Our guest for today is a multi-family investor who cultivates events and experiences. Founder of The Conference, The Mid-Atlantic Multifamily Western Conference. Since leaving corporate America after building a 20MM division, J has become one of the most sought-after thought leaders in the multifamily development space.
Let’s dive right in and learn from Coach Jerome Meyers on why we should attend a conference!
[00:01 – 10:03] Opening Segment
- We introduce our guest, Jerome Myers
- Jerome talks about his background
[10:04 – 22:36] Helping Those Who Have Already Spent 30k
- Jerome shares his previous experience at Events
- He talks about the industry of courses and pitches
- Discovering opportunities
[22:37 – 28:13] What Do You Do, What Don’t You Do?
- Having a network that has access to capacity
- Establishing a new network
- Willing to change your environment
[28:14 – 38:06] Who Knows You?
- Social Capital
- Have a clear framework
- The best marketing is a good product
[38:07 – 48:37] Closing Segment On Coaching
- Apex Performers
Jerome book recommendations:
Connect with Jerome! See the links below.
Final thoughts
Tweetable Quotes:
“I am a huge proponent of getting tuna in the boat and not chasing Moby Dick.” – Jerome Myers
“do you tie all of your self-images, your worth, or esteem into your accomplishments? And this comes back to getting hit in the face as an entrepreneur.” – Jerome Myers
“people think that they’re buying the result, but that money is just giving you access to their time. There’s a whole nother component called work that most people don’t understand” – Jerome Myers
“You pay your coach so you don’t have to give up equity in your company.” – Jerome Myers
Resources Mentioned:
Go to his LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram pages to connect with Jerome. Visit his Website, YouTube, and Podcast.
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Jerome Myers
Anthony Vicino: [00:00:15] Hello and welcome to Multifamily Investing Made Simple, the podcast, it’s all about taking the complexity out of real estate investing so that you can take action today.
Anthony Vicino: [00:00:22] And today we are joined by a legend, a guy who has been, I think, probably on our shows more than anybody else, any other guest back when we did the Multifamily Weekly Roundtable, this podcast which you’re listening to now, this guy is we just can’t get enough of them. So welcome back to the show.
Jerome Myers: [00:00:43] The one the only Jerome Myers, my favorite co-host. And I do mean that from the bottom of my heart. So happy to be with you guys again.
Dan Kreuger: [00:00:53] Thanks for coming back. And we’re going to get you a punch card or something. So you get like a free sub sandwich, like your fifth podcast. I don’t know where I’m going to get the sandwich, but I’ll send you something.
Jerome Myers: [00:01:04] Well, and so that’s where I was going to go. I’m not coming to where you guys live until after me. And that cut-off is probably all the way to code negative something at some point. And I might as well go to Alaska.
Anthony Vicino: [00:01:22] From February 1st through February 15th, we didn’t have a single day that got above zero degrees for 15 days straight. We were subzero. So that’s how they make us up here. They make us crazy, but still out there to property. So getting it done, you know, getting deals done, you don’t feel the same under ten degrees.
Dan Kreuger: [00:01:41] It all feels the same.
Jerome Myers: [00:01:42] I don’t know what kind of clothes you put on to survive that, but God bless you both men.
Anthony Vicino: [00:01:49] It’s all about the layers. It’s all about the layers, like onions and ogres. You’ve got to have layers. So let’s get real estate. Let’s talk about something else. That what are you cooking with recently? What’s what do you what are you working on?
Jerome Myers: [00:02:03] The conference, coffee all week conference and you know, for people who don’t know what the conference is or have been sleeping on Iraq, the mid-Atlantic Multifamily Western Conference is happening March 19th through the 21st. We’re going to start at 6:00 p.m. on Friday. We’re going to go all day Saturday, literally 7:00 to like 10:00, and then we’re going to come back Sunday and wrap it up.
Jerome Myers: [00:02:27] And at 1:00, I want all of the coolest people who are in the apartment of us in space to come to hang out with us because this is a no-pitch affair. Right. Nobody is going to try to get you to run to the back of the room and spend thirty thousand dollars on the program.
Jerome Myers: [00:02:43] And the goal here is just to have people share from their heart and let people who are actually interested or curious about the business get some real exposure to how it happens and the things that people overcome in order to be in the business. And this isn’t just a bunch of success stories. There’s no chest-beating about assets under management or door count because, at the end of the day, I don’t really think any of that matters. I think what matters is people are making progress and actually achieving whatever their plan is and getting closer to whatever their goals are. And it’s not for anybody to decide whether they’re worthy or not. And I just believe that you can learn from everybody, especially if they’ve got a nice, pure, clean heart. However, you want to characterize that.
Dan Kreuger: [00:03:26] That’s awesome. Now, for people who haven’t been to a conference before, I highly suggested it could be tough if you’re not the most social person out there. But Anthony, I met at a conference, and so I can’t even quantify the amount of value they’re putting in, you know, two days over a weekend turned into from that. So it’s one of the biggest or one of the most efficient ways to maximize your time in this business you’re going to walk out of. There was something my partner, you might just find a new lender or a new connection for deals. You might learn something.
Anthony Vicino: [00:03:59] There are a million dollars that you could leave with some motivation or inspiration. Those are always powerful sources as well. Are you guys are doing you guys are going virtual to deal with the covid and everything. How is that going to be different than in years past where it might have been in person? Like what can somebody look forward to?
