Podcast Episode 89 Transcript

Episode 89: Stepping Out Of The Matrix To Create A Better Life With Jerome Myers

Welcome, everyone, to The Prereal Podcast. We have Jerome Myers joining us today. He's the founder and chief inspiration officer of Dream Catchers and the Myers Development Group. He's a podcaster, an instructor, a coach, and a hell of a personality. How are we doing, Jerome? Amazing. James. Thanks for the beautiful introduction, brother. Well, thank you for being with us today. We're excited. So I wanted to give a little background, if I could. Before we started recording, Jerome had shared that he's going to be expanding, or at least formally expanding into the coaching world. But Jerome has put together a pretty impressive real estate portfolio on his website, which, of course, is always all the links and all the information is found below. He's got some neat ebooks that you can download, great videos. He's a great follow, really wonderful story. So why don't we start at the beginning? Jerome, you didn't wake up one day and have a multimillion dollar multifamily portfolio, right? No. I wish it was that easy. I wish I had the silver spoon. But I'm the son of a soldier and a stay at home mom, man. I grew up with a single income, and it was really cool because my dad, he was my hero. He still is. He jumped out of airplanes for extra $200 a month so that we could eat out every now and again. And I could get that pair of cleats or that pair of shoes I needed so I could be cool at school. And the outcome from him doing that was very intense arthritis, having to get his hips replaced, and a bunch of other stuff. And if I could give back those shoes and those dinners, I would. But that's where it all started for me, man. A guy who was willing to put his body in jeopardy in order to give his family a little bit of the extra. So thank you for the service. Number one, you focus quite a bit on high performance habits. Is that just part of the DNA and culture of being the son of a soldier? Yeah. I mean, that guy, he would tell me, I'm perfecting the art of parachuting. Proud member of 82nd Airborne, the jump master for over a decade. And his whole thing was, how can I perfect this? And he really felt like it was art. And I grabbed that, man. I really wanted to be a technician. I never felt like I had really special gifts that were provided to me. It was all about learning the techniques and then executing them over and over and over again until I could be one of the best technicians in the world at whatever I was endeavoring to do. One of those things was football. And then this coaching thing that has kind of exploded over the past couple of years for me is kind of the next thing. And we kind of shaping it around, helping people make their dreams a reality. So highly effective methods and being intentional, is that something that you have to be born with? Is it something that can it really, truly be taught? Being intentional be taught? Yes. It's not something that most people will be excited about learning because it requires a level of discipline. And I don't think most people actually enjoy discipline. But I agree with Tim Ferriss on very few things. But one of the few things that I do agree with him, one is discipline equals freedom. And maybe that's not Tim. Maybe it's Jaco. Sometimes I get those two guys confused, right. But discipline equals freedom. So the more discipline you have on your process, the more predictable the outcomes are. And those outcomes usually lead to you getting what you want. And for me, that's the freedom. Freedom is being able to do what you want, with who you want, when you want. And if you have the discipline to allocate your resources appropriately, then they will be available for you to do those things that you desire most. And at some point in your life, you decided real estate was what you had desired most, right? That's what you wanted to run down. So I'm curious, absent. Or maybe there was a strong influence. A real estate owner, an investor, an entrepreneur. Where did that come from? Yeah, man, that's a beautiful question. I don't think anybody's ever framed it that way for me. So where did it come from? Me and my buddy Duran are sitting on the stupidest sophomore engineering students. And what are you doing your free time when you're engineering student? You do math. And so I realized I was paying 395. Two roommates doing the same thing. He lived downstairs. Exact same thing was happening in there. And so when we multiplied it out, the guy was making $700,000 a year. Top line. We never saw him. We never talk to him. How on Earth was he able to do that? Because we really just wanted to make $70,000 a year. We were College students, right? 