← Next Level Pros
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- [00:00]
A
Somebody outside the US they can invest in the US as long as they comply to the tax code.
- [00:05]
B
You know what's great about America that I love and I tell people this is I'll take an immigrant as a business partner over somebody from the United States nine times out of ten. And the reason why is because they're not jacked up with our schools, you know, because these guys come in and I can, I can self teach these guys, like, okay, hey, this is what we're doing. And I get somebody from here and they look at me like I'm from outer space, you know, when I'm rising. Because they don't understand this stuff because we spend 13,000 hours in school and they don't, they're never taught any of what our company is really built around.
- [00:33]
A
Dude, isn't that so true? Just how jacked up our schooling system.
- [00:37]
B
Man, Our schooling system is bad. You got to be strategic in how you make your decisions because if you don't, it'll take you under. And since money's so expensive, but we have the experience, the experience you can never get rid of. Like my mom told me when I was young, she said, look, the only thing you take with you when you die is what you have up here.
- [00:52]
A
You know, so, so Drum, you have like 600 million in real estate right now. Like tell us a little bit about what you got going on.
- [01:01]
B
So we, our whole model right now is around sustainable and workforce housing. So most of our real estate is in the multifamily sector. But we made over the course of time a lot of money in the retail office, in the single family residential sector. And now that housing is so vastly needed, the attainable and workforce housing has been a big model for us and that's really where we hold most of our asset ownership right now.
- [01:29]
A
So we, we met at Ryan Pineda's wealthcon, right. And that's, we were talking behind the stage and you, you'd said, I mean you built this thing up over what is it, like 20. How many years have you been in the real estate again?
- [01:42]
B
28 years in real estate.
- [01:43]
A
28. And it's all just been like bootstrapped initially. And then you recently started accessing outside capital, right?
- [01:50]
B
Yeah, we were all self, we were self performing 100% until 2018. And then in 2018 I started working on understanding how to raise Capital in 2016 and spent about two years really learning the business of syndication, private SEC laws and so forth. In 2018 we started raising capital and that's where we really Saw our growth because I think we were worth maybe somewhere around 25 million to 50 million, depending on how you evaluated assets at that time. And then so in 2018, 25 to 50 million.
- [02:23]
A
And then now what would you say your worth is of that? I mean obviously you've syndicated or whatnot. How much has that grown by?
- [02:31]
B
Oh, it's been, we, we've grown 300% since then. We've. Because until just recently, and we were talking about this earlier, we would self perform. So I wanted to continue having ownership of 100% where most indications they give away 70% of the equity, they hold on to 30, but they still even raise the debt on the equity stack. And so really they have no ownership of it, in all honesty. And so until they exit at a higher evaluation, then they make their money.
- [03:03]
A
They have nothing.
- [03:04]
B
So they really own nothing. They really own nothing.
- [03:07]
A
So that's a pretty standard setup for most syndications right now.
- [03:10]
B
You don't need a lot of money to get into syndication. If you're a good asset manager, you can manage money, right. And you know how to manage deal flow and underwrite. You can become a good syndicator, a good gp. That wasn't my goal. My goal was not to take it on as a job. In fact, we were trying to hash down on employees and downscale the day in day out operations. The goal for me was more long term assets and having ownership and control of them. So I didn't want to give away the equity. So the way we built and structured the business and the way it's structured right now, we've had a pivot this last two years because of where we are economically. But we weren't giving up any equity at all. We retain 100% of the equity and 100% of our projects until this year. This is the first year ever that we've given up.
- [03:55]
A
So you were just syndicating debt?
- [03:57]
B
Just debt on the equity stack only.
- [03:59]
A
Wow.
- [03:59]
B
And so, and really just on the land. So what we would do in a nutshell is we would come in and I would purchase the land cash, where we would buy a lot that was 5, 6 acres to do 150 to 200 units of apartments. And if the lot was 2 million, $3 million, I would just write a check for it and then I would raise the capital to get my money back. And we pay a debt service on that debt of maybe 10 to 12%. And then once we entitled the land, the land would be worth like $6 million under normal market conditions. And we would collateralize the equity from the land and we get our construction loan. We would exit out the debt, and then we would walk into the build with no investors, no debt on the, on the equity stack. The land itself would carry the. And the first draw that we'd get from the banks would be to pay off our investors the $2 million that I had exited out, or 1.5 or whatever I paid for the land. And then we'd use the upside of the entitlements as the equity stack against the build, and then we'd go build a $40 million development.
- [05:03]
C
Let me ask you, so obviously you know what you're talking about now. What do you wish you would have known earlier, 10 years ago?
- [05:12]
B
Yeah, you hear about as an entrepreneur and being in business for over 30 years, you hear about utilizing other people's money. We're all, we're all trained from the same books, the same mentors. You know, it's just some facet. But you're. Cognitively, the way we exercise stuff is different. Right. Like you're thinking about, like utilizing other people's money from a standpoint, maybe as a, as a, as a basis to get started. Right. But you don't think about it as you grow. And all the big private equity, private debt from all these big companies, this is the way they grow. You know, it's the way the stock market works, it's the way everything works. And as a small business owner, you don't realize that you have access to capital as well, just from your talents and attributes of what you do professionally. If I would have known 10 years prior that people would have really believed in me. You know, Jerome Maldonado is like, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. He has 20 plus years of experience, he's self performed, never lost a property. I've always been successful. If I'd have known that 10 years earlier that people would believe in me, I would have grown exponentially. We would already be over a billion dollars in holdings. And so I just wish I would have done what I'm doing now earlier, because it existed earlier. I just didn't know about it. I didn't have a book that taught it. No one ever talks about it.
- [06:33]
C
Where do you approach, where do you find these investors?
- [06:36]
B
So now we do a lot of our investor pool from social media, but it's putting yourself out there. All of our stuff now comes predominantly from social media and networking from. And the investors themselves don't really come from social media because a lot of these big Investors, they're not on social media. But what it does come from is it comes from building a network of sharp people that know bigger people that are not on social media, where we get our investors. So when we first started in 2018, we were getting a lot of $50,000 here, $100,000 there. And it was, it's a lot of work to raise, you know, 50 grand to raise $10 million in, in $50,000 at a time is a lot of freaking work.
- [07:16]
A
Yeah. What is that? 200 investors?
- [07:18]
B
Oh, bro. Pain in the ass. And you know, the biggest thing is managing the emotion of all these 50 $100,000 investors sucks, man. You're like, you, you almost want out. You're like, okay, I'll just give you your money back. Let me just, let me just go make the money myself. Screw the, screw the investing, man. Like the investors, I'm just going to do this myself, self perform. I don't have to deal with emotions. And that was almost where I was at about 20, 21 was I was like, you know what? I don't want to deal with the investors. You know, so we started focusing on high net worth people. So we really started focusing. A lot of the money comes from out of the country. A lot of people that made money in China, the Middle East, Mexico. And so these guys that, you know, that's what's great about America is that right, an outside immigrant could come in, own real estate here, gets the same tax benefit, gets the same real estate benefits and entrepreneurial and cash benefits that we do, as long as they contribute and do and comply with the same tax laws that you and I comply with.
- [08:14]
A
Let me, let me dive into that. So I don't understand this too well. So now somebody outside the US they can invest in the US as long as they comply to the tax code.
- [08:23]
B
Yeah, and there's, there's a little bit of, you know, there's, there's a little bit of.
- [08:27]
A
The reason I ask is I have several billionaire friends outside of the US that are looking at. So for them, no problem, they can come and dump cash into real estate businesses, whatever they can.
- [08:42]
B
And they're looking for good people, good companies to contribute cash into. And so that has been our big pull since 2020. So now what we do is instead of. And we position ourselves, is this an opportunity for them too? Because we know what we have to offer. Right. And so for them to have a legitimate company with real returns and real assets that they can bring back returns to where they keep the money here or they take the money back out of the country. Really doesn't matter in our eyes. But they have a legitimate investment that they can be a part of. And so that's been our big pool since 2020 that we really worked on. So like now, and it took us a few years because those relationships don't come, they don't come quickly.
- [09:27]
A
Right.
- [09:27]
B
It's a lot of dinners, a lot of food. Trust for sure. It has to be.
- [09:32]
A
Where would you say what country is represented, the largest in your portfolio right now?
- [09:41]
B
China. And we're working on some money that's coming in from the Middle east right now. So in fact, probably over the next, if things work out over the next two weeks, two of our biggest projects we have going on, a lot of that money will be coming in from the Middle East.
- [09:56]
A
When you say Middle east, are you talking UAE or you talk Saudi?
- [09:59]
B
Where are you talking 11? This happens to be Lebanese money.
- [10:02]
A
Okay, cool. Well, if you want any of that more of that Middle east money, we got quite a bit of connections there.
- [10:10]
B
Do you? Oh, yeah, dude, these guys are great. You know what's great about America that I love and I tell people this is, I'll take an immigrant as a business partner over somebody from the United States nine times out of ten. And the reason why is because they're not jacked up with our schools, you know, because these guys come in and I can, I can self teach these guys, like, okay, hey, this is what we're doing. And I get somebody from here and they look at me like I'm from outer space, you know, when I'm rising. Because they don't understand this stuff because we spend 13,000 hours in school and they don't know. They're never taught any, any of what our company is really built around.
