On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. I don't just want you to make more money by work harder or working more. I want you to make more money because you implemented systems. You had a better process. You you did something that made you more efficient. Right? And Chaz efficiency allows you to scale a a more rapid pace. So raise the prices. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe.
Featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the reel of the reel. On what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way. They give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there.
Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and Kings like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? Back again with you, Chaz, Wolfe. This week, my guest, Jerome Myers, breaks down so many life pieces. I'm I'm just I had such a blast with this guy. We not only relate in the real estate world.
He's a successful real estate entrepreneur and Chaz, so many properties that he is, he is cash flowing from, but he has a a perspective on life and his coaching program outside of that that literally brings people to their purpose, and I just love everything about this show. And I hope that you walk away a better person. Grab that pen and paper. It's coming down. Alright, everybody. Chaz Wolfe. I'm your host, gathering the Kings. I've got Jerome Myers on the King stage today. What's up, brother?
How you doing? Man, Chaz. So good to be in with you today, man. Thanks for having me, brother. I'm grateful to be with you and the opportunity to share with you and your community. Absolutely, man. So glad that you're here. And, I'd love to dig into your story. Of course, you got you got referred by really good friend of mine.
And so I already know or knew, even before our off here, conversations that this was gonna be a good talk because you came highly recommended, but even in our intro calls, even just a couple minutes ago, we were just, like, instantly. Every time I've talked to you, we just get right into the to the deep stuff. Which I just love is super real. But before we get in, what kind of business do you have? Yeah. So it's too pronged, and people like me do everything.
But I really simplify it, Chaz, and I say I'm a developer of people in places. And so we run a multifamily investment portfolio with the small group of but he's partners, friends, whatever you wanna call it. And then I do a ton of coaching and masterminding with people who are either exiting corporate America or already left and out in the wild making it happen. That's awesome, man. Love both of those. Field. So we're gonna have plenty to talk about. Probably need to do 2 or 3 shows with you.
I'll move to it. Yeah. Right? Okay. Well, so my first question is always the same, and I like to make sure that I ask it every single show because I think it really kicks us off with some good mindset. And so Basically, it's at this level. I mean, you you just said that you're helping a ton of people through real estate. You've you've been successful. On the coaching side. Now you're helping other people be successful. But at this level, like, why do you keep pushing?
You know, I I've got this silly mission, Chaz. It's the free a hundred people from work they're not passionate about. And I don't count. Right? I I have no idea how many we've helped. I have no idea I mean, we're going to help. But every day, I get up and I look in the mirror, and there's this decal on my mirror that says, are they free yet? And that literally is what life is about.
So the real estate is there because most people don't know how to set up a recurring income business, read a subscription, and they don't really bring themselves to sales people so that they get kind of squeamish about having to chase the transaction. And then on the coaching side, it's like, well, do you see your worth? Do you see your value? Do you see what the marketplace will reward you for?
And if I can help them understand that and help them put their plan together so that they can perform against that and then scale it to a place where they are doing numbers that would be commensurate with whatever they would be selling their time for if they were in a job that they weren't passionate about, but paid well. Yeah. I think I've earned my breath for the day. Yeah. I love that. First off, helping others with 2 prongs.
I I love even just the clarity there of creating passive income and then also even just freeing them from their active income because they are separate. And you can have both for whatever period of time that you'd like, I guess, but freeing them from that from that slavery, if you will. And then the fact that you say that it it earns your breath, I love that. I think that that's super tied to purpose, and I think that a lot of entrepreneurs.
In fact, I even posted this morning on Facebook saying, why do you think that people lose track of their purpose or their why. And you remind yourself every morning, it sounds like, to to earn the breath. Yeah. And I I think your your question is one that most people don't tend to ponder because they're on autopilot. Right? They're just going through them and not any of the day to day, and they're not being intentional with the way that they're spending their time.
Which is extremely unfortunate. But if you're not doing something you're passionate about, then you're just trudging through the activities because you know that they translate into somebody potentially giving you a paycheck 2 weeks from now or a month from now. Yeah. Exactly. Even as an entrepreneur, right, like the mundane pieces of marketing sales, client fulfillment repeat.
And if you can get caught in that and you become more reactionary, then you're susceptible to putting out fires all day long. And now you're susceptible to burnout and just getting through the drudge and you lose track of the the thing that's written on your mirror. How did you know to write that on your mirror to even begin with? That seems so simple. Like, how did you know that? How'd you learn that? Yeah. So a lot of people do vision boards, and I I don't do those.
