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Welcome to The Executive Real Estate Investing Show. This podcast is for you, the busy business owner or executive looking to create generational wealth. Here, we’re going to show you how to do that through real estate investing from multifamily to industrial and everything in between. You will become a real estate investing expert. And now, here’s your host, Michael Holman.

Michael Holman: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the executive real estate investing show. And it was great to have you with us this week. Like always we are going to start today with the executive tip and today’s executive tip is no matter where you are or what your business or who you’re communicating with you almost certainly can benefit from an increased knowledge of the right and digital marketing. And this is something that we actually get into in this podcast, right at the very end with Jerome Myers. And it is phenomenal, but if you don’t already have a digital marketing presence or you don’t even know where to begin, I would highly recommend it is time.

The internet is a vast pool of potential partners, clients, relationships that you need to know and understand. So getting also right before we get into this interview with Jerome, which was fantastic by the way, please, please, please if you are listening to this on apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you’re listening to it.

Go ahead and hit that subscribe button. If you like, what you hear, we would love to get your feedback as well. Not only hit subscribe, please go in, leave a rating, leave a review. We want to hear from you and lastly, go out and check out The Executive Real Estate Investing Show website. That’s www.ExecutiveREIShow.com all the episodes. There are lots of resources and more that’s gets continually added each and every week. Now let’s get into this interview with Jerome.

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the executive real estate investing show as always. I’m your host, Michael Holman. And we have a very special guest with us here today.

His name is Jerome Myers and he’s been all over the place. If you’re on LinkedIn, you’ve probably seen Jerome. He’s the one that has the shirt that says I took the red pill and he’s wearing it right now. And I’m about to ask you about that right now, but Jerome, welcome to the show,

Jerome Myers: Michael. Thanks for having me, man. Super excited to be with you today.

Michael Holman: Awesome. And it’s exciting to have you here with us. Just a little bit about Jerome. He’s the founder of Myers methods. He’s also the host of the podcast, multifamily missteps, and he’s a multifamily operator operating out of Greensboro, North Carolina. But to get right into things.

If you’re listening to the show and you’re not watching, you don’t see that Jerome right now has on a shirt that says I took the red pill. And right before we started recording, I had to ask him, what does that mean. But Jerome, I’d love to hear tell our listeners, what does it mean when you have this shirt saying I took the red pill.

Jerome Myers: Yeah. Yeah. You’re making a proclamation that you are living outside of the matrix. I think so many of us get trapped in this. Whirlwind of activity. It’s called busy and we lose focus on the things that are really important. Right? I have created a model for center life. I think there’s a bunch of coaches.

Everybody’s a coach these days, right? And there’s people who can teach you how to raise money and people who can tell you how to make money and people who can teach you how to buy a deal. And I’m the guy that wants you to live a center life. I want you to. Be able to show up as you are, regardless of the room that you’re in, because the person that you’ve grown into is somebody that you’re proud of and people can identify with.

And so our model has six levels, the red pill, it’s a self-image relationship, work, health prosperity and significance. The first three are the source of all your stress, your image, your self-image, your relationship and your work. And so people are like, wait, what do you mean. So, if you can’t keep promises to yourself, you become really frantic and stressed out.

Right? And so, we have people get really clear about who they are, what they do, and being accountable to self, I think is the key to everything else in your world becoming available to you unlocked. And so, then we move on to the next level, which is relationships. So the people who. Are your listeners being more likely business owners, they’re leading the charge. And so the folks who are around them come to them for answers very fewer, just really interested in, Hey, how are you doing it day? Is there anything I can do to help you? It’s always, Hey, I need this, I want that. And so when you are in a bunch of those relationships, you get depleted pretty quickly because there’s nobody filling your cup.

And so we work to re frame. We’ve positioned those relationships so that there’s mutual benefit. You’re not just giving all the time instead you’re able to receive. And then we go to the next level, which is the work, right? And so, if you have great relationships, then usually your influence and your sphere of influence grows, right?

Because people know that they can count on you to get things. They usually grow your comp and allows you to live out your morals and values. Well, if we can get all the three of those things, their self-image relationship and work taking care of you stopped doing the self-destructive habits that you use and the words that you use in order to justify it as, oh, I just need to take the edge off.

I need to relax. I need to, I need to cool off. Yeah. Right. And so, you’re usually not doing something that’s good for you when you say that. And it’s because life is raw. It’s intense. And so if we can reduce your stress level, then you don’t need to take the edge off. And so that allows us to move into health and get your meditation, or your morning routine practice going and getting you in a space in a place where you’re performing at peak levels, because well, you’re treating your body and your mental health.

Well, and then we moved to prosperity because we think everybody should have abundance and out of your abundance, you can give your overflow. You’re able to share that with other people through your significance play. And so we ran through those six areas and really help people hone in and tweak and dial those different areas depending on where they are so that when they show up in life, they’re showing up as an apex.