- [10:44]
A
Dude, isn't that so true? Just how jacked up our schooling system.
- [10:48]
B
Man, Our schooling system's bad.
- [10:50]
C
Oh, that's one of my like. And Chris does this too. Like, I'm always trying to find kids that are like hungry to learn because they don't know where to turn. They don't like, they're just. There's just such a lack and people that have the hunger are looking for.
- [11:04]
A
So I have my, my son, he's a, he's gonna be a sophomore. He's. He started homeschool this year, so. And the only way that we could get him in the sports program that he wanted to play in was he had to sign up through their homeschool program because he was a transfer and all this crap.
- [11:20]
B
We went through all that with my kids.
- [11:22]
A
All right, so, so he's got to take these like, required classes, which suck. But outside of that, having him come and like hang out with us here at the office and like shadow business and everything else. And he's got this little group of kids, they're, they nickname themselves, they're the Bit boys. And it stands for billionaires in training. And so it's, it's pretty, pretty cool. Like they get together, they play cash flow, the game, you know, to like really prime their minds of like how to invest and everything else. We got them reading books, different things like that. And they're launching a YouTube channel with it where they're going to, where they're going to document them, trying all these different hustles and everything else. So it's, it's pretty fun.
- [12:06]
B
That's cool.
- [12:06]
A
Yeah.
- [12:07]
B
See, ours is a little different. With our kids, we, we've utilized sports in such a magnitude to just build discipline because our kids are spoiled to death, man. You know, we homeschooled them all the way till they were in high school. And then my, my kids, they want to play high school sports, you know, so my son's playing football. They. My son's a two time nationally ranked gymnast. My daughter isn't ranked yet, but she'll get there. She's in eighth grade and, and now I, you know, the football world's different. Like the gymnastics world was crazy because all the parents did well, right? Every single parent. Because it costs 30 to $50,000.
- [12:40]
A
Oh, you can't, you can't be involved in gymnasts if you're not, if you don't have money.
- [12:44]
B
Yeah. If you don't do money. If you don't have money, you can't. Because the expense of the training alone.
- [12:49]
A
It'S like high level travel ball for baseball.
- [12:52]
B
Exactly.
- [12:53]
A
You got to be worth.
- [12:53]
B
Everybody's. All the parents are doctors, attorneys, they all do well self employed. They're doing something. And with football, it's the contrary, man. Like, it's a total contrary. So now that my son's in football, we sit back and there's a couple parents that do really well and then there's everybody else. And so now we have these kids that come to our house and they're. And they wow for a moment and they go, I want to do what your dad does. So it's been actually an attribute because dad's dumb to your kids. Dad don't know shit.
- [13:22]
A
Right.
- [13:22]
B
You know, so when I talk to, to my son before, he didn't want to have anything to do with what dad has to do. But then because his font, his friends now follow dad's content and what we're doing, all of a sudden, what dad does is pretty cool. And they. They get.
- [13:38]
A
I'm having the same experience right now.
- [13:41]
C
One of the. I had a very similar experience, and I actually learned a. Kind of a hack, I feel like. And what I realized is we're having these conversations. I was taking these girls to volleyball every morning, and at first, like, it was just no one would speak the whole way there and the whole way back. And then finally, like, I'm just start asking questions, and I just start asking as much probing questions as I can. And then towards the end of the season, everyone's talking, girls are coming with, like, topics to talk about, and I'm thinking, okay, how could I. This is our last trip. How do I, like, extend this? So then I was like, hey, you guys want to do a book club? And they're like, sure. I was like, all right, I'll pay everyone 50 bucks to finish the book, but you have to tell me what you learned and what was cool about it. I realized is, like, my daughter was excited about reading the book because her friends were excited.
- [14:28]
B
Yeah.
- [14:29]
C
Had I approached my daughter, she would have been like, not interested.
- [14:31]
A
Heck, no.
- [14:31]
B
I don't need your 50 bucks.
- [14:33]
C
So I've done that too.
- [14:34]
B
I've done that.
- [14:35]
C
Give you a credit card.
- [14:35]
B
Yeah, Like, I already got your 50 bucks every single second of every day.
- [14:39]
C
But it was really cool because I was able to. You know, my main goal is to teach my kids everything I can. But, you know, when they're teenagers, they don't want to listen to you.
- [14:49]
B
No, they don't listen to you.
- [14:50]
C
They'll listen through your friends.
- [14:51]
B
They will. Yeah, they will. And so it's been good. But we deal with that, right? So that's. So when I even deal with it, in business, with investors, with anything, I see it from a different standpoint. You know, where I caught it big is when we're going through the 2008 recession. I bought a bunch of Subway stores, and I thought being in construction, that we were dealing with and I saying it on camera, but the bottom of the barrel employees in construction, they are not the bottom of the barrel. These guys make a living. They do well when I own my Subway stores. Now, those.
- [15:19]
A
That's what you were dealing with.
- [15:20]
B
Oh, my God. The garbage that we were dealing with there. And we had to set some major standards on how to Hire and who to hire? Because we had so many stores, so many employees. How many stores did you have? We had 15 stores and 13 of which we ran and operated. And two that we own or financed and sold off that we controlled. And so we had over 200. We had 210 employees, subway employees. And we had.
- [15:47]
A
That is a lot of bottom of the barrel.
- [15:50]
B
And it's. And it was. And it was crazy because it was constant every day. Like every single day. And you got what.
- [15:57]
A
I mean, what were your main problems? People not showing up.
- [16:00]
B
Not showing up. Theft was a big deal. Drugs weren't as big of a deal. You could come in stoned if you wanted to. As long as you were going to work, I didn't care, you know, take a little. Take rail a line of cocaine and come work or something, for God's sake. Just show up. Just get there, right? You know? So, yeah, I don't know if drugs were an issue. They weren't an issue in ours, but we. And I'm sure that maybe they were. But just getting them to show up, you know, get them to show up and produce, you know, was more the biggest thing. So we put standards on it and we said, look, if these guys aren't in sports, they have to be in school. If you had hired somebody that's young, they have to be in school, they have to be in an activity. I go, I don't care what activity. I don't care if it's a chess club. I don't care if it's football. I don't care if it's cheerleading something. They have to be in something, some type of extracurricular activity. And the managers would go, well, they're too busy. They don't have no availability. I said, but when you schedule them on the availability and the limited amount of availability they do have, they'll show up. And they did. So I said, then just hire two more. Two extra employees, you know, in between the mixture of their schedules. You'll find you'll fill your schedules, but at least you have people that show up, you know, instead of having three people scheduled and two people don't show up and you're running a store by yourself, you know?
- [17:10]
A
Yeah. I mean, sports teach. I mean, any type of extracurricular teaches some level of discipline, right? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the same, Same reason. Like growing up, that's all I had was. Was sports. Football, wrestling, all the poor kids, sports, you know.
- [17:25]
B
Yeah, I was a wrestler.
- [17:28]
A
You know, anything that didn't Cost a bunch of extra money to be a part of. I was in that. But I mean, the life lessons that come from that.
- [17:35]
B
Oh, huge. Yeah, yeah. And everybody's done well. Everybody that was in the programs that we were in when we were kids, the wrestling program, everybody did well. And that's why I used it, because it was a tool for us.
- [17:45]
A
Yeah.
- [17:46]
C
We doing door to door sales, emotionally, it's. It's one of the hardest things you can do.
- [17:50]
B
Yeah, been there.
- [17:51]
C
We found wrestlers have the mentality, if you're a wrestler, if you're a competitive wrestler, like, you're gonna do well in sales because you've had to go through the scrutiny.
- [18:01]
B
Yeah, yeah. You put yourself through circumstances.
- [18:04]
C
I'm here by myself. It's all about me and my opponent.
- [18:07]
A
I've lived in my head for a long time. So.
- [18:09]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You live your whole, you whole life, like that kind of living it. My wife always tells me she, like, living your own little world. I was like, I know. I love my own little world.
- [18:19]
A
It's fun.
- [18:20]
B
It's fun.
- [18:22]
A
So, you know, with, with the focus of our show, Next Level Pros, Right. Like, so we always, we always talk about in our community that really there's four areas of life. There's our physical, economic, or associations in our spirituality. Right? And like, if you can break life down, everything fits into one of those categories. Whether, whether it's how we're involved in our community that's in our associations. It's education that's attached to economic, right. Like working out, eating. Right. Obviously the physique. So thinking about those, like, four areas, I'd love to hear, like, the struggles that you're going through right now because obviously you've been successful. Right? And I'm a firm believer that, like, success isn't necessarily where you're at on the chart. It's what your trajectory is.
- [19:15]
B
Yeah.
- [19:15]
A
And it was. In fact, I was, I was at church yesterday and we had this discussion because there was a guy that's like, he goes and he serves in a, in a prison where he goes and teaches these prisoners the gospel, right? And he was talking about, like, how he has, like, these really cool spiritual experiences and how these guys are like, good dudes, right? They're sitting in prison and whatnot. And like, so the discussion was like, man, how can these guys be good dudes? Right? Like, they've clearly done all these different things. And so then the discussion shifted and I kind of pushed it. I was like, look, it's like, it doesn't really matter where you're at. It's like, okay, what direction are you facing? Are you making changes? Are you, are you trajectory. Like, is your trajectory up? Are you plateaued or your trajectory down? And I, I'm a believer that, like, happiness, success, everything is all associated with an upward trajectory.