70,000 was a lot of money, but he was doing $700,000. He didn't even have to show up to work. And so somehow this guy figured out how to decouple his time, earn income in the high six figures, a number that we probably couldn't count to if we had the money in front of us. And he still had the freedom and the flexibility to do other things. So we were hooked at that point. But again, I'm the son of a soldier and a stayathome mom. Nobody was coming to the cookout with their multi million dollar portfolio, having a conversation over the sausage and the brew about the next real estate deal they were doing. And so I was totally disconnected from where I wanted to be and where I was. And there wasn't a phone call that I could make in order to make that happen. And so I continue down the path that we're taught get good grades so you can get a good job, and then you can work for 40 years and you get married and you have the luxury car and 2.5 kids and the dog. And then you get to retire, get Social Security and hope that you live just long enough that you don't run out of money. I decided at some point during that journey that I was hoodwinked, I was bamboozled. I wanted to do something different. So most people never have that moment. Most people go through life and they never have the AHA moment. And if they do, they run from it, right? Yeah. So two questions in here. One is why did you not run from it? Because it's scary to come up through a system and to hit your marks in the system and then decide, oh, shit, this isn't for me. Right. So where does that come from? And then two, why do you think the system is as busted as it is? Right. Like, financial literacy is not taught anywhere. It's something we've become super passionate about in the company. We've got a book club here that I talk about on the podcast all the time because I absolutely love it. And they don't teach these things in school anywhere. Right. So one is why didn't you run from it? And two, why is the system as busted as it is? Yeah, let me ask two, then go to one, the system is as busted as it is because it's by design. If you don't teach people how to be financially illiterate, then they have to continue to be the cog in the machine because they don't actually get to a place where they earn income out of where they trade their hours for dollars. And so the world works. It's totally by design. It's not a coincidence that the majority of people don't have enough money to retire. We don't want you to retire. We want you to keep working so we can continue to profit on your time. Why will we teach you anything else? It doesn't serve the wealthy, and it's not like they are bad people. But if I can pay you $10 and the thing that you do is worth $30, well, there's some expenses involved in there, but at least $10 of that $30 is going to go in my pocket as profit. So as long as I can get you to continue to trade your time for money. I can continue to profit off of you as an asset. People don't like that, but it's true. So why didn't I run from it? Maybe I did have the golden handcuffs. Maybe I did question, is this it, or is there more? And then I finally decided that, yes, there is. And it's possible for me. And that's where we struggle, right? We struggle with belief that it is actually for us. It's possible for us. We look around, we don't see anybody who successfully did it. So why would we believe that we're different? And it's when you start asking those two questions, is there more? Is this it? That you truly begin to open up the possibilities that are available to you? And then the next step is doing the math, right. A lot of people brag about, oh, I make six figures or I make $125,000 a year, I make $180,000 a year, I make half a million dollars a year. But what do you spend? Because once you're able to create money, that covers what you spend, where you don't have to trade your time for that money, you're free. It doesn't matter how much your salary is, because depending on how much of a high income earner you are, you don't get all of it anyway. So you don't need to replace your income. So the number begins to shrink and shrink and shrink. But most people, again, we're programmed, well, I got to spend everything that I make or more than I make. And then I'm on credit card debt. And so before I even make the money, it's already allocated and I don't get to decide where it goes. And I don't run my own business. So there is no equity, there is no keep going down the list of all the things. And those things prevent us from actually getting to the space. In the place of truly being in control and being able to dictate what happens in our life, we always have a choice, but we're not always in control. So trading time for money, it's a catch phrase that I hear time and time again is, what does trading time for money mean to you? And why is real estate investing different? Yeah, I don't know that it totally is different depending on how you participate in the real estate investing. But what I will say is that if you go somewhere and you know what your hourly rate is, and you know that if you work for X amount of hours, you multiply it by the hourly rate that's your gross paycheck, you're trading your time for money. The other way that we trade our time for money is, hey, I need you to take care of this tax for me. It's totally dependent on you to do the thing. It's not something you can outsource. It's not something you can automate. You're trading your time for that money you have to allocate the most precious resource you have for something less precious drawn. What he's saying. Every second that goes by you're closer to the amount of time you have or you're in date on this planet being upon you like everybody's going to die. Sorry you guys came to this really positive podcast to hear me say that. But it's a true statement. Every day that you wake up is one day less that you have to live. That is your most precious resource. You can't get more of it, you can't extend it, you can't change anything like that's going to end that. You know that to be a fact. But if I go spend $25,000 this month, I can make that back and I can do it again, and I can do it again and I can do it again. I can replenish that as a renewable resource. And