This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jordan Hooten, 34, a Florida real estate agent who franchised a coffee shop in St. Petersburg, Florida, to diversify his income. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Real estate has been good to me. I got my real estate license about 11 years ago, when I was 23, but I’ve been practicing full-time for seven years.
Single-family residential has always been my bread and butter; helping people find their first house, helping somebody sell their first house, and helping them find their second house.
Over the last four years, I’ve started doing a lot of multifamily and commercial properties as well.
I’ve seen a couple of different cycles of the market — my parents were flipping houses back in the early 2000s, so I’ve been following real estate since I was a teenager.
When I first came in around 2018, it was a stable market, not too dissimilar to the market that we’re in right now, but inventory would sit for a little while.
Then and now, we went through the 2.5% interest rate market, which was a lot of fun. Back then, if you signed a listing agreement, you could already count the money. You could pretty much say, “I’m getting that money in the next 45 days.”
Southern Grounds
Now, it’s like you can have eight listings worth of a total of $5 million in volume and say, “I really don’t know how this is going to go. I think I’ll get most of this, but it’s not as much of a sure thing.”
The drastic change was very tough on a lot of people in my industry when it went from the 2022 rates to the 2023 rates overnight.
I used to work out of this coffee shop, so I decided to invest in it myself
When the market was going well, previously I’d diversify by buying Airbnbs.
I’ve had a part in four Airbnbs at one time or another. Sometimes you sell them because it’s just a good time, but that business, it’s like you put up $70,000 in your savings, and you’re happy to be getting a return of maybe $800 a month.
Every now and then, there’s a problem where you have to come up with $2,000 to $5,000 out of pocket. I thought this was a pretty good idea for investment if you’re 55 years old — just keep stacking these and say, “All right, well that one will pay for my health insurance, and that one will pay for my car insurance, and that’s great.”
But I was like, I’m 30 years old, why don’t I take a stab at investing in something that could make me the same amount as real estate does? And once it’s stabilized, it will not take up all my time?
I could invest $70,000 and make $800 a month, but what if I could invest double that and potentially make $12,000 or $13,000 a month?
It’s a good time in life for me to take that chance.
Southern Grounds
I was doing so well in real estate that I was confident enough to invest over six figures in a coffee business. But it wasn’t just coffee; it was specifically Southern Grounds.
When I didn’t have an office, I used to go up to Southern Grounds in Jacksonville all the time. It was a place where I could sit on my laptop and order coffee, and didn’t feel pressured to order food until I was ready to order food. If I wanted to stay and work on my laptop and make phone calls for four hours, I could.
I reached out to the founder on Facebook and said, “Man, I want to franchise your store. It’s my favorite place in the world to go,” and that’s how all this started.
I started this process in 2022. We’ve been working on building this store for three and a half years from when we signed the Franchise Disclosure Document to when we actually opened our store in August 2025.
There’s no way we could have afforded to buy our building — it actually wouldn’t even pencil if you look at it as a real estate deal. Our rent of $13,500 is probably half of what the mortgage would be if we bought it. Downtown St. Petersburg is very overpriced.
RudyBalasko/Getty Images
I had to build the entire restaurant from looking like a garage into a restaurant. The construction alone was about $800,000. That’s just to build out the interior of the building that we are renting — I mean, silverware for a restaurant is $25,000.
I think that in the real estate industry, your first year is not usually a good indicator of how you’re going to do financially, just like the restaurant business. During my first year in real estate, I didn’t do that well. So I would say I’m happier with the year one restaurant success than year one real estate success, for sure.
I’m glad I took a risk and diversified my income
I bartended in college, so I’ve always been on the hospitality side of business, and I guess you could say real estate is hospitality: It’s being a people person, enjoying talking to people, enjoying hearing their stories and where different people are from and what they’re doing and what they’ve got going on the rest of the weekend — just caring.
My transaction volume is still the same since before I bought the coffee shop. My real estate business has taken a slight hit because it hasn’t continued to grow in the way that I think it may have grown had I not taken on any other endeavors. But ultimately, I’m not losing clients.
Buying the coffee shop really has not changed my day-to-day; it has just required more time management and multitasking. I wake up earlier and work later. I’m working my ass off.
I think it’s a good idea for real estate agents to diversify their income. It really just depends on each person’s financial situation.
Sometimes I wonder, “Did I make the right decision?”
I think I did because I enjoy this.
