Transcript of You vs. You: Master Mindset for Winning in Business & Life | Jerome Maldonado DSH #1186

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Testosterone levels back. I battle mentally because you want to take the testosterone replacement because it keeps you leaner, but it scares the shit out of me, man.

I'm not a fan of anything unnatural.

Yeah, because you take that shit and then your body loses its own natural mobility to produce testosterone. And bro, you're on that shit forever. What are the long term effects for it?

All right, guys, with Jerome here. We're going to talk real estate in life today. Thanks for hopping on, man. What's up, Sean? How are you doing, brother? It's been a while. Been a year and a half. Couldn't believe how fast time flies.

Time flies too fast, man. It's crazy.

Yeah. Shout out to Dan Flechman and the guys at Aspire for hosting events.

Yeah, those dudes are badasses. I was talking to Dan last week. They're trying to sell the ranch up in Temecula.

Because of the fires?

No, I think it's just the right time. The Olympics is going to do their equestrian arena there. I think he wants to move here to Vegas and put something together here in Vegas. Nice. Just get away from the California politics and some of that stuff.

It's hard to be Vegas, man.

I like it here. I was doing land development out here in the late in 2004, '05, '06, '08, right before the recession. We got out of here at the perfect time before everything fell apart pre-recession.

Was that luck, skill, or both?

No, it was luck. It was luck. My son was born. So I said, Okay, no more out-of-town development. My son was born in 2008, and I just sold off the last development to Tole Brothers. And I said, We're going to stick back. We're stick to doing work and development just here at home. It was a little bit of luck, more so than anything.

I love the honesty on that because some people would have said skill.

No, man. I wish I was that smart. I wish I saw it coming. I had sucker written all over my face in that day, Yeah.

Well, no one saw COVID coming, too. That was another one. I know.

We got lucky with COVID, though, man. Covid worked in our benefit in a lot of ways. Really? Yeah. Housing prices went up. The interest rates went down. We're paying the backlash effects of it right now from a banking perspective. But damn, we killed it. In fact, Ty Lopez and I were doing some stuff over in Virginia, and we had a project tied up in South Beach, Florida at the time, and over on Meridian, Espanola, the heart of South Beach. When we got that property, we panicked because we thought we were overpaying for it at the time, nonetheless. We thought we were screwed with the pandemic. Ironically enough, prices in South Beach, Miami doubled.

In a year?

No, not in a year. But during the course of three years- That's still crazy. Prices just went through the roof. Then we found ourselves down in Puerto Rico because things just got too crazy down in South Beach.

Yeah, Puerto Rico is where you go when you make crazy money, right? That's where we got it right off some taxes. Yeah, Miami exploded, Vegas exploded, too, during the pandemic.

Everything. I think nationwide, I don't think there was a bad market. Everything was doing good. Now, the question is, who can get through the bullshit we're going through now? Because now we're on the backside of all of that. And the reality of all of the attributes that we went through during that time period are now coming back full circle. And so it's the strong they're going to survive and the backlash for people that don't really understand how to facilitate business and real estate and what happened with all the appreciated values and stuff, they're going to get a beaten, to say the least.

Yeah, because those people that were over leveraged are going to get wrecked, right?

Yeah. It's that whole game that people play. They go, I think I got one more before the market. I mean, everybody knew that it couldn't last forever. The market was already kicking ass in 2018 before the pandemic, and then it continued, and then it even got even better. There had to be a correction of some sort coming, and so we're living it right now.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how long. Do they call this a bear market right now? What do they call them?

I call it a bad market. I mean, it's a good market. You just have to know how to invest, right? It's a It's a great market for buying. It's a great market for repositioning. It's those that come into this market right now, in five years from now, we're going to have a heyday. We're going to make money hand over foot here in a few years. But those that can't survive it because they over stimulated their investments and their reach post-pandemic, those folks are going to take a beating, and they'll probably never enter back into the market ever again. Damn. We'll see We'll see how everything plays out. But there's like 2. 8 trillion dollars worth of real estate that's going to come in the market over the next two years. Holy crap. Just defaults from the low interest rates and repositioning of mortgage payments and the 5. 1 arms that were real popular back then. So it's going to be interesting to see who weather's it, who weather's the storm.

There's rumors of all these VC firms stocking up on real estate. Have you experienced that on your daily basis?

Yeah, they're out there. I This is an ad by Betterhelp.

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People focus on that stuff too much. The reality is, how many people do you really know that can compete with those guys? I mean, very few. When you look at it from a reality standpoint, it's like, I always tell people, a drowning person can't save a drowning person. Go It takes your own finances first and focus on. There's so much opportunity out there. There's opportunity within a couple of miles of your own front door, and people are all over the place, and they're worried about everybody else that's picking that stuff up. It's going to happen. There's politics that are beyond our abilities and control. We try to lobby and be the best example and part of correcting the problems that are out there, but not any one of us alone can do that. I always tell people, before you start trying to save the world and worry about all the big reefs and stuff that are going in buying this real estate, go focus on getting yourself financially corrected. That more importantly is what really needs to happen, because then with those people and their finances more well-corrected, then you can go in and make an impact.

Yeah, I I love that mindset because a lot of people try to compare themselves to other people, and they're comparing their level 100 to level one. It's like no comparison.

Yeah, there's no comparison. I told my daughter that this weekend. My daughter has been competing in gymnastics, and she was a little girl. She got started 18 months, and she She's more talented physically than my son. My son's just a harder worker than her, and he has the mindset. Well, let me take that back. He's not a harder worker than my daughter. They're both hard working. He has the mindset, and he competes like a dog. My daughter retracts, and I told her, I said, Look, stop worrying about what other people think. I said, When you go in and you master something and you become great at it, you're going to be judged. But if you worry about who's judging, you're never going to grow yourself. I said, When you can go in and mentally place yourself in a position where you stop caring what other people think, that's when you'll Excel. We were in Dallas two weeks ago, and she had the worst competition that she ever had. She got a five something on her bars, fell three times. I I can't believe it. It was the first time ever since she was a little girl, and she just got crushed.