- [20:12]
B
Yeah.
- [20:13]
A
And whenever we're plateaued or going down, no matter where we're at on the scale, it's miserable.
- [20:18]
B
Yeah.
- [20:19]
A
Like, I mean, I could be worth $100 billion. And if my trajectory from a financial standpoint or productivity stand within my economics is trending down, I'm miserable.
- [20:32]
B
Right.
- [20:32]
A
Like, yeah, like that.
- [20:33]
B
100%.
- [20:34]
A
And so I guess. I guess my question is, like, where. Because obviously you're a lot higher than most people from an economic standpoint. Physically, you look great, you got a great family, all these different things. But, like, what are, what are the things that you're plateauing or maybe trajectorying down that you're trying, that you're working on right now?
- [20:54]
B
Yeah. Banking has been a big cuss for us. And you're 100% right. You hit the nail on the head because we lived through that, through the 2008 recession. And I mean, no one's feeling sorry for us. You know, when you, when you sit back and maybe your net worth was worth 25 million and now it's 10 million. No one's feeling sorry for you. Right. So. But you are. Oh, my God. Yeah. You're sitting back, you know, you're. You're feeling like. You're like, I've worked my ass off my whole life, and you're sitting back going, everything I've worked for is gone. Compromised right now. So you're, you're hard at it, you know, just to, just to keep things stabilized. And today's very similar. Right. And so I always tell people it's not. You're always going through something. You know, there's always challenges, no matter what. And right now, the banks, the banking challenges that we're facing is challenging us. And give us some details.
- [21:39]
A
What do you mean? Like, what, what challenges are you facing with the bank?
- [21:42]
B
Well, money is expensive, you know, And I know people don't. Don't really live. They hear about it and they live in there, and they think it's mortgages tied to a residential house, because that's where most people in their brains live when money is expensive, is. Is the expense of money as it relates to, like, a single family home. But they don't see the entire ecosystem that revolves around that house, and they.
- [22:02]
A
Especially don't see if they got a fixed rate that they signed up FOR and yeah, 20, 20, 21 right there, 33% right there. They're hearing about it like you said, but they're not feeling it.
- [22:13]
B
Yeah, it might be a young couple that's trying to get married that's 27 years old and they're trying to get into a house and they can't afford a $4,000 mortgage and they'd much rather have a $2,500 mortgage. And that $1,500 cusp is what's keeping them from buying a home. But then they find alternatives. Right. So people don't really see it. What we're living right now is the magnitude of the macro scale of what's happening in banking. And it's cusping for us. I mean when you have a deal that's a $70 million development and every friggin bank in the country has seen it, you know, that something's going on. Like, and literally that's the type of stuff that we're going through right now because we're building institutional assets, you know, that are hundreds of units big. And when you're going after a $50 million loan or better and you can't get money for cheaper than 11% interest, you know, it's a, you're sitting back looking at it from a debt service perspective. But it's not just the money that's expensive in the debt. Most people think, oh, it's 11%, 12%, it's 4 points over sulfur because that's how they actually assess money. Right. And then it's not just that now it goes to the, is that what.
- [23:26]
A
You'Re paying right now is four points over sofr.
- [23:28]
B
That's where a lot of banks are right now. It's not what we're paying. But to find less than that is challenging right now. Yeah, there's some that are like 6 and 7% over sulfur that people's what, 7 right now? Yeah, sulfur is like up at like 7%, you know, so we, so you sitting back and you're paying this premium for money, but that's just one component of it that people see is the high interest rates. They don't see the value perspective. So that's based on cap rates. So because anytime money is expensive. Yes. You have that debt service that puts downward pressure on you. Right. Because you're servicing more debt. So you look at it like, okay, we're going to Service an extra $1.2 million in just debt because of the increased premium of money. But now you're trying to service that debt when values just got pressed down because so you're. So now it's a scales of balance because we have this asset that one time would have been worth $80 million is now only going to be worth $50 million.
- [24:26]
A
So let's put this in like plain English for somebody that may maybe not super involved in debt or real estate or whatever else. Right. So before you had values of homes or apartment complexes or whatever it is at a very high level with interest rates low. Now you have increased interest rates and the values coming down. And so just this gap is really the value that you have in, in the business. And so it becomes increasingly more difficult to stabilize. I want to go invest $100 million in this project that's only going to be worth 120 where previously it was going to be worth 180.
- [25:08]
B
Yeah. So for people that are watching, they're trying to understand anytime the cost of money goes up, that debt has to get serviced. So values go down because the way commercial assets are assessed is based on what they produce, revenue wise and they can only produce what they can service in debt. So if the cost of money becomes more expensive and the debt service is more expensive, the cap rates and the percentage of return changes. And when that happens, the cost, the value of that asset drops substantially. So what's happened from 2020 post Covid is that from 2016 to 202021 we saw CAP rates go way down, values of properties go way, way up. And now all of a sudden 2021 hits and the cost of money gets expensive. These values go straight back down again. But the cost for, but the cost for goods and services, commodities, the cost for money, none of that stuff goes down.
- [26:04]
A
Right.
- [26:04]
B
But the values go down. So now we're hitting this value compression and this cost of everything else rising. So now we have everything else in the world going up, the values going way down. And we're still, and we're trying to find a balance between how to get these things out of the ground. So what do you, I mean, what.
- [26:21]
A
Are you guys doing right now to combat that?
- [26:24]
B
Yeah, so we've had to make some changes. So we're giving equity away. It's the first time. So when I made mention that we're giving equity instead of taking on debt, we're taking on equity partnerships. And a mentor of mine years ago had told me, you know Jerome, as long as you're taking profits, you'll never go broke. And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business people and just people in life, they get too accustomed and acclimated to the norm of what they believe the norm is and they're not willing to change and they become stubborn and change is hard for people. And if you get too stubborn, you're going to lose. Especially in a game as big as real estate and the games that we're playing with real estate right now, when I say it's a game, it's like playing Monopoly or poker or anything else. You got to be strategic in how you make your decisions because if you don't, it'll take you under. It's a big boy game.
- [27:11]
A
And so obviously there's, I mean there's a lot of risk associated with what's going on right now.
- [27:16]
B
There is, yeah.
- [27:17]
C
And so basically your margin of errors just.
- [27:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, you have, you have less, less room to make mistakes. Right.
- [27:25]
B
This is where the talented prevail.
- [27:26]
A
Right. And so how are, how are you taking that on? So obviously you said you're giving away some, some equity. Are you waiting for more opportunity like sitting on a little bit more cash or are you saying, hey, this is where the talented prevails? So I'm just going to go where everybody else is going to shrink? Like what?
- [27:45]
B
Yeah, most people are retracting out of ground up development because of the cost. We've been, it's been beneficial, the road that we've driven down over the course of time because we've self performed. So you can take a ground up developer for sake of example that doesn't know one thing about construction.
- [28:04]
A
Right.
- [28:05]
B
You can take a contractor that doesn't know one thing about development and asset management. You can take an asset management and they don't know anything about development or construction. Since we've self performed in our office, we know, we know everything from the acquisition side, the land development side to the construction. And because we self performed as our own general contractor until just recent years. And then we know the development side and then we know the asset management side because we still manage over a million square feet of our own retail that own.
- [28:36]
A
Tell me about your team. Like how big is your team? Like what, what does the structure look like?
- [28:40]
B
Yeah, so our team's small. I, I just have a few girls in the office now me. And then what we've done is we've actually are now have strategic partners. So instead of paying team members, we'll give 10% equity away to a partner that'll take care of the asset management component for us and so it's been advantageous for us because, one, I don't have to manage as many people and moving in the. Into the environment that I'm moving into. Being 50 years old, I want to be in a position where I have more freedom and flexibility, where I was willing to take that, all that on my shoulders when I was in my 20s, 30s, and even my 40s. But when I got into my 40s, I sat back and said, okay. And it comes down to family, right? Like, my wife, she goes. She was, okay. When do we get to enjoy all this? Because we've become a slave to our businesses and we're working, right? And my wife, look, all I ask for, she goes, when the kids go to college, I just. I don't want to be tied down to employees, businesses. I want to be able to have own homes wherever they go to school, wherever they live. I want to have the freedom and flexibility if we have grandkids to just go and come and not have to worry about being tied down to employees. So I started making that big pivot back when I was 43 years old.
- [29:50]
A
How old are you now?
- [29:51]
B
I'm 50.
- [29:52]
A
Okay. Wow. Look good for 50, Jerome.
- [29:55]
B
Dang, dude.
- [29:56]
A
I would have guessed 44.
- [29:58]
B
Yeah. Well, good, man. I'll take. I'll take the six years, man.
- [30:01]
A
Seven years ago, you started making this pivot to smaller team, more shared in the upside with different partners.
