Podcast 161. Taking the Red Pill and Escaping the Matrix with Jerome Myers

Average Joe Finances:
0:00

Hey, welcome back to the Average Joe Finances podcast. I'm your host Mike Cavaggioni and today's guest is Jerome Myers. Jerome, I am super excited to talk to you today, especially about, just looking into your background about taking this red pill and getting out of the matrix. So man, welcome to the show.

Jerome Myers:
0:17

Mike, so grateful to be with you, man. We, before we started recording, I was looking across the background, saw all your stuff from the Navy. My mom left school or her home when she was 18. Went into the Navy, ended up in ADAC, Alaska. Met my dad, who was a Marine from South Carolina. She was from North Carolina. He's from South Carolina. They end up getting married. And all these years later, I think they've been married like 40 years or something. They're still together. And so the service folks have a near and dear place in my heart cause both of my parents were there man. So thank you for your service and super excited to be with you today.

Average Joe Finances:
0:55

That's awesome. Yeah, they combined their powers and created the legend. That is Jerome. Yeah, really excited to have you on, man. So I wanna start this off the same way I start every podcast episode and we wanna know more about you. So if you could, you can go as far into detail as you want or share as little as you want. But if you could tell us about your background and tell us who is Jerome Myers?.

Jerome Myers:
1:15

That's a changing thing, moving target every day. But if I had to get to the core of it, man I was standing in the front yard with my mom. I was probably four years old. This was before elementary school and my favorite day was Thursday cause that was trash day. And every week I would hear the trash truck coming down the main road. They make a right. We were third house on the right in the cul-de-sac. So they hit the first house and I'm there and I'm getting more and more excited every house he gets closer to the next house, then they get into my house. Lonnie hops off the back of the truck, does walks over to the trash, can, flips the top off and spins like a quarter, falls flat, does a little pirouette, dumps the trash into the trash truck, and then spins it back to the corner like a Frisbee never flipped over. He looks at me, Gives me the wink and the finger gun, and then he does what every kid is looking for. He pulls the lever and he crushes the trash. And I look at my mom and I say, Hey mom, I wanna be a trash man. She looks at me as only your mother could do, and she says, baby, do you like your DoorDash jeans? Do you like your Nikes? Do you like that guest shirt you have on? It's yeah, she said, When you pick your career, you need to choose a profession that's going to pay for the lifestyle that you want to live. And I was like, yeah, but Daddy goes to work before dark and comes back after dark and so sometimes we can't play during the week. And she said, I understand, but Daddy also pays for all this stuff that we get this house and your clothes and the cars. And like he does that with his career. It was at that point that she sucked all the innocence out of my life. At least I feel like she did because there was this realization that you as an adult had to do things in order to earn money and it that age, I thought you just had fun, right? I just wanted to play and so fast forward, I'm getting ready to leave high school and go talk to my physics teacher and say, Hey, Mr. Aris, I'm thinking about going to school and I want to solve problems and I don't really have a preference between solving problems with people or solving problems with math and science. What would you suggest that I do as a career? He said Jerome, an engineer's gonna solve math and science problems, and a psychologist is going to solve people problems. I said, okay what should I do? He said a big difference in how much those folks make. Engineers are going to make probably twice as much as people with a psychology degree, a therapists or a counselor. So that took me all the way back to my four year old self. And I said, oh I guess I got to go do something that's gonna pay for the lifestyle I want to live. And so I end up going to university and playing football for four years and two years into that degree, I'm sitting on the stoop with my buddy Deron. We start doing some math and cause that's what engineering students do, and I was paying 395 it had two roommates paying 395 downstairs. Darron was doing the same thing when you multiplied it out across the complex. The owner was making $700,000 a year. We never saw him. We never talked to him. And I said, man, he's figured out how to decouple his time for money. It's like, how do you do this? I had a problem, Mike.

Average Joe Finances:
4:21

Yeah.