Michael Holman: That’s that is awesome. And there’s, there’s a lot of good things in there. I mean, my goodness, we could almost spend an entire show on each one of those, but as you were talking, I, I took a few more. And I wanted to go back in and ask you about some of these things. So when we were talking about relationships, right, and we’re talking about, Hey, a lot of times, because you’re right.

A lot of the listeners they’re business owners or business executives, or they’re people who are aspiring to be that, and people are coming to them all the time for answers. I mean, I’m sure you’ve experienced, I’ve experienced this, right. I mean, we were just talking earlier about my morning. Monday morning, sometimes just feel like I’m putting out fires because of all of the stuff that happened over the weekend, you know, when when I was trying not to work.

And, and so how do you, I mean, for these, for these people who have this influence that a lot of is, is expected out of them, how are you managing or what advice do you have for those people to kind of turn those relationships so that they become a two-way relationship and just set of always giving, giving, giving, giving.

Jerome Myers: Well, the giving is fine, right? Giving, giving, giving is fine. As long as you have something to give from, right. When you think about, I just got off a plane, right? And so, when they give the safety brief, they tell you to put your mask on first and then help other people. And that’s where we lose it.

If we’re not connected to source, if we don’t have somebody filling our oxygen, then we’ll very quickly run out of supplies. And when we run out of supply, then we usually go try to get our legitimate needs filled and illegitimate places. And those, when we make that choice, we usually blow the whole thing up.

So you can build your whole life, building a reputation, a brand, and a couple of poor choices can put you in a place where you lose it all. Because you didn’t set up the systems, you didn’t create the relationships where the thing happened for you prior to you going and getting it from a place that you shouldn’t have gotten.

Michael Holman: That’s, you know, that’s really insightful and, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but as I kind of look like I’m kind of reading in between the lines, it almost sounds like it’s not necessarily every single relationship that you have has to be, you know, I give, and then you fill my cup. It’s not that every relationship doesn’t have to be like that they can be two separate relationships.

You can have one relationship that helps fill your cup. You know, just by default, right? I mean, I look at some of the employees that I have, you know, it’s not like they’re capable of just of stepping in and doing some of the things that I have that I just have to take care of. And they can’t fill my cup in that manner, but there’s, there’s other ways that I can feel my cup and other relationships that don’t necessarily have to be, you know, you have to give me as much as I give you period. And that’s how every single relationship has to be. Is that what.

Jerome Myers: Right. I, I don’t believe well, partially, so I don’t believe everybody has to give the same amount in every relationship. I do believe that I relationship is inherently unhealthy. If there isn’t give and take in each relationship, right.

Because it becomes parasitic. They’re only there to take and once somebody gets to the place where they’re only there to take you have a loss of respect. There’s a loss of gratitude. There, there are some unhealthy things that are always going to fall out of that. And so we want everybody to be a contributor to the relationship in the way that they can.

And everybody can’t be everything for. So, I think it’s important to realize, Hey, this person has this capacity and allow them to show up for you in that capacity. And if you need something else, then make sure that you’re going to the appropriate source for that. So, yes, I agree with you in concept and, just with those small nuances.

Michael Holman: No, that’s, that’s really insightful. And I mean, and the way that you phrase that as is perfect. I mean cup gets filled, right? Like my, my family, right. Or my wife, she fills my cup in a way that you don’t mind employees. Some of my employees are never going to be able to do. Right. And so, and vice versa.

Right. I mean, I can’t go to my wall. And ask her to do some of the things that I’d asked my employees to do. I, I I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work that well. Right. But but I love what you say about every single relationship. Somebody has something to contribute to a relationship. And, and I think that’s a great mindset shift for a lot of people.

Cause I think, especially when you’re, when you’re a VP or your boss or you’re an owner, right. It kind of the mantle the burden gets placed on you to give everything all the time. Right? I mean, this is your expectation. And I think there’s this really healthy ways. Like you were mentioning that you can kind of, you can bring everybody’s best self to the table and contribute to every relationship in some form or fashion.

That was, that was phenomenal. Really, really good stuff. Well, one of the things too, that I kind of wanted to dive in as well, along with the relationships you had mentioned. Your routine, your morning routine. That’s some, that’s a question that we get a lot. Right. You know, what, what routine do I need to have?

Or what does, you know, what are successful people doing? I have my personal routine, right. I mean, I actually a couple of weeks ago, I was on Whitney Soules podcast. And, and that’s something that he was asking me about what’s your morning routine. And I went through that there. But Jerome, I’d love to hear what, you know, what’s your morning routine.

Jerome Myers: So it’s out of control. First of all, I’m like, I don’t want anybody to think that they need to do what I do. But it looks something like this. So, wake before five o’clock, we start with the 30-minute meditation. And then we do 30 minutes of reading, actual physical book, not listening to it on audio.

There’s something about the discipline of turning the pages and being able to write in the margins that I, I think we, we lose when we multitask by washing dishes and reading by listening to an audio book. And so just the discipline of sitting still and consuming the content. And then from there, we do a little bit of Spanish on dually.