And I told her, okay, now here's the thing. You need to stop worrying about other people. I said, you were worried about me, your uncle Rick that was there. Then every time there comes a competition and everybody else and how they were judging you, now it's you against you. You got to come back. And then, was it yesterday? What was it? What state? Today is Monday. So Saturday, she competed. It was the first competition since then. She took fifth in the all-around, which isn't her best performance. But damn, drastic change from what she did two weeks ago. I told her, Don't be worrying about anybody else. It's you against you. Who fucking cares what anybody else thinks? I said, Are they going to affect your life? Do they play any placehold in anything that you do in your life? I said, If the answer is no, don't worry about them. You focus on you. It's you against you. And that's life. If the people that can get through that, they are the ones that will hit the highest level of success because they stop worrying about everybody else's bullshit and what other people think.

Love that. A lot of mindset things you could take away from sports.

Oh, my God. We've We use sports. Our kids are spoiled to death. They don't do shit around the house. It drives me crazy. Absolutely crazy. But, man, we have used sports to drive and instill a work ethic into them. It's been a great tool.

Yeah, I was a distance runner, and I think that's one of the hardest It supports mentally, at least, because you're really locked in mentally.

Yeah, because you want to quit. Running is one of those things. I hate running. Running, I ran for... Because I was in college, I ran high school for a Because I was a wrestler. We had to run. I hate running because it's one of those things. I just did a 10K about, what was it, two years ago. I remember running in Omaha, and I remember running the first mile going, Okay, haven't run a long time. I'm going to get through this. Then I got to about the third mile. I was like, Oh, shit. I feel like I'm going to die. Then I got to about the fifth mile. I was like, Okay, I got my pace. Then it just gets a little bit easier. Then I didn't go too far beyond that on a 10K. I ran a little bit past that. What's a 10K? Six miles. Six miles, right? So a little bit past that, and then we were done. I was like, Okay, cool. I felt good about myself doing it. But they say that the hardest part of the marathon is not the end, it's the middle. Interesting.

Yeah, they call it, what is it? Runner's block? You hit the wall, something like that.

I'm going to run a full marathon, so I couldn't tell you about it. It's on my bucket list.

Yeah. The most I've done is probably 12, 13 miles, maybe half marathon. Did you run?

I did a half Ironman, and I did fast-paced walking on it. I didn't really run. I did a fast-paced walk. Really did good on the bike, and did okay on the swim. Did pretty good on the swim.

What was the toughest out of that, the swimming, the running, or the bike?

You know that the swimming was the hardest mentally because it was the first event that we did. I was a little concerned with the winds because we did it over in Cozimel. If you know that Cozimel, the island, One side of the island is 100% of the time is windy. Once I got halfway through the swim, I realized I was going to be fine. My personal mental block was that was the hardest, getting started. I thought the biking was going to be the easiest until I got on the bike. The bike, because it was in a circle, when you hit that wind, it felt like you were pedaling and you weren't going anywhere on one side of the island. We had to loop that island. I can't even remember. We had to ride 110 miles on the bike, but I can't remember how many circles around anymore because it's been so much time. But I remember riding across that stagnant wind part, that was the hardest because there was times that you sat back and you felt like your legs were going to die, you were exhausted. Then my buddy's wife, we couldn't find her because usually we were lapping her.

We ended up turning back around, going back to the opposite direction. It added time to, obviously, to what we were doing. It totally violated her. She ended up just walking on that side of the island, and then that was where she She gave up on the- Holy crap.

It was that windy.

It was that windy. Yeah, literally, bro, you're pedaling like if you're on a stationary bike. You're pedaling on a low gear, just trying to keep going, and it felt like you were standing still. It'll jack with you mentally because if you're watching, looking your sign right here and you're pedaling and you keep pedaling. It feels like you should be a block ahead over here and you're only here at this other one. Dude, it messes with your brain.

That's half the race. That's 50 miles like that. Oh, my gosh.

I think that was the hardest part and it was mental. I kept telling myself, right, Jerome, don't look at the landmarks. Don't look at the trees, because if you look at the trees, it'll jack you up. Just focus. It's like life, right? You got to just focus on your goal. Just look in front of you. Keep pedaling. Don't worry about it. You're going to get there. But you got to stop focusing on the obstacles and focus on the solution. You just got to focus on where you want to go, where you want to go. It's just like that in life and in business, too. That's one of the reasons I did it, because I suck. I suck at running and that type of stuff. It was one of those mental things where I was like, okay, let's see I can really put my mind to this and get this shit done. And that was the hardest part of the race was that.

I love it. Focus is super important. A lot of people struggle because they call it TikTok brain these days. Your phones are just destroying your focus. But I I contribute a lot of my success to focus, being able to just work and lock in for six hours without looking on my phone. I mean, not a lot of people can do that anymore.

No, I won't look at mine. I'm pretty good about... I have two phones, so my media phone, I'll lock in. I I won't even touch that thing during the day a lot of times because I'm so busy on my other phone, my work phone, my day in, day out stuff. That hasn't ever been a problem for me. I can fucking work.

I can work. You always had that in you?

I've always had that in me. I can work. Yeah, that hasn't been... I am an ADD, though. So if you get me off of work, you're interested in something else, my focus goes left. So if you get me bored where I'm sitting around or something, I'm drifting quick. I get I'm bored so easy. Dude, I'm so easy.

Even conversations sometimes I'm bored.

But, bro, do you think that's part of why the creativity of being self-employed and stuff? Do you think that's a big part of it?