Jerome Myers: [00:04:19] Yeah, so we’ve got three rooms, one with the presenters.
Jerome Myers: [00:04:22] So, you know, if you buy a VIP ticket, you don’t have to watch it live and interact with folks in the chat. You can just go to what I call the lobby and hang out and play hooky in the hallways like a lot of people do at conferences because they’re going to the conference just to network. And so we’re using a platform called Raimo, and it’s really set up for networking.
Jerome Myers: [00:04:42] Basically, there’s a bunch of tables spread around the room and you get to click on the seat that you want to sit and then you go sit at that table, and then the videos of the people who are also sitting at that table or pop up on your computer and you can have those conversations. And if you don’t like the conversation, you can’t leave the table to go to another. And we’ve got to set up where there’s like six chairs, somehow four others have two.
Jerome Myers: [00:05:06] So you can have that one on one conversation and nobody else can listen. And if you’re trying to build relationships and so we’ve got a room for VIP, we got a room for general admission, that opportunity to network is going to be a lot shorter or more condensed because they didn’t buy the recordings of the talks. And so we want to push as many of those folks as possible into the room where the presenters are presenting so that they can get some interaction with the people who are actually in the audience. Everybody who is presenting is presenting live. I think that if the people who are attending the conference need to come to live, you should come to be a presenter. And the whole concept here is really just to get some great people in the same place. You know, they’re serious because they’re spending money. It’s not like going to the local area where people are just showing up and having fun and there’s no real cost of admission. So there’s no real commitment. And I mean, it’s less than two hundred dollars whether you buy tickets a day of or you buy them. Now we’re raising the tickets a dollar a day to forget the people who can’t make a decision. If you know that you’re going to come to buy the ticket. If you don’t, then you could keep waiting. But it’s going to cost you more. And this goes into getting off that hump and actually making progress. Right. I think a lot of people out there are just kind of like the idea of being an investor, but they don’t actually want to take the steps to become an investor. And so we’re proud of you along. We want you to actually make the step. We want you to make that adjustment because we believe that’s the only way you get closer to the life that you actually want to live on the other side.
Dan Kreuger: [00:06:41] I think one of the best ways to get yourself out of that, that that where you’re getting stuck in that place. We love the idea of something we never actually do. It is to surround yourself with people who are doing it because you instantly feel like, oh, man, I got a level up. I’ve been talking a big game, but I haven’t actually done anything. So going to a conference like this is a great way to expedite that. That’s huge. Who? Well, you can have to speak at the sense and.
Jerome Myers: [00:07:06] I feel bad when I started talking about this because I’m bringing over 25 of my wealthy family and best friends to this thing. You know, we’ll start with the guy who has got the biggest personal portfolio that I know of anybody, Pankaj Sharma. He’s got two thousand dollars of his own. My only partner in it is his dad, and he’s a one percent partner. And most people who talk about two thousand dollars are syndicators and them only a small percentage of it. And then I’ll go to the other end of the spectrum, which I hold. And she’s speaking. She did a ten thirty-one out of single-family into a quad. And so just talking about that transition, because I believe that she’s far enough along where there are some people who are thinking about it and they can’t count to one hundred, but four seems reasonable for them. So what were the challenges? How did she overcome it? Because buying a deal is buying the deal. Right. And then we’ve got everybody in between those two.
Jerome Myers: [00:08:03] And, you know, as the is coming and I don’t know if you guys know this, but she weighs over 30 million dollars a year and those are pressurizing.
Jerome Myers: [00:08:16] Who is it? She does. She didn’t even have a website. That’s the size. And I hate that. I kind of mess it out like it’s r e i f e s. But like, she was is just kind of a hobby. It’s crazy.
Jerome Myers: [00:08:36] And she just was able to raise massive amounts of money when I was talking to her was like, you realize you’ve raised more money than people who proclaim to do this full time and have been doing this for years. And she said, yes, I’m very fortunate. And all she’s she’s Jewish. And so she gave all credit to God because that’s what they do every time you praise them for something that they did that was exceptional. You know why this is coming. Speaking of folks, are, you know, coming? He’s not coming to talk about cost segregation. He’s coming to talk about winning. Only then he’s taught me so much about the platform. And I think he could just come in and share with folks. And I’m essentially bringing people in who are talking about things where they’re really good, but they don’t have a program to sell in the back end because I don’t want people to feel the pressure of buying something now if they choose to go do something with the information. Amazing. But I don’t want somebody to feel like they’re getting pitched because I remember going to an event and paying I don’t remember maybe three hundred and fifty dollars to sit in a chair and one person after another game to pitch from stage. And they wanted me to run to the back of the room with my credit card and pull it out and pay them for their next program. That was going to solve all of my problems. And in the end, when I looked at each one of them, they were each incomplete solution for the problem that most people were trying to solve, because you have to buy the next product after that, too.
Dan Kreuger: [00:10:01] It’s all about the one after that and after that.
