John Jones started selling real estate in 1993 with zero experience, no home of his own, and a fear of talking to anyone who wasn’t a first-time buyer. Thirty-two years later, he’s closed over 8,000 transactions, runs a 25-person team in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and develops land across the greater Nashville area. This conversation covers the full arc of how that happened, including the parts most people skip over.
We open with John’s first sales lesson, handed to him by a builder named John Floyd who shared an office wall with him. The advice was simple: drive around new subdivisions at 5 PM, wait for people to start creeping through, and offer to unlock a model home. Then ask where they live, what they pay in rent, and pull out a Texas Instruments calculator. That approach sold John his first 20 houses. No fancy scripts. No CRM. Just a willingness to show up and ask questions.
From there, we find out what it actually takes to build a real estate team. John was the first in his market to adopt the team model, something he picked up from attending Star Power conferences in the late 90s. He talks about the three years it took him to finally commit to buying a moving truck for marketing, not because of the cost, but because he was worried what other agents would think. That hesitation, and how he eventually got past it, runs through a lot of the episode.
“Fear is the absence of love. So if you want to get rid of the fear of calling people, rejection, call reluctance, just get in the spirit of love. Whoever I’m going to talk to today is going to hear someone that truly wants to love on them and help them solve whatever problem they have. I usually never got cussed out if I was in that right spirit of love, because they felt it.”
The 2008 crash gets a lot of airtime. John had just opened his own brokerage in October of that year and was carrying three developments when the market collapsed. He describes capital calls he didn’t know were possible, banks forcing him to dump rental properties at the worst time, and sitting in his closet wondering if bankruptcy was inevitable.
“People ask me all the time, what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in real estate? I said, ’08 through ’13. What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me in real estate? 2008 through 2012, because of what I learned and I didn’t quit. I did not quit. I kept the team together. We fought our guts out.”
He didn’t quit. He kept his team together, leaned into his faith, and came out the other side with a business that had its best years ever. He’s honest about the fear, the mistakes, and the moments that felt like miracles. When he asked a mentor if things would ever get better, the answer was blunt.
“He looked at me and goes, ‘Well, people are still having sex, aren’t they?’ And I go, yeah, I think so. He goes, ‘Well, they’re gonna have babies, right?’ I said, yeah. He goes, ‘Well, they’re going to have to have a place to live, right? I think we’re going to be okay.'”
We then shift into land development. John got into his first deal without putting up a dime by finding property for an established developer and earning sweat equity.
“John Floyd looked at me and said, ‘Here’s how you can help. You find me the right piece of property that works for what I do, and you won’t have to have one dime. I’ll put you in there at 20%, but find it. Because the key is finding it.'”
He talks about what he learned by attending every engineering meeting, planning commission hearing, and rezoning session. Many of the properties he brought to Floyd didn’t work out, but each rejection taught him something new about soils, sewer lines, and zoning.
“With the 20 or 30 or 40 or however many I brought him, I learned something new every time. So I didn’t make that mistake again. He’d always say, ‘Keep bringing them. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince.'”
He explains why he now sticks to 30 to 50 lot projects instead of chasing 300-lot subdivisions, and how competing against national builders has changed over the past decade. There’s practical advice throughout: how to vet a potential development partner, why character matters more than contracts, what to look for when evaluating raw land, and why buying down interest rates might be a smarter play than cutting prices in a slow market.
“Find people with character. How I define it is who you are when nobody’s looking. The guy that just built my house, he built it cost plus and we did it on a handshake. We never signed a contract because we already knew each other well enough. Those are the people I like to partner with. And they’re hard to find.”
John also shares his take on a factor affecting housing demand that he says isn’t getting enough attention: changes to immigrant lending programs.
We wrap up with John reflecting on what he still wants to accomplish – wanting to bring practical business education back into local schools, teaching kids how money actually works before they get their first paycheck and wonder who FICA is.
“My first check, I didn’t know who FICA was. I didn’t even know what it was. I was a college graduate. If we can take something and put it in with these kids, teach them basic accounting, teach them how to run businesses, how money really works, how to understand it in a way they can at that age. Let’s build these guys up to understand things a lot sooner than we all kind of learned them.”
About John Jones
John Jones is a second-generation Realtor who started his career in 1993 at 24 years old. Before launching his own brokerage, he was a consistent top 1% agent nationally. In October 2008, he opened a boutique firm in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, becoming the first in his market to adopt a team-based model. His team consistently ranks at the top of both Rutherford County and greater Nashville in sales volume, with listings that sell faster and for more money than the market average.
John entered land development in 2000 with Harvest Grove and has been involved in numerous projects since. His current development, Riverview Cove, is Murfreesboro’s fastest-selling luxury subdivision. Over his 30-plus year career, John and his team have helped more than 8,000 families buy and sell homes.
Learn more at murfreesbororealestate.com
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