A lifelong entrepreneur, Greg Michaels is a real-estate developer and businessperson who has developed, owned, and operated a number of businesses encompassing telecommunications, clean energy, and real estate. Throughout his life, he has continually set a goal to achieve excellence in business. As a Business Administration undergraduate major, Greg completed the highly selective and well-respected Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business. During his four years at USC he also completed a pre-medical curriculum. During his senior year at USC he used his learned negotiation skills to land his first million dollar real estate deal at the age of 24, with no money down. He also competed as a student-athlete on the acclaimed USC Men’s Varsity Tennis Team and later became a two-time national champion. Mr. Michaels built on his early successes to build a successful real estate portfolio after retiring from tennis professionally. As a principal, Mr. Michaels has bought, sold, and leased $1 billion in real estate, over a 30-year period, encompassing land, residential, commercial, and industrial asset classes.
In addition to his success in real estate, Greg Michaels has bought, sold, and started over two dozen companies and has employed thousands of people. In 1994 at the age of 26, he founded a telecommunications company, now known as Southern California Telephone Company, which was one of the few privately held telecommunications companies to successfully navigate the Telecom Act of 1996. Later in 2014 to address the global energy crisis and meet the need for a clean energy solution, Mr. Michaels established a liquefied natural gas (LNG) company for the development of an $8.3 billion natural gas liquefaction facility located in Southwest Louisiana to export U.S. natural gas globally. In that same year, he identified and acquired a 246-acre industrial site for the development of the LNG export terminal; many experts believe his site is one of the best sites globally for such an endeavor. As Chairman and CEO of his LNG company and an industry pioneer, he is a published author, has negotiated multibillion-dollar contracts with governments around the world, and has spoken on LNG issues internationally. With all his companies, he has capitalized on his ability to build successful teams by identifying personal strengths in individuals and further developing them; he is well respected by his management teams and personnel.
In addition to his business interests, Mr. Michaels’ passion for his community and sense of civic responsibility led him to coach youth soccer and tennis for over fifteen years where he parlayed his strengths in talent development and team building. He successfully led his soccer teams to earn fifteen division championships and over thirty tournament championships. Greg believes, “Success is achieved by helping people accomplish what they never thought was possible.” He runs all areas of his life by this philosophy. Mr. Michaels is a resolute family-oriented person, husband of over 29 years, and father of three adult children, two graduates of Cornell University and one who graduated from Pepperdine University. He enjoys playing tennis, standup paddle surfing, and fishing.
Today, Mr. Michaels has joined his daughter, Brooke Michaels, in forming “The Michaels Group”, a real estate firm with the focus of serving coastal real estate clients in South Orange County. As residents of Laguna Beach, California, where they have resided for over 13 years, Greg and Brooke have first-hand experience in the So Cal real estate market and are enthusiastic about servings its residents. Additionally, the Michaels Group is excited to partner and work closely with their long-time and dear friends, Lisa and Goran Forss, who have created the number one real estate company in the state of California. With a successful history of negotiating multimillion-dollar real estate and business deals, Greg is looking forward to leveraging his 30-plus years as a successful real estate and business developer to represent Orange County buyers and sellers and negotiating the best deal possible on their next real estate transaction.
