#123: Escaping the Broken Education System for Success with Jerome Maldonado

Somebody outside the US, they can invest in the US as long as they comply with the tax code. So we are our whole model right now is around sustainable and workforce housing. So most of our real estate is in the multifamily sector. But we made over the course of time a lot of money in the retail office in the single family residential sector and now that housing is so vastly needed.

The attainable workforce housing has been a big model for us and that's really where we hold most of our asset ownership right now. So we met at Rhyme Pineda's WealthCon and that's where we were talking behind the stage. And you had said, I mean you built this thing up over how many years have you been in the real estate? 28 years in real estate. And it's all just been like bootstrapped initially and then you recently started accessing outside capital right?

Yeah, we were we were all self-performing 100% until 2018 and then in 2018 I started working on on understanding how to raise capital in 2016 and spend about two years. Yeah, really learning the business of syndication, private SEC laws and so forth. And in 2018 we started raising capital and that's where we really saw our growth. Because I think we're worth maybe somewhere around 25 million to 50 million depending on how you evaluated assets at that time.

And so in 2018, 25 to 50 million. And then now what would you say your worth is of that? I mean obviously you've syndicated or what not? How much is that grown by? Oh, it's been we've grown 300% since then because until just recently and we were talking about this earlier, we would self-perform. So I wanted to continue on having ownership of 100%. We're most indications they give away 70% of the equity. They hold on to 30 but they still even raised the debt on the equity stack.

And so really they have no ownership of it in all honesty. And so until they exit at a higher evaluation then they make their money. They have nothing. So they really own nothing. Right. They really own nothing. So that's a pretty standard set up for most indications around that. You don't need a lot of money to get into syndication. You know if you're a good asset manager, you can manage money right and you know how to manage deal flow and underwrite.

You can become a good syndicator, a good GP. That wasn't my goal. My goal was not to take it on as a job. In fact, we were trying to hash down on employees and downscale the day and day out operations. The goal for me was more long term assets and having ownership and control of them. So I don't want to give away the equity. So the way we built and structured the business and the way it's structured right now, we've had a pivot this last two years because of where we are economically.

But we weren't giving up any equity at all. We retained 100% of the equity and 100% of our projects until this year. This is the first ever that we've given up that one. So you were just syndicating debt just debt on the equity stack only. Wow. And so and really just on the land. So what we would do in a nutshell is we would come in and I would purchase the land cash.

We would buy a lot that was five six acres to do 150 to 200 units of apartments. And if the lot was two million, three million dollars, I would just try to check for it. And then I would raise the capital to get my money back. And we pay a debt service on that debt of maybe 10 to 12%. And then once we entitled the land, the land would be worth like six million dollars under normal market conditions. And we would collateralize the equity from the land.

And we get a construction loan. We would exit out the debt. And then we would walk into the build with no investors, no debt on the on the equity stack. The land itself would carry the equity and the first draw that we get from the banks would be to pay off our investors, the two million dollars that I had exit out at 1.5 or whatever I paid for the land. And then we'd use the upside of the entitlements to as the equity stack against the build. And then we go build a $40 million development.

Let me ask you. So so obviously, you know what you're talking about now. What do you wish you would have known earlier? 10 years ago. Yeah. You know, you hear about is an entrepreneur in being in business for over 30 years. You hear about utilizing other people's money. We're all we're all trained from the same books, the same mentors, you know, it's just some facet. But what you're cognitively the way we exercise stuff is different, right?

Like you're thinking about like utilizing other people's money from a standpoint, maybe as a as a basis to get started, right? But you don't think about it as you grow. And all the big private equity, private debt from all these big companies, this is the way they grow. You know, it's the way the stock market works, the way everything works.

And as a small business owner, you don't realize that you have access to capital as well, just from your talents and attributes and what you do professionally. If I had to know 10 years prior that people would have really believed in me, you know, Jerome Aldinotto is like, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. He has 20 plus years of experience. He's self-performed, never lost a property. I've always been successful.

If I had to know that 10 years earlier that people would believe in me, I would have grown exponentially. We would already be over a billion dollars in holdings. And so I just wish I would have done what I'm doing now earlier because it existed earlier. I just didn't know about it. I didn't have a book that taught it. No one ever talks about it.

Where do you approach? Where do you find these investors? So now we do a lot of our investor pool from social media, but it's putting yourself out there. All of our stuff now comes predominantly from social media and networking from. And the investors themselves don't really come from social media because a lot of these big investors, they're not on social media.

But what it does come from is it comes from building a network of sharp people that know people that are not on social media where we get our investors. So when we first started in 2018, we were getting a lot of $50,000 here, $100,000 there. And it was a lot of work to raise $10 million in $50,000 at a time of a lot of pretty work.

Yeah, what is that 200 investors. Oh, bro, pain in the ass. And you know, the biggest thing is managing the emotion of all these $50,000, $100,000 investors, songs, man, you're like, you're almost one out. You're like, okay, I'll just give you your money back. Let me just, let me just go make the money myself.

I'll just screw the, screw the investing, man, that investors. I'm just going to do this myself, self-perform, I don't have to deal with emotions. And that was almost where I was at about 2021. I was like, you know what, I don't want to deal with the investors. You know, so we started focusing on high net worth people. So we really started focusing a lot of money comes from out of the country, a lot of people that have made money in China, the Middle East, Mexico.

And so these guys that, you know, that's what's great about America is that right now outside immigrant can come in own real estate here gets the same tax benefit, gets the same real estate benefits and entrepreneurial and cash benefits that we do. As long as they contribute and do and comply with the same tax laws that you and I comply with. Let me dive into that. So I don't understand this too well.

Now outside, somebody outside the US, they can invest in the US as long as they comply to the tax code. Yeah, and there's, there's a little bit of, you know, there's, there's a little bit of the reason I ask is I have several billionaire friends outside of the US that are, you know, looking at so like for them, no problem. Yeah, they can come and dump cash into real estate businesses, whatever they can. And they're looking for good people, good companies to contribute cash into.

And so that has been our big pull since 2020. So now what we do is instead of a, and we position ourselves as it's an opportunity for them to because we know what we have to offer right. And so for them to have a legitimate company with real returns and real assets that they can bring back returns to where they keep the money here or they keep the money back out of the country.

Really doesn't matter in our eyes, but they have a legitimate investment that they can be a part of. And so that's been our big pool since 2020 that we really worked on. So like now, and it took us a few years because those relationships don't come, they don't come quickly. Right. It's a lot of dinners, a lot of for sure trust for sure that it has to be.

Where would you say like, like what country is represented the most like the largest senior portfolio right now, China and working on some, on some money that's coming in from the Middle East right now. In fact, probably over the next, if, if things work out over the next two weeks, two of our biggest projects going on, a lot of that money will be coming in from the Middle East. Can we say Middle East, are you talking UAE or Utah, Saudi, what are you talking about?

This is, this happens to be Lebanese money. Okay. Go. Well, if you, if you want any of that, more of that Middle East money, we got quite a bit of connections there. Oh yeah. These guys are great. You know what's great about America is that I love is, and I tell people this is all taken immigrant as a business partner over somebody from the United States, nine times out of 10.

And the reason why is because they're not jacked up with our schools, you know, because these guys come in and I can, I can self teach these guys like, okay, hey, this is what we're doing. And I get somebody from here and they look at me like, I'm from outer space, you know, when I'm, because they don't understand this stuff, because we spend 13,000 hours in school and they're never taught any, any of what our company is really built around.

Dude, it is not so true. Just how's jacked up our school system and our school system is bad. That's one of my like, and Chris does is to like, I'm always trying to find kids that are like hungry to learn because they don't know where to turn. They don't like, they're just, there's just such a lack and people that have the hunger are looking for.