I I I encourage people to do vision mirrors because the quicker that you can see yourself with the things that you desire most, the quicker you actually get to the place. And so when you think about the vision board activity in general, people who's cutting out these pictures are putting all these things there, and they see them as reminders that this is what you're supposed to doing, but there's still a disconnect from my perspective.
But when you Chaz see yourself in real time with the things, whatever they are, it can be people smiling. It can be the car, whatever you desire. Right? I don't get to decide what you desire. Subconscious in that gap between where you are and where you wanna be begins to shrink. And then you believe or your belief goes up and that belief leads to activity and then that activity tends to create what you actually wanna have. And so for me, it was let me get myself in it in real time.
And for everybody that actually goes through and does the activity, they see this rapid acceleration towards the target. Yeah. Because it becomes real. And to your point, it's a connectivity. It's just like muscle, mind connection when you're working out. Right? You're focused on exactly what you're doing in that moment. You're imagining even what it like, built up.
I love how you even extended the the vision board to nonmaterial things because I think that that's, you know, material can really only take you so far, the nice car, the nice house, the stuff, and some people aren't even wired that way. So I think it Chaz to go deeper than that, which you've already pointed out. And Chaz, it's not your listeners. Right? But there's a lot of people who say they're not wired that way, and it's just because they don't have it. Yeah. That's true.
So they shrink their dreams or they shrink their lifestyle to whatever they have because the thought of being uncomfortable in order to get the thing that they truly do desire. Right? Like, I got a stupid, stupid idea. Right? I I want this Lamborghini aventador. I I want one pretty bad. And there there will come a time where I park 1 in the garage and and maybe not. Right? Maybe it's just the option to be able to have one for me to be able to say, yeah. I could go do that if I wanted to.
Both of those things are the same thing to me. Right? Sure. Yeah. But there's a lot of people who just shrink their dream and say, you know, I'd rather have a beater. Right? When I went to the book fair, I didn't care about books when I was in 3rd grade. I wanted to get the poster with the car on it. Right? And it was never a beater, Chaz. And so I I just I just challenge people to actually dare to dream again. Like, if you could suspend your disbelief, Yeah.
And you knew that you could not fail, and you knew you could have whatever lifestyle that you wanted. Right. That that you took the chance and actually did Chaz. Like, what would that be instead of saying, oh, yeah. Well, I'm I'm happy with whatever this thing is that I already have because Yeah. I'm not convinced that that's what you would truly ask for if you knew that you could have anything. In fact, the matter is you can. What do you think is the difference?
You you pointed it out and you said it's the same thing, and I I agree with you. I think that to the most people out there that they're different. So I'm curious, and do you hear your thoughts? When you said they're the same thing, whether to be able to go by their Lamborghini or to be able to have the option to go buy the Lamborghini. Where does that mindset come from? Cause for me, it's the option. Like, I don't need the actual Lamborghini to be at that place.
Like you said, but to know that I can go buy buy a Lamborghini cash right now is that's all I needed. So on your side, what have you seen from the actual, like, going and doing it? Or just having the option if I wanted to. Is that is there a really a difference there, or is it the same thing? For me, there is no difference, right, because I get to choose Right? I think I choose are the 2nd 2 most powerful words in combination in the planet. Right? The first one is I am.
The second one is I choose. And so I get to choose how I'm gonna allocate this resource. Right? I can allocate it to retirement savings. I can't allocate it to consumption. I can allocate it, but I get to choose that. And now when I choose this thing, I don't get to choose the consequences of that choice. But I do get to choose how I allocate the resource. Right. And that is you you talked about it before we start a recording. Right? That's ruling. Right? That's ruling well as a king.
Yeah. Your your decisions on how you allocate your resources and the 2 that Wolfe, there's really 3 that I think everybody pays attention to, time, talent, and treasure. Your allocation of those dictates the life that you have And I'm not I don't know, man. I I watch a lot of people on the fire kick, right, and they're gonna shrink their life to nothing so that they can be free from having to go somewhere and do the thing because their times are most valuable resource.
But Right. I I don't understand the lifestyle that they end up with. I I like nice things. And it's kind of blasphemous in today's society to say that, but Yep. I like nice things. And I I think I always Wolfe. And I don't think I ever wanna be in a space where I don't ever wanna be in a space where I I question whether or not it's okay for Chaz. But I think some people are challenging us on whether or not it's okay, but Chaz, I'll tell you, man.
I I really like what you got going here, and I I can't think of a king who didn't have nice things. I think there's so many different angles of why as you say, have nice things has been put down. But generally speaking, they comes from, I think, a, like, a lack mindset Right? Like, if if I have nice things, then that means you can't. Or if I spent my money on the Lamborghini, then that means that there were people that I could have helped. Right?