so the reason why a lot of people, when you start listening to them say, oh man, you're trading time for money. It's not the right way to go. It's because you're trading something that has value that you can't really place on it for something that we have agreed upon. Currency. Real estate investing is so different because you can hire somebody to run your portfolio for you and get the equity appreciation, get the cash flow without all of the time that it took in order to make that happen. In addition to that, usually because you are doing a lease, there's a subscription agreement, a recurring monthly payment from people who live in your property. Whether they stay there that night or not, they still have to pay for the night. That is totally disconnected from you and your efforts. Now, what I would say is a lot of the educators are messing us up. You got the cash flow Quadrant, you got the employee, you got self employed business owner and investor. And a lot of people think real estate investing makes you an investor. I disagree. I think we want to be real estate entrepreneurs. I think we want to be real estate business owners because that's where we get the most leverage. You got more bars or more handles to pull in order to increase the valuation of your property. Then you can take that equity and put it into something as an investor. But I think we should go from employees to business owners and then take the money that we earn as business owners and put it into investments. So you are a wealth of information. I did quite a bit of homework and it's really outstanding content. I'm a deal junkie. I have a lot of experience. Let's just put it that way. I've been doing this for a long time and you'd be hard pressed to present a deal that I haven't had some pretty significant experience in. What's the part of the life story that we haven't shared yet? Where you went from an engineering student who has their AHA moment and has the discipline to a real estate investor to the extent that you're delivering value through your courses to such a level where I've watched some of the reviews, I checked it out. And you've got students that a year out of your class, they're approaching 100 units under their belt, and they've got some ambitious goals. It's working right. So where the hell did all of this real estate knowledge come from? What are we missing in the story? Yeah, there's a lot that I try to skip over because of how painful it was, James. I mean, I went through the school of hard knocks. So my last job in corporate America, I built a $20 million division for Fortune 550. I was employee number two. On January 13, we had $0 in revenue, and by the end of September, we had about 175 people on my team. By the end of the year, we had a $20 million Mark. We had a 30% profit margin. And I get a call on December 20, 455, and it goes something like this. Hey, Jerome, I made a decision. I know you and I have been going back and forth on this for a while, but here's the thing. We're going to lay them off. No, we're not going to lay them off. Yeah, I'm not calling to have a discussion with you. This is what we're going to do going forward. Now, you can be a part of the process if you want or you cannot, and we can get somebody else in to do it for you. No, you don't understand. No drunk. Half of the folks have to go. No, we just had 30%, $6 million. There's got to be a way to be able to staff these folks in another way. Drone, I'm going to go spend the rest of the time for this year with my family. I'll talk to you in the New Year, and then the three boops from the iPhone. For anybody who's got one of those, that when you're in the middle of a really important conversation, you hope you never hear because, you know, the call ended. And I kind of hoped that the call dropped, but I realized that I was hung up on my stomach, fell. I didn't eat. I didn't sleep. It was the first time that I was asked to lay people off. And I had to come to terms with the fact that I was the guy who tried to inspire everybody to go do this big, hairy, audacious goal that even our client didn't think we could accomplish, only to come back and say, hey, you got to find another way to feed your family. And so to get through that, I promised myself I would never do it again. I blamed it on the company. They made me do this. And then I remember a year later, standing in front of the room a few days before Thanksgiving, and saying, hey, don't spend all your money on Black Friday. I'm not sure what's going to happen. And it was at that point I realized that I lost my credibility. And I knew that I was going to leave corporate America at that point. And eventually, within six weeks or so, I became a corporate America drop out. And I burned the boat, James, because I realized that I had this dream on the shelf. And I went and did this thing. I did all these things to lead to the thing where I had a PNL. And I thought I was in charge and in control, only to have somebody who I saw once a quarter and talk to every other week tell me that, no, this is what's going to happen in the business that you've been running on a daily basis. And it was at that point that I realized, no, I've always got a choice, even if I'm not in control. And that choice for me meant that I wasn't going to be beholden to shareholder value creation. I was going to run my own thing. The buck was going to stop with me because I figured all this stuff out to build this huge business for this company, only