Jerome Myers:
4:21

Nobody that owned a multimillion dollar real estate was coming over to the house when I was growing up. My dad was an enlisted man, right? He graduated from university with the same year that I graduated from high school. I never saw the person that owned the property, so I wasn't gonna run up to them and ask them how they did it. And so I was forced to do what we're taught to. Get a good grades, go get a good job, get married, have 2.5 kids, have the dog, and to two luxury cars in the picket fence. And so I went on that journey, man, and it ended with building a 20 million division for a Fortune 550 company. I was employee number two by September of that year, and I started on January 13th. We were up to 175 employees. In the year we had 30% profit margins, and we did that for multiple years before I left and I left because I was sitting there. I wasn't sitting there. I was standing in front of a room of my team, and it was two days before thanks giving. And I said, Hey, I don't know what's gonna happen between now and the end of the year, but please don't spend all your money on Black Friday. And standing there, I felt all of my leadership credibility ooze out and it just ran out on the floor and I knew I had to do something else and I knew that I couldn't be in the space. And the backstory on that is the year before I got a phone call at four fifty five on December 24th and it went something like this. Hey, Jerome. I know you and I have been going back and forth about this for about three weeks now, and I made a decision okay, and we're gonna lay half of the team off. What?, that's not the right answer. We shouldn't do that. It's yeah I'm calling to inform you of a decision. This isn't a debate, this a negotiation. He's no, you don't get it. We're gonna need these people. And he said, We're gonna lay half of them off, and I'm not gonna argue with you anymore. So I will talk to you in the new year.

Average Joe Finances:
6:18

You got some good intuition. When you told them not to spend all their money on Friday?

Jerome Myers:
6:21

That was the year before.

Average Joe Finances:
6:22

Okay.

Jerome Myers:
6:22

That was the year before. And so now I'm like, okay, I'm worried about what's gonna happen at the end of the year this year. So let me go ahead and just warn people not to do crazy things. And I didn't want to be in that place anymore, Mike. That was the first time I had ever lay people off, and 2009 had happened before that. I was never wasn't impacted personally, but my mentor was his, he was a senior vice president and they eliminated his position in the organization. And so I look at all these things and I'm like, man I want the buck to stop with. I want to bet on myself, and I don't want people who I see. On a quarterly basis and talk to every other week to tell me what to do in the organization that I'm building and running. And so I leave and get into some real estate stuff and then after building a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio, I said, I'm lonely, right? I was a lone wolf out there and I might talk to my property management company once a week, but there wasn't really a whole lot of conversation happening. And the thing that I missed most was, Growing and building leaders, right? If you go from 2 to 175 people over the course of nine months, you're going to have to train folks. You're gonna, there's just no way that those people are sitting in the organization ready to rock and roll. And so we all had to grow together and that was one of some of the most exciting experiences I had. In corporate America. And so I wanted to get back to that. And so we started focusing pretty intently on helping business leaders grow. So that's my story, man. I guess we can wrap up the podcast and let listeners turn it off.

Average Joe Finances:
8:01

All right, guys. There you have it. That's it. What a great episode. No. Hey, Jerome that's fantastic, man. Like I just, Circling back to the beginning, when you were a young child and getting so excited about the garbage man comes, I think a lot of, especially young boys, right? A lot of us were always just so fascinated. I know it was the same way for me. And I know waste Management Services, I grew up in New York, right? So I know waste management services there, like they got paid. So if I said I wanted to grow up and be a trash man, my dad probably would've been like, Hey, you might stink, but you're gonna make some good money. That was, that would've been his take on it, right? But at the same time, it's kinda yeah, I don't know if necessarily that's what I wanna do, but I think it's really cool, watching this stuff happen and most of those guys. Just so you know oh man, you get a great workout while you're doing this. And you get really good at it, very efficient, right? And that's how they get through and get done faster and faster. And they're getting paid by the job. They're not getting paid by the hour. So it, it does pay to be efficient at your job. So I think that's huge, right? That efficiency piece. But anyway, you got to see the cool little tricks and the spin top and everything. But I think maybe just slightly in the back of your head. Stuff like that and you see the efficiency. You see how somebody was good at their job, but fast forward, you're going to school, right? It was when you were in school, right? That you were paying for the place and you realize Hey we're paying, this guy never even met him and he's making this much per year just from this unit. That it put that bug in your ear which I think is great that, real estate was something that kind of just stuck there in the back of your head and in the future that's what you decided to do. Coming full circle, it's a whole mentality game, right? It's flipping that switch mentally. So that's what I want to ask you really. What was the point that actually flipped the switch where you said, okay, I want to invest in real estate now. Like I've seen all these other things. I want to invest in real estate. Because you were working at your company, you saw what was happening there and you said, okay, I got to do something else. So what made you choose to start investing in real estate?

Jerome Myers:
9:52

Yeah, I didn't want somebody to come in and tell me that I had to fire people who I felt would run through a brick wall if I asked them to.

Average Joe Finances:
10:00

Yeah.

Jerome Myers:
10:01

That was.

Average Joe Finances:
10:01

That's fair.