And then we’ll go out for a 60-minute run and sometimes we make sense 30 minutes or so of weights. In addition to that, then we get back and we do some audio learning podcast book, whatever it may be. And then we get into journaling and then. We think we’re ready for the day at that point.

Michael Holman: That’s that is awesome. Well, if you want, like the quintessential, the ideal morning routine, it probably looks something about like that, but that being said it’s different for every person. Right. But if you were just to put it on paper is, Hey, here’s the standard routine. That’s, that’s awesome. But yeah, like you mentioned, and like I’m saying right now it is different and it’s tailored to every person.

Now obviously not every morning. Can be exactly the same drum. What, what aspects of your morning routine do you feel like there’s maybe one or two things that are the most important for you personally, or is, or is the entire routine kind of all or nothing for you?

Jerome Myers: I think, the most important piece for me is the meditation or the silence, right? The ability to organize and process the thoughts and put them in the different compartments so that you can actually focus on the task in hand is a game changer. I think most people just want to do, do, do busy, busy, busy, but that’s not smooth. And it ends up being really choppy and fragment. And so you don’t actually ever end up in flow state.

It’s my goal to get into flow state so that it doesn’t feel like I’m working, but it’s just coming through me. And then we produced the art.

Michael Holman: Well, and I, and I love what you’re saying with flow state. And I, eh, correct me if I’m wrong. I believe that I’ve heard, I’ve heard that phrase a few different times. What do you mean by flow state?

Jerome Myers: So with flow, state time slows down and. Pattern you, you you’re able to recognize patterns the, in your ability to recognize the pattern gets you to the outcome quicker. I think a lot of folks are looking for a hack, right? They want to do this or do that. Those things don’t usually work because they, you don’t understand the frame where.

That strategy or that tactic is applicable across. And so you’re trying to apply this hack in the situation where it doesn’t matter if, you know, I think the majority of our listeners have some concept of what it takes to model a business plan, right a project. And in that you’re making assumptions, you got a cap rate assumption, an interest rate assumption, and if those assumptions are wrong, then what you project happens.

On the back end, there’s not going to actually be true. And I mean, I know that the is going to be wrong. It’s just a matter whether you’re high or low on your model. But the important piece here is understanding that, Hey, this is the trend. If I apply this with that trend, then I can predict the future.

You end up in a really good. But if you don’t understand the trending, you just do the strategy and say the trend is going in the wrong direction, or you apply the strategy. And in incorrectly, then you’re going to blow up something that you thought was a slam dunk. And you know where we are in the market for, if we just want to dive into the real estate at this point, I think there are a lot of people who are making faulty assumption. And those assumptions are going to lose people

Michael Holman: That, you know, I’m actually, I want to get into that. Right now I just have one quick mentioned that I have to say you were talking about the hacks, versus the actual template or the model and it, and it kind of makes me laugh. It goes back to an experience that I have.

I remember, I first read the seven habits of highly effective people in co in college. And at the time I was just looking for those seven hacks, right? What are like the seven tips that is like, Hey, I just have to do this checklist every single day and I’m going to be amazing. Right. And I started reading the book and I went through the whole book.

I actually, I almost hate to say it, I didn’t, I didn’t like it. I hated that book the first time I read it because it wasn’t the seven habits of highly effective people. Right? I mean, and so all of a sudden I went oh, six or seven years and people always were asking me, Hey, what, what book would you recommend?

I was like, oh, I don’t really like that book. I went back and I read it again. And this time, my, my frame of mind was completely different. Right? I wasn’t looking for the seven hacks. I was looking for the seven habits, the models, and, and turns out that book was so good. It actually was turned into one of my favorite books because of the frame of mind and the frame of reference that I had actually read it twice in a row.

I do this weird thing all the time when. The book that I, like, I ended up reading it two times in a row just to try and capture as much as I can. But, but that was, you know, that was my own experience. We’re all looking for hacks and those things just don’t work. And, and that got, that got lined out. So clearly for me that second time that I was reading the seven habits of highly effective people, it’s like, Hey, you need to change your mindset.

You need to change. Who you are, not just what you do, you know, and that kind of goes back to the modeling that you mentioned, but as you were getting into, we were getting into the real estate and I was really excited. So let’s, you mentioned you feel like there’s a lot of assumptions, a lot of things out there that are, that might cause people some issues, what are those, what are those key assumptions that you’re seeing? Are they, or they, at least in your mind are kind of causing the red fox to.

Jerome Myers: I, I don’t think rents can just go up with no limit. I mean, and people are modeling it as if for the next five years it’s going to happen. I just don’t know how it’s possible. And maybe it is, and I could be overly conservative, which I’m okay with because you know, I’m more concerned about preservation of capital than upside.

For the folks who are thinking they’re going to double or triple folks’ money over the next five years, because they’re going to be like the past five. I don’t think that’s a, I think that’s a false assumption. And I think that counting on cap rate compression and rent increases greater than, you know, 5%.