So I have my, my son, he's, he's going to be a sophomore. He's, he's started homeschool this year. So, and the only way that we could get him in the sports program that he wanted to play in was he had to sign up through their homeschool program because it was a transfer. All this crap went through all that one, my kids.

So, so he's got to take these like required classes, which suck, but outside of that, having him come and like hang out with this secret, the office and like shadow business and everything else. And he's got this little group of kids. They're, they nick them themselves. They're the bit boys and it stands for billionaires in training.

And so it's, it's pretty, pretty cool. Like they get together, they play cash flow, the game, you know, to like really prime their minds of like how to invest and everything else. We got them reading books, different things like that. And they're launching a YouTube channel with it where they're going to, where they're going to document them trying all these different hustles and everything else. So it's, it's pretty fun. That's cool. Yeah.

So, the arts is a little different with our kids. We, we've utilized sports in such a magnitude to just build discipline because our kids are spoiled to death, man. You know, we homeschooled them all the way till they were in high school. And then my, my kids, they want to play high school sports, you know. So, the sun's playing football. They were, my son's a two time national ranked gymnast. My daughter isn't ranked yet, but she'll get there. She's an eighth grade.

And, and now I, you know, the football world's different. Like the gymnastics world was crazy because all the parents did well. Right. Every single parent because it costs 30 to $50,000. Oh, you can't be involved in gymnasts if you're not. If you don't have money. Yeah, if you don't do money, if you don't have money, you can't because the expense of the training alone. It's like high level travel ball for baseball. Exactly.

You gotta be with my family. Everybody's, you know, all the parents are doctors, attorneys, they all do well. Self-employed. They're doing something. And with football, it's the contrary, man. Like it's a total contrary. So now that my, my son's in football, we sit back and there's a couple of parents that do really well. And then there's everybody else. Right. And so now we have these kids that come around our house and they're, and they, they wow for a moment.

And they go, I want to do what your dad does. So it's been actually an attribute because dad's dumb to your kids. I don't know shit. Right. You know, so, so we, so when I talk to, to my son before, he didn't want to have anything to do with dad has to do with them because his front, his friends now follow dad's content. And what we're doing, all of a sudden, what dad does is pretty cool. And they, they get to the same experience right now. So one of the, it's pretty crazy.

I had a very similar experience. And I actually learned a kind of a hack I feel like. And what I realized is, is we're having these conversations. I was taking these girls to volleyball every morning. And at first, like, it was just known would speak the whole way there and the whole way back. And then finally, like, I just start asking questions. And I just start asking as much probing questions as I can. And then towards the end of the season, everyone's talking.

Girls are coming with, with like topics to talk about. And I'm thinking, okay, how could I, this is, this is our last trip. How do I like extend this? So then, I was like, hey, you guys want to do a book club? They're like, sure. I was like, all right, I'll pay you everyone 50 bucks to finish the book. But you have to tell me what you learn. And what was cool about it, I realized is like, my daughter was excited about reading the book because her friends were excited.

Yeah. Had I approached my daughter, she'd have been like, not interested. Heck no, I know. I need your 50 bucks. Yeah. So, so I've done that too. I've done it too. Yeah, I got it. I got your 50 bucks every single second of every day. But it was really cool because I was able to, you know, my main goal is to teach my kids everything I can. But, you know, when they're teenagers, they don't want to listen to you.

No, they don't listen to you. They'll listen through your friends. They will. They will. Yeah, they will. And so it's been good. But we deal with that, right? So that's, so when I even deal with it in business, with investors, with anything, I see it from a different standpoint. You know what I caught it big is when we're going to the 2008 recession, I bought a bunch of subway stores.

And I thought being in construction that we were dealing with, and I, and I, and say it in on camera, but the bottom of the barrel employees in construction, they are not the bottom of the barrel. These guys make a living. They do well. When you, when I own my subway stores, now those, oh my God, the garbage that we were dealing with there. And we had to sit some, some major standards on how to hire and who to hire because we had so many stores, so many employees that we,

I mean, we had 15 stores that, and 13 of which we ran and operated in two that we owner finance and sold off that we controlled. But yeah. And so we had over 200 and we had 210 employees, subway employees. And we had to that is a lot of bottom of the barrel. And it's, and it was, and it was crazy because it was constant every day, like every single day. And you got what? I mean, what were your main problems?

People not showing up. Yeah, not showing up. Staff was a big deal. Drugs weren't as big of a deal. Shout out, you could come in stone if you wanted to. As long as you were going to work, I didn't tell you. Take a little, take rail aligner cocaine and come work or something for God's sake. Just show up. Just get there, right? You know, so yeah, I don't know if drugs were an issue. They weren't an issue in ours.

But we, and I'm sure that maybe they were, but just getting them to show up, you know, and get them to show up and produce. You know, was more the biggest thing. So, so we put standards on it. And we said, look, if these guys aren't in sports, they have to be in school. If you had hired somebody that's young, they have to be in school, that to be in an activity. I go, I don't care what activity. I don't care if it's a chess club. I don't care if it's football. I don't care if it's cheerleading.

Something. They have to be in something. Some type of extra creativity. And the managers would go, well, they're too busy. They don't have no availability. But when you schedule them on the availability and the limited amount of availability, they do have, they'll show up. And they did. So I said, they just hire two more, two extra employees, you know, in between the mixture of their schedules, you'll find, you'll fill your schedules.

But at least you have people that show up, you know, instead of having three people scheduled and two, one, two people don't show up and you're running a store by yourself, you know. Yeah, I mean, sports teach, I mean, any type of extra curricular teaches some level of discipline, right? I mean, it's the same, same reason, like, growing up, that's all I had was sports, football, wrestling, all the poor kids sports, you know. Yeah, that was a rest look.

Anything that didn't cost a bunch of extra money to be a part of, I was in that. But, I mean, the life lessons that come from that. Oh, huge. Yeah, yeah. And everybody's done well. Everybody that was in the programs that we were in when we were kids, the wrestling program, everybody did well. And that's why I used it because it was a tool for us. Yeah, we do indoor and door sales. Mostly it's one of the hardest things you can do. Yeah, been there.

We found wrestlers have the mentality. If you're a wrestler, you're a competitive wrestler, like you're going to do well in cells because you've had to go through the... Scrucing, yeah. Yeah, you put yourself through circumstances. I'm here by myself. It's all about me and my opponent. Yeah, I've lived in my head for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You live your whole, you live your whole life like that.

You're kind of living it. My wife follows tells me, she's like living your own little world. I was like, I know I love my own little world. It's fun. It's fun. So, you know, with the focus of our show, next level pros, right? So we always talk about in our community that really there's four areas of life. There's our physical, economic, our associations and our spirituality. Yeah. Right. And like if you can break life down, everything fits into one of those categories.

Yeah. Whether it's how we're involved in our community, that's in our associations. It's education, that's a tax economic, right? Like working out, eating right, obviously the physique. So think about those like four areas. I'd love to hear like the struggles that you're going through right now because obviously you've been successful. Yeah. Right. And I'm a firm believer that like success isn't necessarily where you're at on the chart.

It's what your trajectory is. Yeah. And it was in fact, I was, I was at church yesterday and we had this discussion because there was a guy that's like he goes and he serves in a, in a prison where he goes and teaches these prisoners, the gospel. Right. And he was talking about like how he has like these really cool spiritual experiences and how these guys are like good dudes. Right.

They're sitting in prison and whatnot and like so the discussion was like, man, how can these guys be good dudes? Right. Like they clearly done all these different things. And so then the discussion shifted and I kind of pushed it. I was like, look, it's like, it doesn't really matter where you're at. Okay, what direction are you facing? Are you making changes? Are you, are you trajectory? Like is your trajectory up? Are you plateaued or your trajectory down?

And I, I'm a believer that like happiness, success, everything is all associated with an upward trajectory. Yeah. And whenever we're plateaued or going down, no matter where we're at on the scale, it's miserable. Yeah. Like, I mean, I could be worth $100 billion. And if my trajectory from a financial standpoint or productivity standpoint, within my economics is trending down, I'm miserable. Right. Like that.