Jerome Myers: [00:10:04] And then eventually you’re thirty thousand dollars in and you still don’t know how to do it, though. And that’s part of my problem with the industry. It’s that we’re not actually focusing on helping people get those. We’re focusing on selling them the next product. And it’s great if your business is to sell the next product. But for me, I want an outcome to be either you decide that this isn’t for you and you didn’t buy a used Mercedes Benz. Like the thirty thousand dollar program, and you don’t actually have the car or you figure out that this is what you want to do and you’ve got a plan that you can actually execute against that’s going to get you to the place that you want to be. I am a huge proponent of getting tuna in the boat and not chasing Moby Dick. And I think there’s a ton of people out there trying to catch one hundred UNTIL and they’ve never done anything entrepreneurial. Real estate, they own a single-family home at best, and they think they’re going to go take down the ten million dollar property. I don’t know why people believe that it’s not real. And I only can think of one person who did anything remotely close. And I just haven’t dug into that story enough to actually see what the real story is about that. And so I believe Greencard’s own personal life. Well, so but I don’t because Grant tells you that you can’t do it and that you just need to give him your money.
Dan Kreuger: [00:11:32] So, yeah, that’s what he said after he launched a fund before he had a fund. He said anything under whatever number is ridiculous.
Anthony Vicino: [00:11:39] All about the product that you’re selling.
Jerome Myers: [00:11:42] It’s all convenient, right. I make the market look like what I want them to look like. I, I appreciate Grant telling people that they should get into space because for most people they should and they’re not actually cut out to be operators.
Jerome Myers: [00:11:56] And this desire to create generational wealth and the way that their work ethic and tenacity are set up are not equal to you. And so. That may offend some of your listeners and I’m sorry guys, but it’s the way I feel, I think a lot of people disrespect the craft.
Jerome Myers: [00:12:16] We were talking before we started recording about you guys going out in subzero temperatures to tour properties. There are not many people who are excited about doing anything close to that. They wanted to be all the temperatures. Right. They got the impression that you always make money and that there won’t be any challenges along the way. And they’re going to fold when they get hit in the mouth with something that they didn’t expect, regardless of how good their plan was. And I I just know these things to be a fact because, well, I’ve been hit in the mouth and every operator that I talk to as well.
Dan Kreuger: [00:12:50] Mm-hmm. And I think you’re right. The vast majority of people don’t have the time-the personality and work ethic to really do all the things that they think they want to do. But there’s probably somewhere in between where they could fit in. Right. They don’t necessarily need to be the guy running the show, the partner with people do a joint venture with somebody, share some of the risk and responsibilities, be a passive investor. And syndication is a bunch of different ways to get exposure here. You don’t all have to be the one out raising the capital, running the deal, getting the dad, finding the properties, doing all that stuff because it’s a lot of work and you have to be able to get punched in the mouth and just deal with it and keep moving.
Jerome Myers: [00:13:26] So, yeah, I mean, there’s times where you’re going to wake up and you want to go back to bed and you won’t be able to because you’ve got to go do the thing right. And then there will be days where you can’t go back to bed. But the fact of the matter is and you know, I don’t want to hammer the point too much, but this is hard. You owning this business is hard. And anybody who tells you that you can just go buy 250 and deal actually sat in a webinar where this happened. You can just go buy two hundred and fifty units or whatever the deal is after you back out the acquisition fee.
Jerome Myers: [00:14:00] So that replaces your income and all you have to do is pay me fifty thousand dollars and I can show you how to do it. They’re selling you snake oil and it’s people who actually want to see folks do deals, educators, content creators like the three of us are.
Jerome Myers: [00:14:23] They think they do us a disservice, and I’m really frustrated with that as well, and I made my little rant on LinkedIn the other day talking about, you know, if I change my messages to because somebody told me on Facebook right there, like, nobody wants to hear about hard work and struggles and the things you have to overcome to get into space. So that’s why you have it.
Jerome Myers: [00:14:47] So three hundred tickets like you want to right now and said, yeah, but the people who have bought are genuine people who actually are going to get what they need to move forward, whether it’s continuing down this path or not. Right. I just want people to have a genuine experience where they actually get real information instead of marketing because anybody can say you’re going to get rich.
Dan Kreuger: [00:15:12] Yeah, I’m glad you present this in an honest way because there are so many people that presented as easy and all you have to do is give me two grand, five grand, 30 grand, 50 grand, whatever it is. And it’s like the other side. But ask yourself if this person is doing so well, doing the thing that they’re trying to teach you how to do, why are they spending all the time trying to sell courses?
Dan Kreuger: [00:15:31] Right. Well, that doesn’t reconcile to me.
Jerome Myers: [00:15:35] I’ve actually got I got a D.M. that I mailed about one day and the guy was like, drome. I’m not sure how you do deals because you spend so much time producing content. And I mean, he has no idea what my back end looks like. Right.
Jerome Myers: [00:15:53] But the fact of the matter is, for me, being known has to get bills brought to me.
Jerome Myers: [00:16:00] That’s part of your job, that it’s part of my job to be the face as part of my job, to be recognized as part of my job, to get opportunities coming out with folks like you who have reached in a community who may hear this and this may resonate with them. And then they show up and maybe they get inspired a conference and then they go do the thing to get that deal and they find out that the deal is bigger than what they expected. But what we’re going to tell them at the conference is if you have the knowledge and you can actually find a deal that you need to bring that deal to somebody who has experience because now you’re valuable to the people with experience of capital. And so now that deal comes back to us and me producing put into conference together or me producing the content or me coming to hang out with you guys and sharing this and somebody picking up.