I just don’t know that they’re. Their project is going to be saved and it’s terrifying. Cause I mean, we’re in the middle of a development project and we don’t know what to do right now because units that were going to cost us $120,000 are now being projected at $180,000. And, you know, can we just say, adjust the rants and say, Hey, this is what it costs and we’ll get it.

I can’t say that, right. I, I need empirical data that proves that this is going to happen and sure it’s two years out. But does that mean that we’re actually going to be there again? Preservation of capital is more important than upside for me. So I just want people to be really careful when they’re placing their capital and making sure that they’re going in the deals where their cost basis makes sense.

And they have a business plan. That’s actually executable. I think you have to have both in order to make money and multi.

Michael Holman: is, you know, I, if you can’t see my face, cause you’re watching, I got nothing but big smiles. Cause Jerome you’re, you’re talking to my language right now is right. As a, as a developer, you know, we do a lot of multi-family.

This is the world and the realm that I live in each and every day. And I think you’re exactly right. I mean, I’ve seen some of these, some of these projects where you have people who are trying to develop it, and. All of a sudden, they’re trying to project, you know, 30% right. Growth in an area over like two years.

And you’re like, why in the world? Like, you know, and if you, if you tone that down to three to 5%, all sudden they’re making like a 2% return kind of thing. So I’ve definitely seen this and that. And it brings up the same concerns for me is that sometimes you just get people who get, who get, very aggressive, right.

And that can be, that can be, That can be scary. Yeah. And it’s dangerous. And it’s exactly just for the reason that you said, I mean, especially on development, we dealt with that too. We just had a project that we’re at the time of this at the time we’re speaking, we’re just about to close on the construction loan within about a week.

And we had that same problem. Right. We first projected the cost out in December of 2019, we had multiple estimates. We knew we were right on. Well, by the time we go to start that project right now costs have gone through the roof, right. Comparatively. And that project ended up costing almost $12 million more than we originally anticipated, which you know, how do you, how do you deal with that?

And that’s, that’s a, that’s a big big thing. And the only reason that we were able to make it through on that is because, Hey, we, we were conservative. We had, we had enough meat on the bones, for example, we, we validated it with the appraisals and that’s kind of what you have to do in that, in that scenario.

So I, you know, like I said, nothing but smiles for me right now, because everything you just said, I mean, it’s, that’s my world. That’s my realm.

Jerome Myers: I love operators, ladies and gentlemen. We’re not just talking about it. We’re actually doing business out here.

Michael Holman: Yeah, no, I absolutely love it. So I’d love to hear you kind of had mentioned a couple times.

Preservation of capital is more important to me than returns, which is sometimes I feel like that kind of goes against the grain of some of the narratives that we hear, because especially over the last, you know, five years for, at this point, and take the last two years, for example, where cap rates have gone, nothing but down in some of these markets, you have rental increases of 20, 25%, right?

Everybody is looking, especially, especially limited partner investors. They come into how much can I make, right. Are you going to, are you going to triple, are you going to quadruple my money? Like tell me which one it is. Why do you talk about and say, Hey, capital preservation is actually for you more important than returns.

Jerome Myers: Yeah. I guess I’ve just been fortunate enough to be around some really wealthy people. And that’s what they care about. It’s they’ve made it. And so I don’t care if you can give me a 30% IRR that doesn’t matter to me. What am I, what am I risking in order to get that? And they want a short thing and I’ve just come to the place where I think wealth is built on short things.

You might get rich taking the big rests. Right. And that’s why people are doing Bitcoin and all the other cryptos. And it’s like, oh, what is that based on? And how can I make sure that I’m accurately associating a premium. For this investment based on the risk that I’m exposed to. And, you know, people don’t like development because the long time horizon and the market might not be proven or where you’re going into and et cetera, et cetera, or who’s going to perform on a construction because construction is so hard and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right. All the folks that I just, all the folks that I do deals with. They are interested in real estate because they know that the asset isn’t going to go to zero and there’s going to be some salvage value. If you totally screw the pooch, I I’ve had money. I’ve had no money. And what I found is that when you’re super aggressive, it’s because you don’t have any money.

And you’re trying to get out of that place. But true wealth is bill with very risk averse approaches that allow you to manage out as much of the risk as possible. Right. I still remember being in corporate and some of the guys who were in our business group being upset because they wouldn’t let us do this project or that project.

And it was just like, we’re not going to risk an enterprise because we think we can get it quick. Like we want to build something that’s sustainable and we can see a very methodical approach to this outcome that we’re pursuing. And so I I’ve just been there. And I guess the last piece of it is man, I’m a civil engineer and one of my early projects, there was a tower on the side of a mountain holding electrical power lines, and we had to replace the legs of the tower.

And so my job to do the calculation of wind speed. And so that we properly size the crane to hold the tower while men were working there. And if I was wrong and the crane didn’t work, the crane could be pulled off the side of the mountain. The people at the floor could be crushed by the tower or electrocuted by the live power lines that were up above their head about a hundred feet.

And it was then that I realized this is real life. And while, you know, investing money isn’t life or death for some people, it’s their life savings. And do I want to be the person who made an inappropriate assumption and didn’t have enough safety factor. And I put them in a place where now they can’t retire.