And so I guess, I guess my question is like, where? Because obviously you're a lot higher than most people from an economic standpoint. Physically, you look great. You got a great family, all these different things. But like, what are, what are the things that your plateauing or maybe trajectory down that you're trying, that you're working on right now?

Banking has been a big cuss for us and you're 100% right. You hit the nail in the head because we lived through that through the 2008 recession. And I mean, no one's feeling sorry for us. You know, when you, when you sit back and maybe your net worth was worth 25 million. And now it's 10 million. No one's feeling sorry for you, right? So, but you are. Oh my god. Yeah. You're sitting back. You're, you know, you're, you're, you're feeling like, you're like, you're like, you're broke, you're broke.

You're working my ass off my whole life and you're sitting back going, everything I've worked for is like compromised right now. So you're, you're hard at it, you know, just to, just to keep things stabilized. And today is very similar, right? And so I was tell people it's not, you're always going through something. You know, there's always challenges, no matter what. And right now the banks, the banking challenges that we're facing is challenging us and.

What do you mean like what, what challenges are you facing with? Well, money is expensive, you know, and I know people don't, don't really live. They hear about it. And they live in there. And they think it's more. Gagist tied to a residential house because that's where most people in their brains live when money is expensive is is the expensive money is it relates to like a single family home, but they don't see the entire.

Echo system that revolves around that house, especially don't see if they got a fixed rate that they signed up for and yeah, 20 out of 30, 20, 21 right there, 3% right there. They're hearing about it like you said, but they're not feeling it. Yeah, it might be a young couple that's trying to get married. That's 27 years old. And they're trying to get into a house and they can afford a $4,000 mortgage and they much rather have a $2,500 mortgage.

And that $1,500 cost is what is what's keeping them from buying a home, but then they find alternative right so people don't really see it. Well, we're living right now is of the magnitude of the macro scale. Of what's happening in banking and and it's it's it's it's cussing for us. I mean when you have a deal that's a 70 million dollar development and every friggin bank in the country has seen it.

You know that something's going on like and and literally that's the type of stuff that we're going through right now because we're building institutional assets, you know, that are hundreds of units big. And when you're going after a $50 million loan or or better and and you can't get money for cheaper than 11% interest, you know, it's a you're sitting back looking at it from a debt service perspective.

But it's not just the money that's expensive in the debt and most people think, oh, it's 11% 12% it's four points over sulfur because that's how they actually assess money. And then it's not just that now it goes to the side what you're paying right now is four points over sulfur. That's where a lot of banks are right now. It's not worth paying, but to find less than that is challenge hard right now.

Yeah, there's some that are like six and seven percent over sulfur that people are. It's over what seven right now. Yeah, sulfur is like up at like seven seven percent, you know, so we so you're sitting back and you're paying this premium for money. But that's that's just one component of it that people that people see is the high interest rates. They don't see the value perspective.

So that's based on cap rates. So because any time money is expensive, yes, you have that debt service that puts downward pressure on you right because your service is more debt. So you look at it like, okay, we're going to service an extra one point two million dollars and just debt because of the increased premium of money.

But now you're trying to service that debt when values just got pressed down because so you're so now we're it's a scales of balance because we have this asset that one time would have been worth. 80 million dollars is now only going to be worth 50 million dollars. So let's put this in like plain English for somebody that may maybe not super involved in debt or real estate or whatever else right.

So before you had values of homes or apartment complexes or whatever it is at a very high level with interest rates low. So now you have increased interest rates and the values coming down. And so just this gap is really the value that you have in in the business. And so it becomes increasingly more difficult to say, yeah, I want to go invest. Yeah, 100 million dollars in this project that's only going to be worth 120 where previously it was going to be worth 180.

Yeah, so for people that are watching there trying to understand anytime the cost of money goes up that debt has to get service so values go down because the way commercial assets are assessed is based on what they produce revenue wise. And they can only produce what they can service in debt. So if the cost of money becomes more expensive and the debt service is more expensive.

The cap rates and the percentage of return changes and when that happens, the cost the value of that asset drops substantially. So what's happened from 2020 post COVID is that from 2016 to 2020 21 we saw cap rates go way down. way down, values of properties go way way up and now of a sudden, 2021 hits, 2022 and the cost of money gets expensive.

These values go straight back down again, but the cost for goods and services, commodities, the cost for money, none of that stuff goes down, but the values go down. So now we're hitting this value compression and this cost of everything else rising. So now we have everything else in the world going up, the values going way down and we're still trying to find a balance between how to get these things out of the ground. So what are you guys doing right now to combat that?

Yeah, so we've had to make some changes. So we're giving equity away. It's the first time. So when I made mention that we're giving equity, instead of taking on debt, we're taking on equity partnerships. And a mentor mine years ago had told me, you know, in terms of long as you're taking profits, you'll never go broke.

And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business people, these people in life, they get too accustomed and acclimated to the norm of what they believe the norm is and they're not willing to change and they become stubborn and change is hard for people. And if you get too stubborn, you're going to lose, especially in a game as big as real estate and what we're in the games that we're playing with real estate right now when I say it's a game, it's like payment, op-le or poker or anything else.

You got to be strategic in how you make your decisions because if you don't, it'll take you under. Yeah. You know, it's a big boy game. And so obviously there's, I mean, there's a lot of risk associated with what's going on right now. There is, yeah. And so basically your margin of error is just, yeah, yeah, you have less room to make mistakes, right? This is where the talent did prevail. Right. And so how are you taking that on? So obviously you said you're giving away some equity.

Are you waiting for more opportunity, like sitting on a little bit more cash or are you saying, hey, this is where the talent to prevail. So I'm just going to go where everybody else is going to shrink. Like what? Yeah. Most people are retracting out of ground up development because of the cost. It's been beneficial the road that we've driven down over the course of time because we've self-performed.

So you can take a ground up developer for sake of example that doesn't know one thing about construction. You can take a contractor that doesn't know one thing about development and asset management. You can take an asset management and they don't know anything about development or construction.

Since we've self-performed in our office, we know everything from the acquisition side, the land development side to the construction end because we self-performed as our own general contractor until just recent years. And then we know the development side, and then we know the asset management side because we still manage over a million square feet of our own retail that we own. So tell me about your team, how big your team, what does the structure look like? Yeah, so our team's small.

I just have a few girls in the office now, me, and then what we've done is we've actually are now have strategic partners. So instead of paying team members, we'll give 10% equity away to a partner that'll take care of the asset management component for us.

And so it's been advantageous for us because one, I don't have to manage many people and moving into the environment that I'm moving into, being 50 years old, I want to be in a position where I have more freedom of flexibility, where I was willing to take that all that on on my shoulders when I was in my 20s, 30s, and even my 40s. But when I got into my 40s, I sat back and said, okay, and it comes down to family, right? Like my wife, she goes, she goes, okay, when do we get to enjoy all this?

We've become a slave to our businesses and we're working, right? So and my wife goes, she goes, look, all I ask for is she goes, when the kids go to college, I just, I don't want to be tied down to employees, businesses, I want to be able to have own homes wherever they go to school, wherever they live. I want to have the freedom of flexibility if we have grandkids to just go and come and not have to worry about being tied down to employees.

So I started making that big pivot back when I was 43 years old. Holder, you know? I'm 50. Okay. Wow. Let's give 50, Drew. That's great. I would have guessed 44. Yeah. We'll do it, man. I'll take the six years, man. Seven years ago, you started making this pivot to smaller team, more shared in the upside with different partners and so on. Yep. So I was giving up 50% in the beginning and now we're doing it with smaller percentages and it was more so to leverage their teams.