Whether we go super spiritual religious or whether we just go, you know, super environmental and and we just wanna help the masses. There's this there's this lack mentality that that stems from or that that perpetuates if if I have, then you don't. And as opposed to us both being able to reach in and grab whatever it is that we are capable of gathering. And so last kind of philosophical thought here before we kinda transition a little bit. I'm I'm curious to know what are your thoughts on that?
Like, obviously, here we are, men of 2 different backgrounds, men of 2 different cities, we come from two different places, but we have we we're kings. Like, what, like, how do how does someone from a different background with maybe not much given to them or from a different culture? Like, how does someone reach in and not have lack of talent? Well, it's a choice. Right? It is perspective, and it's always gonna be perspective. You know, I I trace my lineage and as silly as it may sounds.
I'm just a descendant of a pharaoh. Right? So literally paternal paternal side, not maternal side, paternal side, and with the center of a pharaoh. So when you Say a king. Yes. Yeah. Like, literally bloodline. That that's a real thing for me. Now Alright. The difference between scarcity and abundance mindset is the belief that It's fun foundationally what you said. If I have, that means that you can't. And I think the game is infinite.
I I think it's an infinite game, and I don't think everybody wants the same thing. Now we may be competing for the same resource. For finite amount of time. Right? If I'm buying an apartment deal and there's 3 other people who want the same deal, only one of us is gonna get that deal. Right. But is that the ecosystem normally? It's not. In fact, the better you do as an apartment her.
If you're in my general area, the higher rents you charge, the more customer satisfaction you have, the better for me. Because when you do eventually sell, your thing's gonna trade for a higher number. You are gonna have higher rents as you're generally operating it, which means I should be able to match mine to yours, which should grow mine. And so while there there are these very finite periods of competition and, let's call it market share grabbing. Right. It's not the normal.
It's not status quo. It's temporary. And I think if you truly know who you're serving, why you're serving them, you won't ever run out of resources. Does the bird or the squirrel or the ant worry about if they're gonna have something to eat tomorrow? Right? No. No. Not at all. Alright.
So let me use this question or this answer they just gave to us from this question to transition because I think that it makes a lot of sense What you just said is that there's the the the prospect pool is big enough for all of us. K? But even more so for the listener who's at the 6 figure mark trying to get to the 7 figure mark, right, that's the MS of the show. And so even more so for the person who isn't at the $1,000,000 mark yet, there should never be this thought of like, oh, man.
Like, there's not enough. Like, to me, a $1,000,000 is like, like, one little drop in the bucket. Right? Like, you can go do I heard this a long time ago off of a a book is that you could do $10,000,000 in the market. You could literally pull out $10,000,000 right now today. Nobody would know. Nobody would know you put a $100,000,000 out of the marketplace. Today, nobody would notice. Yeah. And it's right? And so, like marketplace. Like, you can just pick a 3 and do that.
And then she's like, nobody would know. Right? So, okay, so if we if we dial that thought all the way down to somebody who isn't even doing a $1,000,000 in sales not even not even making a million bucks, doing a $1,000,000 in sales for them thinking back to your journey. If we can just gonna rewind it back to before you got there, taking this mindset that we're talking about, more so about maybe when you started, like, how did you propel yourself into, okay, so I know that there's abundance.
I know that you know, someone else is winning doesn't mean that I can't. And so how did you get to that $1,000,000 mark from that mindset? You know, what's crazy, Chaz? Is when I dropped out of corporate America, I resented my ability to earn. Oh. Okay. I I I did everything I could to push money away. It was like, I don't need that. Right? This mindset that you speak of of no. I'm just doing it for the good of helping people and You know, something will work out.
But if you're having impact, your income's gonna reflect it. Yeah. Those two things go together. They're not mutually exclusive. And if you think impact happens long term without income, just know that you're gonna be going to ask somebody who prioritize income to fund your business. Right. So now to go to that next level, once I realized Chaz, once I shifted that and realized that If you're gonna have impact, income's gonna come.
And if you have income, then you should have impact with the income and that those things are They're almost synonymous in my language now. Right? I think they're interdependent. When I accepted Chaz, when I accepted that I was a good person by earning and that I could do more with the earnings than somebody who didn't have the same heart as me because the money's just a amplifier, right? It's a megaphone. It allows you to impact and influence more things as your influence income increases.