I think so. A lot of our friends that are entrepreneurs have ADD. Have you noticed that? Oh, bro.

I mean, most of them do. I think that's where the creative part comes in. I was in front of a room last week, and I told them, I always ask people, I say, Hey, how many of you guys are immigrants in this room? I say, You guys have a better opportunity of becoming successful doing what I'm doing than anybody else that went through our education system because you guys haven't been taught all the bullshit, right? I tell them, and I said, maybe that's why I'm successful. I was dyslexic, ADD. I was pulled out of class half the time. Maybe that contributes to my success because I wasn't fed all the bullshit in our education system. Probably. It kept my creativity going.

Yeah. Yeah. Damon John has all of those, too. He's dyslexic, ADD, everything.

Yeah.

A lot of autism these days, too.

Yeah. I think that has to do with our nutrition, man. For sure. I really do because Bro, you don't see that shit in other countries. No.

You travel a lot, so you're speaking from experience.

Yeah, it's just, bro, there's so much shit in our food, man. Our kids are eating, and then we as parents are ingesting. That stuff has got to be fucking with our kids, man.

It has to be. I mean, 100%. Look at the fertility issues going on. Our average lifespan is decreasing in the US. For males like us, we're only living to 71 on average.

Yeah, bro, that's crazy, man.

That's super young, man.

Dude, yeah, that's 21 years away from me.

Damn, you look good for 50.

Yeah, bro. I'm going against that, man. I'm going against that green.

I love it. So am I. I'm aiming for 100. You got to be careful with these numbers. My dad would always say, I want to live to 60, growing up and that stuck with me. But he ended up I'm guessing that. It's pretty young.

Oh, bro, that's way young. My buddy Ricky did that, too. I remember when we were in our 20s, and he had such a hard upbringing. He goes, I don't care. I'm going to do it. I remember he was doing steroids and just all kinds of other stuff. I go, Bro, you're freaking crazy. And he goes, Dan, I'm going to die at 30 anyways. Then 30 just came fast. He's 52 now. So he's doing well. Okay.

I thought you were going to say he died. No, bro.

No, no. No, unfortunately, we lost his wife to ovarian cancer a few years ago. That was hard.

Cancer is everywhere, man.

Dude, it's crazy. But no, he's still with us, and we still enjoy. In fact, he's working with our team now, and it's great having him because he's so light on his feet.

I love that, man. Yeah, Everyone watching this, I would recommend a MRI. I just got a full body MRI. Did you? It could detect cancer early. Yeah. Yeah. It's super helpful. Yeah. Shout out to Pronubo. They're in LA.

Are they? Yeah. I need to do something like that.

I'm super into it because people are just guessing with their health. But I'd rather take some bloodwork or whatever. No, where I'm at.

Bloodwork, I do. I do that every six months. I go and get bloodwork every six months. Most looking like, see about cholesterol. Testosterone is important. Testosterone is important. I've never had problem. I've been able to naturally keep my testosterone normal. It was always high. Wow.

Even at 50, you have no...

Now it's normal. But it was hitting the low end of the normal about a year and a half ago. I started doing organics, like almons and just a lot of avocado. There's nutrients in our foods that we can get our testosterone levels back. I battle mentally because you want to take the testosterone replacement because it keeps you leaner, but it scares the shit out of me, man.

I'm not a fan of anything unnatural.

Yeah, because you take that shit and then your body loses its own natural mobility to produce testosterone. Bro, you're on that shit forever, right? What are the long term effects for it once you're on it?

It's so bad because people that take it and then they stop, they're screwed.

Yeah, you bitch tits and they soft on the side of the chest. Dude, I'm just like, you know what, man? I'll just sustain, man. I'll get up every morning. I'll do my 150 pushups before I get going every day. I'll do it seven days a week, religiously. I'll make my family late if I need to to make sure I get it done. But, bro, that shit just... Because otherwise, man, that other stuff scares the shit out of me. Yeah.

I mean, you never know. I mean, it's interesting seeing all this biohacking peptides and stem cells, but I just try to be as natural as possible, man. Yeah, I do, too. You know?

I do, too. We're still eating garbage. I know you're doing it without even knowing.

When you travel, it's tough to eat healthy. It's tough, but- Super tough.

I think making the right choices at home makes a big difference.

Absolutely. Getting a chef was the first hire for me when I had money because I knew no matter what I ate, it would impact me a lot.

Bro, I still need to do that. You don't have a chef yet? No. We only do it sometimes when we travel just to eat better. We need to. We had explored it at one point in time. Our kids are so busy with sports and stuff, and we were traveling so much. It didn't make sense to have them unless we had them travel with us, which we could have done, but we just hadn't. But we're pretty good about it. My wife cooks. We don't eat out during the week. I cook.

Yeah, as long as she's not overwhelmed, then you're probably chilling.

Yeah, she's overwhelmed. It's part of our household, man. I think everybody in our household at some point in time during the day gets a little overwhelmed. We live a pretty high intensity lifestyle between all of us. We all grind pretty hard.

I assume you have high expectations for your kids, right?

Yeah, and I think they have high expectations for themselves. You know what's hard about kids is that both my kids are gymnasts. My son's a two-time nationally ranked gymnast. My daughter's working to try to get to nationals this year, and I think that's what's playing on her brain so hard. But we pushed my son so hard in gymnastics because we were trying to teach him just how to win mentally, physically, that he ended up just hating the sport. He just ended up hating the sport. He went through the motions for the last couple of years. When he was going through the motions, it's when he actually did the best because he didn't care. Then we We got to a place where we felt like, we said, what's our goal? Is our goal for them to be like these super athletes, or do we just want them to be a part of our lives forever? My wife and I are real close to our kids, and I go, we're going to kill them, the morale. We're going to kill our relationship with them if we do this. We saw the other parents doing it to their kids.