My whole thing was let them manage the employees. Make on, sharp business partners that I trust, I like, I've watched them grow and let's utilize their staff and then I take my 50% profit and I just continue moving. And so, Gilleflow was important because now I could scale because we had capital, we had the right partners. I didn't have a lot of staff. I was able to have more freedom of flexibility. I'm not married in my office. And so everything's good, right?

But now we're sitting back and since money's so expensive, but we have the experience, the experience you can never get rid of. My mom told me I was young. She said, look, the only thing you take with you when you die is what you have up here. So what you learn and the information. So we're able to go in and X out all of the development fees. We're not charging development fees for the development. So that scrubs right there alone 2.5 to 3%. We're not charging project management fees.

We're self-performing for free and our whole philosophy is we'll perform for our investors first. We don't deserve to get paid until we've performed and then we'll get paid on the back end. So we're not taking asset management fees. We're not taking project management fees. We're not taking development fees. We're basically building and developing right now for free. And until and and long as we can get these assets stabilized, the benefit to us is we can cost aggregate them.

Since we have companies and other assets that are stabilized, the cash flow and we have millions of dollars that are coming in each year in income from other assets and what we built over the course of time. The reason I can justify them is because once I get them out of the ground and I get them built, I can cost segregate and depreciate them and I don't pay taxes.

So that increases my bottom line by 40% on just the revenue that I'm already making by having these additional assets that I can write off. And so if that's all I get for the next 3 to 5 years, we're good. And then we'll take ours on the back end because these assets will perform for us for the rest of our lives. As the market changes and historically values went up, when that $50 million asset becomes a $25 million asset and I refinance it, I get to pull all that money out tax-free.

Provided that our legislation and what we're going to do and economically goes in the direction that we were at and continues going. Speaking of which, when was the last time you paid taxes? I mean, I paid taxes, property taxes and so forth. Sure, sure. Obviously there's all the other taxes, but I'm talking income tax. I'm assuming you don't pay any. I haven't paid income taxes since 2018. It's awesome. No federal income taxes.

Yeah, I mean, and to really understand that if you're a viewer, it's not that this guy's at vading taxes. Like he's got these tax shelters that are created through real estate. I mean real estate is one of the greatest ways to avoid income tax in the history. You pay more property tax, right? You're still paying tax. Yeah, you just paid it a different way. Well, the hope is that you're not paying that your tenants are paying your property tax for you.

So, you're cash flowing these assets, but then you're getting the depreciation riding off these huge and then you're doing cost segregation, which is... You know all that stuff and all the taxes? You know what I still... This is where we lose half the viewers. They'll be pissed because that's like that whole thing where Trump went disclosed his taxes. Because this tickles me because we were paying about 1,500 bucks a month for health insurance for our family. Right.

To have good health insurance for the family, we paid $50 a month because we're low income because our net taxable income is so low we're a poverty level. And so we get like $50 a month and we have the best insurance we've ever had. You have that up to $50 a month. I don't even know what it is. My wife feels well that. But all I know is that I didn't have vision. I have vision insurance now. I didn't have dental and now I have dental.

You know, and so like all the insurance that we didn't have and we're paying a premium for our health insurance, now we have being low income. And so how can that be? Oh man, you're going to get some ticked off people. They're like, oh. Especially we lose half the viewers. Especially health insurance, man. That's a deal. Health insurance is such a rough. It's a hoax man. Oh my gosh. So I'm type 1 diabetic. And like, yeah, dude, the whole insurance and health.

So for years, I used to have to go down. So I've always done like self-performing insurance, whether it's like a Christian health care ministry or something like where you have to pay cash for like some of your prescriptions. And because I've always been self-employed. And so for years, I used to go to Mexico and stock up on my insulin because I could go get the same exact insulin bottle, same manufacturer, lily manufacturer. I can go and pay 20 to 30 bucks a bottle down there.

Meanwhile up here in the United States, there's $350. It was crazy. 350. That's the stuff that, in fact, I think Mark Cuban just bought a pharmaceutical company and he's in the process right now of doing that exact same thing because it's such a bullshit. I was in pharmacy school when I was in college and I went all the way through pharmacy school. And we'd get these medical journals when I was in college and 100% of everything that we learned wasn't out of a textbook.

It was out of like the New England Journal of Medicine or everything was revolved around the pharmaceuticals companies fund our medical programs. Most people don't know that. And so anyways, I'm not going to run down that show. Oh no, it's a fun rabbit hole. It's crazy, man. And I recognized it when I was in college 32 years ago.

And I remember sitting back and they were teaching us, I had this one class that they taught us how to take 10 abstract articles out of these and dissect them to see if they were good research articles and if they were relevant or if they were biased and who was funding them and everything. So I learned how to read that stuff back years ago. And so I look at that stuff now and it's amazing to me where it was then where it's evolved to now and the bullshit that exists in the medical system today.

It's crazy. It's not. It is. And frankly, like, difficult if you're in the medical space because like you have this weird dichotomy of, I'm in healthcare to be able to help people. Yet if I cure them, I will lose my patient or my customer. Right? Yeah. Or it's, there's a, there's a better option, but it doesn't, I don't make any money. I don't make any money. Yeah, exactly. So it's the weirdest thing, right? Like you have this profession with this like, like I've always talked about this.

Like, there's no incentive to cure diabetes, right? Like, like, that cancer, or cancer, right? Like these are two huge money makers. Like, like all the, all the things that you can keep somebody alive for a very long time getting medication. Don't cure that. Like what? And so, and that's where like, dude, it's so, it's so hard because I don't think there's a political party that has the right solution. It was interesting.

It was interesting, though, for the first time, like I know RFC just dropped out, but like he's talking about like going after FDA and the medical. And they need to, you know that like if you, you guys travel out of the country sometimes? Yeah. Yeah. So you ever notice like your body, the way it reacts when you eat like real food in other countries. So much better.

Like I mean, like you go to Japan and like even the, the, the, the sashimi and the sushi, everything that you have out there is is so much more pronounced because it doesn't have all of the, it doesn't have all the sodium and preservatives and stuff that we have here in the United States. Our food and drug administration is killing us. Killin us because we're literally eating preservatives and it's going into our bodies. And we're eating all that, those toxins, right?

We, like I go down to Mexico and some of it might be the food from Mexico, but I think our stomachs get jacked because everything out there is just truly organic. Like they're not using pesticides. Oh yeah. Like you know, you go to these other countries and you're detoxing from all the garbage that we're eating here in the United States because none of these countries have the FDA and none of them have the preservatives or anything that we do here in the United States. It's crazy.

One of the things I always say is like my type one diabetes is actually like kind of one of my superpowers because I get to do, I'm a real life science project wherever I go. Yeah. I can see how things impact my blood sugar, right? Like does this spike my blood sugar doesn't not, right? And so like I'm always testing these type of theories, right? So like in the United States, I try to stay away from bread and white flour and everything else. But dude, I can go over to France.

I can have, I can have bread or pizza or anything else over there and guess what? It doesn't have the same impact that it does here in the United States. Why? Exactly because there's a, there's a, there's a racer who does motor cross and he's from Australia and he started racing the United States. So he came over within, I want to say he's like within the first year of being here, type two diabetes. What? And this is a guy who's like fit is top of the crazy.

Dude, it's, it really is wild like the, the things that we subject our bodies to in the United States. Another real life experience. So my parents, they went and served a mission for our church in Sri Lanka. They were there for a year and a half. And over in Sri Lanka, to your point, like everything's organic, right? Rice, beans, fish, like all this stuff. And my dad continued to have the same appetite. So my dad weighed probably when he went over to Sri Lanka, probably 26270. Big guy, right?

6, 2, stout. Got a little bit of a gut or whatever. Dude, he dropped 60 pounds over there eating the same way that he did in the United States from like just the amount of, but because it was organic, because it wasn't this, this lack of a problem. Holding onto all that stuff. It's all the preserves, our bodies hold all that stuff. I think preserve it. Yeah, preserves it in you. You know? So let me ask you, you're pretty fit, very healthy looking.