- [30:11]
B
So I was giving up 50% in the beginning, and now we're doing it with smaller percentages, and it was more so to leverage their teams. My whole thing was let them manage the employees, take on some sharp business partners that I trust, I liked. I've watched them grow, and let's utilize their staff. And then I take my 50% profit and I continue moving. And then. So deal flow was important because now I could scale because we had capital, we had the right partners. I didn't have a lot of staff. I was able. I have more freedom and flexibility. I'm not married to my office, and so everything's good, right? But now we're sitting back, and since money's so expensive, but we have the experience, the experience you can never get rid of. And like my mom told when I was young, she said, look, the only thing you take with you when you die is what you have up here, you know, so. So what you learn and the information. So we're able to go in and X out all of the development fees. We're not charging development fees for the developments. So that scrubs right there alone. Two and a half to 3%. We're not charging project management fees. We're self performing for free. And our whole philosophy is we'll perform for our investors. First, we don't deserve to get paid until we've performed and then we'll get paid on the back end. So we're not taking asset management fees, we're not taking project management fees, we're not taking development fees. We're basically building and developing right now for free.
- [31:35]
A
Nice.
- [31:36]
B
And until as long as we can get these assets stabilized, the benefit to us is we can cost segregate them. Since we have companies and other assets that are stabilized the cash flow and we have millions of dollars that are coming in each year in income from our other assets and what we've built over the course of time. The reason I can justify them is because once I get them out of the ground and I get them built, I can cost segregate and depreciate them. And I don't pay taxes. So that increases my bottom line by 40% on just the revenue that I'm already making by having these additional assets that I can write off. And so if that's all I get for the next three to five years, we're good, you know, and then we'll take ours on the back end because these assets will perform for us for the rest of our lives.
- [32:19]
A
Right.
- [32:19]
B
As the market changes and historically values went up. When that 50 million dollar asset becomes a 25 million dollar asset and I refinance it, I get to pull all that money out tax free. Provided that our legislation and what we're going economically goes in the direction that we were at and it continues going where we need it.
- [32:39]
A
Speaking of which, when was the last time you paid taxes?
- [32:42]
B
I don't pay tax. Federal income tax. I mean, I pay taxes. Property taxes. Sure, sure.
- [32:46]
A
Obviously there's, there's all the other taxes, but I'm talking income tax. I'm assuming you don't pay anything.
- [32:52]
B
I haven't paid income taxes since 2018.
- [32:54]
A
It's awesome.
- [32:55]
B
No federal income taxes. Yeah.
- [32:56]
A
I mean, and to really understand that if you're, if you're a viewer, it's not that this guy's evading taxes. Like he's got these tax shelters that are created through real estate. I mean, real estate is one of the greatest ways to avoid income tax in the history.
- [33:11]
C
You pay more property tax. Right. So you're still paying taxes.
- [33:14]
B
Yeah. You're paying a lot.
- [33:15]
A
Well, the, the hope, the hope is that you're not paying Those that your tenants, your tenants are paying your property tax. Right. For you. So you know, you're cash flowing these assets, but then you're getting the depreciation, writing off, you know, these huge. And then you're doing cost segregation, which.
- [33:30]
B
Is, yeah, you know, all that stuff and all the taxes. You know what I still. And I'll tell. This is where we lose half the viewers. They'll be pissed because that's like that whole thing where Trump wouldn't disclose his taxes is that I still. This tickles me. Because we were paying about 1500 bucks a month for health insurance for our family.
- [33:47]
A
Right.
- [33:47]
B
To have good health insurance for the family. We pay $50 a month because we're low income. Because our net taxable income is so low. We're, we're at poverty level and so, so court. So we get like $50 a month. We have the best insurance we've ever had. 50 bucks a month. I don't even know what it is. My wife deals with all that. But all I know is that I didn't have vision. I have vision insurance now. I didn't have dental and now I have dental, you know. And so like all the insurance that we didn't have and we're paying a premium for our health insurance now we have being low income, you know. And so like how can that be?
- [34:20]
A
Oh man, you're gonna get some ticked off people.
- [34:22]
B
They're like, that's what we lose half the viewers, man.
- [34:27]
C
Especially health insurance, man. That's a, that's a. Dude, Health insurance.
- [34:30]
A
Is such a, such a hoax, man. Oh my gosh. So I'm type one diabetic and like. Yeah, dude, the whole insurance and health. So for years I used to have to go down. So I've always done like self performing insurance, whether it's like a Christian healthcare ministries or something like where you have to pay cash for like some of your prescriptions.
- [34:52]
B
Yeah.
- [34:52]
A
And, and because I've always been self employed and so for years I used to go to Mexico and stock up on my insulin.
- [35:02]
B
Yeah.
- [35:02]
A
Because I could go get the same exact insulin bottle, same manufacturer, Lily manufacturer. I can go pay 20 to 30 bucks a bottle down there. Meanwhile, up here in the United states, it was $350.
- [35:16]
B
Crazy 350. That's the stuff that in fact, I think Mark Cuban just bought a pharmaceutical company and he's in the process right now of, of doing that exact same thing because it's such a. I was in pharmacy school when I was in college and I went all the Way through pharmacy school. And we'd get these medical journals when I was in college. And 100% of everything that we learned wasn't out of a textbook. I was. It was out of, like, the New England Journal of Medicine or. And everything was revolved around the. Because the pharmaceuticals companies fund our medical programs. Most people don't know that.
- [35:46]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [35:47]
B
And so it's. So anyways, I'm not going to run down that.
- [35:50]
A
Oh, no, this is a fun. It's a fun rabbit hole.
- [35:52]
B
Yeah. It's like. It's crazy, man. And I recognized it when I was in college 32 years ago. And I remember sitting back and we were teaching. They were teaching us. I had this one class that they taught us how to take 10 abstract articles out of these and dissect them to see if they were good research articles and if they were relevant or if they were biased and who was funding them and everything. So I learned how to read that stuff back years ago. And so I look at that stuff now, and it's amazing to me where it was then, where it's evolved to now, and the bullshit that exists in the medical system today. It's crazy.
- [36:26]
A
It's nuts. It is. It is wild and frankly, like, difficult if you're in the medical space because, like, you have this weird dichotomy of, I'm in healthcare to be able to help people, yet if I cure them, I will lose my patient or my customer. Right.
- [36:47]
C
Or it's. There's a. There's a better option, but it doesn't. I don't make any money.
- [36:51]
A
I don't make any money. Yeah, exactly. So it's the weirdest thing, right? Like, you have this profession with this, like, hey, like, I've always talked about this. Like, there's no incentive to cure diabetes, right?
- [37:03]
B
Like, like getting cancer or cancer.
- [37:05]
A
Right. Like, these are two huge money makers. Like, like, all the. All the things that you can keep somebody alive for a very long time. Getting medication don't cure that. Like, and so. And that's where, like, dude, it's so. It's so hard because I don't think there's a political party that has the right solution.
- [37:27]
C
What's interesting, though, for the first time, like, I know RFK just dropped out, but, like, he's talking about, like, going after the FDA and.
- [37:35]
B
Yeah.
- [37:36]
C
And the medical.
- [37:37]
B
And they need to, you know, that, like, if you. You guys travel out of the country sometimes.
- [37:40]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [37:41]
B
Yeah. So you ever notice, like, your body, the way it reacts when you eat? Like, real Food in other countries, so much better. Like, I mean, like, you go to Japan and like, even this, the sashimi and the sushi, everything that you have out there is so much more pronounced because it doesn't have all of the. It doesn't have all the sodium and preservatives and stuff that we have here in the United States. Our Food and Drug Administration is killing us, killing us, because we're literally eating preservatives and it's going into our bodies and we're eating all that, those toxins, right? Like, I go down to Mexico and some of it might be the food from Mexico, but I think our stomachs get jacked because everything out there is just truly organic. Like, they're not using pesticides.
- [38:20]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [38:21]
B
You know, you go to these other countries and you're detoxing from all the garbage that we're eating here in the United States because none of these countries have the FDA and none of them have the preservatives or anything that we do here in the United States. It's crazy.
- [38:34]
A
One of the things I always say is, like, my type 1 diabetes is actually like kind of one of my superpowers because I get to do. I'm a real life science project wherever I go, right? I can see how things impact my blood sugar, right? Like, does this spike my blood sugar? Does it not, Right? And so, like, I'm always testing these type of theories, right? So, like, in the United States, I try to stay away from bread and white flour and everything else, but, dude, I can go over to France, I can have bread or pizza or any, anything else over there. And guess what? It doesn't have the same impact that it does here in the United States. Why exactly?
- [39:11]
C
Because there's a, there's a, there's a race where he does motocross and he's from Australia and he started racing the United States. So he came over within. I want to say he's like within the first year of being here. Type 2 diabetes.
- [39:23]
A
What?
- [39:23]
C
And this is a guy who's like, fit is top of the dude.
- [39:28]
B
It's.
