk that we put on ourselves because we're our own biggest fan or our own worst enemy. That pounded me down for almost two years while I figured it out and came back out the other side saying, "I'm going to rebuild my real estate business, which we have done and I'm going to diversify, which is where the business online came from, The Podcast Factory. Now, we're even more diversified with a media company and an eCom business because if one of those goes down, I got three others to replace it.
I'm watching a recorded talk of a friend of ours named Pastor Travis in Atlanta. He did a talk on grace. How most of us are always chasing after grace? It's already given to us. A lot of times, we forget that. It's like, "If I could do this and if I could open my real estate company and buy the Carleton Sheets package.” It's interesting when you realize that, “I know I'm the only one-of-a-kind fingerprint of this person in this body at this time in the history of the world. I was built to do something cool, so let's do it and get all that other garbage out of the way.” It sounds like the thing that you cleared was, “I have to do a trade because my parents told me to.” A lot of us have that. Most people are walking around with that story of I'm supposed to do that because someone else told me to do it, and then when you finally hit your lane and go, "No, this is fun. I like helping people and giving people value. That's when everything changed.” Do you have a family? Do you have children of your own?
One note I want to make there because I love sharing this part of it. I told you I was an electrician, I jumped into real estate, and then I bought my first rental property about three months into it. This is the thing and this is why you have to follow the path that God is putting out there for you. You can't resist it. You got to know where it is and see it, even if it's scary, go for it. Believe it or not, my dad and I bought that first property and the girl that did the closing was sent over by the title company is the girl that is my wife. We've been together for many years now. I would have never been able to score this girl in my blue jeans and tool pouch, but she sees me all dressed up and I'm buying a property and she’s like, "This is a hotshot."
That's one of those things that you don't know what benefits you're going to get when you get on that path when you get behind that intention and surrender to what you're supposed to be doing. "Supposed to" is shame-based words. Surrender to what is in store for you maybe is a better way of saying it. We have to be open to those things. The funny thing is we're talking about stories here and the stories that were programmed into us by our teachers, pastors and parents. Stories are in there and most of us think, "That's it. That's what the story is supposed to be." When you get to a certain point, you realize I can put a new story in here. I have a wife who I met at my first closing. We have a son who's sitting back there watching cartoons. I did my quarter game plan and I have three goals in there. One of the goals is to make memories with my family. I can do that because I've set up the life, I’ve followed the path and I've done the right thing. That was a long way around answering your question, do I have a family?
I love that story because that was important. The question that makes me prompt is, would you give everything that you own if you could meet the girl of your dreams? As someone who's reading this might be going, "I don't know if I should take the risk." It's like, "If you're being pulled that direction to leave as an electrician, move from this job to that job, industry-to-industry or you follow the thread, you can meet your wife. Of course, you would. It’s the same question, would you give away all four businesses that you own to have your son? The answer is, "I would." It makes you realize that everything is on loan to us and we don't get to keep it forever. Live life and have a blast doing it. This is a question that's sometimes interesting, which is a loaded question. If you could accomplish something which you've already have, what would happen that would change everything for you?
Here's the problem with that question, “If I could do something.” I am doing some things every single day. For me, this is an evolution of things I'm doing. What I'm doing now is not what I was doing ten years ago or even one year ago. If there was one thing that I can do, the only thing that I would do is to continue to grow because we are evolving creatures. It’s like the old saying, "If you're not growing, you're dying,” and that's extremely true. That would be the one thing for any reader out there. That's why I mentioned the quarter review. What did I do before I got on with you? I did an hour of thinking, writing and journaling. What was I doing? I did my quarter game plan for the coming quarter and I did my quarter review for where I came from. One of the things that I saw there that shocked me as I have this list like, how are you in mindfulness? How are you on faith and finances, 1 to 10? I'm like, "I'm not doing good. This is 7.” When I looked back at where I was last quarter, I bumped all these up like 2 points and 3 points. One of them fell back one point but you can't have it all up. To me, the one thing is consistent growth.
Robert White puts on Living A Better Story with us. He's run through four mindset academies for 30 years. He was an early human potential movement person. He's now a friend of our family and a friend of mine. At the last one we did in Arizona, he said, "See that rug right there? If you let that sit for 100 years and there was no nobody came in or out of this room, it'll go away. It'll turn into dust but people walking in and out on it causes it to change. The energy in the room causes it to change." It was an interesting thought that even something that's an object, if it doesn't have people interacting with it, then the energy goes out of the room.
One friend’s dad was one of the Chief Executive Officers of NASDAQ if I remember right. They worked with me for a while. He said, "You're either doing this or you're doing this." Always learning and growing is part of the fun of life. It's funny I did the quarter review too. I did it during the same time you did, which is funny. The revenue for the quarter was down a little bit and my cost of goods went down almost accordingly, which is great because I'm contracting. At the same time, if I grow then I grow the cost. The thing that stuck out was my expenses went up year over year and it should have gone down accordingly. It caused you to look in the mirror and say, "Am I making the right adjustments so that it can accordion with what needs to happen?" Learn and grow.