What, what do you do to like, like what's your, what's your regiment that's getting you through that? And it's changed over the course of time. My wife's like, oh, we're late everywhere because of you. So my life's changed. I've changed my regiment with my life. I've grown, I'm growing into my age, right? So I'm not as limber as I once was.

It seems like my whole life revolves around like this, this like religious regiment that I do or according to my kids and my wife, they're like, oh my god, dad stretching again. And I've just, I've been an athlete my whole life. And so I love extreme sports, you know? I still want to be out there on my snowboard and I still want to be out there on ATVs. And I want to be doing the stuff that I've always done. And I don't want limitations on it, although we have to acclimate to it.

So like now, when I wake up in the mornings, my tea bands are tight and stuff. I have, before I even get out of bed because of my planar fasciitis and everything else that you, as you get older and being an athlete, you beat your body up. Yeah. Before I roll out of bed, I do all these religious stretches in my bed.

And then I get out and when I wake up every morning, I do about a 20 minute stretching regiment that before I leave the house, because I don't feel human until I do this stretching regiment. Part yoga, all stretching, where I stretch my back, my legs, my hamstrings, I roll my spine. And then I do 150 pushups every single morning, seven days a week. Never let loose on it. If I'm in a huge rush, I'm missing a fly or something.

I'll at least do one and then I'll do the other, I'll do one set of 50 and I'll go to the airport and do another 100 at the airport, you know, whoever. And the biggest thing is for people is that when you do it, you can't, there's no excuse for not doing right. So everything that I do in my life, I do as a completion. And I don't feel satisfied in the day until I know that I did it.

So it doesn't even matter like if I do it in the middle of the night or if I, but if I tell myself, I do 150 a day, you have to do them every day. And so I just like getting it out of the way my pushups in the morning and just being done. So you're 150 pushups every day every morning, three sets of 50 before I even leave the house. Before you even leave the house. And if you don't get that done, you get it done throughout the day. But 95% of the time or better, I get it done in the morning.

Are you a daily weight room guy or just four days a week, I hit the other weight. So I go to the gym four days a week and that was one thing even when my, when my wife and I started dating, when I was in my late 20s and she was in her early 20s, I told her, look, there's this one thing I ask and that's my gym time. Give me an hour every day. I'll never compromise that for kids for nobody. And it's, you have to give yourself that time every day because it makes you better.

It makes you feel better, you know, it's like you're a better dad, you're a better husband. When I don't get hit the gym and I don't get my gym time in, I think it does something to you mentally. So you're a little bit more of a train wreck in regards to how cranky you are. You're more irritable, less patient, you know, because in the back of the mind, it weighs on you. And if you accept that, it takes away from everything else. I can't ignore. I just never accepted the fact that I can't do it.

So four days a week and I do cardio every night. I do 25 minutes of cardio every night. Are we talking like runs, walks? Just fast-paced walks. I did it when I was competing in bodybuilding after I finished wrestling in college. It was a way I'd stay lean. I'd do two minutes how I trimmed down before a competition. I would do a 25 minute fast-paced walk in the morning and 25 minutes in the evening.

And so I added that to my agenda because obviously as you get older, gravity takes its pace and you know, and your metabolism does tend to slow down a little bit. So in lieu of just staying lean, that 25 minutes every night is really a disciplinary action to stay lean, so than anything. So every single night after my wife does, most of the time my wife does it with me. She's not as disciplined with it, but it's not her thing. It's my thing. I kind of drag her along with me.

So anything that she does just adds to what she already does to. And but my kids see me do it, right? So we got like one of those swim spas at the house and I did it because sometimes just riding the bike gets boring and so I'll jump. It's a one day. So you're saying one of those wave pools that you swim against it, Typia? Yeah, it's not strong enough, man. So my wife's like, she goes, she goes, you're too intense for absolutely everything that you do.

She's like, she can't even use a wave or that's like, that's what it's built for. For sports and athletes. I go, I know, but I keep pounding my head against the top of the, of the, of the, of the to fast. So it's really too hard. Because everything you do, you do it too much intensity. And she goes, so I have to, so they have these bands. So I hold onto these bands and I do it off the bands when I do it at night.

So I'll do that or I'll ride the bike and have a full gym at home or I'll just do a fast piece walk. Like last night, it was gorgeous. I was, I was right down the road here and I was right over the, um, just at the lodge. Yeah, I stayed at the lodge. They have that walking trail. Yeah, that's nice. So I just go and do my 20th. I did it. And yeah, I actually walked like 35 minutes. I walked all the way outside of the area. Yep. Just outside of where all the housing is.

I walked all the way back past the golf course and then back to where the loading docks were. And that whole walk back and forth was like 30 some odd minutes and, um, and just a fast piece walk. It's just, it's just really just a disciplinary thing to stay lean more than anything. So that's really my, so, so obviously like diet and supplements and everything else are dialed in like, uh, so, you know, guys, I'm 40, you're 50, right? We start slowing down in, in testosterone, everything else.

What are you doing as far as like, uh, TRT, uh, blood work, like what would, what, what, so I do blood work once a year. I can do every six months. That's why I should be doing it at least every six months. Yep. But we, um, and I, I will probe like for testosterone. Now I'm not taking any supplements. I'm, I'm a little bit apprehensive to take testosterone replacement. And my testosterone level was always super high.

It's a little bit, um, um, lower compared to what it used to be, but it's not low. It's not low. And I try to just do it through food, you know, there's certain foods that, uh, increased uh, asked you to do. So you've been able to do it without TRT? Yes. I've been able to do it. I mean, that's pretty, that's pretty uncommon, right? Like most, most people have to have something. I know Darryl hasn't had to.

I, I've had to, you know, do TRT just because my testosterone has been so low like, and like battling diabetes and everything else. I think that might be why for you. Um, so I've been lucky in that regards. And what happens? I took blood, uh, two years ago and they said that my testosterone level was, was slightly low.

And I looked into supplements and then I talked to a buddy of mine who's a physician who had been on it and he goes, he goes once you're on it, you're almost dependent on staying on it for the rest of your life. Because your body loses its ability to naturally produce testosterone. So I talked to multiple, um, conneasologists and people that, um, that are dealing with, uh, natural homeopathic ways.

And they said, you know, um, your sex drive, if you have sex more, if you, if you, uh, eat certain foods and increase your testosterone level. So you just try to practice things that will increase your testosterone level and it does take some research and, right? It's like anything of life. Anything that, if it holds any value to you, you just have to, um, take the time to learn it, right?

And so I've just taken the time to learn, okay, what foods, there's certain nuts that I shouldn't eat that, um, that increase estrogen and decrease testosterone. Don't eat that, you know?

There's certain nuts like almonds that are really good, you know, they help increase and promote testosterone, uh, certain vegetables and same thing mixing, I didn't know this, but if you mix vegetables, and the reason I learned this is because I got on these big, uh, juicing craze where I was like, okay, I'm going to start juicing and then my stomach was jacked, bro, like I was going in and my stomach was jacked. So many different things going in.

Oh, bro, I didn't realize that all these mixtures of vegetables create gas in your stomach. And I was sitting back going, holy shit, man, my stomach's jacked. And I mean, and so I find out that, um, like spinach and some of these other, uh, greens, if you mix them, they create gas. So I got, I, so now I went down to like single vegetables and if you eat single vegetables at a given time, mix with some fruit, it increases your testosterone level, but you can't mix them.

So there's certain ways and it's just like what you do with diabetes. There's a science behind it, right? And you just have to be consciously aware of what you're doing, how you eat it, what you scrape off the plate when the, it's a restaurant, when they bring it out and what you set aside, you know, you're a little pile of whatever it is on the side of your plate and you just don't eat it, right?