So Knowing that, it made me feel like I had this obligation. I felt pulled to do more bigger And, you know, everybody has their different opinions about Grant Cardown, Cardone. But let's be clear. When he says you have a duty and an obligation to help everybody that you possibly can, and to charge them something less than the value that you're offering to them, right, so that you know in your heart of hearts that you gave them the upper hand in the transaction. Right.
How could you not go out and do that? Right? You're being selfish if you don't. Yeah. Yeah. You'll be in selfish if you don't. So let's let's take that mindset that you said that you grabbed a hold of. And once you're able to grab a hold of that, then that, like, equated some practical steps in your business to get growth.
And so once you have Chaz, so let's just take an example of you know, you're in real estate or someone's, you know, in the trades or, you know, someone's got a digital marketing agency, whatever the the practicality of their business is. They Chaz that mindset of, okay. The more that I serve, the more people that I help usually means, and it should, to your saying, Chaz more money I make.
Because if I provide value and I charge for my services less than the value that I'm providing, then it's a good deal for them. Therefore, people like what I'm giving them. Therefore, they refer. Therefore, there's a good name. There's goodwill, and my business should grow. Practicality, what does that look like in one of these businesses? Like, taking that mindset, what's the next step? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's just use the real estate because I think it's the easiest one for folks to go.
Right? And so our first deal was 23 units. We imputed a huge amount of value in to the deal, re made tremendous investments, roofs, parking lots, redid the interior, tuck walls out, out of half baths. Right? We did all this stuff. When we purchased that property, the rent was 6.95. When we got done with our improvement plan, the rent was 1195. Now we're up to 12.95. Right?
And so we added values to the lives of the people who decided to live at that property And because of that, we were able to double the revenue on a monthly basis that that property was generating. Right? We we included internet. We included water. We we gave them services that they weren't able to get in other places. Now was the property performing optimally when it was renting at 695? Absolutely not. Right? Their sewage was backing up. Trash wasn't getting picked up. We can go down the list.
Right? Sure. Crime ridden, prostitution, drugs, like, all of the stuff was happening there. But we were able to come in and uplift that community. That for me is you go in, you do the work, you roll up your sleeves, you get your hands dirty, you create value in the enterprise. Right. That should increase the revenue. And out of that revenue, as long as you maintain your operating expenses, that net operating income should increase the valuation of the business. Right?
Yeah. And I think that's what everybody's trying to figure out. How can we grow revenue? How can we decrease expenses so we can take the net and use that to grow our business's value? Now what you do in order to charge more is the place where I think you can be the most creative And that's truly understanding what the folks in the marketplace want. And not just any folks, but the specific habits are. Right?
I think it always breaks down to a specific person that you want to help because it's not really a business. It's not really all of these customers over here. It's Bob who is working at the hospital downtown. They're not ready to buy because they're a resident. And make $60,000 a year. They like to party on the weekends downtown, so they wanted to be walkable. And you go down the list of the person that you're building this thing for.
Sure. And you hopefully understand some of their philosophical challenges. And if you understand all that, then you can put together something and present it to them that they're gonna be excited feel like they're giving getting a bargain Yeah. To do commerce with you. Yeah. Yeah. Is that helpful? Oh, a 100%. I was just having a conversation with a client of mine, a mastermind client. He's an insurance. He's trying to grow his agency team.
And his mindset shift is shifting from how do I sell insurance? We all I mean, it's the needs analysis, you know, life insurance, health insurance, PNC, whatever it is. To now I have to sell the opportunity to other agents. And so even for him, he's not selling necessarily anything, but he had to create Who am I looking for? I'm looking for somebody who's already in insurance. I don't want the guy that signed insurance yet. I don't want the guy who's already in insurance or whatever.
Or maybe he maybe he wants the guy that's not insurance. He wants to train him from from 0. The point that you're making though, which I think is applicable to every listener right now, is if you know exactly who it is that you want to help, then because you understand who they are, you understand their frustrations or their their lack or what they what they need so then then you can provide that in your offer.
In this case, it was an upgraded, living space with the other extra half bath or new appliances or the extra amenities that weren't involved for. And so that made it easier for them if they live here. They're not these things are included. I don't have to go worry about them, so I'm happy to pay the extra money because it it was rolled into the deal. It's value. Right? It's all about value creation, my friend. K. So along the way, maybe maybe it's on the real estate side or the coaching side.
Give me an example of as you're building, making decisions in the business. I wanna try to go good and bad. Right? Like, give us the good stuff like, someone's got their pen and paper and they're taking notes. What was a good decision that you made along the way Chaz would be helpful for them to also do? Yeah. Raise your prices. Right? Like, without question, each time I raise prices, people get bigger results. The vast majority of people that I work with last year doubled their revenue.