- [39:29]
A
It really is wild. Like the things that we subject our bodies to in the United States. Another real life experience. So my parents, they went and served a mission for our church in Sri Lanka. They were there for a year and a half. And over in Sri Lanka, to your point, like, everything's organic, right? Rice, beans, fish, like all, all this stuff. And my dad continued to have the same appetite. So my dad weighed probably when he went over to Sri Lanka probably 260, 270. Big guy, right? Six, two stout, got a little bit of a gut. Whatever, dude. He dropped 60 pounds over there eating the same way that he did in the United States from like a, just the amount of. But yeah, because it was organic, because it was this, this lack of process.
- [40:17]
B
Holding on to all that stuff. It's all the preserves. Our bodies hold all that stuff.
- [40:21]
A
They preserve it.
- [40:22]
B
Yeah, preserves it in you, you know.
- [40:25]
C
So let me ask you, you're pretty fit, you're very healthy looking. What, what do you do to like, like what's your, yeah.
- [40:31]
A
What's your regimen that. That's getting you through that has changed.
- [40:34]
B
Over the course of time? My wife's like, God, we're late everywhere because of you. I, My life's changed. I've changed my regimen with my life. I've grown, I'm growing into my age.
- [40:45]
A
Right.
- [40:45]
B
So I'm not as limber as I once was. I, it seems like my whole life revolves around like this, this like religious regimen that I do or according to my kids and my wife, they're like, oh my God, dad, stretching again. And I'm just, I've been an athlete my whole life and so I love extreme sports. You know, I still want to be out there on my snowboard and I still want to be out there on ATVs and I want to be doing the stuff that I've always done and I don't want limitations on it. Although we have to acclimate to it. So like now when I wake up in the mornings, my IT bands are tight and stuff I have before I even get out of bed because of my plantar fasciitis and everything else. As you get older and being an athlete, you beat your body up.
- [41:23]
A
Yup.
- [41:23]
B
Before I roll out of bed, I do all these religious stretches in my bed and then I get out. And when I wake up every morning I do about a 20 minute stretching regimen that before I leave the house because I don't feel human until I do this stretching regimen. So I do like part yoga, all stretching where I stretch my back, my legs, my hamstrings, I roll my spine and then I do 150 push ups every single morning, seven days a week. Never let loose on it. If I'm in a huge rush, I'm missing a flight or something, I'll at least do one and then I'll do the other. I'll do one set of 50 and I'll go to the airport and do another 100 at the airport, you know, wherever. And the biggest thing is for people is that when you do it, you can't. There's no excuse for not doing right. So everything that I do in my life, I do as a completion. Like, and I don't feel satisfied in the day until I know that I did it. So it doesn't even matter, like if I do it in the middle of the night or if I. But if I tell myself I do 150 a day, you have to do them every day. And so I just like getting it out of the way, my push ups in the morning and just being done. So nine.
- [42:25]
A
So you're 150 push ups every day.
- [42:27]
B
Every morning, three sets of 50. Before I even leave the house.
- [42:29]
A
Before you even leave the house. And if you don't get that done, you get it done throughout the day.
- [42:33]
B
I get it done throughout the day, but 95% of the time or better, I get it done in the morning.
- [42:38]
A
Are you a daily weight room guy or just.
- [42:40]
B
Yeah, four days a week I hit the other weight. So I go to the gym four days a week. And that was one thing. Even when my, when my wife and I started dating, when I was in my late 20s and she was in her early 20s, I told her, look, there's this one thing I ask and that's my gym time. Give me an hour every day. I'll never compromise that for kids, for nobody. And it's, you have to give yourself that time every day because it makes you better.
- [43:03]
A
Absolutely.
- [43:03]
B
Makes you feel better. You know, it's like you're a better dad, you're a better husband. When I don't get hit the gym and I don't get my gym time in, I think it does something to you mentally. So you're a little bit more of a train wreck in regards to how cranky you are. You're more irritable, less patient, you know, because in the back of the mind it weighs on you. And if you accept that.
- [43:22]
A
Yep.
- [43:22]
B
It takes away from everything else.
- [43:24]
A
I couldn't agree more.
- [43:25]
B
I just never accepted the fact that I can't do it. So four days a week and I do cardio every night. I do 25 minutes of cardio every night.
- [43:34]
A
Are we talking like runs, walks, just fast paced walks.
- [43:38]
B
I did it when I was competing in bodybuilding after I finished wrestling in college. It was a way I'd stay lean. It's how I trimmed down before competition. I would do a 25 minute fast paced walk in the morning. And 25 minutes in the evening. And so I added that to my agenda because obviously as you get older, gravity takes its pace and you know, and your metazoline does tend to slow down a little bit. So in lieu of just staying lean, I just that that 25 minutes every night is really a disciplinary action to stay lean more so than anything. So every single night after my wife does. Most of the time, my wife does it with me. She's not as disciplined with it, but it's not her thing. It's my thing. So I kind of drag her along with me. So anything that she does just adds to what she already does too.
- [44:19]
A
Yeah.
- [44:20]
B
And. But my kids see me do it. Right. So we got like one of those swim spas at the house. And I did it because sometimes just riding the bike gets boring. And so I'll jump. It's a one day.
- [44:30]
A
So are you saying one of those wave pools that you swim against it type deal?
- [44:33]
B
Yeah. It's not strong enough, man. So like my wife's like, she goes, she goes, you're too intense for absolutely everything that you do. She's like, you can't even use a wave runner. That's like, that's what it's built for, is for sports and athletes. I go, I know, but I keep pounding my head against the top of the swim too fast because I'm swimming too hard. Because everything you do, you do too much intensity. And she goes. So I have to. So they have these bands, so I hold on to these bands and I do it off the bands when I do it at night. So I'll do that or I'll ride the bike and we have a full gym at home. Or I'll just do a fast paced walk. Like last night it was gorgeous. I was, I was right down the road here and I was right over the.
- [45:09]
A
Did you stay at the lodge?
- [45:10]
B
Yeah, I stay at the lodge. They have that walking trail.
- [45:12]
A
Yeah, it's nice.
- [45:12]
B
So I just go and do my 20. I did it. And yeah, I actually walked like 35 minutes. I walked all the way outside of the area, just outside of where all the housing is. I walked all the way back past the golf course and then back to where the loading docks were. And that whole walk back and forth was like 30 some odd minutes and just a fast paced walk. It's just, it's just really just a disciplinary thing to stay lean more than anything. So that's really my.
- [45:35]
A
So obviously like diet and supplements and everything else are dialed in like so, you know, guys I'm 40. You're 50, right. We start slowing down in testosterone and everything else. What are you doing as far as, like, trt blood work. Like, what?
- [45:54]
B
So I do blood work once a year. I should be doing it every six months. That's why I should be doing it at least every six months. But we. And I will probe, like, for testosterone now. I'm not taking any supplements. I'm a little bit apprehensive to take testosterone replacement. And my testosterone level was always super high. It's a little bit lower compared to be. But it's not low. It's not low. And I try to just do it through food. You know, there's certain foods that increased estrogen.
- [46:20]
A
So you've been able to do it without trt?
- [46:22]
B
Yes, I've been able to do it, yeah. So I'm just like, that's pretty.
- [46:25]
A
That's pretty uncommon, right? Like, most people have to have something. I know Darrell hasn't had to. I've had to, you know, do TRT just because my testosterone has been so low, like, and, like, battling diabetes and everything else.
- [46:39]
B
That might be why, for you. So I've been lucky in that regard. And what happens. I took blood two years ago, and they said that my testosterone level was slightly low. And I looked into supplements, and then I talked to a buddy of mine who's a physician who had been on it, and he goes, once you're on it, you're almost dependent on staying on it for the rest of your life because your body loses its ability to naturally produce testosterone. So I talked to multiple kinesiologists and people that are dealing with natural homeopathic ways, and they said, you know, your sex drive, if you have sex more, if you eat certain foods, it increases your testosterone level. So you just try to practice things that will increase your testosterone level. And it does. Take some research. And it's like anything in life, anything that if it holds any value to you, you just have to take the time to learn it. And so I've just taken the time to learn, okay, what foods. There's certain nuts that I shouldn't eat that increase estrogen and decrease testosterone. Don't eat that. There's certain nuts like almonds that are really good. They help increase and promote testosterone. Certain vegetables and same thing. Mixing. I didn't know this, but if you mix vegetables. And the reason I learned this is because I got on these big juicing craze where I was like, okay, I'm gonna start juicing. And then my stomach was Jacked, bro. Like, I was going in and my.
- [47:54]
A
Stomach had so many different things going on.
- [47:55]
B
Oh, bro. I didn't realize that all these mixtures, mixtures of vegetables, create gas in your stomach. And I was sitting back going, holy shit, man. My stomach's jacked. So I ended up finding out that spinach and some of these other greens, if you mix them, they create gaso. Now I went down to single vegetables. And if you eat single vegetables at a given time mixed with some fruit, it increases your testosterone level. But you can't mix them. There's just certain ways. It's just like what you do with diabetes. There's a science behind it, right. And you just have to be consciously aware of what you're doing, how you eat it, what you eat, what you scrape off the plate when the. At the restaurant, when they bring it out, and what you set aside, you know, your little pile of whatever it is on the side of your plate, and you just don't eat it, right?
- [48:39]
A
Yeah.
- [48:40]
B
So a lot of it just takes self discipline and management. But it's really. If you listen to how I do that, it's kind of like how I do everything in life, Right. You know?