Jerome Myers:
10:02

It was the buck stopping with me and me having final authority over what happens with the team that I was assembling.

Average Joe Finances:
10:10

Yeah, that's fair. Because, I feel like in that situation you felt like you, you were just powerless and you couldn't help your teammates out. There was nothing you could have done to, to save their jobs. And, it's one of the things that I think I could say I really respect about you, that, when you started your journey, it was to make sure that the buck stops with you, right? To make sure that you're gonna be the one making that decision. And it's gonna be a conscious decision on whether or not you're gonna have to let people go. Because you understand the impact that it has on lives, right? You saw what happened when those people lost their jobs. That's definitely very respectable. Now I wanna point something else out here too. You said that you were a lone wolf when you started off in real estate, so you were doing everything on your own. And I bring a lot of people on the show that talk about investing in real estate and most people say, Hey, this is a team. You need to have a team, you need to put the systems and processes in place if you do it by yourself. Sure you can do well in real estate by yourself, but you're gonna cap out eventually and you're gonna need help. So did you ever get to that point where you experienced oh my goodness, I need to start building a team because I can't do this by myself anymore. I know you said you started getting lonely. Getting lonely is one thing, but when did you realize I need to start putting something together?

Jerome Myers:
11:18

Yeah. So there's always some form of a team, but the issue is they all had jobs, right? Like they care about the property when it's time to send the check, but outside of that, or maybe a quarterly meeting, right? But day-to-day operations, they don't care. Hunting for a new deal. They didn't care. Like that to me wasn't true camaraderie. That wasn't true teamwork. That was a function of a business partnership. And what I wanted was a deep relationship with people where I'm significantly impacting the trajectory of their life. And I think those are very different things. It's one thing say, oh yeah, we're partners in our apartment building. There's another thing to say, or , take it a step further. I'm a limited partner in this apartment syndication. It is something totally different to sit with the business owner, understand the challenges that they're dealing with, knowing that they can't vent down. Because if they do, then people will probably leave the organization It's two totally different types of relationships. And that's what I was getting at.

Average Joe Finances:
12:25

A hundred percent. Okay, good. I'm glad we can clarify that a bit because with how you did that, right? You said you wanted to have more of an impact in the direction of someone's life, right? Versus that business partnership, that business relationship, right? You wanted to have equity partners, right? Somebody that was in it with you as you accelerate and do better together. So actually I want to talk about that a little bit. What was it that you did, what transition did you make to go from being a quote unquote lone wolf real estate investor to start like, I guess having these partnerships that were more relationship built versus business built.

Jerome Myers:
13:04

Yeah, I think it's really more a focus on. Like moving into the leadership business leader development space and spending time with them, whether they're a real estate entrepreneur or running some other type of business, the challenges are very similar, right? It's how do I figure out my problem that I'm solving for people? How do I fulfill that order? How do I make sure the back office is doing what it's supposed to do? And as long as you can help people navigate those, you can become instrumental in their lives. What I found really quickly was nobody actually wants to own a piece, a house or an apartment building. They're looking for the revenue that it generates, that creates options for them in their life. The actual building like that doesn't ever really matter. And if there was a way for them to get to the revenue without the building, then they would probably still do that. Most people miss that, especially when they start talking about asset center management and door account. I just think you lose focus and sight on what you're actually trying to do. And we'll take the house or the apartment out and then we'll insert the person, right? Can you buy something, improve their living environment, which makes them want to send even more money to you? And when you start really getting to the essence of what you're trying to accomplish, instead of, oh, I want this door count, or I want this amount of assets under management. I think people really get clear on how they should spend their time and what they should spend it on.

Average Joe Finances:
14:36

I love that because it reminds me of, I had these guests on my podcast a while back Michael Barnhart and Suzy Cevier, and one of the things that they talk about with their syndications, one of the things that they do, their ROI isn't return on investment. They said they want to have a return on impact. It's what are we doing to actually help these residents that are living in. Units, right? What are we doing to help better their lives and give them, a better space to live, a safer place to live and all that and that's how they focus their business, right? It's not about, oh, how many doors do we have? Or, how much in millions assets under management do we have? It's, that's not what they care about. What they care about is what service are they providing to their residents. I feel like having that kind of mentality. Helps you not only grow as a person, but helps you grow others around you as well. So I think that return on impact is huge and I feel like what you're describing there is very similar to that and very I want to help other people grow and become more successful. It's not about me, it's about what can I give. What value can I add to you in your business and what you're doing? And I think that, that kind of goes into what you do as a coach, as a leadership coach. That's fantastic, Jerome.