Jerome Myers: [00:16:45] You can’t draw and you can’t connect the dots directly to the conversation, a relationship that we’ve built, but then the deal showed up and there’s no way that I could have done it any other way. But anyway, that’s just to say, like I think the people are raising price points, the big price point, because they wanted to filter out certain people.
Jerome Myers: [00:17:09] I’ll never forget having a conversation with a guy who spent seventy-five thousand dollars on education. And he said that was the only thing that was going to get my attention, me putting that much money into something. And it made me slow down on my day job so that I would actually focus on the thing that I was doing.
Anthony Vicino: [00:17:25] I don’t need to do that, but, you know, for some people and some people do, right, like it’s this idea that you have to put the skin in the game to have you have to have something at risk. If you don’t have anything that you could lose and you can spend, then there’s nothing stopping you from spinning your wheels indefinitely in that analysis paralysis mode where you’re still on the fence, you want to do this thing. But there’s really no big kick in the ass to go out there and hunt for your meat. Right. Like, you know, like I can just go to the refrigerator. But as soon as you get rid of that refrigerator, well, now you need to start getting out there and hunting for sure.
Jerome Myers: [00:18:02] And just elevate that one more point. I believe that. There are a bunch of people who aren’t actually they don’t have the capacity to do the deal, and so they’ll go and they’ll swipe their credit card. I think this will keep coming up.
Jerome Myers: [00:18:19] Those swipe their credit card because they got all this emotion and adrenaline going and then they realize that, well, they did that. And now they don’t have money for bonus money. They don’t have money for due diligence to do the deal. And they don’t have any money to do the deal.
Jerome Myers: [00:18:37] And we put the cart before the horse.
Jerome Myers: [00:18:40] But, you know, they’ve committed because they swipe the credit card to get the thing. And the thing isn’t the deal. The thing was education so that they could go spend more money to do the deal, but nobody connects those dots. And so the people end up in an uncomfortable situation. And so my whole goal, because I’m tired of people coming to me after they go spend the thirty thousand dollars and ask me to help them, is to get in front of them and give them the exposure so that we don’t end up in a space where people are trying to find their way through.
Jerome Myers: [00:19:16] I really want them to have the exposure, have the knowledge, compare it right. Don’t you don’t have to believe what we’re telling you guys? Like you can go still chase the wave of syndication and all of the educators out there who are telling you you can do it and it’s just your limiting beliefs that are in the way. But just ask the same questions that we’re posing to you right now them and see if they have a great answer for that. I’m pretty sure the answer’s going to be no.
Anthony Vicino: [00:19:47] This reminds me of when I was in high school, I started snowboarding and you’d go out to the hill and there would always be this crew of new skiers and snowboarders decked out in the nicest mint gear and they’ve never written before. And they’d be falling all over the place. And they would go out. They would spend thousands of dollars on all the nice gear before they’d ever ridden. They’d go ride and realize it kinda sucks. This is hard. And then they would never write again. So now they’re selling all their stuff. And I remember when I was in high school, I had to make a decision between upgrading my kit and getting nicer gear or affording the season pass to the Hill. And I was like well past. I was like, take the pass because I don’t need the gear. I can write on whatever, but if I don’t have the Hill then I can’t do it. And so this just reminds me, like, if you if you’re spending all of your money on the education stuff and then you have nothing left over to actually take action, that that’s maybe not the best plan. When you could have just gone out there and started small, like maybe it wasn’t a hundred units, maybe it was just a five-unit or four-unit like Yevhen. And for us, as we talk about this all the time, we’re dealing agnostic. We’re not in that crowd of people who say bigger, bigger, bigger. Like we just closed last week on, what, nine units down like that. We’re not too proud to bend over and pick up the little things when they make sense, is a really great unit. That is a really good unit. Yeah. And there’s so much there’s just so much like pride and ego tied up into this for people where they’re like, oh, nothing smaller than one hundred will do. And like you mentioned it before, AJ, like generally if you’re very first deal is going to be over one hundred units, your percentage of ownership is minuscule, minuscule, like us, practically nothing.
Jerome Myers: [00:21:42] I just talked to a guy today and he was explaining to me how somebody brought a deal and he said, yeah, we got fifty-one percent of that thing and this was the educator taking fifty-one percent of a deal from us. Do that. Why?
Anthony Vicino: [00:21:59] It’s a great racket for educators. They get there, they get the puppies out there, finding them the deals and bringing it to them and then they get their cut. They don’t have to do much. They already have their networks. And so it’s a racket.
Anthony Vicino: [00:22:10] So I’m curious, Jay, because you’re a coach, too. So, like, what is it what are those questions that people need to be asking or like evaluating in themselves before they get to that point of doling out money and making sure that they’re getting into the bed with the right coach?
Jerome Myers: [00:22:26] Yeah, hopefully they don’t get in bed. But the number one question is what do you do and what don’t you do?
Jerome Myers: [00:22:37] For example, if you don’t have a network that has access to capital or what I call capacity. Right. Then the first thing you’re well, one of the first things that you’re going to have to start doing is establishing a new network. Right. Drake Song. No New Friends is not your friend right now. You need to go make new friends. And so that’s why I go to the conferences that are in these different meet-ups. And you can basically attend one anywhere in the country at this point like all of those things are necessary because you’ve got to get around people who are interested in doing the same thing you’re doing. I remember when I got started, I realized that the day that I walked out of corporate America and started knocking on the banks of doors and they told me that I didn’t have any experience and I needed a partner with somebody that had experienced that I was no better off than sophomore year when I was a student, somebody to run. And we didn’t know the guy that owned the apartment complex. My network hadn’t gotten any better. Right. Not any better when it comes to getting into my first deal. And that is just baffling for me. Folks think that they can just look old, never look at Craxi and get their deal done. But they don’t know anybody who has experience. They know.