Not me, not, not on my watch. I want to make sure that. Are able to live their life, the way that they plan to, and that we did all that we could to eliminate unnecessary.

Michael Holman: I love that. Right. And I think that what you’re saying in the experiences that you have right now, coming from a civil engineering background into multifamily operations, I think is, I think is spot on, right?

I mean, it’s, it’s really important. And the other thing that I love is that you’re looking at it from an investor standard. Right. Cause as, as the sponsor, we’re we try and align ourselves as much as possible with the investors. Right. But, but our livelihood is getting deals done and doing deals and things like that.

And, and I think what you just did taking a moment to step back and saying, Hey look like if I were this person right. And my life savings was a million dollars and this person’s asking me, Hey, $500,000 with me. That’s half my life savings, I need to treat that money as if it were my life savings. You know, the way that I would want someone, if I were to put my life savings with them, I’d want them to treat it right.

That’s, that’s important for me and I love the way that you kind of stepped into the shoes there to really be able to project yourself onto saying, Hey, if I were an investor, you know, these are the things that are.

Jerome Myers: Yeah. I actually believe their money is more valuable than mine, Michael. I, I, at the end of the day, the whole concept of, oh, we’ll just do it with other people’s money and if it doesn’t work okay, it doesn’t sit well with me.

I don’t want those people to be in the game. Right. Because they aren’t actually fiduciaries. They are thinking about it like as a tech startup and what they do. I don’t see the world that way, brother. People should, Y you can’t guarantee anybody’s investment. I think people should sleep well, knowing that their money is with me in a deal that we are doing. I want people to know that.

Michael Holman: That’s awesome. Well, one of the things I got to ask then, so Jerome, are you, are you mostly syndicating your real estate projects?

Jerome Myers: No. In fact, we haven’t syndicated any, everything that we’ve done has been joint ventures.

Michael Holman: Perfect. Well, I’m really interested in and getting into that in a little bit because yeah, you, you hear a lot of these people and we’ve, you know, on, on our end, we’ve done both institutional money.

And we’ve done syndications and joint ventures, right? We’ve done all three of those and, and they are a little bit different, right? I mean, you talk about, hey, this is just like a tech startup. And, and sometimes, that happens in the institutional space. I mean, right now where, where we’re based out of in salt lake city, there are a number of institutions coming in and basically throwing assumptions to the wind and saying like, hey, we don’t care.

We think this market’s going to go up. We, you know, 80,000 a unit on our purchase price for land, no big deal. We don’t care because we think it’s going to go more than that. And you know, some of those times you have those institutions come in and it does feel like house money. If you’re a if your interests are aligned, right.

Yeah. The complete opposite can be true with an institution as well. Don’t get me wrong. And so, you know, what you’re saying is really interesting. So talk to me, you know, you, you mentioned JV. Can you kind of just maybe run through what are the differences between joint venture and the syndication?

Jerome Myers: Yeah, I think the one, this is something called the Howey test and now he tests determines whether or not you are selling a security. There’s the first three pieces of the test. The answer is always going to be, yes. The last question is, are you relying on the efforts of a promoter to get the return. And if you answer yes to that, then you have a security.

If the answer is no, then you potentially have a joint venture. And so what a joint venture means is everybody has an active role in the project. What that role is, I’m not an attorney. That’s up to the people who are in the partnership, but what I can tell you. You know, it’s not just having voting rights, you actually have to be engaged in a meaningful way.

And so when we do these deals, part of the reason why we do the deals, the way that we do is because I didn’t know anybody who had a multi-million-dollar real estate portfolio. And so, when I wanted to buy apartments, when I was in college, I had a big problem. I didn’t know anybody who right and so, me and my buddy Durand were sitting on a stupid and we did the math and we realized the guy that owned a complex was doing at least $700,000 a year, top line.

And we were like, but we don’t need that, we just need 70. What do we do? Like, how do we get to this place? But we never saw him or talked to him. Cause he had third party, property management in place and everything was being taken care of. He figured out the decoupling the time for money. And so when people syndicate, but they have a desire to be active, it’s really hard to go from a wannabe syndicator to an actual sponsor because you usually don’t have the network. You usually don’t have the liquidity and the folks who are leading these deals are going to just give that to. Right. And so there’s some dues that have to be paid. It, it truly is a fraternity or sorority where somebody has got to bring you in with the joint venture.

You know, you own more of the deal. Depending on the capacity of the partners, you can do really small deals or you can do multi hundred unit deals depending. You know, just people’s net worth and liquidity. And so what we look to do is bring at least one new person in to the joint venture, have them sign the loan so that they check the box for experience.

And then in that program, or in that situation, we can end up with opening the door for somebody who hadn’t had that opportunity prior. And for us, that’s really important because. We didn’t have a path to that. And when I thought of, when I was smart enough to actually look at a lot of the syndication programs, I didn’t believe the promise, no money, no experience, no capital, but you can buy a $2 million deal.