to get my $30,000 bonus on a $6 million profit. It just didn't make sense to me. So I exited, and I thought I was going to go buy an apartment building. And so I found a deal on Luke Net, walked down to the latest community bank and said, hey, don't you want to give me a million dollars to buy this 23 unit apartment builder? And he said, Why would we do that, sir? I said, Well, I got an 800 credit score. I got money in the bank. He said, what else you got? I said, Well, I'm a licensed engineer and I got an MBA. He said, what else you got? I said, I don't know. What else do you want? Six Sigma Master, Blackboard. They said, we want to know that you execute a deal of similar size with the same business plan and had success. I said, I reached my pocket and I pulled out some lint and said, I got some lint. I don't have that. I've never done that. And they looked at me and said, well, thank you for your time, sir. You need to go find a partner who can fulfill that for you. And I said, oh, wait, so you mean to tell me I did all this stuff in corporate America, and I still no closer to being an apartment building owner than I was when I was a sophomore in College. I failed. So I went to the next Bay because there's no way that these folks were actually telling me the truth. They just didn't like me for some reason. So I walked into the next bank and went through the same rigmarole, and they told me the exact same thing. I was like, okay, well, no. Three times a charm. Third bank. No, we are not interested in lending to you. All right? So I kept doing this, right? Because I'm stubborn and I get what I want. And like you said, I'm a dill junkie. I figure out how to solve the problem, to get what I want. And by the 10th Bank, I realized that nobody was going to give me any money. James, I didn't have experience, right? So I started fixing and flipping. I'm sitting on the stupid of my $90,000 rehab because I had to do it big, right? I wasn't doing apartments, so I needed to do huge rehabs. $90,000 rehab. 1920s. We did every system that you could think of. New roof, all the stuff. A guy pulls up in his white Dodge Rami, hops out and says, hey, bud, I want to check out the finishes in your property because we're getting ready to do a house down the street. He walks in. I'm proud of myself because somebody wants to see what the work I've done. After the banks told me I didn't know what I was doing. And he's like, oh, you took the wall out. Look at the granite counter on top. You got the island with the sink. This is nice, man. Walk upstairs. Look at the bathrooms. This tower is immaculate. Come down the steps. He's getting ready to walk out the front door. He pauses. He looks at me and says, hey, man, do you know anything about that building behind the Chimbomark? Yeah, I do. I tried to buy that four or five months ago. Oh, man. Well, I'm getting ready to make an offer on it, and I just want to know if you could tell me anything about it. You're the guy I've been looking for. You're the guy I've been looking for. Like, I literally went to the banks and they told me that I need an experience partner. There's no way you're making an offer if you don't have experience, right? We own a little something. No, you own apartments, right? Yeah, we do. Don't leave me out of the deal. What are you going to bring to the table? I don't know. We'll figure it out. Please don't leave me out of the deal. You're the guy I've been looking for. Yeah, I hear you, man. But what are you going to bring to the table? Dude, I don't know. All I know is you're trying to buy the deal that I wanted to buy four or five months ago. Please don't leave me out of the deal. And so he gets frustrated. He walks away after shaking his head, hops in a truck, drives off. This is a Wednesday. I'm like, all right, he's going to call me tomorrow and let me know he's got a thing under contract. Thursday came and went. Nothing Friday. All right? Friday. Nothing weekend, all right? They just had to work it out through the weekend. Monday is my day, James. No call. And then I'm sitting on the stoop on Tuesday, and I realized I didn't even get his phone number, so I couldn't call to check in with them to see how things were going or if something got jammed up or anything. So then my heart sank because I realized that I probably just missed my opportunity to do my first apartment due. So the rest of week goes by, of course, no phone call. And then the following Tuesday, I get a call from a guy I used to lend money to, and he says, hey, man, I got an opportunity to be a general contractor on that deal that we talked about a few months back. Amazing, man. Yeah. But here's the thing. I told them I was only comfortable being involved if you were part of the deal. Really? What do I need to do? We're meeting tomorrow at nine. What's the address? I'm there. And so the three of us locked arms. And then we brought in the broker. He rolled his Commission and brought in our property manager. The five of us take down a 23 unit apartment deal. And I'm fortunate enough to sit in the asset manager chair as the asset manager. The Business Journal did an interview, and my name was in the paper. And of course, all of the mortgage or the loan officers are peruse in the Business Journal so they can see who's doing deals. And my phone starts shrinking, and they want to know, hey, what else you got in the pipeline? I didn't even know what a pipeline was. Do you want to meet so we can talk about our products? Banks