- [48:49]
A
So do you. Do you have any weaknesses when it comes to your diet? Like, are there times that you're just like, hey, man, I'm going off course for a week on a cruise or whatever else?
- [48:56]
B
Like, yeah. You know what's cool about being disciplined? Every other area, I almost eat wherever, whatever I want. Like, I don't eat a lot of sugar. So, like, I don't eat sweets. I. You know, my wife and I go out, and my wife loves creme brulee. So if we get a restaurant, they have, like, the old school, regular burnt sugar creme brulee on the top of it. We'll eat it, right? If it's a Saturday night, we go to dinner alone and we want to have a cup of coffee, we don't. We're not big coffee. Well, she drinks coffee. I'm not a big coffee drinker, but having a nice cup of coffee that I turn into a dessert with all the extra cream and sugar, I'll have it, right. I don't feel guilty about it because I do everything else right the rest of the time. But I don't refrain from pizza, and I don't. What about alcohol?
- [49:34]
A
Are you an alcohol drinker?
- [49:36]
B
I'm not an alcohol drinker. We'll drink a glass of wine when we go out to eat, but I don't drink any alcohol. Beer, mixed drinks, the sugar and all that stuff, I just never did when I was younger, and I got into a great disciplinary. And now that I don't even like them, like, I have a hard time finding a drink that I really even like. And so to my benefit, nothing, really. I don't crave any of that stuff.
- [49:59]
A
That's good.
- [50:00]
B
So. But I'll have a glass of wine at dinner, you know, every day, or. No, no, just. We'll go out, like, on Saturday night or something, my wife and I. Yeah. You know, we'll have a glass of wine.
- [50:09]
C
You bring up your wife a lot. Yeah. What do you do for. To preserve and improve that relationship?
- [50:15]
A
Yeah. Like, we're. When. When we talk about trajectorying up, plateauing or trajectorying down. Where you at with. With your wife right now?
- [50:22]
B
We're good, man. I love.
- [50:23]
A
My. Mine changes every week, so.
- [50:25]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. I mean, and it does. You know, we went through all of that. You know, I mean, we've. We've been together for 28 years. We've been married for 18 of those. This coming two weeks from now is our anniversary, so it'll be 18 years and two weeks. And so we've had a long course of growing up together. And I played hard when I was young, you know, I was doing on my entrepreneurial journey four years before I even met her, to my benefit, because those are my real hard, struggling years. And we've ridden the roller coaster like all couples do. The man riding the ego, feeling that force against each other, feeling like if you let in that you're giving up your manlihood and you learn, like, what I've learned, and I don't know if everybody learns this is that my wife's not against me, man. Like, I've just learned over the years, like, because there's, like, this pride thing, I think, that we have as men that, like, if we let it let up on the control that we're letting up on, like, our manhood. I don't know if you guys have ever experienced that, where you don't even think you're doing it, but you're doing it. You know, I've kind of just let that go. I understand that my wife has a lot more authority in the house than I do, and I've accepted that with the kids. They just. Like, when dad puts his foot down with the kids, the kids know, right? Like, when I need to put my foot down, like, they know. And that's like the. That's like the last straw. But my kids don't listen to me. They don't. It's like they, I talk, I, I tell them something, then they go ask mom and I'm like, like chopped liver, you know? Like what, like what the heck, you know? And, and you just learn, you know, it's just like mom's with them, man. Like Mom's been there. Like they just, they're going to go to mom because mom's been there with them, homeschooling them, and she's been the disciplinarian and dad's the fun guy that comes home at the end of the day that plays with them. Right. And so they don't take dad as serious as they do until dad puts his foot down. So dad is the hard disciplinarian, but mom is really the boss in the house. Right? And as a man, I've just, I've learned that, you know, what are two.
- [52:20]
A
Best practices you're doing right now to preserve that relationship? Relationship or not preserve, but even better, it, yeah.
- [52:27]
B
Just respect each other. There's, there's things you learn not to do through your relationship that you just know. Really irksome.
- [52:35]
A
And examples. Give us examples.
- [52:37]
B
Yeah, so. So like for example, like with my wife, she chose. We had a dance school she ran. I opened up for the physician. The physician she worked for passed away when we were real young and she loved that job and it was, it was the only job she ever had. And then I said, well, don't get a job. I'm an entrepreneur, right? Like, what do you want to do? She goes, I want to open up a dance school. I was like, okay, cool. So we had buildings. I opened up her dance school, we had 11 year run with it. Very successful, hundreds of students. And when my son was born, it was great because I'd go down and I'd pick him up from the car seat, I'd go play with him. And when he was just a toddler and she'd do her dance school, then she'd come home. Then when my daughter was born, it became more challenging. I, I said, okay, we're working. The recession had hit and I'm going, okay, we're never going to see each other as a family. We got to make a decision. Do you want the dance school or do you not want it? So we shut, decided to shut that thing down. She felt she lost her sense of identity because she's like a stay at home mom now. And she went to college, she had all these accolades and there's a piece of them that they feel like They've given up to raise this family, and they feel like almost like there's a level of. Of non worth that they. That they have that they don't have. There's no worth that they bring. And I'm like, no, you bring a lot of worth. You're a mother. And if a man doesn't respect the fact of what they're doing. I've learned this because we've all said stupid things at the wrong time. All of us, every single. There's not a man out there that hasn't. Right? And so. And I was guilty of doing that all the time. And I just learned to respect the fact that what she does is admirable, because I couldn't do it, you know, not to the level I do it if I had to, because I would do anything if God put me in that position. But to the level and the. And as well as she does it, I can't do it. And so you have to allow yourself to humble yourself in the house and also praise them and thank them. And it's just the small stuff. And it's just like. Even, like, I noticed the trash is a big deal. She'll let the trash just fill up and she'll wait me to do, and I'll get home. And I used to get upset. I'd be like, damn, man, I'm working all day. You guys can't empty a damn trash can, right? The dishwashers. We have two dishwashers.
- [54:42]
A
Absolute worst thing you could ever say.
- [54:44]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [54:44]
B
Like, you get home, there's two dishwashers, and sometimes I'll just take note of them, right? I'll be like, I'll open them in the morning to clean up the kitchen, and they're both full. But I got a meeting. I got to run out, and. And I'm like, okay, I'll just leave them slightly opened every once in a while, put a little stick. You know, it says empty dishwasher, and put it on there. Like, can you open your damn dishwasher? Right? But you just learned that if you get home and that dishwasher isn't empty, you just shut up. You don't say anything you don't like. And inside it's boiling your blood. Like, I'm not going. Damn, I just had a hell of a day. But you can't come home, and you can't say that because you don't know what their day was like. And you can't come home and puke on them either. And I've learned that the hard way as well. These are all just like, little life tips that when you have a hard day, you can go to dinner and talk about your day, but if you come home and you puke on your wife about all the crap that you've had during the day, she's peeling all that stuff off, and you haven't even considered what they've went through on that day, you know? And so I've just learned to hold on to all of what I go through until the timing is right to talk about it and embrace a little bit more and consider a little bit more of what she's gone through to help make our relationship better. And I'm not perfect at this, man. Like I'm saying, I'm talking about.
- [55:58]
A
Oh, for sure. I mean, this is all a work in progress.
- [56:01]
B
Oh, man. It's a. It's a life lifetime. You'll sit back and one day you just do it on action, like, damn, I shouldn't have done that. Right. And so it's all a work in progress. But I think it's just that. And she recognizes that I do that more now than I used to. And so when. So we might get in a little quarrel about something, but because she recognizes it, those quarrels are few and far from, and they don't last as long as they used to because she knows that I get it. So. Because I'll sit back and go, yeah. She goes, you're cranky last night. Don't even talk to me. And I'll be like. And I'll be like, yeah, you know, I was. You know, sorry. You know, that was all. That was 100% me. And it's just taking accountability for your actions.
- [56:38]
C
Yeah.
- [56:38]
B
Recognizing it and not being forceful that you're right and they're wrong. And because it's like, what's your goal? Right? Like, is your goal to be right and to have the superpower over your wife? Or is your goal to have, like, this healthy home? And, like, what. What are you displaying to your kids? Because we've all done dumb shit in front of our kids, you know, that we are less than proud of. Right. It's like. And you sit back, go, damn, I really screwed that up. And so you sit back and go, okay, like, how do I want my kids to walk away from this? You know? And what kind of examples do I want?
- [57:06]
A
You have two kids.
- [57:07]
B
Yep. Yeah, I have two.
- [57:08]
A
That's right.
- [57:09]
B
So a little bit of all that, man. But it's all just a work in progress, like everything else that we do. Every day.
- [57:14]
C
Yeah.
- [57:14]
A
You know, so, dude, it's. Yeah, the. It's a. It's a lifelong battle in. In a good direction. Right.
- [57:24]
B
Like. Yeah.
- [57:24]
A
Like, how to. And it's really, like an internal battle of, like, how do I just overcome myself and not be an idiot and, you know, put my foot in my mouth every once in a while.
- [57:35]
C
I think what's interesting is. Same as health, right? Let's, like, we don't talk enough about. About, like, what are we doing and where are we learning and where we're growing? Because everyone in a relationship deals with the struggle of, you know, social media wouldn't.