Right, or double their transaction volume or whatever their KPI, whatever the key performance metric was, they doubled it. Right? And then they tuck more time off because that for me is a thing that signals if they're doing the right thing. I don't just want you to make more money. By working harder, working more. I want you to make more money because you implemented systems. You had a better process. You you did something that made you more efficient. Right?
And Chaz efficiency allows you to scale a a more rapid pace. So raise the prices because more than likely, you're not serving the client at the level that you're able or even capable of serving them at. Because of the constraints of your pricing model. Yeah. And so you you can raise your price a small amount and deliver so much more value because you're able to outsource this or include something else in the package or do something to make them feel amazing.
And for you, the incremental cost increase versus the client loyalty or, I I like to send people gifts to us when when they don't expect it, right, just a box pops up on their door. And the conversation that they have on the backside of that when they go show somebody what happened leads to referrals. Yeah. Without you asking for it. Right? Totally. Or if you you go somewhere and they have an amazing experience.
Like, we went to Saint Lucia back in March, and people come back and talk about that experience. It it's an opportunity for you to differentiate yourself without absorbently charging the folks and delivering value or delivering them an experience that they wouldn't have got for themselves. I I love the increase. How do you balance what you just were saying either at the end of going? Okay. First off, the the 6 figure owner is terrified. To raise their price. Right?
Cause they're just like, they're in survival mode. They think I just gotta take every job possible or every client possible. So hearing you say that just blows their mind, probably. So that's number 1. Like, address that first. And then and then we'll get to the how do you balance the value with the, like, charging too much, not enough value piece, but How do you how do you how do you confront the mindset of, but if I charge more, I'll lose all my opportunities.
Yeah. I think you're in scarcity mindset if you feel that way. I think that's the first piece. Right? If you feel like you're getting every penny, every coin that you can, out of the customer based on the service that you're providing. I question whether or not your service is delivering as much value as you think it is.
And if you take a step back, can really question whether or not you're giving your client all the value that you Chaz, or if you and that's probably the the wrong way to look at it. Let's look at it this way. How much more value could you give your client if you had a incremental, very small incremental increase in the fee? What else could you do for them Chaz they would value tremendously? Right. That doesn't cost you as much as to deliver as they would see it as being valued to their life.
Right. And I think if you spend enough time there, you get really, really excited about what's possible for you in your business. For instance, I I had a client who was like, man, I really like for you to record our sessions and then send a send me a highlight kind of a kind of a highlight reel of the session so I don't have to review the full session. Right? And that Wolfe help me with notes. That would help me with action items. That would help me with pick the thing.
Yeah. And I was like, Okay. And then I went back to the team. I was like, hey. How much how long would it take for you to do this? And then if you factor that into the price, for him, it wasn't even a 15% increase. And he's gonna save hours of his hours. Right? And so Let's just make it, you know, easy math for this sake. And these aren't real numbers, but just for this sake of it, let's say you charge a $100 for the thing. And you increase it by $10. Right? So a $110.
And this person values their time at $50 an hour for the sake of being really low. And if there's 4 calls and we increase this thing, that's extra $40 a month, but their time is $50. So their net is, like, I am I'm not good at math, but I think it's like a $160. Right. So what what you're what you're breaking down here for the listener as they're taking notes is find what you can do for the client that's in synergy with your current product that provides this over an abundance of value to them.
So it it might be different. For each one of your clients, but you might have a rolodex of 2, 3, 4 extra things that you can into the package that then brings value to this person but because you're doing it at a efficient way or a scalable way, it doesn't cost, hard cost you that much, but the value to them is so much more, and it's a way that you can genuinely grow your revenue, and they actually appreciate it.
Yeah. And for the new person who comes in, right, maybe you charge them a 125 or a $150 an hour for the exact same service because you found out that this product, this this upgrade, this this optional service is really valuable. Yeah. 100%. Okay. Tell us about a bad decision. What have you done along the way? That was just oof. Gut punch. Yeah. Yeah. I I I mentioned my resentment for my ability and my capacity to earn in the beginning.
And so I would do things and then assist that people not do anything in return. Right? It was like, oh, I'm just being generous. And what I've learned on the backside of that is you immediately create an unhealthy relationship when you do that. Right? Relationships are supposedly mutually beneficial in the moment that you create a situation where people aren't willing or able to give and receive.
Yeah. You put yourself in a space where the relationship guarantee to create resentment on at least one side of the equation. You're also putting your the person that you're serving in a place where they can be in this spot of learned helplessness where it's like, oh, Wolfe, You never need anything from me. And so for all of the 6 figure earners and even early 7 figure earners, they probably live here.