have products? Yeah, of course. Sure, why not? And I was able to create some relationships, and I left Richmond, Virginia, came to Greensboro, North Carolina, started buying here. And then my buddy James Bryant says, hey, man, we're using the Myers methods. James, what are you talking about? He's a marketing genius. He comes with the catch stuff. Like you're using the Meyers method to buy these deals. James, what are you talking about? He said, well, we find, we fund, we fix, and we flip deals. Find fund, fix, flip that's kind of catchy. Well, when you find a deal, you go through all the lead generation stuff, and that's over when you get it under contract. Okay, so what's next? Well, you fund it, so you put your team together. You get your property manager, you get the contractors, you get all the money that's going to go into the deal on the at risk portion. You get your bank, and then you close it. Okay, so what happens when you fix it? Well, after you close, you got to actually execute the business plan that you put together during the funded phase. And then once you get your net operating income where you want it to be, you either refinance or you sell it fine for a fix. Flip. Dude, you're a genius. Why is it the Myers methods? Well, because you figured it out, okay? Now we're going to teach other people how to do this because you didn't know what you were doing when you got started. Are you sure? Yes. We need to help other people figure this out because there's a lot of people out there talking about a lot of stuff, but they're not giving anybody a comprehensive system in the end, okay? And we're going to do a conference and we're going to do this other stuff, and we're going to show people that there's diversity in multifamily investing. Contrary to what most people are being exposed to, that's heavy. Well, you're doing the world. He didn't say this part, but it's what I realized. Drum. You're doing the world of this service. You're not telling anybody about your success. And there's somebody out there who's saying, well, I can't do this because nobody that I am interacting with looks like me. And so that means that this opportunity isn't available to me. I thought back to Craig, who was the one African American executive out of 88 at the 17,000 employee company that I worked for when I got out of College and how I used to tell him, hey, man, I believe I can be an executive here because you are. And I would tell them that at least once a month when I would see them in the hallways or in a parking garage or wherever, and I actually had the opportunity to be Craig. And so that's where this stuff came from. Not because I thought it was a great idea or any of the other stuff, but I owed it to Craig to show up for folks the way that he showed up for me. And I had a buddy who recognized that we actually had a repeatable process that we could share with other people to help them have success, because a lot of people get into real estate investing thinking that they're going to create generational wealth, and what they end up doing is creating debt because they don't actually have the proper education to do a deal profitably. First of all, it's an amazing story, and I appreciate you sharing it. I think it's important to get that message out, and I'm happy to play my part, as small as it may be, in contributing to that. Your process, your methods seem to come to you right, because you're organized your discipline. Clearly, your tenacious is all hell. You put together this comprehensive platform that really does take you from step to step because there are a lot of incremental steps. And I think part of the story you don't hear often, Jerome, is there are a lot of people out there selling a lot of courses that have no business doing it. People get hurt in this game. Real estate is not all lollipops and rainbows like people say that it is. We see pro forma after pro forma that I wouldn't use it to put my coffee on. And these things are getting funded in 3 hours. And I'm talking these are big deals. This is real money. Millions and millions of dollars raised in hours on some of these assets that you have to really call into question the history, the experience of this indicator, the integrity of the deal overall. There's some scary stuff out there. So you talk a lot in your content about the Red Pill and you've got some amazing videos. I don't know who does that work for you, but oh my Lord, it is good stuff, man. You look like a rock star in those videos. Tell us about the Red Pill. Yeah. So the Red Pill is our model for centered life. It's got six layers. It starts with self image, then moves to relationship, and then up to work those three layers of the RePHILL. We focus and start there because they are the source of all the stress in your life. And I'll get through the other three layers and then tell you why this became so important for me. So stress is concentrated to self image, relationships work. The next level is health. We work on stress in the bottom three layers so that you stop needing to take the edge off. And everybody out there when they think about the last time they said I need to take the edge off, I can guarantee you they didn't go meditate or work out. They did something that was self destructive. Right. We want to get the stress down to a level where you don't have to numb it so that you can persist through life and then focus on achieving what I call peak level health. From there, we want to move to prosperity. We