He said, at some point in time, they just have to want it and they have to love it. If they don't want it and they don't love it, then we can't make them want it. We can't make them love it. They're going to land up resent us for it. We felt it with my son because I remember we were in Costa Mesa, and he had a gymnastics competition up in Costa Mesa. I remember he was expected to win, and he was doing vault. The coach brought him up to me and said, I think at this time, he was in seventh grade. His coach, Joey, comes to me and goes, Hey, because I don't know if Jacob's going to be able to compete today. I said, Why? He goes, He's falling apart on us. You might want to talk to him. He was just bawling, crying. This was in my son. My son doesn't cry, especially for stuff like that. I said, What's up, man? He goes, and then he was gasping for air. Basically, in so many words, without saying much, is basically he's felt overwhelmed with the pressure that we put upon him to do something that he didn't want to be doing.

As a parent, we had to recognize it, one, and not say, Okay, he's a puss. We're going to push him anyways. There's a level of reasonability and a threshold that you got to focus on. I called my wife, I said, Jacob is mentally crushed, man. We got to figure out what we need to do, and we need to listen to him, man. He was talking about he wanted to play football, wanted to play football. We had him in private lessons. We were sustaining Holding them off on that. Now, he's crushed it, man. This last year, he was first-team everything, first-team all-metro, first-team all-state, first-team all-district, offensive player of the year, 6A state champions, and he crushed it. But it was his choice. We tell him now, he'll come home and say, Oh, my grind hurts. Oh, I broke in his finger was sideways. He went to state, jacked up. Hey, man, you could tell us you want to stop right now. This is your choice. You could tell us right now you want to stop, and we'll be okay with it. We're not really okay with it like that, but you know what I mean.

It was like, Hey, this is you. You picked this sport. You decided you wanted to do it. You want to do it at this level. We're here to support you. But the second you tell us that you don't want to do it at this level, we're okay with it. We just love you and we want to support you. Then I go, So quit. I tell him, Quit. Then he just doesn't say anything. He goes back, and then he goes back and competes harder. My daughter is in that phase right now where she's at her breaking point with gymnastics. We've used it as a good tool, but we've already told her. Last weekend was that same type of transitional period for her where I told her, Look, now, fuck gymnastics. The competition is you against you. What are you going to do with this in life? What she needs to know is dad's my back, and dad's right. I need to do this for me, for my mental state. Because if I let her get crushed and just lose and acclimate to losing, that's a habit. It scares me. So I sit back and go, no, I can't teach her that losing is okay.

What I have to teach her is that focusing on your mental health is important and that with your mental health, you're going to win. There's so many different moving pieces to it. It's the same thing in sports that we deal with in business. It's one attribute that I just thank God that I got when I was in sports, not even knowing I got it in sports. When I got into business, even when we're going through hard times, they were hard times, and they did feel like hard times, but they didn't. And all the hard times that we still go through, they feel like hard times, but they don't. It's because I've conditioned myself through sports my entire life to get back up when things are tough. I think if we can give that to our kids and they get it without killing their morale and their self-confidence in the process, it's one of the most self-sustaining attributes they can take with them forever.

That's beautiful, man, because there's a lot of parents in that same situation you're in with their kids and they're forcing sports down their throat.

Parents want it more than the kids. We see it every day. We see it in football. Kids don't want it. Dude, it's a... I was like, no kid wants to get out there all beat to hell and go play. You have to love it, man. Because those kids by state, man, they're beat up. You have to love it. They themselves have to want it.

I think a lot of parents project that they didn't make it in sports, right? They want it for their kid.

Yeah, they use it. They use that as... They try to live through their children.

Bicariously, yeah.

Yeah, it's stupid. It's crazy, man.

It's tough, man, because sports are supposed to be a learning experience, fun, make lifelong friends, and then you turn it into a business. It gets tricky.

Yeah. It's what's going to be a good... Like they say, it takes a village to raise a child. The whole point, and we've had really bad coaches for our kids, but we've had some really good ones, man. The really good ones really make the big difference because they themselves will help you as a parent fill the gap where your kids don't listen to you. We've been blessed now that my son's in high school. He has incredible football coaches, just great guys and great attributes. They were Division One. One of his coaches was a Division One College coach. To to come back to a high school and coach at a high school level, to be with his kids and his family and give that up, those attributes he gained at the Division One level, oh, bro, the life skills that he's given my son that I try to give my son, but he doesn't listen to something dad has to say. Just like us. We listen to our parents, though.

Teenage phase is rebellious. I was rebellious with my poor mother.

I was so rebellious. I was being sarcastic. I was horrible, bro.

I think it's natural, right? You want to rebel once you're a teenager.

You don't listen to your parents. Your parents don't know nothing. And so my son, they hear you, but they don't want to listen to you. Having those little bits and pieces of mentorship in their lives from coaches, bro, priceless.

I love that, man. So freaking priceless. Are they at a public school, both of them?

No, we probably... Oh, dude, so that's a whole different story. I got to roll up, dude. Fuck. So my son in kindergarten went to a traditional Catholic school because we grew up Catholic. My wife and I both went to Catholic school growing up. In high school, I went to a public high school because the Catholic high school didn't have wrestling, so that was my ticket out into public school. In that day and age, I was like, Oh, my God, thank God. I got to go to school with all my cousins. I got to go wrestle. We homeschooled our kids. We put them in a 50/50 hybrid until my daughter started competing at the highest level in gymnastics, then we put her in full-time homeschool. We kept my son in a 50/50 Christian-based homeschool. It was like a co-op. It was awesome. It was great because we had them with us all the time. They had plenty of interaction between the 50/50 aspect. There was a lot of mentally challenged kids in a lot of those schools. I think that was probably the best attribute to that program. My son became more genuinely, not softer, but more in tune with people and just a little more sensitive to it because I wasn't me, and I still ain't like that.