I, the promise and the requirement didn’t make sense for me. So I had to pull back and find another way. Where it actually made sense. And so what we, I call it, get into an, in a boat. So I don’t tell anybody to go buy a a hundred unit building or build a a hundred unit building their first go, I tell them to go buy something that’s between 10 and 30 units.

And for most markets, that’s going to be between half a million. $1.5 million, something like that. Right? And you can get that, get together with a few of your buds. You can take down the property, you might need an experienced partner to come into that deal. But you know, if a smoking hot, there’s a lot of people who are interested in it, you do that.

You prove that you can make money, right. And then you go do another one and you tell people about the one you make money. And then you go do another one and sequentially or sequentially building your track record. And these are going to be the hardest deals you ever do by the way, because the larger deals are easier, but you do these deals, these smaller deals as an operator to cut your chops and really get an understanding of what the business is and how it works and how you pull the levers, because you got to figure out how to find them.

Right. And then I think you’re in a good place to go raise money from other people, because you do have some operating experience and everybody doesn’t want that. They want the shortcut and I’m okay with. But I just, I get really uncomfortable when you can’t write a check to fix the problem that happens at your property, because there’s going to be a problem at some point.

Michael Holman: Yeah. I, you know, there’s, I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, you, you have some that are, that are better than others, but a lot of times you, you hear some of these gurus that kind of come up and it’s like, you can make a million dollars a year and invest and have tens of thousands of units. And you’re not going to use any of your own money and this and that.

And you can be fought broke as you get started. And it’s kind of, I always been shaking my head because, you know, we do, we do a number of syndications. And to say that it requires none of your own money and no experience. And you know, those are the overall those feel like pretty dicey statements to me because I can tell you.

Right. There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, at least in every single project, right. The, we have to fund every single lender. Every single investor is looking and analyzing the experience that we have. And so I think, I think what you’re saying is, is. For those who are interested in becoming an active investor, that is really, really important.

It does take steps, right? You’re going to be partnering with a lot of people. I mean, sometimes you can get a syndication done, but sometimes that might take three or four or five partners to get into that first syndication, right. With one of those, having some experience. And so, I love, I love what you’re saying on, Hey. The joint venture just worked for me. Right. I mean, and that works also for a specific type of investor.

Jerome Myers: Yeah. I think they see the world differently. Because I’ll be honest with you, Michael. I don’t want to partner with everybody. Right. And I don’t like the concept of oh yeah. Just wire the money. Like I left corporate America for a reason and a big part of the reason why.

I wasn’t, I wasn’t excited about returning maximum value to shareholders. I wasn’t excited about having to do what was best for the bottom line at every turn that didn’t connect for me anymore, because I got the opportunity to lay people off two years in a row and we made 30% profit margin. So how do those two things go together?

They did and for me, and so when I realized. You know, they didn’t make me do it, but I chose to actually follow through and lay people off. I had a reckoning and I needed to do something different. And so, you know, anything for me where profit is the end all be all. It isn’t exciting for me anymore. I want the investments to make an impact.

I want to make money, but I don’t want to have to look somebody in the face and argue with them about. Y, this is the right answer when they’re just solely focused on how can I maximize my return? Well,

Michael Holman: I love it, great conversations. One of the things that I want to get into here before we start wrapping up, right, is you’re the host of this podcast, missteps, you’re you, you’re doing a lot and you’re hearing a lot.

I’d love to hear kind of your perspective going off of that. What are some of the top, you know, let’s call it. Two or three missteps that you see multifamily investors making and also how to avoid them.

Jerome Myers: Yeah, the first one is self-educating self-education is not the answer. It’s the most inefficient and ineffective way to get your base knowledge.

And while you should listen to apply why you should go to conferences, why you should do all those things. If you don’t have an end-to-end system for running your business. If you don’t have a framework, then you are setting yourself up for failure. I think a lot of people are just trying to eat the elephant a bite at the time, but they don’t even know the parts and pieces of what it takes to make the full dish.

And what happens is you get the ball and you don’t know what to do with it. You don’t know which goal you supposed to put it in. And that’s and then you pull other people’s money in and now supply and leading the blind and everybody to pretend that they know, but they don’t. And then somebody like me comes along and you know, I’m a Wolf.

If you’re not in my pack, I’m going to take advantage of your lack of knowledge, because that’s the world that we live in. It’s real estate as a zero-sum game. If I make money and I’m buying something from you, then you potentially lost there’s, you know, there’s only pluses and minuses on that, on the, that HUD sheet.

So it’s really, really important that you get that knowledge, and then you supplement and augment from the other sources through your continuing education. That’s the one that I see the most where I’m going to save whatever the number is 5,000, 20,000, 50,000. I’m going to save that money and just figure it out on my own.

Well, you’re not taking an account your time and you’re not taking an account, not knowing what you don’t know, because you don’t have a frame to actually connect the pieces together. I think the next thing that I see. Is a big misstep is just under capitalizing. And so I’m gonna do all that I can with what I have, and I don’t have any reserves on the back end.