do health before prosperity because I think a lot of people decide that they want to get healthy after they make their money. And so they end up giving up all of their money in order to get healthy. Instead of going backwards, I want people to get healthy, then get their prosperity out of that abundance that overflow you're able to make your significance play, right? That significance play is you becoming immortal because you've positively impact the lives of other people. So the way that I tend to condense this because most people are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy and needs levels one through five is self transcendence, right. Self image, relationship, work, health, prosperity. Once people get the money, they feel like they achieved the thing. The next level transcendence is the one where people actually get fulfillment. Making money doesn't fulfill anybody. Being able to impact the lives of other people, being significant, being remembered, being valued. That's where all the fulfillment. That's where the true essence of life actually happens. And for me, when I scaled the pyramid or the model of the Red Pill, the teaching piece for me, is a significance play. The conferences is the significance play. It's my opportunity to positively impact the lives of other people. Me being with you today is my significance play. I learned through podcasts. The problem with trying to learn through podcasts was that this information is disjointed. You're not getting an end to end system on how James does his deals, right. You might get a piece here, a piece there, and you're trying to piece it together, and then you're unconsciously incompetent. I call that overconfident. You're unconsciously incompetent. You think you know, but there's this gap, and then you fall in the hole, that gap, and you have no idea why you weren't able to go from step A to step C. Or maybe we'll call it D and C was missing. So again, the model for a centered life, the red pill came to existence because people were saying, hey, Jerome, teach me how to buy an apartment building. I'm like, okay, so you want to add hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of debt to your life. Are you ready for that? Yeah, of course. Well, is your self image in a place where you hold yourself accountable and you keep promises to yourself? Because if it's not, when we add this pressure, you're going to be in trouble because there's going to be something that doesn't go right. And are you going to doubt yourself or you're going to believe in yourself as somebody who can fight through it? Oh, well, yeah, we got all that. Okay, so your relationships do you have any mutually beneficial relationships, or is everybody coming to take things from you you're just sourced because you're an apex performer. You're a top performer, because if so, if only people come to take from you, guess what? You're going to be empty, and there's nobody pouring in that cup. And when you're empty, you do desperate things to fill your cup. So we need to reframe those relationships if you aren't ready for it. Okay, well, I got that. All my relationships with each other. Okay, well, fine. Let's go to the next one. So you got a job, right? How are you earning that income? Do you have to put a mask on to go into work, or are you actually walking in your morals and values? Because it's really exhausting to go to work every day having to put a mask on and pretend to be somebody else. Oh, well, I got all that. I'm walking in my morals and values. Are you sure? Is your responsibility increasing? Is your influence growing? Because if not, then you aren't actually working in your morals and values. Yeah, got it. Okay, let's go to the next level. Your health. You've got this habit that you do in order to make yourself feel better, and it's negatively impacting your health. And so now we're going to have the stress of maybe people didn't pay rent because it's covet and the COVID relief funds didn't show up. So what are you going to do now? Are you going to numb more or like, are you going to go meditate because you're in a space where you can handle the stress? What are you going to do? Are you going to embarrass us by doing something that's unhealthy? Okay, got that. All right, let's go to prosperity. So real estate is not a poor man's game. Contrary to what your favorite multifamily educator will tell you, this game is not for a person who does not have capacity to reach in their pocket and write a check to cover something that came up short because their business plan didn't go as planned, it's not. And so whether it's you or somebody else. And I'll be honest with you, had I been able to get the loan from the banks on the deal that I wanted to do, I would have bankrupted myself because I underestimated construction budget and the bank doesn't give you more money because you underestimated how much something is going to cost. And I did not have enough money to pay for the down payment, pay the mortgage because we took the Occupancy down to zero and pay for the construction costs that I did not account for. So if I'm not in a solid financial position from a prosperity standpoint, well, the deal is going to fail. Oh, okay. So I needed those five levels in order to put in this real estate thing because it costs more than most what anybody else would ever buy. It costs more than your home. It costs more than any vehicle you'll normally buy. And so that pressure will crush those other things if