I stuff to work hard, really hard to be sensitive to people's emotions and stuff. This is because I'm hard on myself, so I'm hard on everybody. But because there was kids that I think were challenged, athletically, mentally, that school catered to a lot of diversification in personalities with kids. It was great. My son went in like a rock star in high school, just getting straight A's. Sucked it, taking tests at first. He had a hard first semester. My daughter, we decided to do public school this year, and we filter in an eighth grade to public education. We were homeschooling her again. It's so fucked.

That fast?

Bro, it's so fucked. The teachers- Where is this? It's in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Just outside of Albuquerque. We live just outside of Santa Fe, and we spend our time half in Arizona, half in New Mexico. But the teachers are fucked up. There's some good teachers. There's some good teachers, but there's a lot of teachers that are really fucked up. When you call and my daughter had been homeschooled, she'd never done standardized test nor did my son. But my son has a very outgoing personality, so he was able to get a lot of the help he needed just with his own personality. My daughter's not quite like that. My daughter's a little bit more intense, but doesn't speak up with her intensity. She holds it in. More introverted. Yeah. Well, yes and no. There's times that she is very introverted, and there's times that she's very extroverted. But when it comes to that stuff, she hates being embarrassed. So going out and asking for the teacher for help, she wouldn't do it. So I said, Look, I'm going to intervene. And I started making calls to the teachers. No phone calls back. I do emails, say, Hey, because I sucked in college, and I went through all the way through college, but I just communicated with my teachers.

They sat down with me. They worked with me. I got Cs just because I think they felt sorry for me. They were like, Fuck, this kid's been here every damn day. He's signed into tutoring every single day. This guy's still getting Fs on test. I think at the end of the semester, it was like, Okay, we're just going to give this guy a C. Because he just worked his ass off. That was me. With my daughter, I thought, I told my wife, Let's just communicate with him. I'll just do with my daughter what I do with myself. No phone calls back, nothing. They don't help you. They don't work with you. They don't want to sit with you. Nothing. Wow. Yeah, It pisses you off. You want to go choke a teacher. That's nuts.

I guess from their point of view, they're being paid hourly, right? So they don't want to devote any extra time to the students.

I don't know what it is. I think it's fucking crazy. I have my education platform, and we're doing this stuff, and I didn't think I love it as much as I do, but one of the things that I love the most is seeing people succeed. It's cool, man. When they're under your influence and you help them do something they wouldn't have done without your influence, man, it's one of the most gratifying feelings in the entire world. I think that they're in the wrong profession. I know we need more teachers, but God, at what expense, man, is my question to that. I told my wife, I said, This is bullshit. I said, We're pulling her back out. I talked to my daughter about it because she was really enjoying the social aspect with the kids and stuff, but she gets plenty of social interaction. We talked to her during Christmas break and said, Hey, it's up to you. You can go back. But school was slowly demising her, man, because she was feeling stupid, like she wasn't smart. I was like, Oh, my God, you're freaking smart, man. You're super intelligent. She is. She just doesn't know how to take standardized testing.

She's never had to. Anyway, so that's my little story on education. For all you parents out there that have the ability to go out and take advantage of homeschooling your kids, freaking do it.

Homeschool or private, I think for now until the public education system can fix something.

Yeah. My son is doing fine in public school. There's parts that we appreciate with the growing up process, and there's other areas that it's lagging big time. But anyways, he's acclimated well. My daughter is going to go to public school next year for sports, so she's going to have to acclimate, and we'll just deal with it one step at a time.

Yeah, man. The right teacher has a lot of impact because you're not only affecting that person, but their family, their friends. You're probably seeing this with all the people you coach, right? Yeah. It really matters. It makes a big difference, man. I had some pretty bad ones growing up, some pretty good ones, but I had priests, man.

You know my worst teachers were priests, man. I remember seventh grade. I think those priests are going to be living in hell, bro.

Damn, they're that bad?

Oh, bro. Seventh grade was tough for me, man. When you get to a point when you're a kid, I wasn't a bad kid. I had good parents, man. I came from a good upbringing, good family. Seventh grade was so tough, man, that I was segregated out because I couldn't read right and pulled out of class and things were blamed on me, and rightfully so, at the end of my sixth grade year, me and three friends took out the little nuts out of the lockers, and we were just dumb kids, right? We used to wrap our books in paper bags, and this girl put her bag of books at the last day of school in the locker The bottom of her locker fell through, and it was like a domino effect, five or six lockers fell over. We were like little kids. We thought it was funny, just like you laughing. We're just like little kids, laughing. Well, that was the last day of school. They couldn't suspend us. The other two boys didn't come back to school. I did. It was my fault. From that point forward, everything was my fault. Everything was blamed on me.

The bathrooms got flooded. It was my fault. Then I beat up a kid that found out. I found out who did it, and I was an aggressive kid. I go, and I told him, I said, You tell him that you did it, and it wasn't me, or I'm going to kick your ass. And then he didn't, so I kicked his ass. Then I got suspended for fighting. Then he told him it was him, but then they thought that because I beat him up, I made him tell him. So then through the whole year, just never ended.

Never ended. Wow.

And so then you get to a point where you're like, Well, everything Everything's my fault anyway, so it's all going to be my fault. Who fucking cares? Like, shit, I'm going to fight. I'm going to do whatever I want to do because everything's my fault anyways. That was the attitude that I acclimated in seventh grade. Then my mom put me in a private school, and there was this teacher, her name was Sister Ada. God bless her heart, man. She sat with me and she goes, no school wanted me because they thought I was just this bad kid, and I wasn't. But she sat with me and she goes, Hey, Jerome. She goes, I know you're a good kid because God doesn't make bad kids. She goes, I want you to come in and work with me. She goes, We're going to get you through your eighth grade year. No other school wanted me. She accepted me in. Just her, just believing in me, you just don't want to let them down. That in itself will make you a good kid. That was like a turning point. I was like, See, I'm not a bad kid.