And so, you know, it’s funny, people talk about no money. And so I think no money strategies are for people who have a lot of money, right? Because inherently, when you buy a deal, that’s no money. The person that sold it to you was in a pinch. And that pinch means that there’s something wrong with. And if you don’t have money to take care of the thing, that’s wrong with the property, then the property will ever get fixed, which means that you won’t make money.

And so it’s, there’s all these semantics and all this great marketing and Salada empty promises that I see in the, in the marketplace, which makes me really sad because I see people who are pursuing generational wealth and they’re just finding. And I want to put it into that. And so, I’m not your favorite guru, your syndication gurus, favorite podcast guests, because I’d say something that’s counter to the message.

And I’m also not the favorite gas for people have bought into this concept that they don’t have to have any money or any experience or any real talent in order to be successful at this business. Michael, you, you talked about a really big loan, right. And in order to successfully navigate that and manage that.

You gotta be able to run a business. And so it’s really difficult for me to see people who are in their W2. Haven’t actually run a business outside of, you know, maybe selling candy when they were in high school. Think that they can go navigate and run these multi-million-dollar businesses and do it successfully.

They ended up in a really precarious situation. And sometimes people get hurt really bad. And I just, I want people to really understand what they’re getting themselves into and I like to illustrate it this way. And I don’t mean to go on a ramp with it. I’m really passionate about this. So, Michael, I know you’re doing well and know you have some excess recently, so I know you had a liquidation event and you might be looking for a place to put that capital.

So look, man, I’m starting my MMA. All right and my first vice is going to be what kind of McGregor and I, I can give you a 15% return on your money is six months out. So I need a half a mil, right? It’s six months out. We’ll do the fight and the way that I’m gonna win this fight with Conor is I’m gonna listen to podcasts.

I’m gonna read books and watch videos on YouTube. I don’t have anybody looking over my shoulder. You know, I probably outweigh the guy by a hundred pounds and I I’ve watched all these videos and I’ve seen what other people have done. So I’ve got the wire instructions at the ready. If you just give me your email address, I’ll send them over to you.

And oh, by the way, if I lose. You know, I, I don’t get any of the money back that I put into this, but upside is 15% and six months. So, you know, it’s a 30% IRR, I think. So we should have these wiring instructions.

Michael Holman: I love it. I love it.

Jerome Myers: where do you want me to send them?

Michael Holman: You’re maybe the only person I might send those wire instructions to not escape, obviously.

No, one’s going to send those, right. I mean, you’re, you’re dealing, you’re going up against one of the, you know, one of the great MMA fighters with no experience. And like you said, I love what you were, you were illustrating. Hey, I watched a lot of YouTube videos and podcasts.

Jerome Myers: I mean, but just this, this is 15% upside. People don’t understand how difficult it is to operate. Right. And it’s, it’s borderline disrespectful for the folks who are actually fighting the fight, because this is really tough. Contrary to what’s. Your favorite guru will tell you so that you send them $30,000.

Michael Holman: you know, that that was a perfect illustration of exactly, you know, some of the things that, that are happening, especially right now.

One of the things people don’t understand right, is we’re, we’re definitely booming right now. And our economy is a boom bust economy. Right. And you see this all the time is we, you know, I’m not trying to predict when we’re going to go down because I don’t necessarily know, but I can, I can tell you with a hundred percent certainty that we will come down.

Right. I mean, and so what you have is in these boom economies, everybody gets focused on, give me as much as you can give me as much as you can, if everything starts to become feel like it’s risk-free right. I mean, I remember back in 2008, I had a friend who was like, oh yeah, I’m going to start buying houses because houses never go down in value.

Right. And it was. You know, I, that was like a year before, before the big crash happened or whatever. Right. And, and that’s kinda some of the feeling that I feel like a lot of these sponsors are taking right now is like, Hey, just give me your money because it never goes down. And it’s because they’ve been saved for the last two, three years.

Right. Cap rates continue to go get down, rents, continue to go up. And they’re not really focused on, Hey, at some point, there is going to be a downside and you need to understand that and you need to be preparing for that from day one so that you don’t end up. Paying Jerome Myers all your money to go fight Connor McGregor, right?

I mean, that’s, that’s the kind of scenario that people need to be thinking about and understand right now, because if you wait to think about, well, what’s going to happen. If things take a downturn as things don’t go as well as expected, it’s too late at that point. Like if you wait until that already happens, you’ve missed the boat.

Jerome Myers: And the thing that most people don’t get it. Just you making a decision in 2021, you might not find out that it was a poor choice until 2026, because of the way that this market is set up. And, it’s just terrifying for me to see people who don’t actually understand what’s happening to be deploying hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars against a business plan that has no actual opportunity at being successful.

Michael Holman: Yeah, no, I hear ya. Well, Jerome, I want to ask you one last question before we get into the last two questions that we ask all of our guests, you know, getting to this point in your life and your career and your, you know, we’re talking about the red pill and balance and centered life.