Jerome Myers:
15:48

Yeah. I like Michael and Suzy. They have very, I call it pure spirits, right? They're looking to make an impact in a real way.

Average Joe Finances:
15:56

Yeah.

Jerome Myers:
15:56

And the real estate is just a vehicle through which they do.

Average Joe Finances:
15:59

Yeah, I love that man. A lot of people just, they look at real estate investors and they're like, just thinking numbers, and Oh yeah, this person's doing that and this and they have this much, and this is what they're doing. This is how many units they have, this is how many syndications they're in. This is how many apartment buildings they own, whatever, but a lot of people don't see that other side too. There, there's a lot of real estate investors out there that focus on building communities, that focus on building people. And helping other people and giving back to communities and just adding value, not just value to their portfolio, but life value. And I think that's huge. And a lot of people don't see that side, they see real estate investors like, ah, they're greedy landlords that just want to take all my money, but I think it's important to highlight these other pieces, these other sides of the puzzle here, so you can get a full, broad picture instead of just the one half that you see every day. So I think that's huge, man. And I'd love to talk about what you've been building, separately from real estate with your coaching and how you help people, get to these different levels of performance and get better at their craft. So can we talk about that a little bit?

Jerome Myers:
17:03

Yeah I'd love to, Mike. The thing that I learned the hard way was at first I started out and I was like, Ooh, I'm gonna help people buy apartments cause it makes sense to be able to buy apartments, get your freedom, create the passive income. And then I started having people come to me who weren't ready to add hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars worth of debt onto their balance sheet. And so when you get to that place, They crumble, it falls apart. And I'm like, man, I want success cases. I want people to actually win. I don't want people to turn around when it gets hard.

Average Joe Finances:
17:39

Wait, what do you mean I have to take risk?

Jerome Myers:
17:41

And the beautiful part about what you just said, Mike, is the vast majority of apartment educators tell people that you don't need any money. No credit, no credibility. Nothing else, and this is magically gonna retire you in a year or two or however, five years. Pick one. But that's just not real man. And so I got really disgusted with a lot of the messages and then walking into different rooms and seeing people who have been trying for a year or two years or three years and spent 50, 60, a hundred thousand dollars and hadn't been able to get to a place where they actually had ownership interest. Or they thought they were gonna be operators and they just ended up raising money for everybody else. And I just man, this isn't the way it's supposed to go. And it started to bother me. But what I realized on the backside of that was we got to make sure that we're actually ready for the burden that we're going to take on when we actually start investing in property. There's so many people out there who just hang their shingle and say, I'm a real estate investor, and change their handle on LinkedIn. They haven't done anything to prepare themselves. And so to put this in perspective, I'm gonna go really extreme. So Mike, I'm starting my MMA career. You may have watched a few fights, you may have heard of a guy named Connor McGregor, and what I'm going to do is my first fight's gonna be with him in order to get in the ring. I need half a million dollars and I'm raising money for people to get a 15% return on the investment of me fighting Connor. Now, if I win or when I win, not if when I win, I'll be able to send you the half a million dollars back with the 15% return. And we will split up the other proceeds on the upside after I win this fight now. I've read a few books, I've watched a few videos on YouTube, and I listened to your podcast and a couple of other podcasts that talk about the subject. Now I've got the wire instructions at the ready. Will you send, where should I send them?

Average Joe Finances:
19:43

Not to me.

Jerome Myers:
19:44

Mike, I've watched YouTube, I've listened to podcasts, and I read a book. I'm ready to get in the ring with Connor.

Average Joe Finances:
19:51

Yeah, that's great. I'm more concerned of have you done this with anyone else?