you're not careful. And I just realized time after time after time that people were not actually ready for the weight of what they were getting ready to do. So I said the real estate will take care of itself if we do these other five or six things. In fact, we do these five or six things. You'll grow into the person where people are begging you to give you money to help them invest in a deal because that's who you have to grow into. I believe in B do have. And so you have to become the person first so that you do the things necessary to have the things that you want. And so levels one through five are all about becoming that person so that you can do the stuff, so you can have all of the things that you desire. And then that level six is all right. We're significant. I've got time and location, freedom. What do I want to do? Who do I want invest in? How do I want to share what I've been so fortunate to accumulate so many people, skip the whole damn pyramid, and race right to the investing part? How did you come up with such a foundation? Is there a mentor or coach? Is all of this self taught the balance approach. Because you're right. By the way, folks, the point where he was talking about if something goes wrong in your business plan isn't an if the real estate again, it's almost become like a caricature of real estate. Like be a syndicator, invest in real estate, and you'll be on TikTok on a yacht somewhere surrounded by beautiful people and living this crazy life. That's not how it goes. And you're right. You can take system after system after system and pile them on people. But if the foundation is not ready for those systems, the whole thing comes crumbling down time and time again. We've seen it, and it is very hard to achieve the things you're talking about. It's very hard to even admit those things as you're going through that journey. Right. So how the hell did you pull it all together and recognize where did it come from? It's all trial and error, man. And I wish I could tell you that it was divine intervention and it was just given to me on a tablet on the top of the mountain. But literally I realized that I had to go through all the things. So the self image. When I left corporate, what was my job title? Right. I very quickly realized that the people who I thought cared about me and valued me didn't because I didn't have a title anymore, which meant that I couldn't allocate a contract to them. It made me question, well, who am I and what am I about? I had to redefine myself. Then I started thinking about the relationships, and I realized how many of my relationships were one way, right? They came to get something from me, and then they left. They didn't come to bring me anything. It was just them coming to get things from me. And when I didn't have anything to give anymore, then they vanished. Oh, that was really scary. So I realized that you got to segment your relationships. The ones that are mutually beneficial. You want to keep those. There's some that are not mutually beneficial, but it's only because you have an as for mutual benefit. Those can be reframed and be mutually beneficial. And then there's the ones that will never be mutually beneficial. I had to get rid of those because I didn't have enough capacity in myself where I wasn't making any money. I was living off of my savings to actually sustain those energy vampires, those parasites that were just along for the ride. And then I moved up to the next level. Well, the plan that I put together didn't work, so I had to go do this other thing. And the more that I dug in, the more that I realized if I truly walk in integrity and my morals and values, the more people come that want to help me move to that next level. That became really important. And that is probably more important than anything when you're raising money, because people really want to know that they can trust you. And that predictability piece ties into your self image because you're accountable to yourself. You make those promises, you keep them, et cetera. And then I moved up to health. I was stress eating because things weren't going well, and I was soothing myself because that was my way of feeling better. And I would go and eat candy all day and Donuts and all this stuff, and I would sit at the project, and I wasn't really exercising. I wasn't doing anything. And so I started gaining weight. And, okay, well, we got to get this under control. And we started making adjustments there. And when I finally started running, I told myself for years that I couldn't run and that my knees were messed up from car accident and football, and it would be a bad thing. My buddy James, again, he showed up. He was like, he caught me. Hughes out of breath. He's like, I just ran 4 miles, man. Don't you ever tell me you can't do something? And so the next day, I ran and ran for the first time. And eventually I got up to a place where I was running 46 miles on a pretty regular basis. And I started to see my life changed. I started to see more deals happen. I started to see more people showing up who wanted to engage and interact with me. And I was like, okay, so let's add in meditation. Let's add in this other stuff. And then prosperity started to show up for me. I started to make more money than I ever would have made had I stayed in my corporate job. Now, with that said, my fear was always going to zero, right? I didn't have any income. I didn't have any income. All of my money was going the wrong way because I was