I'm going to flip this question upside down because that's what I think we can do. You've probably never been asked this. Normally, this is a one-hour thing that you do, so we're going to do it in three minutes. I went to Noah's Ark in Kentucky and there was this bird that you see in Joust. That's huge like you could get on it. I don't know if it would fly me around but imagine you have a bird that could take you into the future. You jump on this thing and it takes you twenty years from now, and you see yourself wherever that may be. It could be the same place or a different place. You knock on the door and there you are. You shake your hand, "Good to see you, Jonathan. It's been a while."
You take inventory of what you see in the room and you smell it. All your senses are active and you're like, "It’s really cool." You're leaving and your future self tells yourself something of value like, "Do this," and then you get back on the bird and come back to now. This exercise is cool because wherever you ended up, it doesn't mean that's where you have to end up. It’s talking about writing your own story, but it also tells you the trajectory you think you're on now. Is there anything that stood out to you like, "I didn't think of that?" What jumped at you?
I have a show recorded on this with my old podcast where it was future me ten years from now talking to me about what I had accomplished, where I am, and what I've done. It was a powerful exercise and it did take some time, which is great because now I'm prepared for you.
Growing And Learning: You have to follow the path that God is putting out there, for you can't resist it. You got to go know where it is.
You've already done the mental workshop.
I wrote a letter to myself and I have the letter in my safe so I can read it ten years from now and there were things that were important to me. This goes back to Maslow's hierarchy. We've all studied it and at the bottom is physiological needs like food, water and that kind of thing. At the top is self-actualization where you're thinking about living to your full potential. The future me was in that self-actualization. It was at the top of the pyramid telling me about things that I was doing there, which included giving to my church and giving extremely generously. It was also helping mold our future by way of the children, by educating them with the good, the true and the virtuous. Of course, there was the houses, vacations, and all that but the parts that stuck to me were the parts about giving, being a philanthropist and extremely generous.
Here's the interesting part about that. Anybody who does exercises like this is going to create a time machine for themselves. What I mean is if you make that picture crystal clear like you said, you feel, smell and see it clearly, what happens is you take that future and you bring it closer. I did this philanthropy thing exercise, I'm not giving what I'm going to be giving but I remember when it was time to start the new year, I thought about how I was tithing the church and the first number that came to my mind was 25% more. That scared me. I'm walking and I'm like, "What did you say? Who said that? Okay, do it."
It wasn't that easy like it hurt a little bit. With my son's school, we absolutely love the school. They're teaching the things that matter most to us. I call my wife Cupcake. That's her code name. Cupcake came up with the idea to give a gift to the school. It was all right. They started crying and stuff when we told them about it. We were embarrassed because we thought it wasn't that much and they're all crying. We're like, "Maybe it means something."
We were able to take that future and bring it towards us, so I recommend anybody out there reading if you haven't done and it has to be like that 10 years or 20 years because you don't want any limiting beliefs. You don't want any of that getting in the way of, "Let's talk about this ideal where we would like to be," and then it brings it closer to you. It's a beautiful thing and I'm seeing it happen already so we're already giving more and more generously wherever we can. The big thing for me in 2021 is I say, "Give until it hurts." If I'm going to give $500, I better give $1,000. That hurts. That's what I do now.
I love that quote. In March 2019, my company had its worst quarter ever. It went from $200,000 a month to $20,000 and I wasn't familiar with the accordion thing that I talked about. I prayed about it. In 30 days, my wife and I would work on puzzles at night and that was the thing to relax the mind, three hours of hanging out together. It was a wild time of literally about a month. We went through multiple puzzles, a 500-piecer, then 1,000 and 2,000. Who knew that puzzles were our thing for a little while?
I had a meeting with my mindset coach, Townsend Wardlaw. He said to me, "Chad, what do you want to do after ScaleX? I was like, "I want to go on a cruise with my wife for a year." "What about after that?" I'm like, "You're minimizing. My entire life's dream is to go on a year cruise." He was like, " I get it, but after that?" I was wearing this shirt that day called Elevation Church where I used to go. Elevation music and was in North Carolina and my kids both accepted Jesus there. I was like, "When I moved to Colorado again, I thought of opening an Elevation someday. I was like, "What a better name than Colorado Elevation?"
My dad owns property in Castle Rock. I was like, "It’s perfect. It'll go on the 35 acres." I’m attached with I want to do something because my grandparents, my mother and my dad are very good at one-to-one helping people discover the kingdom. I'm like, "I'm a businessman. I've learned how to scale." That's my company, ScaleX. It's like, "Go figure." I tried to get Scale.ai twice and it was unavailable. What I'm realizing is it wasn't by accident. It's ScaleChrist. Let's be real. All the work that I've done for all these years is like, "Now I can put it in another lane."