Anthony Vicino: [00:23:54] No, no. You start with your first tier, your friends, and your family. They have the money.
Jerome Myers: [00:23:58] Well, that’s true for some people. Well, my dad was a soldier and my mom stayed home.
Jerome Myers: [00:24:09] My dad’s not going to be a partner in any of my bills. Right. I don’t have any cousins or anything that I would go ask for money either, and so I started from zero, right?
Jerome Myers: [00:24:22] And I had to go talk to new people in order to establish a network. Now, the majority of people I talk to are accredited investors, right. But three years ago, four years ago, I probably knew one or two. And if you aren’t willing to change your environment, I mean, this is literally here the network is your net worth. Because they have the resources that most folks don’t have and you have to be doing, I think, pretty well for yourself too in order to be successful.
Jerome Myers: [00:24:57] I don’t think real estate supports man’s game, although a lot of people like to tell you no money, no credit, no experience, no nothing. And you can become a millionaire overnight. It’s just not an I haven’t seen anybody be successful at that. I’ve seen the educator selling the program to be successful at that, but I haven’t seen people actually follow that path of being successful.
Dan Kreuger: [00:25:18] One hundred percent. I think it said something, though, that’s really important. I think a lot of people miss this game. And I think that’s one of the things that lead people to fall into the trap of trying to, you know, just spend money on courses to try to get ahead is that you can’t fast track the building of the network. It takes years to do and you can get a mentor to help you get connected to people. But even then, it’s still going to take a long time for you to form connections with people. And it just you got to put in the reps and it usually takes a lot of time. Some people are blessed with a really great network of people right off the bat that they’re kind of born into. But if you’re not if you’re like me and like Jerome, from the sounds of it and Anthony, you have to get out of your immediate circle of people and meet a whole bunch of new people to be surrounded by the people that are going to help bring you up to where you’re trying to go. So, you know, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on a course like you really can’t expedite that. You know you can help. You can help. You can go to conferences and have a mentor to help introduce you to people. But it still takes a lot of time, no matter how much money you spend.
Anthony Vicino: [00:26:21] So when I was young, I heard all the time people were always talking about, you got to start investing when you’re young. The sooner that you start investing, the better. And people would always talk about this in terms of money and compounding interest. And that makes a lot of sense to me. But I don’t remember anybody taking me aside and saying and maybe they did and it was totally possible. I just was ignoring it. I wasn’t ready to receive the message, but I wish somebody had gotten it into my head that that applies that concept of investing early. It applies to your social capital, into your net worth as well. So if you put the time in if you’re only twenty-two right now, you don’t have much money. Hey man, just get out there and start educating, start hustling and start investing in the relationships around you. Because in 10, 15 years, if you’ve been consistently investing in those relationships, they are going to pay massive dividends in ways that you can’t calculate. It doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet. It’s written on karma. It’s written on social capital, however, you want to conceptualize it. But it’s the defining factor of how far and fast you can go in this business is who you’re able to work with and through.
Dan Kreuger: [00:27:28] Hundred percent, I think that you probably heard it about a million times when you’re younger, but you blew it off as a cliche. It’s like it’s all about who you know like you probably heard that a million and a half times, but you didn’t really interpret it and I didn’t either. I learned this year into my first entrepreneurial endeavor before I even got to real estate. Luckily, by the time I started real estate, I already knew this. But it took me probably four years of trying to run a business before I realized that I literally have to walk outside and talk to people. I can’t sit behind a computer and do all the stuff online. I’ve got to actually get out of my comfort zone and try to meet as many people as I possibly can. So it’s one of those things. I think it’s probably just brushed off as a cliche by people, but it legit is probably one of the biggest things that could have a positive impact on your future.
Anthony Vicino: [00:28:14] Yeah, and to add into that, because, you know, it’s who you know. But Jarome, in the last couple of years, you’ve been doing a lot of work about building your brand and profile because it’s also about who knows, you write like that. It’s one thing and then who you know. Exactly. So you have to be putting yourself out there so that these people are aware that you exist because it doesn’t matter if I know who Bill Clinton is and Bill Clinton doesn’t know who I am. I don’t know why I pulled him out. I don’t know how helpful he’s going to be in my life. But he’s the first person that came to mind. So it tells you in my head that everyone knows him. So he did something, right? Exactly.
Jerome Myers: [00:28:50] We’re not going down the political rabbit. Yeah, right away. I have so many things I could go. I’m not going to tell. But what I will do is I’ll try to answer the question that you asked me before I went on my rant. So the questions that you need to ask a chosen one, what are you actually providing? Like what do you do or are you just going to teach me how to analyze the deal? Are you going to teach me how to build a brand so that people know, like, and trust me, are you going to introduce me to your network? Are you going to teach me how to raise money?
Jerome Myers: [00:29:23] What do you do right?
Jerome Myers: [00:29:25] And what are you here for? You know, we talk in our program. We talk about the red pill, this self-image, relationships, work, health, prosperity, and significance. And so anything in those is fair game, right?