doing flip deals. So I was borrowing money to put into this project to hope that I would make more money when I got to the close. But I was paying contractors. I was doing this. I was doing that. And then eventually, the money started to come back to me. And then it was truly my opportunity to be significant where I could share with other people what I learned through the School of Hard Knocks. Had I actually found somebody to guide me through the process, my business will be three to ten times bigger than what it is today. But I did it the most inefficient and ineffective way. I pieced together a bunch of different podcasts. The School of Hard Knocks, books, YouTube, trying to create my own University because I didn't realize that I could go to conferences and meet people. I didn't realize that there were people in systems that could speed up my learning curve. I didn't get that. I didn't understand that. And it wasn't probably until about six months ago that I realized I never truly valued education because I went to College on a full scholarship and I went to public schools through. So paying for education was a foreign concept to me. And then once I realized that I did the exact opposite and started paying a whole lot of money for education and mentorship and coaching, and I just watched how my business changed exponentially. And so this is truly full evolution for me and people catching me in a Pivot because I know for a fact that the right education, the right mentorship, can compress time frames and help you avoid the potholes that can put you out of the business. So you may have gone through a rough path to get there, but you got there. And so many of us, even those of us that are performing in the game, are not performing anywhere near the level we should be because we have not addressed those things. So I've been in real estate literally since I'm Kneehigh to a grasshopper, since I'm a little baby. I've been around it. My mother had founded a company, and she was a real estate agent and a pioneer in her own right. So I've always been around it. And I pursued a path, and I was not optimized when I tell you zero balance. I had zero balance up until a few years ago. And while I was performing, as you had said, if I would have stopped and addressed the things that I've been addressing over the last two years, ten years ago, good Lord, the places I could have been. And you don't realize it when you're in it and you're performing, you really, truly at least I didn't even see these other alternatives, man. Hand to God, I didn't see it. And it took a beautiful alignment of circumstances and people in my life to point out certain things to me. And once they did, and I started to pull it back and really pump the brakes and start working on these other things. And I've got a million miles to go, but I'm walking the path and I'm loving every minute of it. And it is absolutely impacting everything that I do. I've never been a better deal maker. I've never been more enjoyable to be around. I've never performed at a level that I'm performing at now, and I love it. I absolutely love it. So this part of it, there's the real estate knowledge, right? And then there's all of the other stuff. They're both part of what you're offering now. Absolutely. In fact, I give the real estate stuff away if people partner with me on the other stuff. Because for everybody who isn't where they want to be in the real estate stuff, it's not because you don't have the education and the other stuff, it's because you haven't become the person that can handle the burden that goes with the thing that you say you want. You've got to grow into that person. So if I can get you to align with me, to grow into that person, me giving you the real estate knowledge, I'm okay with that because I can teach you that very quickly. It's a repeatable process. Everybody's journey to become who they're supposed to be is customized. It's individualized. And connecting those dots is the wizardry. Is this the alchemy that I'm uniquely gifted with? Early on I said I didn't have any gifts. This truly is my gift. It's the ability to help people connect the dots so they can get the thing. I really appreciate you sharing some of this with us today. I love the journey that you're on. I love the content. I love what you're doing. It is so absolutely critical. I encourage people to really take time and take stock of where you are and who you are. As Jerome had said, if you're on the other end and people are continuing to take from you or if you're a taker and you're not depositing as well, right. Because there's a lot of us out there doing a lot of things. I really encourage you to take the time to explore it. It has profoundly changed my life. As I said, I have a long way to go but I'm very proud of the work that I've done and my team has done over the last two years. Jerome, what's the best way for folks to find you? How do people reach out? Yes, the best way is Jeromemyers.com Depending on when folks hear this, they may get a different experience. But regardless of what experience they get they'll be able to find all kinds of goodies there. We give all kinds of content away because we just want to serve people even if it's not in some formal deep engagement. Jerome Myers, everybody. Jerome, thank you so much for taking the time today. James grateful for the opportunity to share with you and your audience. Blessed to have you on how's there's always everybody out there. Please stay safe.