- [57:50]
A
Social media would make us believe that everyone's got to figure it out, right? From fitness, from relationships. You see a good relationship, you're like, that's perfect all the time. Yeah, right. It's not.
- [58:01]
C
I mean, you're. Think about. Your health is always changing as you age. Right.
- [58:04]
B
Things change constantly.
- [58:05]
C
Your relationships are always changing as.
- [58:07]
B
Yeah.
- [58:08]
C
Constantly change financial. So you're always. Yeah. So you're always learning new things, and you always have to learn new things in order to, like, optimize it.
- [58:16]
B
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And that's, I think, recognizing that. I think people get stubborn in that. And it's like. Like, I had a buddy who. He's single. He's gonna die single. I think he just. I'm looking for a woman that. I'm an entrepreneur. You have to think like an entrepreneur. My wife doesn't think like an entrepreneur. She does organically because she's been with me for so long. But if I died and you made my wife be an entrepreneur, oh, my God. You know, she doesn't understand this game. Right. Like, she still, you know, there's like, this level of where she came from, and she's never really had the hard push like I've had to do my whole life. I just love and adore her for who she is.
- [58:52]
A
Right.
- [58:52]
B
Like, I don't need her to be an entrepreneur if she supports me, but I've never also put her in a position where we've had a worry or we've starved, either.
- [58:59]
C
Yeah.
- [58:59]
B
Some of these entrepreneurs, man, they put them. Their wives in a position where they're broke, their families, their kids, and they want their wives to support them. Well, if you want your wife to support you, you can get off your ass and you can make something happen, man. I don't know any wife that would support anybody if you. If you. If you don't have a roof over your head and food on the table.
- [59:14]
A
For sure. You know, So I think a good question for you because it's similar to like us, like Pasco, Washington, not the ideal place for like entrepreneurs. Albuquerque, New Mexico, not usually considered on the map for like the big entrepreneurial city. Why do you live in Albuquerque? Why haven't you guys relocated? Like tell us about that.
- [59:36]
B
Yeah, it's all family stuff. My wife's family's there, My family's there too, but my wife's family, we're really close to them and I just couldn't. My in laws help us out tremendously and they, they're a big part of our lives and so I couldn't imagine pulling both my kids and them. I grew up there and then I left. I left when I was in college and I was gone for five and a half years. And then I came back, literally just came back to finish my last year of my degree. Because after I was in Multilevel Marketing 97, the FTC shut us down. And I was like, okay, if I'm gonna finish my degree, this is the time. And I looked at like UT Austin. Cause I was living San Antonio and Austin looked at UTSA and it was going to take like three years where I could just go back and in two semesters finish my degree. And so I went back and I was moonlighting back and forth, flying back and forth every week to Austin and Albuquerque, flying back and forth.
- [60:32]
A
And I was a direct flight.
- [60:34]
B
Yeah. Oh yeah. We were living like the multi level marketing. Like you flew first class and you get direct flights and you know, you still have that, that little, that little ego of sales confidence that you, that you do when you're, when you're in sales and you're doing it. So yeah, direct flights, first class. Even if you're broke, you're still trying to, you're still right. And so we, yeah, I was flying back every single week and, and my wife was in college at the time and we knew each other some mutual friends when she was younger and that's where we met. And then, and I was like, I kept telling, okay, I'm just going to be here for six more months. Six more months and I'm out of here. I'm still there.
- [61:12]
A
So, so I mean what, what is it about Albuquerque that obviously family is there for me? I love like going to other cities doing the work and then coming home and like having like just this place of refuge that's like completely separate from the rest of the world.
- [61:28]
B
It is for me too. And I think because like I don't Like, I wasn't doing a lot of work there, and all my work was, like, in Phoenix and other areas. Now I got some developments that are going in there for the first time in a long time. But I won't do social media stuff there. I won't host meetups there. I won't do any type of trainings there. I won't do anything there, because when I go to a restaurant, I just want to be Jerome. I just want to be dad when I. I don't want someone coming up to me and asking me questions when I'm at home about it. And so I've kind of withdrawn. People say, why don't you do a meetup in Albuquerque? I'm like, that's my home, man. This is like, I just want to keep it separate. Yeah, just keep it separate. I'll travel for the day, come back, and I'll do what I need to do elsewhere. And I come back, and I just want to be dad and Jerome, you know, I just want to live my life and do it. So it's been good. It's a great place to raise a family. Right? It's like this. It's. It's pretty. A lot of hiking, a lot of outdoor stuff. If you're an outdoor person, It's. It's a gorgeous place to live.
- [62:20]
A
Nice. What. What's present for you right now? Like, what is. So obviously banking and all this stuff. Like, but personally, like, if you were like, okay, these are the things that I'm really working on being better at overcoming or whatnot, or some things that I sometimes struggle with. Like, what. What are those for? Right. You right now, Jerome, at 50 years old.
- [62:42]
B
Yeah. Time freeing up my time. I think I'm still struggling with that. Anytime that economics work against me, I land up finding myself work, work hard again. It's always been my struggle. I'm just a workhorse in just so.
- [62:56]
A
Like, yeah, give us. Give us more detail. When you say time, is it because, like, you're spending too much time working and not enough with your family? Like, what?
- [63:02]
B
I do a decent job with that. I think just personally, you know, health wise, because I worry about also being 50 years old. I have friends that have passed on, like my attorney. When my asset protection attorney passed on at 49 years old from a massive heart, he literally worked himself to death, you know, and so I don't want to work this hard and then die of a massive heart attack either. Right. So I think I do. I do good balancing family for the most part. You Know, like I won't miss my kids games. I'll schedule like this whole trip right now coming down here, it's easier for me to travel on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but it doesn't work right with my son's football and everything else. Like that's important for me to be there. So I'll come on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, in much of an inconvenience as it is. So I do good with trying to balance that stuff. It's my own. And because I think sometimes I'm doing, I'm balancing for everybody else, sometimes it compromises, compromises my own well being because I'm doing it for everybody else, trying to balance, find balance in other positions in my life. So what I struggle with probably the most right now is saying, okay, enough's enough, Jerome. Like that customer can wait till for another day to get that proposal, or if they can't, then you're fine, you let it go, you know, so finding like where that balance is to say, okay, enough's enough and just let that piece go and being okay with letting that one piece go for your own personal.
- [64:22]
A
So do you find yourself struggling saying, no.
- [64:27]
B
I think that, you know, when you struggle in business and you come from nothing, there's like this piece of you, like it's almost like guilt that you live with where if you don't produce, you almost have this level of guilt that weighs over your shoulders that you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing to satisfy where you're going or where you, you're at. Right. In business specifically. So you feel like this level of guilt because the business is weighed on your shoulder and if you don't get it done and if you're not there and if you're not, that whole thing about being in the office first and being in the office, dude, it's. Yeah, I screw all that, like that stuff, like down the drain, man. Like that stuff. I've just learned, dude, I'm gonna pride myself for being at home till 11 o'clock. Thank you. You know, like you guys go to the office. I've had those days. I've done it, I've done that grind. I'm not, you know, will not catch me in the office at 6:00 in the morning and 7:00 in the morning. The days like my kids come home from, like my son comes home from 2A days or he. And it's, he's. He's out of the house at 6:00am and back home at 10, 10:00 in the summer. He's like, dad, you're still home. What are you doing at home? I'm like, hey, how you doing? Give me a hug. Come here. Give me up. I'm proud that I'm home today. So that kind of stuff, like, letting that kind of stuff go where, you know, you can be just as productive where you are and finding that balance where I can be more at home as opposed to pushing, like, at the office. So my. But it's. That comes with maturity. It comes with. You earn that too. There's a level of that that you earn. So, like, for. Entrepreneurs are looking right now, and if you need to be in the office and you're on and you're in. You're in build mode, you can't do what I'm doing.
- [65:56]
A
Right.
- [65:57]
B
I mean, I've. I've done that grind for 30 years, you know, so there's a. There's a flip to it too. Now I'm on the opposite side going, okay, I've done it. I'm here. I am at a different level than a lot of people now. I need to learn how to come off the grind level and learn how to enjoy what I've built. And that's hard. Sometimes it's harder than the grind.
- [66:18]
A
So what's. What's on the horizon? Like, what is the thing that you are working towards? Just, like the big, hairy, audacious goal that would be like, I did it.
- [66:29]
B
Yeah. The whole goal that my wife set for us, and that's just having that freedom and flexibility that, like, when my son graduates in two years and my daughter graduates in five years, that I'm successful doing the plan that the only thing that my wife has asked me for, the only thing, because my wife is simple, you know, she's not out spending money and buying Gucci and Louis Vuitton, man. That's not my wife. You know, she's happy. You know, she's just. She's just simple, you know, she's happy. God bless her heart. She's. I've never had to worry about any of that stuff. But if I can't fulfill that, I feel like all this, like, why did I do all this? I failed my wife, my family. Like, I can't be there for my kids. I'm buried. I buried myself in a. In a job, in a profession that I'm sunk.