Jerome Myers: [00:29:39] We feel like we’ve experienced all of when we figured out how to give money away. Well, figured out how to volunteer really well from a time perspective. We’ve learned how to make really good money, both through investing and as corporate employees, we’ve figured out how we learn how to lose weight. We can help other people with diets, meditation, mental health. We’ve figured out how to get promoted really fast. When we had jobs, we figured out how to correct relationships. I think most people who are performing at a high level only have folks coming, two of them, to get things. It’s not a mutual benefit. Right. And if you can’t have a relationship that’s mutually beneficial, then it’s a hole in your bucket and it will continue to drain from you until there is no more. And if there’s nothing filling up your bucket, which is a place that I found myself in, then you end up in a spot where you’re just depleted. And so we spend a lot of time around relationships and we spend a lot of time around self-image, which for me is just can you keep your promises to yourself? And do you tie all of your self-images, your worth, or esteem into your accomplishments? And this comes back to getting hit in the face as an entrepreneur.
Jerome Myers: [00:30:48] Like there’s going to be things that you want to do, things you find, and they’re not going to happen on your timeline. And if all of your self-esteem is wrapped up in that, then you’re going to be in a really miserable place and probably going to prevent you from making more progress in the future. And so if they don’t have a clear framework on what they’re working about or if they’re going to just send you a spreadsheet and say, hey, you need to call temp workers this week meeting new people and do this thing, and they’re going to get on a call and ask you that, then just know that that’s what you’re going to get. I just struggle when people say, hey, Michael should be four years. Forty thousand dollars.
Jerome Myers: [00:31:27] You pay me that upfront and then I’ll make forty-five minutes a week for you and then we should be good. You’ll get what you want at the end of the day. And people think that they’re buying the result, but that money is just giving you access to their time. There’s a whole nother component called work that most people don’t understand what they think about the education and the coaching as the combined go result. Not what’s happening.
Dan Kreuger: [00:31:58] I think something else it’s an important task as well of coaches because I come from a coaching background as well. That was my business before I got into real estate. It was on the nutrition side of things. But still, something that I thought was very important and still think is important is, you know, to figure out, and you kind of alluded to this, but I just kind of want to really identify it for people who are listening is to figure out if the coach is offering a customized solution for you personally or if it is a cookie-cutter, kind of like the spreadsheet you mentioned. Is it just a cookie-cutter framework that you give to every single person? That’s a great deal for the coach because it just doesn’t require any time on their part. But you don’t get nearly as much value as actually getting a real expert’s time on a regular basis where they’re talking to you about your unique situation, your goals, your struggles. Like that’s the value right there. The time, you know, to your point room. That’s a really key thing to try to figure out, because if you’re getting just some cookie-cutter stuff, I mean, you’ve got Google for that, right? You don’t really need to pay some of the top dollars.
Jerome Myers: [00:33:01] They probably have a book that you carry. Twenty bucks.
Anthony Vicino: [00:33:05] Yeah, I think I had I had you know, last year I was looking for a performance coach and I was interviewing a bunch of people. And this one guy, in particular, I’m not going to say his name, but he was very highly recommended in the real estate space by some people that I look at these guys, I respect them. And I sat down with them. And first, he was like five minutes late to our meeting, which Dan will tell you, like, that’s a surefire way to, like, get on my cranky list is if you show up late, don’t even bother showing off. I’m looking at paying you tons of tons of money. You show up on time, please. And we sat down to have a conversation and I was just like, OK, so tell me about what you do and how you work.
Anthony Vicino: [00:33:43] And it’s like, well, tell me what you want to work on. And I was like.
Anthony Vicino: [00:33:47] Ok, I started telling him a little bit more, and all he was really trying to do was get me to coach me and I was like, I was like, OK, but I don’t know what value you bring in this equation. Like, what am I paying for? He is like, oh, you get me for one hour, twice a week, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, yeah, but what exactly am I getting? Like what are you doing here? Give me something here. Yeah. And it was the vaguest thing. I was like, oh, my people are paying for this. But people swore by. And what it comes down to is in the coaching world, if what you’re looking for is just sheer accountability and somebody to sit across from you and throw money at them, like there are plenty of coaches out there that’ll do that for you. But if you want somebody that’s actually going to like, you know, stand with you and stare down the invading hordes and be like, here’s how we’re going to do it, let’s do it together, let’s go. Like, that’s a different type of person and it takes a little bit of doing to find them.
Jerome Myers: [00:34:40] Well, that and they’re probably not the best market because they’re actually doing the thing. They’re busy and that hard. I and I swear to you guys, up until about a year and a half ago, I was like, marketing and branding are stupid. Like, is the product good? If the product is good, it will take care of itself. The best marketing is a good product, right?
Jerome Myers: [00:35:07] Yeah, but time after time and it goes back to why I’m trying to get on the front end of these experiences that are people are having with, you know, these mentorship programs that aren’t delivering the results that they want time after time.
Jerome Myers: [00:35:20] What I find out is that the person who has the best marketing is the person who’s getting not only paid but the premium pricing.