Jerome Myers:
19:54

At some point you might want to coach at some point you might want to actually get in a ring and spar with somebody. Yeah. Bigger than the champion. But that's what I hear. Whenever people say, oh, I'm gonna buy a 200 apartment unit on my first deal, or I'm gonna buy whatever, pick the thing. I think people really need to understand what they're getting into before they get there. And so with that as the kind of context for the way I think about things, I think we need to pull back and there's six levels that I think you need to work through. That gets you to a place where you're really ready to have all the things that you want in life. And the real estate investing, the prosperity stuff is at level five, but let's go down to the bottom and then work our way back up and hopefully the listeners will get something out of this. And so the first thing we need to do is reduce stress. I don't care how great your life is, there's something that's creating stress in your world, and we want to reduce that. And so we start with self-image. Self-image is really just do you keep your promises to yourself? If you keep the promises to yourself, life's pretty good. It's when you don't have that congruency that you begin to challenge stuff. You become to be, start getting uncomfortable with who you are, and I say, okay, let's get that tightened up from there. Then we go to level two, which is relationships, and then relationships. There's three different types of relationships, mutually beneficial. Not mutually beneficial, but can be reframed and never gonna be mutually beneficial. If something's not mutually beneficial, you need to sever it immediately just in the relationship. Not mutually beneficial, but could be. You need to just go in and reframe those and get them mutually beneficial. Why? Why does this matter? I like feeling like I can do stuff for people who can't do anything for me. The issue is, and it's the issue with all top performers, if you do that, eventually you'll be empty because there's nobody replenishing you. You're just pouring, you're sourced for everybody. And when you can get those healthy relationships, cause by definition, if there is no exchange, then you can have a healthy relationship, so we want to get all of our relationships healthy, get them all mutually beneficial, and then you never have to worry about being replenished. From there, we go to work, and work is a bunch of different words, but at the end of the day, it's usually how you earn your living. And so when you have great relationships and you hold yourself accountable, those things lead you to a place where you have more influence and you have more impact in the workplace. That usually leads to more income. Those three things in and of themself is what I think all of the stress in your life is wrapped up in. So we turn down the dial on the stress, which then allows you to stop doing the self-destructive habits, order self-destructive habits from drinking, eating things that you shouldn't eat that are full fullest sugar.

Average Joe Finances:
22:45

Hey, you really helped me out there with that. Man.

Jerome Myers:
22:47

Come on.

Average Joe Finances:
22:48

Cause I was gonna ask that

Jerome Myers:
22:49

Yeah. Yeah. Not sleeping. Pick all the things that we do when we're stressed out to try to cope with it, right? I'd like to call them pacifiers cause I think most of us really don't ever mature Pac a toddler, right? So what is your pacifier and how can we get rid of that pacifier? And usually you have to get rid of pacifier by actually dealing with the thing, right? But if we can get rid of self destructive behaviors, then it makes sense to actually focus on our health at this point. And so level four is health. And here we're just trying to get you in a peak performance condition. We want you meditating, reading, doing the stuff on the inside, right? For the that work. We want you on a diet, we want you exercising so that your physical body is taken care of. And then from there, we think you're ready to actually handle prosperity because you've got a solid core. You got a solid base, and you're not gonna be one of those people who. Spent all of their health trying to get money. And then now that you have money, you got to give it back to get your health. We want you to progress instead of going forwards and backwards. And so usually there self-actualization happens. You level five, right? You've got prosperity, you got money, you got the choices, you can do what you want. But this is where it gets really special. And I think this is where we differentiate ourself from the majority of people out here who are coaches. You feel empty, you start asking two questions. Is this it? And what was it all for? And when you start asking those questions, you're actually onto something. It's likely that you'll push it down and say, oh, it doesn't matter. I'm good. But when you feel those two questions pulling up, you better pay attention because then you can actually transend and hit level six, which is significance. Some people call it legacy. Other people call it immortality. But in our model, we believe that significance is the only true success. And so we call it simply significance. And this is how can you positively impact the lives of other people? How can you actually make a difference in the world? We talked about Suzy and Mike. We talked about my desire to actually have a impact that was meaningful for people. And in that I think you have the life that you truly dream of. You actually are out there impacting the world. You have prosperity, so you can be generous and you have your health, which I think is probably truly the only wealth that we have.