- [67:13]
C
You know, you brought up, like, your lawyer dying at 49. You know, I think that's really. That's really important to realize. Like, we don't know how many days we have left on this earth. And so many times, like, we find ourselves stuck in the mindset of, like, someday, one day I'll get there. And, yeah, I constantly get reminded of, like, today's the day. Today's the day to enjoy, have the best day of your life. And one of the recent mind shifts I'd have is, it doesn't get better than this.
- [67:45]
B
Yeah.
- [67:46]
C
Like, you're living in the best moment you could possibly live.
- [67:48]
B
Yeah.
- [67:49]
C
Because tomorrow doesn't exist yet and in the past is gone. So, like, live the best moment today because this is the best it gets.
- [67:56]
B
Yep.
- [67:57]
C
And me and my wife were talking about that, and it's like, we got to change your, you know, change your mindset. Like, I absolutely love every stage my girls are in. I absolutely love where my relationship with my wife and where we're going. It's like, find gratitude and enjoying absolutely everything.
- [68:12]
B
Because everything, man, every stage, man, every stage is good with the kids. And yeah, we. Because I sometimes in moments I think I'm like, damn, I only got, like. I'm counting how many football games I'm going to this year, next year. And, and, And God willing, he stays healthy, he can play in college, but it's like, he's got to enjoy every phase, man. You know, like, we're doing the tailgating things on Friday and like, last week was our first tailgate. We did it all wrong. And so next week I'm like, okay, I'm pulling out the grill. We're doing this, you know, and it's like, okay, it's like, it's like preparing for that stuff to make that stuff more. More successful, more enjoyable.
- [68:43]
C
Something. So last year, I. My wife, or my. My oldest daughter was in travel volleyball. And I have to say, like, didn't enjoy, let's put it nice. I didn't enjoy the volleyball aspect of it. But the time I had alone with my daughter was priceless.
- [69:00]
B
Oh, my God.
- [69:00]
C
Conversations we had were like conversations I don't think I could have ever recreated.
- [69:05]
B
We did that with gymnastics. My kids were in different states every weekend during gymnastics seasons. And so we would take turns. My daughter kind of X me out because I can't do her freaking hair right, man. So she's like, dad, dad, you're not allowed to come to me no more because you don't know how to do hair. She got just old enough to. The hair thing was like, a big deal. And so now my wife is the only one that's allowed. I'm welcome to Tag along. But dad can't travel with her alone because dad doesn't know how to do hair. So I don't know when that's going to end. But we would literally switch, like if my daughter was in Anaheim and my son had to go to Oklahoma City or if we were in Florida and the other one was in Wyoming or wherever every weekend we were traveling and when they were both competing. And so we'd get these weekends alone with each of them. And then sometimes. And then sometimes we fly. Like if she competed on a Friday and my son competed on a Saturday, my wife would fly all the way across with my daughter to be back at the other one and just did that, you know, and those times are priceless. So we miss that. Like, my wife and I, now that they're both not in gymnastics, you miss that.
- [70:05]
A
You miss that much travel, you know?
- [70:06]
B
You know, you sit back and my. So let me tell you guys this joke, okay? So my friend Bill, So not my friend, my mentor.
- [70:14]
A
Bill.
- [70:14]
B
Bill. Bill was one of my mentors. And he goes. And we used to do these briefings for like, our multi level marketing company. And he goes, he goes, you go up to. You go to. You die. You go to St. Peter and you get to the pearly gates of heaven. And. And St. Peter goes, hey, welcome to heaven, you know, and he goes, he goes, you have a choice. You can either go to heaven or hell. And there's this big giant elevator. And so you go up to the elevator and you're like, well, you know, I've always kind of been a man of choice, you know, I mean, I know the heavens, like, you know, I just want to make sure that I have all my options right? And it's getting painted out the way heaven and hell really is, you know, like, can I go up and see both? And so St. Peter goes, yeah, you know, why not? You know? So he gets in the elevator and he hits hell on there. And the elevator drops. It goes down to the fiery flames of hell, man. The doors open up and there's just people partying, flames going. It's like a party's going on. People are on tables and there's beautiful women and everything's just. Just crazy. And yeah, it's hot, but flames are going. And then he goes, all right, it's time to go boom. He hits the elevator. Elevator. And he goes, let's go up to heaven. Let's see what heaven's like. And he goes, he hits the elevator. It goes all the way back up. And you get up to heaven. The elevator opens up at heaven, and it's real calm and serene, you know, it's real just easygoing, and everybody's on their cloud and just everything is just picture perfect, right? So they go down to purgatory elevator. St. Peter asked him, he goes, he goes. He goes, what's your choice? And he goes, well, you know, man, heaven's beautiful, but damn, I'm kind of a guy that likes to party a little bit, man. And I mean, hell doesn't seem too bad, you know? He goes, I think. I think I'm gonna. I think. I think. I think I feel better than that down below, you know? So St. Peter shoves him back in the elevator, hits, hits hell again, drops down the bottom, flames open up. St. Peter kicks him out of the door, and there's flames going. Nobody's partying. Nothing's happening. So hold on. What happened? Where's all the party? He goes, oh, you must have been here during a briefing, you know. He goes, that's what everybody. That's like your sales time, where you're going in. Like, everybody's happy, right? Fake it till you make it. Everybody's happy, partying. No, this is hell, man. And so when you're going through it, it seems like the worst thing that you're ever going through in your life, but it's the best thing that you've ever lived through. Right? So Bill always tells, said you're going to look back at these times that you're struggling, and you're going to sit back and go, best, best time of my life.
- [72:41]
A
Amen.
- [72:41]
B
And so you look back, like what you're doing with the kids, and at the time, it seems like you're traveling all over the place, and it's a.
- [72:47]
C
Waste of time, and it's crazy.
- [72:49]
B
Yeah. And you sit back and you look back, and now you're like, man, best time of our lives.
- [72:53]
C
Yeah.
- [72:53]
B
You know, because now, like, it's living in every single piece of. Enjoying every little piece of the ride, what I.
- [73:00]
C
What I loved with my daughter. Right. She's in the car with just me and her, and we're talking about things, and she's very open to me, so we're talking about some deep things of what she's thinking and her future and how she sees things. And I'm like, man, I could have never created this moment.
- [73:15]
B
Yeah.
- [73:16]
C
And I'm just eating it up is awesome.
- [73:18]
B
Yeah.
- [73:19]
C
I've had a few of those with her, traveling that. That have made it all worth it, because watching the volleyball oh, my gosh. Imagine being in a gym with 40 quarts and you got whistles blowing non stop.
- [73:30]
B
Oh, yeah, man, it's wild. The parents are nasty. Everything's crazy, man. I mean, it's nutty, man. We sit by ourselves. I told my wife when our kids were little, I told them when they were born, I said, hey, don't be friends with these parents, I said, because there's going to be a day. I said, this is going to be an affirmation if what we teach and how we live our lives is total bullshit or if it's real, like our kids will be winners. And I said, our kids will beat their kids at some point in time and those parents will not like us. Yeah. And I told that when they were little and they were just born, you know, and so my wife's like, whatever, right? And. And then she became friends with everybody. And then as soon as my son started beating people in gymnastics, they all freaking hated us. We would like the family to beat. No one liked us. Oh, Drum thinks he's special because he's rich and entitled. They have meetings about us like that. They're like, when I do, like, if we did something where I did something with the kids or something, they're like, oh, yeah, the Maldonados, they're. They're the entitled family because they're. They do well or something. Like, come on, guys.
- [74:23]
A
You know, Jerome, dude, I appreciate you making it out here to Pasco, hanging out with us. Yeah, it's been a fun conversation. Just, just talking about everything going on in life, man. It. You've got, you've got a lot of things figured out. I mean, when we, when we talk about, like, becoming the whole human, it seems like you're at least on the right trajectory for, for all those things. So appreciate you sharing your words of wisdom.
- [74:49]
B
Thank you, man.
- [74:50]
A
Where. Where's a good spot that our viewers, our listeners can. Can follow you at and catch a little more of your journey?
- [74:58]
B
We're on all social media platforms. If you just go to Jerome Maldonado and they'll be in the show notes, I'm sure. And if you go to Instagram, it's the Jerome Maldonado, but we're on all social media platforms.
- [75:09]
A
Love it. Love it. And last, last piece of advice. If you could leave us just like one big word of wisdom that sums up your life, your passion, whatnot, what would it be?
- [75:22]
B
Yeah. Without being something too cliche, I think what we were talking about earlier, just live your life strong. Live it strong. And what I mean by live it strong is live every aspect of every day of your life strong in everything that you do. Some days are going to be exhausting but it's worth it. And the fulfillment that you'll get out of it is just amazing. And it doesn't have revolve around money. Money is a byproduct of all of everything else that you do. It's taken me a long term, long time to learn that. And so I just leave people with the fact that wake up each morning trying to be the best version of you. You can be in every aspect of your life and money will fall into the right place as an entrepreneur in business where you need it if you're doing everything else you need to be doing in life. Right.
- [76:08]
A
I love it. You heard it here. Live strong. Identify the areas in your life, get real, get truthful with where you're at, whether physically, economically, with your associations or your spirituality so you can take it to the next level until next time.