They live in a space where people only bring problems to them to solve because, you know, they are usually when they are to the left and the right, they're at the peak. Right? They're they don't even have anybody to talk to, and they feel bad telling anybody that they're experiencing any discomfort because, well, their life is so perfect from the outside looking in. Sure. And there there's these constant withdrawals from the relationship bank account with no posites.
And then eventually, Chaz you mentioned it earlier, they end up being disappointed. They end up being burnt out. Right? End up being in a space where they they don't feel as worthy or as capable as they would if they actually have people pouring into their cup. Yeah. It's I mean, I can't tell you from even just a personal perspective of what you said was true for me, and I'm sure it was for you for a period of time there as well.
That's why you're saying it, but I think everybody, to your point, kinda goes through that period of time in the 6 or even, as you said, the early sevens. It was for me, it was the early sevens. Like, I I was very capable, and I could be in five places at once. And most people can't. And so I was I was the king. But not really. I was still very much a warrior, very much in the stage of doing. It was probably more ego than anything of, like, I I wanted to be the go to. Right?
I wanted to be the guy with all the answers as opposed to being okay Chaz it went past me onto somebody else, and and then somebody else was just as worthy or good in that moment as I. And so I think that's so practical, especially when you think about becoming a king in business, really what that means is that you the king might be well known, but the the king has a whole team. Like, we we have to understand that there's there's layers and layers and layers of how the the kingdom works.
And, but you can't raise up people. You can't hire people and raise up leaders, and you can't do this if you're trying to be the guy. And if I can pick, you know, just a couple of things to get to some figures, that would be one of them is that you can't be the guy. You gotta get out of that way. And you need to bring on other people. And so I love the perspective that you've given there. What do you think is important for the guy or gal who's stuck in that place. They're a perfectionist.
They think they're the only ones. They don't wanna be, but they wanna be. Like, they're it's self sabotage, really. They they talk about the drama of I'm the only one, but but they just they they just keep putting themselves in that position over and over and over. How do they break that cycle? Yeah. They've gotta get out of their own way. Here's the thing. If somebody can do it, 80% as well as you, they're probably gonna do it better than you because you're a firefighter. Right?
There there is no interference or bust about it right now. You're a firefighter. And you can only pay attention to things for a finite amount of time before you have to move to the next thing. And as soon as you turn your attention from that thing, to the other thing Chaz ball begins to drop. And there are some rubber balls in your business that can bounce and hit the ground, and they won't break. And then there's glass ones.
And the moment that you forget which one's rubber and which one's glass, you're gonna drop a glass 1 and you're gonna spend the time trying to repair that and you may not be able to repair that glass. But the rubber balls, the ones that can bounce anyway. What if you delegate Chaz? And if it doesn't work out, there's time to recover and fix that while you spend your time with the glass balls.
And then after somebody shows you that they can juggle the rubber balls pretty Wolfe, Once you move them over and give them a glass ball. And then through that progression of trust building, you get to a place where you can fire yourself from a lot of the tasks that you probably shouldn't be doing anyway. Right? Prioritize it. If if you are the guy or the gal and you value your time, and you you can pick a number. You can pick $10 an hour. You can pick a 10,011,001,000.
You can pick whatever number you want. And then you calculate how much time you're on something and you question whether or not it's really imputing that much value to business. And if it's not, then you better find somebody else to do it because your business is gonna be stuck exactly where it is until you do something else. Yeah. I love that. If I was taking notes, which I have been, actually, but if I was taking notes on this whole thing, my notebook would be full already.
It's this has been an incredible chat. And I wanna ask you one quick question here before we transition to the speed round. Still on the line of decisions. And I hope the listener picks us up. It's everything you said has been really intentional. Like, you felt something or you experienced something. So then, therefore, I then created a process or I think in a certain way or whatever. So it's just super intentional.
And I'm just really big on being intentional about what I'm doing, my calendar, the decisions I'm making, I just think intentionality is kind of the underlying piece that a lot of people just miss They just kinda go about their day. And that's what leads to to burn out like we talked about earlier.
So my question for you is this, is there a process that you have to making decisions that makes it intentional or some sort of a discipline that you follow around decision making, trying to, you know, stay to more toward the good decisions Chaz the bad decisions. You know, this is really interesting. So there's always a a space in between the stimulus and then what happens, what you decide to do after that.