Yeah. So a lot of it just takes self-discipline management, but it's really, if you listen to how I do that, it's kind of like how I do everything in life, right? You know, so do you, do you have any weaknesses when it comes to your diet? Like other times that you're just like, hey man, I'm going off course for a week on a cruise or whatever else? Yeah, you know what's cool about being disciplined in every other area? I almost eat whatever I want. Like I don't eat a lot of sugar.

So like I don't eat sweets. I, you know, my wife and I go out and my wife loves crumb or lay. So if we get a restaurant, they have like the old school regular burnt sugar crumb or lay on the top of it, we'll eat it, right? If it's a Saturday night, we go to dinner alone and we want to have a cup of coffee, we're not big coffee. Well, she drinks coffee. She's not a big coffee drinker, but having a nice cup of coffee that I turn into a dessert with all the extra cream and sugar.

I'll have it, right? Right. And I don't feel guilty about it because I do everything else right the rest of the time. Right. But I don't refrain from like pizza and I don't, you know, we don't know. What about alcohol? You alcohol drinker? I'm not an alcohol drinker. We'll drink a glass of wine. We go out to eat, but I don't drink any alcohol beer, mixed drinks, the sugar and all that stuff.

I just never did when I was younger and I got into a great disciplinary, and now that I don't even like them, like I have a hard time finding a drink that I really even like. And so to my benefit, nothing really, I don't crave any of that stuff, you know. So I'll have a glass of wine at dinner, you know? Every day or just, we go out on Saturday night or something and my wife and I, you know, we'll have a glass of wine. You bring up your wife a lot.

What do you do to preserve and improve that relationship? Yeah, like when we talk about trajectory and up, plateau and trajectory and down, we're yeah, with your wife right now. We're good, man. I love it. My change is every week. Yeah, yeah, man. I mean, it does. You know, we went through all of that, you know? I mean, we've been together for 28 years. We've been married for 18 of those. This coming next two weeks from now is our anniversary. So it'll be 18 years and two weeks.

And so we've had a long course of growing up together and I played hard when I was young. You know, I was doing my entrepreneurial journey four years before I even met her to my benefit because of my, those are my real hard struggling years. And we've ridden the rollercoaster like all couples do.

The man riding the ego, filling that force against each other, feeling like if you let in that you're giving up your manly hood and you learn like, what I've learned and I don't know if everybody learns this. I said, my wife's not against me, man. Like I've just learned over the years like because there's like this pride thing I think that we have this man that like if we let it let up on the control that that we're letting up on like our manhood.

I don't know if you guys have ever experienced that where you don't even think you're doing it, but you're doing it, you know? I kind of just let that go. I understand that my wife has a lot more authority in the house than I do. And I've accepted that with the kids. They just, back when dad puts his foot down with the kids, the kids know, right? Like, and I need to put my foot down like they know. And that's like the that's like the last straw. But my kids don't listen to me.

They don't, it's like, I talk. I tell them something and they go ask mom. And I'm like, like, chop liver. What the heck, you know? And you just learn, you know, it's just like moms with them, man. Like moms been there. Like they just, they're going to go to mom. And because mom's been there with them, homeschooling them and she's been the disciplinary and dad's the fun guy that comes home at the end of the day, the plays with them, right?

And so they don't take dad as serious as they do until dad puts his foot down. So dad is the hard discipline area and but mom is really the boss in the house, right? And you as a man, I've just, I've learned that, you know? What are, what are two best practices you're doing right now to preserve that relationship? Or not preserve, but even better it? Yeah. Just respect each other. There's things you learn not to do through your relationship that you just know really irks on.

And examples, give us examples. Yeah, so, so like, for example, like with my wife, she chose, we had a dance school. She ran. I opened it up for the physician, the physician she worked for passed away when we were really young. And she loved that job. And it was the only job she ever had. And then I said, well, don't get a job. I'm going to ask her, right? Like, what do you want to do? She was, I want to open dance schools. I go, okay, cool. So we had buildings. I opened up a dance school.

We had 11 year run with it. Very successful. Hundreds of students. And when my son was born, it was great because I'd go down and I'd pick him up from the car seat. I'd go play with him. And when he was just a toddler and she'd do her dance school, then she'd come home. Then when my daughter was born, it became more challenging. I said, okay, we're working. The recession had hit. I'm going, okay, we're never going to see each other as a family. We've got to make a decision.

Do you want the dance school? Or do you not want it? So we shut the site of shut that thing down. She felt that she lost her sense of identity because she had to stay at home mom now. She went to college, she had all these accolades. And there's a piece of them that they feel like they've given up to raise this family. And they feel like almost like there's a level of non-worth that they don't have. There's no worth that they bring. And I'm like, no, you bring a lot of worth to your mother.

And if a man doesn't respect the fact of what they're doing, I've learned this because we've all set stupid things at the wrong time. All the time. There's not a man out there that hasn't, right? And so, and I was guilty of doing that all the time. And I just learned to respect the fact that what she does is admirable because I couldn't do it, you know? Not to the level. I do it if I had to because I would do anything. It's God in putting that position.

But to the level and as well as she does it, I can't do it. And so you have to allow yourself to humble yourself in the house and also praise them and thank them. And it's just the small stuff and it's just like even like I noticed the trash is a big of she'll let the trash just fill up and she'll wait for me to do it and I'll get home and I used to get upset. I'd be like, damn man, I'm working all day. You guys 10 empty a damn trash can. Right? We have two dishwasher. We have two dishwasher.

You're sure about that. Absolutely. You could ever say. Yeah. Like you get home, there's two dishwashers. And sometimes I'll just take note of them, right? I'll be like, I'll open them in the morning to clean up the kitchen and they're both full, but I got a meeting. I got to run out. And I'm like, okay, I'll just leave them slightly opened. And you know, it's a while, put a little sticky notes, it says empty dish washer and put it on there. Like, you know, if you a damn dishwasher, right?

But you just learn that if you get home and that dish washer is an empty, you just shut up. You don't say anything. You don't, like, and inside it's boiling. You're like, I'm like, I'm going down, like I just had a hell of a day, but you can't come home and you can't say that. Yeah, right. Because you don't know what their day was like. And you can't come home and puke on them either. And I've learned that the hard way as well. These are all just like little like life tips.

That when you have a hard day, you can go to dinner and talk about your day. But if you come home and you puke on your wife about all the crap that you had during the day, she's peeling all that stuff off. And you haven't even considered what they've went through on the day, you know?

And so I've just learned to hold on to all of what I go through until the timing is right to talk about it and embrace a little bit more and consider a little bit more of what she's gone through to help make our relationship better. And I'm not perfect at this, man. Like I'm saying, I'm talking about this. Oh, for sure. I mean, this is all all the work progress. Oh, man, it's a life time. You'll sit back and one day you just do it on action like, damn, I shouldn't have done that. Right.

And so it's all the work in progress. But I think it's just that. And she recognizes that I do that more now than I used to. And so when, so we might get in a little quarrel about something, but because she recognizes it, those quarrels are few and far from and they don't last as long as they used to because she knows that I get it. So because I'll sit back and go, yeah, she goes, you're cranky last night. Don't even talk to me. And I'll be like, yeah, I was, sorry. That was 100% me.

And it's just taking accountability for your actions, recognizing it and not being forceful that you're right and they're wrong. And because it's like what's your goal, right? Like is your goal to be right and to have the superpower over your wife or is your goal to have like this healthy home and like what, what are you displaying to your kids? Because we've all done dumb shit in front of our kids, you know, that we are less than proud of, right? And it's like, you sit back, go down.

I really screwed that up. And so you sit back and go, okay, like, how do I want my kids to walk away from this, you know, and what kind of examples do I want to do? You have two kids? Yep. Yeah, two. That's right. So, so a little bit of all that, man. But it's all just a work in progress like everything else that we do every day. Yeah. You know. It's a, it's a lifelong battle in a good direction, right?