The long and short of it is the valuation of the business went from pretty good to pretty bad in that month, and then by the end of the year, I said, "God, I have this number in my mind. Let me make it a little bigger and if we can get to that number, then I'll put $1 million and we'll go build Elevation Church in Colorado." By the end of that year, I got a formal valuation and it was $1 million higher than what I expected, plus $10,000. It was like God said, "Here's the $1 million, keep the $10,000, and don't spend it all in one place."
Since then, there have been ups and downs and it's only paper money but I'm now all in. I've spent $40,000 on building this app called 77 Pray and it comes out any day. It's in beta and it's going to get people the ability to crowdsource their prayers. I have got this prayer. People put it out to thousands of people and they say, "I did it," and now you can see, "I had 20,000 people prayed for me." I've been following the thread. I don't know where the money is coming from. I'm doing it going, "God, are you sure you want me to?” There’s this TV show where I'm going to go talk about it. I'm on this other news show to talk about it. To your point, you met your wife following the thread, you had a baby because of that, and that's where I'm at. I don't know what this is going to bring, but if it's 1, 10, 100, 10,000, or 10 million people, it doesn't matter. It's moving in the direction that it’s supposed to be moving.”
Walking that path that He sets for us.
The last question is about faith and that is, what role does faith play in your journey? You've been through the ups and downs of life. Tell us about the role of faith.
One of the things that were super cool when I met Cupcake was that she had faith as well. We were both Catholics and I was practicing. My dad and I used to go to church together and all that stuff, and she had fallen out of practice but she loved that we were in practice and we were the same faith, which is Catholic. That was an immediate bond for us. We're teaching our son faith. What's right, what we expect of him, and what we expect him to bring to the world is what I pray for him. I pray that he's a good leader, a reflection of God's light, and brings his glory to the world. I tell him that every night because that's what we're supposed to do. As good Christians, we're supposed to bring the good news to everybody that we can help.
Growing And Learning: What we're supposed to do as good Christians is bring the good news to everybody that we can help.
Not just that, and this is weird. I was thinking about this. Cupcake and I had to talk about it. It's like we're living in a divisive world. Things are crazy. People are at each other's throats. You don't know what you can or can't say so I'll keep my mouth shut. It's our job to keep spreading the word of what we believe in because that's more important now than ever. People are lost and maybe we can help find a few of those and bring them back to where they belong. We had a conversation about one of our clients who, in my opinion, went to college and got brainwashed. She's all indoctrinated into the other lane. For a second, she was saying some things on social and stuff like that that was against what I believe, really far, but I know she's a good girl.
I was talking to Cupcake about I think I have to drop this person as a client and they have to go. It then hit me, "Can you hear yourself? You have to be an example of what a good Catholic man is. Support her and bring the light in her way. Even if she's lost, maybe you can shine a little light that way so she can see, 'Look at this guy who believes something different than what I'm spousing out, and yet he's still here supporting me, helping me with my business and my message. Maybe Catholics aren't what they're saying in the press. Maybe that's not true.'" I'm here to bring that every single day to every single interaction. I'm doing my work for God and this is what I tell myself every day. I know it sounds corny but it helps motivate me.
Ken Ham is the founder and creator of this life-size Noah's Ark in Kentucky and he's created the Creation Museum. It's the two only Christian theme parks in the world, I understand. He wrote a book that came out on June 15th, 2021 called Divided Nation and it talks about all of this. What I'm optimistic about is that I've had about 40 guests on the show in 2021 and they're on all sides of the aisle and we still have to believe. When we ask the faith question, 99% of people have a very similar answer. To point, that's the place to put the stake in the ground. It's not an RRD and I discovered that in 2020 and at the beginning of 2021. It's a big G. That's a very cool testimony that you're sharing here. I appreciate you sharing everything with our audience. If you were to leave one last thought and call to action to somebody who's reading, what would you suggest?
We may have started here about taking that leap of faith and going to do that thing. You don't know what's on the other side unless you do it. What I would say to our audience is there is no right time. The time is right now.
It’s like Nike, "Just do it." Jonathan, it's been a pleasure getting to know you and letting you share your experiences in life. May God's grace continue to be with you and your family. Let's stay in touch. This has been an awesome conversation. Jonathan Rivera, Founder of The Podcast Factory and about 4 or 5 other businesses, including real estate. If you're in the podcast world and you want to get on the podcast, Jonathan provides a good white-glove service, so check out the website, The Podcast Factory, just like it sounds.
Thanks for having me on the show, and allowing me to share, and doing the work that you're doing to bring light to people.
Amen. Everybody, we'll catch you next time.
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About Jonathan Rivera
You’re an action taker eager to identify and leverage opportunity using a proven, strategic process based on what works now and what’s coming next for digital marketing. Are you wondering if podcasting is the multiplier to growing your business?
I've been podcasting since 2008.
I know how podcasting can work for your business.
That's why the top coaches and consultants trust me and my team at The Podcast Factory® to help them leverage the power of podcasting to reach more people, make a lasting impact and become more influential leaders in their communities.