And most of us don't realize that there's a gap there Chaz we get the opportunity to respond versus react. If there is no space, then the reaction is, hey. This happened. I do this. And that works when maybe you're in war, you're playing a sport, but in business, It's very rare that it's an emergency. Right? There is some time for you to actually contemplate what you actually want to do. You have a choice, right, to come back to I choose.
Yep. And so when the thing happens, you get to assign meaning to the thing, and you get to decide what that means for you. From there, you get to make a choice on what you're gonna do about it or not do about it. Right. Both are okay. Both are options. And the more that you can stay there versus having an emotional reaction to a stimulus as a dog Wolfe, the more likely you are to make a great thought out decision.
And if you don't know what to do, then you extend that gap and you go seek wise counsel. Just because it happened doesn't mean you have to do something right now. That's not the one. In all seriousness, if we can pause the whole show and go, wait a second. Are you saying that I don't have to react immediately? Which is different than speed. Right? Speed is our friend, but reactionary, fire putting out, what you're talking about. It's like, oh my gosh. Now it's drama and emergency in my business.
Chaz doesn't exist. So once I have that mentality, what you're saying, is that there is no emergency. What that does is it gives me a level of peace. A piece of understanding to go, okay. Now I've got a time frame. It could be 2 hours. It could be 20 days. I don't know what the time frame is on this decision. But I've got some time. So now that you're in that time, what do you do? You evaluate whether or not you actual well, first, assign the meaning. This happened. What does it mean?
What does it mean for me? K. Then you evaluate. Do I actually have what I need in order to make a decision on what to do next? If I have the information, then I can make the decision. If I don't, then you go seek wise counsel. Yeah. Okay. If you don't make a decision until you have wise counsel and wise counsel's probably not gonna say, hey. Do this, this, and this. They're gonna ask you some clarifying questions. Yep. That's right.
And then with that information, you will probably be very certain on what the logical next step is. Many times these things are very much solitary instead of Chaz. Right? It's just what's the next logical step in the sequence because I might not be able to see all of the moves. Right? But I I can see the next one. Yeah. 100%.
And to even your point of wise counsel, Whether it's a group or a friend or a mentor, a paid coach, whatever it is, that's the reason that you have those sounding boards is so that whether it's the next step or even the next 7 because sometimes they can just see it differently because they're not in the weeds like you are. And so I think that there's a huge opportunity there in that moment to really ask yourself as an entrepreneur, who do I have around myself?
Because I know that I didn't, like, coming from a single mom family, like, I didn't have a group of super successful. I was raised in a, you know, business oriented group of people. It just wasn't like that. You know? So I had to lean into friends that I grew, you know, that I that I've made along the way or mentors or other business owners that I met through networking, whatever it was, but to your point, you had to you've gotta get around wise counsel. Somebody Chaz give you some perspective.
If if you'll allow me, I I got this really silly metaphor, but I I think it will really illustrate the point. And I I'll do my best to do it in less than a minute if that's okay with you. Absolutely. Give it to us. Okay. So I'm on my way to a flight And there's deadlock on the highway. I'm in a city that I don't know very Wolfe, and so no idea really how to navigate another path to get to where I need to be. But I do know that if I stay in this gridlock, then I'm likely to miss the flight.
And so I pull out my phone, which I only use when I don't know where I'm going. And I type in the address where I'm trying to go. And the navigation system reroutes me after telling me that I was not on the fastest route to get to where I wanna go. The GPS had a different vantage point. They could see how long it was gonna take me to get to where I wanted to go based on the path that I was on.
It gave me another alternative to get to where I wanted to go, which was not the most direct route from a standpoint of distance. Right. But when you compare travel times, they were very different. And for a lot of us, we just wanna go in a straight line. We wanna go the way that we already know how to go. So good. But what if somebody could give us a different option?
Yeah. What if somebody could navigate us away from the traffic, away from the gridlock, even though it seems like it's out of the way to get to the place that we wanna go. Yeah. They have a different vantage point. They have different information than what we have. I had no idea why the traffic jam happened. And I Chaz had no idea on how it was gonna be resolved or how long it would take for it to be resolved. Yeah. But because the satellites were at a different vantage point.
They could see things that I couldn't see. And and that's your wise counsel. That's your coach. That's your mastermind group. That that's your mentor. Right? 100%. I love the perspective, visual art that you just gave to us because if you don't understand what you just said, you're gonna have a hard time navigating anyway. I think maybe even a good word there, ego or stubbornness of just the person that's just like, no. This is the best way I'm gonna stay right here.