Average Joe Finances:
25:04

Wow. Jerome, that was amazing. I'm sitting here taking notes, obviously as we're going writing all this stuff down and this really hits hard because, I feel when I look back at everything that I've done to, to get to where I'm at, I look at the, where my stress levels were. I look at the relationships that I had in the past and whether or not they were mutual, non-mutual will never be mutual. And it, if you can reflect on things like that, the things that will reduce your stressors, right? I think it can really just those first three steps can 100% change your life. If you know what you're looking for, and I think, as you would call it, as taking the red pill and getting out of this day-to-day monotony of being stuck in the matrix, of being stuck in your. I hate saying it this way, but being stuck in your nine to five, where your focus is to just go to work. Do what you got to do, come home, sleep, rinse, repeat, do this until you die. Yeah. And being able to escape that and escape the rat race, as we commonly call it, as real estate investors. Having steps to get there and having somebody to be able to guide and mentor you as you go through that I think is huge. And it's one of the reasons why I believe in coaches. It's one of the reasons why I have a coach myself, and it's one of the reasons why I coach other people. It's that service and being able to give back and I absolutely love this, the way you described it. What is your pacifier like? I never even thought to look back at what are those things that I, what's my advice that I go back to, to bring me back to my comfort level because I'm stressed out or because of, something's going on and the different ways to reduce your stress and focus on those things. Like when you could tell that step four piece, the health piece, right? I think that's huge. Eating healthy, exercising meditation, yoga, all that stuff. My wife makes me do yoga with her, and I say makes me, but I do it now willingly. I enjoy it. It's a good way to clear my head and focus and, I got to the point now I drink lemon water every day when I wake up, it's, the first thing I do is drink lemon water, just reset the body before I even have any type of coffee or anything like that. I've reduced how much coffee I drank. Left the Navy because I used to drink a lot of coffee, probably unhealthy, copious amounts of coffee. But it's these little changes that you make in your life that you start seeing this difference and it's not always right away. But as you make these little changes, these small things start happening and these small things progress and get, and they grow like when I talk about helping people beat debt, and you do that snowball method, right? And you're slowly beating that debt down and the snowball's growing bigger and bigger and eventually turns into an avalanche, right? You can do that with your life too. And the way that you describe these six steps, I feel. That is that avalanche building up, and it starts with that small sound that you make that makes the snow start falling right and makes it start rushing down the mountain. I absolutely love the way that you you put this down and that, that significance, that legacy piece. I think that's what most people in life are looking for, maybe not all you know, but most people in life want to know that they made an impact somewhere, that they left something behind. That they'll either be remembered for or that somebody else will carry the torch and carry that on. So I think that's huge, man. And absolutely love what you do. I can already tell just from this conversation how amazing of a coach you are and the team that you've built and the organization that you have. Man, it's absolutely awesome. I wanna talk a little bit more about that I know we talked a little bit off the air right before I hit the record button, and you were describing how you built a business, from nothing to, huge with what you're doing right now with a lot of people. And I think we've been gearing this show and just building up to that with everything that you've described. And I really love that because it's going in the right direction. So I wanna know , when you built your actual business, how did you go from, okay, I was investing in real estate, doing the lone wolf thing. You got lonely with that, and then you wanted to have your own business where you were, the buck stops here. That was always that thing that you wanted. So how did you do that? Like how did you go from investing in real estate to now I have my own business and I am the man.

Jerome Myers:
29:13

It's terrifying, right?

Average Joe Finances:
29:14

It is.

Jerome Myers:
29:15

Thought of it. And What I've found is all opportunity comes through people, and I think so many of us feel like we created our own opportunity. We're self-made, this, that, and the third. And so in my particular case, my first real coaching client was my financial advisor, and so he was explaining some frustrations that he had about a person that he was working with and decided to discontinue that relationship. He was looking passively for somebody that could show up and do strategy conversations with them and hold him accountable to the things that he professed that he wanted to work on. And he was in this world where nobody would really challenge him, and it was really tough for him to get that external motivation to go with the inspiration that he was already walking through. And so fast forward 10 years, he was and he's my longest running client. And not only that, but he referred me to other people within his organization and in some cases paid for younger folks to get exposure because he saw that as a great opportunity to increase retention. Increased productivity and really provide an opportunity for people to be successful who might not be if they were left to their own devices. And so that was the start of it. And we won awards. He was rep of the year multiple times, and he also got other awards as in addition to promotions. And it was just a really exciting experience for the both of us. And then that kind of expanded and I realized that the people who I could help most were those who were placing capital into something, whether it was real estate, public and private equities. You pick the thing, I was the person who could help people, as we describe it, double their business and take twice as much time off. And that was really compelling for me because I realized that. There's so many people who trade in their nine to five for five to nine, right? Ooh. And they end up just working brutal, insanely hard for less money than they were making in a job for the sake of being able to say that it's their own. And I don't know if that's the best way to get things done, but what I do know is you can put systems and processes in place that allow you to leverage things and get exponential results without putting in exponential time. And some people are like, oh man, this sounds like , the Get Rich quick schemes that people talk about in a lot of these seminars that are free your 99 bucks. But what I can tell you is if you have the team around you, as you mentioned a few times, then you can get into opportunities and get outsize returns for your effort. And so the client acquisition model started in that way. And we're really excited, Mike, because this fall we hired a chief operating officer. Who's got two different doctor degrees? It's probably more than that, but I'll boil it down to two. One in energetic medicine, another in business strategy. She's was working at the Morehouse College of Medicine before she came over to us, and she's really just coming in and diving deep on the clients that we have, why they are our clients, and then figuring out ways where we can serve them better. There's other people who are along the way, but that strategic hire for us, we think put us in a different stratosphere because I think there's a whole lot of folks out here who are saying they're serious about coaching, and they've got an organization, but it's really just them. They just have a job and I just don't think that you can preach that you can help people do this or that and then not actually do this or that. And I'll take it even a step further, like over the past year, like I've personally invested $200,000 in personal development between my coach and seminars and courses and so on and so on. And I just don't think that most people who. Profess to be coaches are making that level of investment in their personal development. And I think it's extremely important because I don't want any of my clients to ever outgrow me. A lot of folks come in and you're like, oh yeah, you got me from, I don't know, 50,000 to 150,000. I need to go find another. No, like I could take you to 10 million. And that's my ambition is to grow at a pace that most people are baffled by. And so I just doubled down on investment and so that's how the company grows, right? Strategic acquisition of really talented, highly competent and highly credentialed people, and then using my personal development to keep the company from having a lid on it, right? Because there's always a lid based on the leader.

