April 2022- Jacksonville Real Producers

JONATHAN DAUGHERTY ~ Humility and Humanity

giving back

By Brandon Jerrell

Jonathan Daugherty grew up in a midsized Missouri town. “I grew up in poverty; our family of five lived off of less than $500 a month,” he shares. “I remember visiting my dad, who worked three jobs to support our family, on his lunch breaks. He was injured in Vietnam but never received disability and, with an injured back, did everything from pump gas to work as a janitor. All low-paying labor-intensive jobs.”

“I went to college on a fluke,” he admits. “Once I got there, I delivered pizzas for 30-40 hours a week while taking a 20–22 hour course load to work my way through college.”

“Eventually, after two years, I became burned out and took a break from school and started working full-time at various jobs. I worked at a factory rebuilding broken torque converters on the overnight shift for an extra .25 cents an hour.”

Breaking the Cycle

Then Jonathan had an epiphany. “I looked around me, and I saw all the older people working there who were simply making a paycheck and barely getting by. I knew I could never support a family or break the cycle of poverty that I lived in if I kept going down this track. I turned off my machine and walked over to the foreman and told him, ‘If I don’t leave right now, I will be here the rest of my life.’”

Over the next few years, Jonathan worked in various roles. He finished his college education at Southwest Missouri State with a bachelor’s in

business. Afterward, he decided to move to Florida, where a coin toss on the way there decided that he would go to Jacksonville.

After a slew of events — which even included a political career — Jonathan met his now-wife, who invited him on a mission trip to serve orphanages in Mexico.

Seeing Beyond Self

“It was 2009, and I had asked for time off to go on my first trip and instead was laid off from my job,” he shares. “Since I no longer had a job, I was free to go on the mission trip where we flew into Phoenix and drove across the border into one of the worst parts of Mexico where human trafficking and drugs were rampant.” While he was on this mission trip, someone broke into his house back home and stole everything. “I remember crossing over the border with a weight of self-pity knowing I had lost a job I was very proud of and my house being burglarized and every possession I had stolen.”

It was here during his trip that Jonathan had another epiphany. “I quickly realized that those kids didn’t need their dorm painted, but they simply needed a hug and attention from someone who cared for them. God broke my heart on that trip and humbled me in a way that I could never have been humbled otherwise. I gained a love for these kids and for the needs that they had.”

“Coming back from Mexico, I returned to an empty house, and I was unemployed. My self-pity had disappeared, though, and it was replaced with the guilt I had for placing my value as a person in my material things.”

Jonathan found himself in real estate in 2010, and he married his wife in 2015. Both hoped for a large family but were unsuccessful in having children. “My wife and I remembered the passion we had for the kids we worked with together in Mexico, and we decided to sign up to be foster parents.”

Becoming a Foster Parent

“Our first placement was a little girl named Sophia. She was born with drug addiction, and we visited her in the ICU for 21 days before we took her home for the first time. We had her in our home for four months until the mother found a guy 20 years older than her to claim he was the father, and without a paternity test, DCF placed the baby with him.”

“This broke us. I have never cried as hard as I did the night I had to drive and deliver Sophia to that man we all knew was posing as the father.”

After that, Jonathan and his wife nearly quit foster care, but a new opportunity gave them the determination to try again. “We adopted Annie on her 1-year birthday.” Around this time, Jonathan’s wife quit her corporate job to focus on being a full-time mother, as well as to run the books for their two businesses. “The moment we were not required to keep her in daycare by DCF, I started taking Annie with me everywhere to show houses and work and even put her on the back of my business card as my ‘Director of Client Relations.’”

“We don’t want to admit it, but even here in Jacksonville, there are people who live in squalor in third world conditions. Again, God humbled me and caused me to realize that I grew up in some of the same poverty conditions that many of these kids who enter foster care grow up in.”

Jonathan and his wife have had 11 foster children come through their home in the last five years. “Although it isn’t easy, it is definitely worth it,” says Jonathan. However, they have taken a break from foster care for this year as Jonathan’s parents have moved into their home.

Jonathan Daugherty brings this same humility into his business with all his clients. “We are blessed to have a profession where we can actually do good and help people,” he reminds his peers. Although real estate is his primary focus, he also manages rental properties. “I actively encourage my tenants not to be tenants anymore and instead invest in themselves. I help put them through a credit-building program with a lender I have a relationship with and have helped many of my tenants become homeowners and invest in themselves instead of paying rent.”

We are blessed to have a profession where we can actually do good and help people.