It's the same spirit or mindset that keeps us in the way. Like, we talked about a few minutes ago of not giving things away, not delegating because we think we're the best. No one's gonna do it as good as us. I hired one time, you know, before, and they couldn't do it. I had to do their job also and X Y Z down the road. So it's just all comes from the same the same place. Okay. We gotta we gotta hustle through the speed round here. That's why I call it speed round. One one word answers.
I might dig in a little bit, though, because I'm kinda notorious for that, but drum, give me give me the number one metric. If you could only track 1 in all of your businesses, the one thing that you could track us the most important, what would it be? Yeah. Net operating income. Boom. Because if you're not making money, don't do it. Or Well, I mean, here's the thing. Right? You're in business to do business. Without question.
And for me, the income shows that you're paying people well when because there's some expenses. It shows that you're serving people well, right, because the revenue is there. And so it it brings everything together. Yeah. Brings everything together. Yeah. If you're serving people well, then you have revenue. So it goes back to our point a little bit ago. It's great. What book would you recommend that a six figure owner read? To get to the next level. Sizing people up. Oh, good. Who's that by?
Robin Drake. K. What did you what was the just give us one thing from that book that you got that that would help get some some figures. Liking somebody does not mean you should trust them. Interesting. I'm intrigued. Gotta go read that book now. For me, the gift of discernment is one that, I I don't have if I like you, then I tended to trust you before I read that book. And trust is all about predictability.
The ability to know what's gonna happen if somebody's presented with these circumstances. Sure. And, you know, as as a recovering engineer, I realized that assumptions are really important. And those assumptions give you an answer that's correct across a specific frame. Right. Right. But if you get outside of that frame, then it doesn't work.
And what happens a lot of the time is you cover this person's actions with the fact that you like them, but it's not giving you the level of predictability that you need in order to move confidently in your business interactions or insert the word, but that predictability is It's the game changer and allows for speed. Love it. Yes. We could we could just we could probably just end it there. And, I'm I'm excited to go read that book. Like, I love predictability.
I love being able to put put things in in order. And I think every entrepreneur needs to. So last question here, not last question. 2nd last question. We kinda already know this from the from last little talk we had, but do you intentionally network and mastermind with other nurse. And if you do, why do you do it? Yeah. It's necessary. Right? You you grew up in a single mom household. I'm the son of a soldier in a stay at home mom. Right?
There weren't any multimillion dollar real estate portfolio holders coming to the cookout. There were no $1,000,000 business owners at my house. Right? The professionals who were high 6 figure earners or even just call it 6 figure earners, were my dentist, my doctor. Those were the people that I knew that made that type of money. And so I went to state schools. I went to public school throughout, you know, k through 12, and then I went to a state university. There's a different language.
There's a different network. And sometimes you have to pay to be exposed to that if you weren't put there by your ancestors. Right? I mean, it's just not it it it doesn't happen accidentally. Right? Most of us network based on proximity. Networking based on proximity leads to more of what you already got.
And so if you're not moving yourself into spaces and places where people of affluence are spending their time, then you're likely not to have a network of folks who are able to what I'll say, move the world or eliminate friction with a phone call or 2. 100%. Love it. Okay. Last question, Jerome, if you lost everything, it was all gone today. What would you do tomorrow? Smile. Yeah. I love it. Myo, be give gratitude. Give give thanks for the opportunity to build it again.
I I I gave it all up before. Right? I I I was living the dream. I I had the six thousand square foot house. I had the exotic car. I was in corporate America. I hated my life, and I walked out to nothing. Right? I walked out to nothing. And so I I know without a shot of a doubt that I did it the first time, and I know I can do it again because I'm way smarter than I was when I walked out and and started from my own.
And so Right. I I just be grateful for the opportunity and then I make some phone calls to let people know, hey. Here's what we're doing. And I need some wise counsel in order maybe some introductions to help me get on my way. Yeah. Love that. Very good. Okay. Jerome, you've been an absolute blessing to us here today. Thank you for giving us so much value.
If someone wanted to connect with you, maybe they even wanna, take a look at, some of your coaching or get in some of your real estate deals, how do they find you? Dromeiners.co. All kinds of free guys there about getting in the multifamily, and you can find out more about the rabbit holes related to coaching, man. Everybody to take the red pill. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love it. I remember when that that little picture came up when we first talked, the the red pill. Very good.
So, thank you again so much for coming today. It's been it's been incredible to hear your story and all the little pieces that you've given to us. We wish you nothing but success and all that you've got going on. And and we're gonna have to stay, in touch, because I wanna picture that Lambo when you buy it. Hey. Yeah. Hopefully, we we can go for a ride in the 2 chest. Thanks so much for having me, and I look forward to hanging. Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings.
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