I am a good kid. I didn't deliberately go out to jack shit up and get in trouble. But it just took her believing in me my eighth grade year that me in my attitude because she just didn't accuse me of stuff. She didn't condemn me. I was able to be put in a position where I had this one woman, this one nun, that she just believed in me as a person. I just didn't want to let her down. That changes the directory of a kid's life, man. But what if I didn't have a sister? What if God didn't put her in my life? What could have happened?

Would have been a whole different life, right? Yeah.

How many kids go through that?

A lot. A lot, bro. It's The public teachers don't really give a shit about you.

It happens in the home. It happens in school. I mean, it happens more than we even know. I lived that, and I was a lucky one because I had a sister, Ada, in my life. But God only knows where I would went if I didn't. Thank God, I had the mom I did that was persistent. It kept placing me someplace because she knew better.

Yeah, she could have given up on you, right? She could have, man.

My mom could have subjected, but my mom knew I was a good kid. She's like, you know. So my mom continued to work to try to place me at the right place. And thank God she did because it made all the difference in the world.

I love that. Yeah, the right mentor and teacher is a game changer, dude. Oh, not even just for kids. I mean, for adults. Yeah. I'm sure you had one getting in a real estate Yeah.

I had a business mentor. I didn't have a real estate mentor, per se. You find your own leadership elsewhere. Google was a mentor of mine because I found a lot of of underwriting skills and training skills on Google when I really got into the big game in real estate, where I really wanted to learn the game. Brokers that confided me, they were also mentors without me knowing. I'm here for the National Multifamily Conference There's a gentleman's name is Joe Deetz. He owned the Orion Group, and he probably doesn't even know this. I just had lunch with him the other day. He was a big piece of mentorship for me because I was already doing good. I was probably worth about $20 million at the time, back in 2000. 12 or so when I met Joe. Joe challenged me, man. He sent me out to this 84-unit apartment complex. I was buying all this small retail stuff, and I was staying in this little safe haven that I felt was safe and was afraid He didn't need to push it into anything bigger. Joe challenged me leaving his office one day. He told me, he goes, Hey, go drive by this property.

He goes, This might be a good property for you. I go, What do you think it'll trade for? He goes, Probably about 7. 8 million. I was like, Okay. I was like, All right. I'm thinking this to myself. I ain't telling him that, but I'm like, All right. I'm trying to man up in front of him. I went and looked at it, and it was a beautiful property. The first thing that goes to your head is that there's no fucking way I can afford this, right? But then Joe challenged me and he goes, Well, if you really want to get into this stuff, you could be one of two people. He's like, you could be the guys that come in here and act like they're going to do something. Then I never hear from them again. Or somebody that comes back in. There's very few of them that come back in. He said, We'll find out which one you are.

Wow.

I was like, Fuck. I drove to the airport in Phoenix that day. I remember driving out there going, Jerome, don't be a puss. Stop being a pussy. Like, Man up. I looked at it and I was like, and I kept all these things go through your brain, right? Like, okay, I do this, I get money from here, I pull from this, I do that. You're putting all these... You're trying to find solutions, but you're putting all these roadblocks in front of you, and that's what people do. Sometimes it just takes somebody challenging you like that, and you pushing past your ego, and you send back going, you just take it one step at a time. That's what it was with Joe. Joe put an offer together. He explained the underwriting on it with me. I went home, and I went back through it, and then I didn't understand something, jacked it up. Joe fixed it for me and said, No, bro, that ain't the way you do it. He took the time to help me fix it. Lo and behold, six months later, I bought another property from Joe, and we're still buying stuff from Joe today.

Wow.

So you bought that one for seven, eight?

Yeah, I bought that for seven, eight. I still own that property today. It's worth a little... Well, it depends how you look at it. I did a cash out refi of $15. 5 million about three years ago during the market. Wow, so it doubled? Yeah, doubled in price. And I pulled $10 million out tax-free out of that property.

Damn, that's why I love real estate, the tax benefits.

And that came from a portfolio that I bought during the 2008 recession in Phoenix, a bunch of garbage, little garbage shit. I was buying these single family homes for 25 to $40,000. That's it? Renting them. That was it, man. I was buying them cash. I was buying them site unseen in Central Phoenix. In Phoenix at that time, they were going through... The mayor and the governor were both high and heavy on Mexican immigrants. They were like, look, if you get caught leasing to somebody that doesn't have legal residency, it's a $2,500 fine per occurrence.

Damn.

I rent it to all of them. All of them, bro. You didn't care? No, fuck that, man. I didn't care. It was fucking wrong as bullshit. If it's wrong, it's wrong, bro. Let me tell you why I didn't care. One, I had retail back home that I had built, and I was struggling through the 2008 recession just to stay alive. I was buying this real estate, Side Unseen in Phoenix, and I'd go down to the Home Depot on 36th Street in Thomas, and all these Mexican cats were in the parking lot with signs saying, Hey, they needed work. These guys wanted to work. There were some that were bullshit, guys that But most of these guys just need to work, man. I needed workers. And I needed workers for a very reasonable cost. It wasn't a day and age in that moment that we wanted to spend exponential amount of money renovating stuff. You needed to do it on the slim. We went in and I started picking these guys up and saying, Hey, I just bought a fourplex over on 44th into the 202. Come down and help me with that one. I found a handful of just really freaking great dudes, and they brought me in guys that they were like, I thought I was going to buy appliances.