Yeah. Like how do, and it's really like an internal battle of like, how do I just overcome myself and not be an idiot and you know, put my foot in my mouth every once in a while? Well, I think what's interesting is it's same as health, right?

Like we don't talk enough about like what are we doing and where are we learning and where we're growing because everyone in a relationship deals with the struggle of, you know, social media would, social media would make us believe that everyone's got to figure out, right? From fitness, from relationships, you see a good relationship or like, that's perfect all the time, right? Yeah. And it's not. I mean, you're, think about your health as always changing as you age, right? It is.

And things change constantly. Your relationships are always changing as constantly. Yeah, constantly changing. Fighting each other. So you're always, yeah. And so you're always learning new things and you always have to learn new things in order to like optimize it. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And that's, I think recognizing that. I think people get stubborn in that.

And it's like, like I had a buddy who, he's single, he's going to die single, I think he just, I'm looking for a woman that I'm an entrepreneur. You have to think like an entrepreneur. My wife doesn't think like an entrepreneur. She does organically because she's been with me for so long. Yeah. But if, if I died and you made my wife be an entrepreneur, oh my God, you know, she doesn't understand this game, right? Like, she's still, you know, there's like this level of where she came from.

And she's never really had the hard push like I've had to do my whole life. I just love and adore her for who she is. Like, I don't need her to be an entrepreneur. If she supports me, but I've never also put her in a position where we've had a worry or we've starved either. Yeah. Because I'm just an entrepreneur, man. They put their wives in a position where they're broke, their families, their kids, and they want their wives to support them.

Well, if you want your wife to support you, you can get off your ass and you need to make something happen, man. Like, I don't know any wife that would support anybody if you don't have a roof over your head and food on the table for sure. You know, so I think a good question for you because it's similar to like us like Pasco, Washington, not the ideal place for like entrepreneurs. Albuquerque, New Mexico, not usually considered on the map for like the big entrepreneurial city.

Why do you live in Albuquerque? Why haven't you guys relocated? Like tell us about that. Yeah, it's all family stuff. My wife's families are my families are too, but my wife's family were really close to them. And I just couldn't, my in-laws help us out tremendously and they're a big part of our lives. And so I couldn't imagine pulling both my children. You grew up there, man. I grew up there and then I left.

I left when I was in college and I was gone for five and a half years and then I came back. Literally just came back to finish my last year of my degree because after I was in multi-level marketing, 97, the FTC shut us down and I was like, okay, if I'm going to finish my degree, this is the time. And I looked at like UT Austin because I was living in San Antonio in Austin. I looked at UTSA. It was going to take like three years where I could just go back and into semester finish my degree.

And so I went back and I was moonlighting back and forth flying back and forth every week to Austin and Albuquerque. Wow. And I was going to fly back and forth. Is it direct flight? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. We were living like the multi-level marketing. You flew first class and you get direct flights and you still have that little ego of sales confidence that you do when you're in sales and you're doing it. So yeah, direct flights first class. Even if you're broke, you're still trying it.

You're still running back. And so I was flying back every single week and my wife was in college at the time and we knew each other from mutual friends when she was younger. And that's where we met and then I kept telling her, okay, I'm just going to be here for six more months and I'm out of here. Mom's still there. So what is it about Albuquerque?

Obviously family, is there, for me, I love going to other cities, doing the work and then coming home and having just this place of refuge that's completely separate from the rest of the world. It is for me too. And I think because I wasn't doing a lot of work there and all my work was in Phoenix and other areas. Now I got some developments that are going in there for the first time in a long time. But I won't do social media stuff there. I won't host meetups there.

I won't do any type of trainings there. I won't do anything there. Because when I go to a restaurant, I just want to be drawn. I just want to be dad. When I don't want someone coming up to me and asking me questions when I'm at home about it. And so I kind of withdrawn. People say, why don't you do a meetup in Albuquerque? And I'm like, that's my home, man. This is like, I just want to keep it separate. Yeah, just keep it separate.

I'll travel for the day, come back, and I'll do what I need to do elsewhere. And I come back and I just want to be dad and Jerome. I just want to live my life and do it. So it's been good. It's a great place to raise a family, right? But it's like this. It's pretty high. A lot of hiking, a lot of outdoor stuff. If you're an outdoor person, it's a gorgeous place to live. What's present for you right now?

Like what is so obviously banking and all this stuff, but personally, like if you're like, OK, these are the things that I'm really working on being better at, overcoming, or whatnot, or some things that I sometimes struggle with. What are those for the right? You right now, Jerome, at 50 years old. Yeah. Time. Freeing up my time. I think I'm still struggling with that. Anytime that economics work against me, I find myself work hard again. It's always been my struggle.

I'm just a workhorse in just doing what you're doing. So give us more detail when you say time. Is it because you're spending too much time working and not enough with your family? I do a decent job with that. I think just personally, health-wise, because I worry about also being 50 years old, I have friends that have passed on, like my attorney. Well, I ask the protection attorney passed on at 49 years old from a massive heart. Either do work themselves to death.

And so I don't want to work this hard and then die of a massive heart attack, either right? I do good balancing family for the most part, you know? I won't miss my kids games. I'll schedule it like this whole trip right now coming down here. It's easier for me to travel on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. But it doesn't work right with my son's football and everything else. It's like that's important for me to be there.

So I'll come on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and much of an inconvenience as it is. So I do good with trying to balance that stuff. It's my own. Because I think sometimes I'm doing, I'm balancing for everybody else. Sometimes it compromises, compromises my own well-being because I'm doing it for everybody else, trying to balance and balance in other positions in my life. So what I struggle with probably the most right now is saying, okay, enough's enough to roam.

Like that customer can wait till for another day to get that proposal. Or, and if they can't, then you're fine. You let it go, you know? So finding the whole of that balance is to say, okay, enough's enough and just let that piece go and being okay with letting that one piece go for your own personal. So do you find yourself struggling, saying no?

I think that, you know, when you struggle in business and you come from nothing, there's like this piece of you, like it's almost like guilt that you live with. Where if you don't produce, you almost have this level of guilt that weighs over your shoulders that you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing to satisfy where you're going or where you're at, right? In business, specifically.

So you feel like this level of guilt because the business is weighed on your shoulder and if you don't get it done and if you're not there and if you're not, that whole thing about being in the office first and being in the office, that's it. Dude, it's, yeah, I screw all that. Like that stuff, like down the drain, man, like that stuff, I've just learned, dude, I'm going to pride myself for being at home till 11 o'clock. Thank you. You guys go to the office. I've had those days. I've done it.

I've done that grind. I'm not, you know, we will not catch me in the office at six o'clock in the morning, at seven o'clock in the morning. The days like my kids come home. My son comes home from two days or he's out of the house at six a.m. and back home at 10 o'clock in the summer. He's like, Dad, you're still home. What are you doing at home? I'm like, Hey, how you doing? Give me a hug. Give me a hug. Come here and give me a hug. I'm proud that I'm home today.

Yeah. So that kind of stuff, like letting that kind of stuff go where you know you can be just as productive where you are and finding that balance where I can be more at home as opposed to pushing and get the office. So my, but it's, that comes with maturity. It comes with you earn that too. There's a level of that that you earn. So like, for entrepreneurs, you're looking right now and if you need to be in the office and you're in, you're in, you're in build mode. You can't do it. I'm doing it.

Right. I mean, I've, I've done that grind for 30 years, you know. So there's a, there's a flip to it too. Now I'm on the opposite side going, OK, I've done it. I'm here. I am at a different level than a lot of people. Now I need to learn how to come off the grind level and learn how to enjoy what I've built. And that's hard. So sometimes it's harder than the grind. So what's on the horizon? Like, what is the thing that you are working towards?