Average Joe Finances:
34:11

Jerome, I absolutely love that. I love how you started this by saying, all opportunities start with people. Or opportunity comes through people, right? Because that is a hundred percent fact. And, I can see how you, the way that you do things, you're not just a coach. I feel like you really build great relationships with your clients and you are truly invested in their growth and development, right? And you also show how you're investing in your own personal growth. And I think that's huge. And a lot of people, I practice what I preach as well, right? I have coaches. I think it's super important. To have somebody not only hold me accountable, but help me keep developing into the entrepreneur that I am and keep growing because if I cap myself, what do I have left? I want to keep going. I want to keep getting better at my craft. I wanna be able to serve people better and help people do more things. And you just made me feel 10 times better about that because every time I have to stroke a check and I'm like, ah, here we go. Paying for this and then my wife's asking me like, oh, how much was that coach again? And why are you doing this? And I tell her and she's oh, okay. I trust you. Trust the process. It's like one of those things like sometimes oh, am I doing the right thing? And the way that you just described everything makes me feel a lot better because it is a hundred percent important to take care of yourself, develop yourself, not just just that health side, right? The physical health and mental health. But how are you developing yourself? There's so much in our brain here, right? There's so many different facets of the brain and there's so many pieces that need to be touched, right? It's not just the education, it's not just the relationships that you build and you nurture, right? What are you doing that also builds yourself up, right? So there's all these different pieces of it. The way that you've built your organization you're even talking about with that new hire that you just had. That's fantastic. You're looking at this from a hundred thousand foot level. You're up in space looking down saying, here's the earth and I'm gonna zero in all the way down to this city. You know what I'm saying? That's how narrow and precise that I feel like you get with what you're doing. So I definitely appreciate that and I wanted to point that out for my listeners because that is truly a touching thing because you are truly invested in your clients and yourself. Okay. I'd like to transition this into something that we call the final round. And it's the same four questions that I ask everybody that comes on the show. And if you're ready to go, we'll get this party started.

Jerome Myers:
36:37

Let's do it.

Average Joe Finances:
36:38

All right. Let's do it. All right. So the first question is, and normally I keep this within the real estate and finances realm, but I'm gonna go. Take this to the business realm and I'm gonna say, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made in business? Sounds like a good one.. Jerome Myers: Yeah, man. And it's in the same vein of conversation. We were just having all the information's out there, and it's for free, and you can invest all the time that you want to get all the information that is free and you will just have information if it's not combined into a cohesive system. That takes you from end to end, getting you the thing that you said you wanted. You will spin your wills. There's this thing called unconscious incompetence. Other people call it overconfident, but I call it unconscious incompetence. You're out there doing this thing, you're running hard, and you're running in the wrong direction. If I want to get over to where Mike is in Hawaii and I go east, I can guarantee you it's gonna take me a whole lot longer to get there than if I go. And I just think so many people miss that, like, why would I pay for that? Because the content is organized and somebody who's already made the mistakes that you're going to make, don't make level one mistakes when you can skip to level four. You either pay with time or you pay with money and you can't get time back. So it's always better to pay with money. I absolutely love that, man. Absolutely. And I see it all the time, and it's one of the things that I try to focus on too, is there's so many opportunities out there to learn from other people and the mistakes that they've made. One of the things that I like to point out on this podcast as well, but sure, that's free, right? You can listen to a podcast for free. You can go watch a YouTube video for free, that's great. But you know that the other piece of having somebody hold you accountable and guide you in a specific direct versus you just wandering all over the place until you figure it out. You're like, you said, you're gonna pay. It's either with time or it's with money. And if you've been in this game long enough, you understand how much money your time is worth. So time is money. So I love that. So thank you for pointing that out. Okay, next question kind of ties into this, and that's what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