What has been just, just one thing for me, what’s been probably one of, if not the most, difficult thing to overcome. To get to where you are today,

Jerome Myers: it’s interesting because I think about where I am and it was like, if I would, I, if, if I would’ve gotten help early on in my journey, I’d probably be three or four times the size I am in business. I think probably the most difficult thing for me is just my own ego. Right. I went to engineering school, got business degree.

So I think I’m pretty smart. And so I can figure it out and all the information is free. Right. So you just go get it and you put it together and it’s totally idiotic, right?

Jerome Myers: Because you’re saying that I know this better than anybody else who has done. And I can spend my time doing it better than a person who actually has experience.

And I’ve just been in the way of me growing so many different times. It’s embarrassing. And it’s disappointing when I. I have this moment of reflection, because you asked this amazing question because there’s so many folks out there who were like, oh, well, I’m doing the do. If you haven’t actually sought counsel from a person who has the expertise at the thing that you want to do, you’re doing yourself in anybody who’s falling behind you at this.

Michael Holman: Agreed that, you know, that was that was fantastic. I really appreciate you sharing that with us. Cause you know, those are difficult questions. We all experience, you know, we all have to overcome the obstacles we’re experiencing failures. And so to, to hear kind of a mindset of someone who, right is right here and maybe a lot of people listening are right here and they’re trying to get it to where, to where maybe you are a drone.

It’s good to know in here that you and I, and all these other people on podcasts and that up on stage at conferences, we’re all real people that have made real mistakes or have real regrets or, or would have, should have could could’ve. And those are the things that I think. Like most often are the things that need to get passed on.

Right. I mean, it’s easy to go up and talk about, Hey, look how successful I am. And we’ve grown 20 X over the last four years and XYZ, and those are all awesome. Right? Those build credibility. And there’s a time and place for all of those. I agree. But when you’re talking with a lot of people, who are interested in getting into real estate investing, I think the most important questions that we can answer in that we can, that will benefit.

Others are going to be, hey, let’s talk about some of the failures let’s talk and how’d you overcome them, right? Let’s talk about the things that you can, that you would have done differently. So thank you for sharing that with us, but you’re on, we’re going to wrap up. We have two questions that we ask every single guest who comes on the show. And are you ready for them?

Jerome Myers: Absolutely.

Michael Holman: Perfect. So Jerome, what is the best business advice you were ever again?

Jerome Myers: Figure out digital marketing.

Michael Holman: I love it. I love it. And why do you say that

Jerome Myers: if you didn’t have, if you didn’t figure it out before COVID you, you had no business and the reach that the internet gives people is second to none.

You know, I’ve literally changed my entire network through LinkedIn. And the people that I’ve met there and simply by using content based marketing and thought leadership, I’ve been able to create a community of people who have changed me knowing one millionaire. When I got into the business to the majority of people, I talked to having seven, eight, and nine figure net.

Michael Holman: That that is phenomenal in case anybody is wondering the way that I found Jerome was through LinkedIn. Right. So what he’s saying and the content that he was posting, right. That’s how, that’s how him and I hooked up. I I went on LinkedIn. We connected. I don’t even remember how, if it was me or you or one or the other, next thing I know we’re connected.

I’m seeing everything that Jerome is, is posting and talking about it. I think man, this, this guy has a lot of good content. I, you know, Loving everything from the personal stuff to the business stuff. This is somebody who I want on my show and that’s how we, that’s how we hooked up. So. Awesome. I love that.

And that’s great advice, especially for some of us. I mean, you’re talking about coming from a civil engineering background. This is something that’s kind of hard for me too. I come from an accounting background or I’m a CPA by trade accountants. Aren’t necessarily known to be the most. Digital marketing savvy people on planet earth.

Right. And you know, I’m no exception, but, but I love that advice. So the second question, Jerome, what real estate investing advice would you give other business owners or business executives?

Jerome Myers: You don’t have to get Moby Dick on your first fishing expedition. It’s very okay. To get some, to an end, the boat, come back to shore, lay it out.

So everybody sees. You did it and your tuna is making money, right? So you lay out, let people know what your returns were. And if people see that they want to go out with you the next time. And so maybe you got a bigger bowl, more people, maybe you get some swore fish the next time he come back and then maybe you do some shark hunting, and then maybe you do the well hunting, but this whole concept that you just need to go get Moby Dick the first go around. I think. It’s hogwash.

Michael Holman: I love it. Well, that’s great advice, Jerome. Thank you for being on the show at drum. How can people connect with you or find you.

Jerome Myers: Yeah, I think the best places to go to https://www.jeromemyers.co/ and there you can get access to all the different things that we have going on. But the thing that I think is most interesting is our, our four step guide to get into multi-family investing.

I think it gives a unique perspective on why we do things the way we do, and an opportunity for you to go into conversations. If you’re new to the business. A little more educated so that you don’t get the wool pulled over here.

Michael Holman: Love it. And we will definitely have a link to that in our show notes. Jerome, thank you again for coming and appreciate all your.

Jerome Myers: Thank you for having me, Michael, this has been outstanding

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