Jerome Myers: [00:35:30] Right, and because people are just saying, oh, well, he’s well recommended and well, really what it is, is groupthink so this person is using them. And so then if I use them, then I’m going to get the same results. Even if I don’t have the same capacity, I don’t have the same network and all of the other things that actually go into delivering the result. And you talked about staring down it’s like we talk about being a tour guide instead of a travel agent. There are a whole lot of travel agents out there. You’re going to ask you a bunch of questions and they’re going to type of thing and they’re going to say, OK, well, here’s where you should go and you’re on the other end of it right away. Well, what is anybody going to come at least for water out while I’m walking through the desert? No, you’re out of your is a desert. You’re on your own. But thanks for spending that money. I, I it doesn’t connect. Could not.
Anthony Vicino: [00:36:25] There’s something else at play here too, which is when you go stay with a coach or program and it doesn’t really work and you know that. And you feel bad about that. You feel embarrassed about that, you’re probably not going to go out there and vocalize that too loudly. Like you’re probably just going to take your lumps and go sit quietly in the corner. If somebody asks you, you’re going back. Oh, yeah. No, it was great. It was great because you don’t want to be the idiot who, like everybody else it worked for, but you it didn’t work for. And so there’s a self-fulfilling thing that once you’ve committed some money and you put your time and energy into it, now you’re tied to the results. And that’s problematic. There’s a bunch of programs out there that I can point to where that’s happening over and over and over.
Jerome Myers: [00:37:07] Yeah, so you are talking about the person I thought you were talking about from a coaching perspective, but in it, they ask the same questions that you were talking about. And I just want the answer to come from within you. But there’s a piece of this that I think should be consultative. I think there should be some guidance. I think they should be able to add to the dialogue instead of you just talking to yourself and you’ve got a person asking you questions. Yep. You are really frustrating.
Anthony Vicino: [00:37:38] You market yourself as the preeminent authority on dream realization of dream actualization, catching your dreams. Right. And one of the things I want to ask you because. It is really hard to figure out what your dream is for a lot of people, like as you sit down and you maybe bought the American dream about this dream. You see the Kardashians dream. And then when you strip all that way and you’re like, OK, what what do I want? Like, how do you help somebody get to that place? Because it’s hard.
Jerome Myers: [00:38:07] Yeah. So in general, I don’t want to talk to people who don’t know what they want. I’m the person that helps the person figure out how to get what they want and I help them get clear on why they want what they say they want because we need the Y to be bigger than all the Y, not because of a bunch of Y. Not so, Paula, but if our Y is big enough, then we’ll overcome that while we’re going through the how to get the what. And so if somebody doesn’t know what they want, it’s really hard for them to rationalize the fee to work with me. And that’s intentional. When I was cheaper and working with people who I wasn’t really excited about the big, hairy, audacious goal that they had because it wasn’t big and hairy and it probably wasn’t even audacious, then I was spending my time watching people just kind of play at it. When a person gets that conviction and it haunts them, it’s not just them out of their sleep and they feel like that they’ve got to make progress and they’re spinning their wheels. They need to get traction and they just need somebody to help them push the car that they started fixing. But it’s not all together and they’re not scared to admit that, hey, there’s something broken, I need to fix it. Like that’s when the game changes. That’s when people actually start to make a real impact. The difference in their life,
Anthony Vicino: [00:39:34] It’s really I want to I don’t want to say fun. I want to use a bigger word than fun. It’s. Impactful when you’re around people who have big dreams and who are not afraid to do what’s necessary for the pursuit of that dream, like it opens the door for you in many ways to say, hey, you can dream big, too. You can come along with me. My dream is my dream. You can have your dream and it can be big and crazy. But when you’re pointing out like a lot of people, they’re big, hairy, audacious goals and dreams. They’re really not all that big and scary and audacious at the end. It’s like, don’t be afraid to dream just a bit bigger.
Jerome Myers: [00:40:14] Yeah. And I’m not here to tell anybody what their dreams should be or how aggressive or not aggressive they should be. I just know what excites me. When Logan reached out and said, hey, I did a hundred million dollars over the past three years, I want to do it in one and I want help. Is that because most people aren’t willing to try to figure out how to do all the production from three years or one, whether it’s a hundred million or whether it’s a hundred thousand, it doesn’t really matter. The fact of the matter is, is that you’ve got to go to a different level. You’ve got to create systems that you haven’t had before. You’ve got to create new networks. You’ve got to develop new relationships and all of those things. Are really difficult for one person to do when they’re thinking about it by themselves, especially if they’re the top performer and their peer group, and that’s who I spend the most time with. I call them apex performers. They look to their left and the right. They don’t have anybody who really understands what they’re going through that they spend time with. And because of that, they just try to do it all alone. And what they find is their strategy is faulty. They don’t have the support that they need in order to be successful. And so they end up in this place where they get frustrated and eventually they give up because they’re tired.
Anthony Vicino: [00:41:34] It’s exhausting to go it alone. In the dark, there’s a lot of balls that need to be picked up, a lot of buckets of water that need to be carried up the hill and do it all around, but you’re going to burn out.
Dan Kreuger: [00:41:45] That speaks very clearly to me and probably Anthony, too, because he and I are both fairly introverted guys and I love you by default working in a silo. And so the point that we hit on earlier, this is not something this is not a business, nor is any business really a business that you can operate in a silo and you’ve got to get out of your comfort zone. You’ve got to beat all these people that are involved in whatever business you’re in and you need teammates. And it’s very rare that you can go exceptionally far anywhere in life without some kind of teammate in some capacity I can’t think of. Many people have done it, even if it’s even if their teammate is a coach or something like that and an athlete in there, they’re the one on the bike. I’m picturing Lance Armstrong for some reason like he’s the one on the bike pedaling, but he had a whole team of people supporting him. It’s not just him training himself, getting his own steroids, or whatever else, you know. But, you know, you need a team. Even if you know there’s a poster boy that gets all the credit. You look at all these successful CEOs in these successful people like Musk, it’s like they have hundreds of people on their team supporting them.