Jerome Myers:
38:42

There's never a perfect time, start now. I think so many of us are looking for the right moment to do the thing, and what I found is you either jump out the plane or you get kicked out of the plane. And it's a whole lot better for you to jump than to get kicked because it's on your terms. So if you want to do the thing and do it.

Average Joe Finances:
39:02

I love that.

Jerome Myers:
39:02

Now.

Average Joe Finances:
39:03

I love that. I love that . Don't wait to get kicked out of the plane. Just jump. Although I personally would never jump out of a perfectly functioning plane to come down in a parachute. But that's just me. But if I had to, if I was up there yes, I would rather jump than have somebody kick me. And I get that surprise going out there because, surprises sometimes can really suck. I definitely appreciate that perspective. Okay.

Jerome Myers:
39:25

Especially if you're scared. My dad.

Average Joe Finances:
39:27

Yes.

Jerome Myers:
39:27

Was a jump master for, 18 or 20 years. So he loved he was perfecting the art of parachuting. But yeah, it's. Yeah. I'm sorry. I slip that in.

Average Joe Finances:
39:38

No, that's awesome. It's a great, it's a great way to describe it that, a lot of people, struggle with that analysis paralysis, right? And that's what you're struggling with when you're, there're thinking about, should I jump, should I do this? As you're sitting there trying to figure out if this is the right move for you, instead of taking that plunge and Having faith in everything that you've learned in the journey that the path that you've come down. You have to have faith in yourself cause if you don't, you're gonna crumble. So I love that. All right. Next question again, this also ties into that, and that would be, do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started out today?

Jerome Myers:
40:11

Go find somebody who's done what you want to. And pay them whatever they charge in order to help you get to the place that you want to go. Period.

Average Joe Finances:
40:19

Period.

Jerome Myers:
40:20

The exclamation point, that is the fastest way to get there.

Average Joe Finances:
40:21

Done.

Jerome Myers:
40:22

That's the fastest way.

Average Joe Finances:
40:23

Yeah.

Jerome Myers:
40:23

There's no question about it.

Average Joe Finances:
40:24

Love it. Love it. Absolutely. Okay, fantastic. Jerome, and then the final question of the final round is, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Jerome Myers:
40:38

Sizing people up is my favorite book. And hundred million dollar offers is right behind it. But sizing people up by Robin Drake was the thing that transformed my life in 2020 when I read it because I was meeting so many new people at such a rapid pace and I couldn't tell who I should trust. And I learned really quickly through that book that trust is not. Whether you like a person or not, trust isn't whether or not you know a person, it's about whether or not you can predict what that person's going to do. And if you can't predict what that person's going to do, then you probably shouldn't trust them.

Average Joe Finances:
41:18

Yeah. No that's fantastic. I definitely appreciate great recommendations as well. Jerome, this is awesome, man. I have, that's it for the final round, but I do have one more question for you, and it is the most important question of all people are listening to this episode right now saying, man I love what this guy's talking about and this whole conversation that Mike and Jerome are having is amazing and I want to know more about Jerome and I wanna know, like Where can I find information about them? So if you could, where can people find you? Do you have a website, social media, any of that stuff that you could share with us?

Jerome Myers:
41:48

Yeah, so the best place to go is jeromemyers.co. There you can find the social media, the podcast, the books, all of the free stuff. And I think you'll find something that'll help you on your journey.

Average Joe Finances:
42:00

All right, fantastic. So I'll make it easy for everybody. I'll have those links in the show notes so you can click or copy and paste away. Just don't do it while you're driving cause that would not be good. Jerome, thank you so much. This was honestly a phenomenal interview. I had such a great time talking with you. I have a whole page of notes here of just awesome sauce and thank you so much man. I really appreciate it.

Jerome Myers:
42:22

Mike, it was good to be with you, man. Thanks for having me.

Average Joe Finances:
42:25

Yeah, absolutely. And hey, to my listeners, thank you so much for joining me and our special guest, Jerome Myers on the Average Joe Finances Podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Jerome Aloha from Hawaii and have a fantastic rest of your day.