They're like, Oh, no, $25. They buy me this little piece and the whole stove would work. Be a little flint, and they fix the whole stove for a $25 part. Then I started buying these houses, and then I bought one house, and I put it up to rent. It was like, Hey, how about me? Can I live here? I say, Yeah. I rent it to him. Then they go, You got one more? I got a cousin that needs a place. I was like, No, but I'll find one. I'm going to buy another one, man. I leave it to their cousin, and I start renovating. They're like, No, no, no. Just. They're like, It's good. And I was like, No, it looks like shit. I can live there. And they're like, No, no, we got it. Then they would renovate for me in lieu of exchange for rent money. And so I started putting this portfolio together, just housing Mexican immigrants, man. And I was buying all these shitty fourplexes for $40,000, $42,000 for a fourplex. And I was buying these single family homes for $28,000, $25,000. I assembled this portfolio with about $800,000 out of pocket.

I had 64 units of four plexes and 12 single family homes. And I sold that whole portfolio out for a little over $4 million back in 2015. That was the money I, 1031, exchanged into some of the bigger stuff that I got into. Damn. I ended up with a little over $3 million after taxes and stuff.

That's incredible. So you 5X on that and helped out a lot of people make a living.

A lot of people, bro. And some of those guys still work with us today. They're still doing work with us today.

That's cool, dude. Yeah.

Fuck all those bullshit rules.

Yeah, I didn't know Phoenix did that.

They've since... That was all the old McCarry days and stuff. Those days are gone, man. And I mean, now it's just, there's bullshit laws like that, man, it's just that are just wrong. What's wrong is Who's really doing wrong? Was it me doing wrong by going against their legal actions to do that, or was it what they were doing? I think their policies were fucked.

Dude, even right now, so 75 % of the workers in the fruit fields are not showing up to work anymore. So It's going to be high prices because they're scared that they're going to get deported.

My guys are worried. We still run our concrete company. I still got guys, man.

I got friends freaking out, dude. Like, really scared because they're deporting. There's a tracker It tells you like 500 per day right now.

Yeah, and there's going to be a threshold to that. I told one of my guys, he has three DUIs that works for me, and he's still driving the other day. I got mad at him. I go, Bro, you're not supposed to drive my trucks, man. You drive I told them, You don't learn, man. Here's the thing. If you're doing shit right, there's going to be a threshold. What they're trying to do is they're trying to cut out. They're trying to cut the bullshit. What they're doing right now is a little different than what we went through in Arizona. Big picture. These guys that they're sending back, they're trying to get placed back in the countries they came from because not all of them from Mexico. There's from South America, from different areas. And these are some of the worst criminals. And the country they came from don't even want them back. They won't even take them back, bro. The biggest thing is, is they're going to clean house with those that shouldn't be here and are causing trouble. I told my guys that. I said, look, guys, if you guys just put your head down, stay working, and go to work, you're not going to be messed with.

They're not going to mess with you.

That's what I'm thinking, too.

But if you're out there getting DUIs and doing dumb shit, domestic violence and doing dumb shit, you need to get deported because you don't learn, man. Okay, give you a slap on the hand, fix your stuff. But if you don't learn, fucking deport their ass. If you're not going to do shit right, fucking leave. I mean, I'm all for immigrants coming to the country. I love them. I love immigrants, man, because they come to this country for opportunity.

They work hard.

Bro, they come to this fucking country based on what this country was built on, was built on capitalism. It was built by our forefathers for free enterprise. And hate it or love it, that's what America was built on. The reality is that those people that come to this country country, come for opportunity because as bad as our politics are and as bad as some of our policies are, we're still the best country in the world when it comes to economics and capitalism. When you look at it from a real perspective, we are the land of opportunity. And just because people that are born and raised here don't want to take advantage of it, there's people that come to this country because we are still the best country to live in and create a life of entrepreneurship. I mean, Ville-amies people come here, they don't even know how to fucking speak English, and they're crushing it in nail salons They're crushing it with-Flau restaurants? Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah, restaurants. Bro, Ukrainians. I have a development that I just finished up in Kirkland, Washington. All of our trade labor now, they're not Mexicans, they're Ukrainians. And these guys freaking work, man.

They came in from their country scared with the war, and these guys just put their head down. They just go to work. Those guys need to stay here. We need those people. Facts. Those people need to be here because people born and raised here, they're too comfortable, man. We have fat homeless people on the side of the street. We're the only country with fat homeless people. We have no lack of food. No one's starving in our country, is really starving in our country. The reality is those people need to be here. We need to help them be here.

There was that whole drama with the H-1B visas. Did you see that? Yeah, I did see that. Yeah. Sounds like you side with Elon and Vivek on that one.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I get it from both perspectives. As a business owner, we want to save money, but we also want efficient workers.

Yeah, we do want efficient workers. We I don't want to save money, but there's a balance to everything. That's what's hard about everything that's happening right now is things are going to get a little worse before they get better. People only look at the worse initially, but sometimes if it's broken, sometimes you just got to devour it and then start all over again. When you devour something, as you know, if you're getting rid of poison in your company, it's going to get worse initially before it gets better. We've all dealt with it with employees where you have that one employee that's poison. It feels like when you get rid of them because usually it's the most talented person.

I know. It always works out, though.

It isn't like the shittiest person, poison in your family. Because then it's easy. It's like, Bye, get out of here. No, it's usually the person that has the most talent, and they're the poison. And then you're sitting back going, damn, man, that person makes me money, but they're fucking killing me.

Yeah, it was my top salesman, and then he was just so toxic to anyone else. And he was probably by 5X the top salesman, but I had to let him go.