Dan Kreuger: [00:42:48] So with that question, I’ll dive into that. So, Dan, there are people who you really like and you get excited when you get ready to talk to them. It’s you still need your I call it caveman time, but there are people that you really enjoy spending time with 100 percent. The process of going through the people to find the people you really enjoy is hard. And I liken it to scuba diving versus snorkeling. You’re a snorkeler. Your conversations are very, very rarely surface. And so you like to dive deep because of that deep dive. You’ve got to have somebody who, you know, can go through those steps with you that they actually enjoy that too. And then I think the other thing I’ll say is the thing about having a coach is for those people who are going it alone and they know they need a partner or they want a partner. You pay your coach so you don’t have to give up equity in your company.
Anthony Vicino: [00:43:42] Yes. Yeah.
Jerome Myers: [00:43:46] So I mean, if you bring a partner to the then you’ve got to split it and. Sure. Yeah. If he took off with everything, what the hell it wasn’t like a marriage when you do that. But you could get rid of the coach if the coach isn’t either delivering the value you want them to deliver or you think that you’ve outgrown them and their usefulness. Right. Yeah, that’s pretty easy to do. But unraveling your company because you have a partner that isn’t actually doing what needs to be done anymore. That’s pretty tough. And so, you know.
Anthony Vicino: [00:44:17] That’s I hadn’t really ever thought about it from that angle, but that’s a pretty interesting perspective. But guys, we’re getting to the top of the hour and want to be respectful of Jay’s time, because I know you got you’re a busy, busy man. You got the motive. It is the mid-Atlantic. Multiple investors network right there at that conference, Yamit Midatlantic Multifamily Investing Conference, that’s coming up March 19th through the 21st, is that right? Yes, sir. BOEM nailed it.
Anthony Vicino: [00:44:45] So if you guys are at home, you’re on the fence right now. It’s only going to get more expensive. And from Dan and I, our experience of networking events, it’s been invaluable. If we hadn’t gone to a conference, we wouldn’t have met each other. There’s going to be tons of impactful information coming out of this thing. So I highly recommend you go check it out. There’s going to be just a killer lineup of speakers. I took a look at it the other day. It’s just it’s a who’s the whole list. But it’s not just the top people. It’s also, you know, people I can’t remember what her name was, the lady that has the quad, Yvonne. And and and that’s like honestly, for a lot of people, it can be really hard to look at somebody who has two thousand units and say and connect with that because they’re so far ahead. It’s like, I don’t know like if I looked at it’s Armstrong and then thought about riding my bicycle, probably so demoralized, I wouldn’t do it. But if you look at me like my brother, he’s riding his bicycle. If he can do it, I can do it like so somebody who’s just one or two steps ahead, that can be super powerful as well. So before we let you out of here, man, where can people get a hold of you?
Jerome Myers: [00:45:46] Yeah, so LinkedIn is a place where I hang out every day, I try to talk to people every now and again to get them to move off the couch and get something going, something special, something exciting, something invigorating. And so Jerome Myers and Greensboro, North Carolina.
Anthony Vicino: [00:46:04] So we are going to get you we’re going to get you. Yeah, I guess we have to get a crack down just like holding up a sign. And I was like, oh, yeah, we didn’t even get a book. The right is pretty. This is a pretty non-traditional conversation for us here, guys. Like we talked very little about real estate specifically. But honestly, this is, I think, one of the most important topics that you could be listening to right now if you’re taking the time to learn about real estate and like making that next move in your life. This is really powerful stuff. But Jabe, what’s a good book recommendation that people can pick up this week?
Jerome Myers: [00:46:32] Yeah, I would go with the one thing. So I reread that probably three months ago. And what I realized is if you’re really going to break through, if you’re going to make real change, you’ve got to channel your energy into one thing. And a lot of people are chasing a bunch of different rabbits, a bunch of different birds, and not really making progress on any of them. But once you know what that thing is, back to the conversation we’re having about the dream, right? When you know what that dream is, you need to hammer that thing. And until you can’t even tell anymore and then you can move to the next one because that dream will set up the next one. And while everything is sequential, I think having something that’s really firm as your foundation is extremely important in a life where most people are just satisfied with chasing a dream instead of catching it.
Dan Kreuger: [00:47:26] Love it. I can think of several people I need to gift that book to right now. It’s one I’ve read frequently over the years. It’s a short read. So anyone who hasn’t read it definitely pick it up or download it. It’s a quickie, but it’s a really good resource to make sure that you kind of keep yourself focused. So I usually through it on audible like once a year, just to kind of remind myself of some of those key concepts, because it’s very important. Anthony, I’ve been talking a lot about that stuff in recent weeks, just because there have been so many things all over the place. So an excellent book.
Anthony Vicino: [00:47:58] Too many bunnies out there to chase some, but that’s going to do it for us here at multifamily investing. Made simple for this week as we appreciate you taking a little bit of time out of your day to join us and catch you next week.