Yeah, you have to. At the time when you let him go, it's painful. You feel like, damn, okay, how am I going to replace But God's good, man. God works in great ways. When you finally get rid of them, you realize what a hindrance they were on your company. Everybody else comes, too. Sometimes you even feel like you're going to lose some of the other ones because they're so influenced by this toxic person. The second they're gone, though, it's amazing. All these people were wanting them gone as much as you did. Then all of a sudden, leadership starts popping up even within your own environment from it.

How many chances do you give your employees? Are you pretty forgiving?

Oh, I'm way too forgiving, man. I'm hard in life in general, but damn, I'm really forgiving. I do it, and I tell my wife, I said, I do it for my own sanity sometimes because the amount of work it takes to train good people is tough. It It takes a long time. I try to see the good in everybody. Look, most these people are good people. They're self-destructive in so many ways. It's more of their self-destructive nature that is the bigger of their demise than it is them trying to demise my company. We haven't had a lot of jealousy or stuff like that. We've had a little bit of that where we've had to fire people. But really, it's self-destructive people within the company that are bringing alcohol to our job sites, and we tell them not to. But then they're bringing all these other guys, and they get a whole crew drinking. But they're just an alcoholic, man. You can't reason with somebody that's an abuser with substances abuse of any sort, whether it's alcohol, whether it's tobacco, whether it's drugs, amfetamines, whatever it is, man.

That happened to one of my landscapers. I was pissed, bro. They showed up drinking the whole time. I'm like, Why am I even paying you? It's unprofessional on the job, at least. Do whatever you want outside of work.

Yeah, just don't do it in my trucks. That's what I'm saying. In my customers' houses. Those are my customers. I own those customers. Those are my customers. I marketed them. That's my job. That's my customers.

It's a representation of you.

It's a representation of everything that we do.

Yeah, that's tough, man. You're up to a $600 million portfolio now, right?

Yeah, We are probably lower now the way the interest rates are. So real estate's funny. It's probably worth 300 million. It just depends. So real estate is very arbitrage on valuations because it's all predicated on cap rates. The value of it is like, if I sold it all today, I'd probably have to scrub the portfolio at a discounted price, right? Because everything's based on interest rates and valuations based on financial revenue. So right now, our revenues are the same. Everything's the same. But because cap rates went so low, values artificially got really high. And so now that interest rates are higher, cap rates have to go higher, and so values have softened. Got it. But values will come back. They always do. So Yeah. So we've been able to accumulate about a $600 million portfolio over the course of the last 28 years. I've been self-employed for 32 years, but I've been in real estate for 28.

That's impressive. Is the B your goal, the 1 B?

I don't know that that's a goal. People keep asking me You know that it isn't the money that's my goal anymore. It is when I was younger because I think that's what drives you when you don't really have much else that's driving you. My goal now is just better. I've been telling my wife, we got to buy our time back. My son graduates high school next year. My wife and I are simple people, man. My wife is super simple. God bless her heart. As long as she could be by her babies, she's cool, man. Our goals are a little different where we know our kids are going to probably go to college abroad someplace, either United States or someplace else. We just know we're going to have to travel. She asked me about 10 years ago. She goes, I just want one thing when the kids graduate. She goes, I don't want to be tight to this because every vacation we go on, we're tight to our businesses. Phones are ringing, there's problems, shit happening back home. We're dealing with tow trucks and trucks getting broken transmissions. We've never been able to enjoy a transmission.

I mean, a transmission. We've never been able to enjoy a vacation for 20 plus years. Because we enjoy them as a family, but every fucking vacation has issues at home. Got to put out a fire, right? Yeah, man. When you're self employed and you got people and you got boots on the ground, man. There's shit that has to get taken care of.

I can't vacation without working. I'm not going to lie. There's certain hours I have to spend working.

And I don't mind working. I just want to be able to work 100 % remote. And so that's what the whole personal brand is. That's why I started raising capital. That's why we got so heavy into large assets back in 2016. And that's why we scaled because I made that promise to my wife. And so for me, it's less about the dollar achievement of what our networth is and more about, okay, can I do what I'm doing now and still make what I'm making now and still play the game at the level I'm playing it now without having to be stuck in an office. To give my wife the one thing that she asked me for over the last 27 years that we've been together. If I can't give her that, why did I do all this, man? To be a slave to myself. We've been really just trying to buy back our freedom. My goal more is wrapped around that. Now, once we hit that in the next couple of years, my daughter graduates high school. They don't probably go back into the money game being that goal. Because then I'm just going to be old and I'll just be like, fuck it, man.

Let's go all in, man.

You're so close at that point.

I might as well. Kids are raised. Yeah. I'll be maybe at that time, hopefully grandpa or something. I'll be, Fuck it. Let's go freaking. Let's go all in, baby. Let's go. Then I might do it because I have no intentions of ever retiring. But right now, that's not my goal, man. My goal is freedom, flexibility, position my wife and I where we can be wherever our kids are at any given time, at any point in time without having to deal with bullshit.

Love that, man. Yeah. I don't believe in retirement also. I think that's how you age quicker, actually.

Yeah, 100 %.

Yeah. Dude, this has been awesome. I can't wait to do more with you in the future. Anything you want to close off with? You got any coaching programs or anything?

Yeah. We're coaching on accident, man. I I started a social platform to raise capital, to scale my real estate portfolio, started helping people do the same in their own real estate portfolio. And now we have 1,800 people nationwide. We're fucking crushing it. Our students are crushing it. They're kicking ass. They're buying land, they're building houses. They're buying land and building apartment complexes, and we're changing lives all over the country. So I'm proud of that. Your audience can find me just with the CliffNotes, and they can see what we're doing and see what our audience, what our community is doing. I'm proud of what we built. It's been really fun, and it's been It's been a very interesting ride over the last few years that we've created here. I love it, man.

Thank you for asking. Yeah, we'll link it below. Thanks for hopping on. Check them out, guys. We'll link it all below. See you next time. Appreciate.

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