Just like the big, hairy audacious goal that would be like, I did it. Yeah. To the whole goal that my wife set for us. And that's just having that freedom of flexibility that like when my son graduates in two years and my daughter graduates in five years, that I'm successful doing the plan that the only thing that my wife has asked me for, the only thing is my wife is simple. You know, she's not out spending money and buying Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Man, that's not my wife.

You know, she's happy. You know, she's just, she's just simple. You know, she's happy. God bless her heart. She's, I've never had a worry about any of that stuff. But if I can't fulfill that, I feel like, you have all this, like, what did I do? All this. I've failed my wife, my family. I can't be there for my kids. I'm buried, I buried myself in a, you know, job and a profession that I sunk. You brought up like your lawyer, Diane, at 49.

You know, I think that's really, that's really important to realize like we don't know how many days we have left on this earth. And so many times like we find ourselves stuck in the mindset of like someday, one day I'll get there and yeah, I constantly get reminded of like today's the day. Today's the day to enjoy, have the best day of your life. And I, and one of the, the recent mindships I'd have is it doesn't get better than this.

Yeah. Like you're living in the best moment you could possibly live. Yeah. Because tomorrow doesn't exist yet. Yeah. And in the past has gone. So like, live the best moment today because this is the best it gets. Yeah. Me and my wife are talking about that and it's like, we got to change your, you know, change your mindset. Like I absolutely love every stage of my girls are in. I absolutely love where my relationship with my wife and where we're going.

It's like fine gratitude and enjoying absolutely everything. Everything, man, every stage, man, every stage is good with the kids. And yeah, we, because sometimes in moments, I think I'm like, damn, I'm the God. I'm going to count you how many football games I'm going to get this year next year. And God willing, he stays healthy, playing college. But it's like, he's got to enjoy every phase, man. Yeah. Like we're doing the tailgate and anything's on Friday.

And like last week was our first tailgate. We did it all wrong. And so next week I'm like, I can't pull out the grill. We're doing this, you know? And it's like, it's like preparing for that stuff to make that stuff more successful. More enjoyable. So last year, my wife or my, so my oldest daughter was in travel volleyball. And I have to say like didn't enjoy, let's put it nice. I didn't enjoy the volleyball aspect of it. But the time I had along with my daughter was priceless.

Oh my God. And the conversations we had were like conversations I don't think I could have ever recreated. We did that with gymnastics. My kids were in different states every weekend during gymnastics seasons. And so we would take turns. My daughter kind of acts me out because I can't do her friggin' hair right, man. So she's like, dad, dad, you're not allowed to come in and work. You didn't know how to do hair. She got just old enough for the hair thing was like a big deal.

And so now my wife is the only one that's allowed. I'm welcome to tag along. But dad can't travel with her alone because dad doesn't know how to do hair. So I don't know when that's going to end. But we would literally switch like if my daughter was in Anaheim and my son had to go to Oklahoma City or if we were in Florida and the other one was in Wyoming or wherever, every weekend we were traveling. And when they were both competing. And so we get these weekends alone with each of them.

And then sometimes we fly like if she competed on a Friday and my son competed on a Saturday. And my wife would fly all the way across with my daughter to be back at the other one. And just did that. And those times are priceless. So we miss that. Like my wife and I now that they're both not in gymnastics. You miss that? You miss that much travel? You sit back and so let me tell you guys this joke. So my friend Bill, not my friend, my mentor, Bill. Bill is one of my mentors.

And he goes and we do these briefings for our multi-level marketing company. And he goes, you go up to, you die, you go to St. Peter and you get to the pearly gates of heaven. And St. Peter goes, hey, welcome to heaven. And he goes, you have a choice. You can either go to heaven or hell. And there's this big giant elevator. And so you go up to the elevator and you're like, well, I've always been a man of choice.

I know the heaven is like, I just want to make sure that I have all my options right. And it's getting painted out the way heaven and hell really is. Can I go up and see both? And so St. Peter goes, yeah, why not? And also he gets in the elevator and he hits hell on there. And the elevator drops it. It goes down to the fiery flames of hell. Man, the door's open up. And there's just people. Party flames going. It's like a party's going on. People are on tables.

And there's beautiful women and everything's just crazy. And yeah, it's hot and the flames are going. And then he goes, all right, it's time to go. Boom, he hits the elevator. And he goes, let's go up to heaven. Let's see what happens. He goes, he hits the elevator, he goes all the way back up. And he get up to heaven. The elevator opens up at heaven. And it's real calm and serene. It's real, just easy going and everybody's on their cloud. Just everything is just picture perfect, right?

So then go down to purgatory, elevator, St. Peter asks him, he goes, he goes, what's your choice? And he goes, wow, you know, man, heaven's beautiful. But damn, I'm kind of a guy that likes the party a little bit. Man, I mean, hell doesn't seem too bad. You know, he goes, I think I, I think I think I think I feel better down below, you know. So he's, St. Peter shoves him back in the elevator, hits, hits hell again, drops down the bottom, flames open up, St. Peter kicks him out of the door.

And there's flames going, nobody's party, nothing's happening. It's all, hold on, what happened? Where's all the party? He goes, oh, you must be here during a briefing. You know, there he goes. That's when everybody, that's like, you're sales time, you're going in, like everybody's happy, right? Fake it to you, make it, everybody's happy party. No, this is hell, man. And so when you're going through it, it seems like the worst thing that you're ever going through in your life.

But it's the best thing that you've ever lived through, right? So Bill, I'll just tell you, he said, you're going to look back at these times that you're struggling and you're going to sit back and go best, best time of my life. Amen. And so you look back at like what you're doing with the kids. And at the time, it seems like you're traveling all over the place and it's like a living home, it's crazy. And you see back and you look back and then you're like, man, best time of our lives.

Yeah. You know, because now it's like it's living in every single piece of enjoying, every little piece of the right. What I love with my daughter, right? She's in the car with just me and her. We're talking about things and she's very open to me. So we're talking about some deep things and what she's thinking in her future. And now she sees things and like, man, I could have never created this moment. And I'm just eating it up is awesome.

Yeah. Now I've got a few of those with her traveling that have made it all worth it because watching the volleyball. Oh my gosh. Imagine being in gym with 40 courts and you've got whistles blowing. No. Yeah. Yeah, man. It's wild. Parents are nasty. Everything's crazy, man. I mean, it's, it's nutty, man. We sit by our side. I told my wife and our kids were little. I told them they were born. I said, hey, don't be friends with these parents. I said, because there's going to be a day.

I said, this is going to be an affirmation if what we teach and how we live our lives is total bullshit or if it's real. Like our kids will be winners. And I said, our kids will beat their kids at some point in time and those parents will not like us. And I told them when they were little, they were just born. You know, so my wife's like, whatever. And then she became friends with everybody. And then as soon as my son started beating people and gymnastics, they all freaking hated us.

We would like the family to beat. No one liked us. Old, wrong, and not bad. That's all because he's rich and entitled. They have meetings about us like that. When I did something where I did something with the kids or something, they're like, oh, yeah, the Maldonado's. They're the entitled family because they do well or something like, come on, guys. You know, that's crazy. Jerome, dude, appreciate you making it out here to Pasco. Hanging out with us. It's been a fun conversation.

Just talking about everything going on in life, man. You've got a lot of things figured out. I mean, when we talk about becoming the whole human, it seems like you're at least on the right trajectory for all those things. So appreciate you sharing your wisdom. Yeah. Thank you, man. Okay. Where's a good spot that our viewers, our listeners can follow you at and catch a little more of your journey? We're on all social media platforms.

If you just go to Jerome Maldonado and there'll be in the show notes, I'm sure. And if you go to Instagram, it's the Jerome Maldonado. We're on all social media platforms. Love it. Love it. And last piece of advice, if you could leave us just like one big word of wisdom that sums up your life, your passion, what would it be? Yeah, without being something too cliche, I think what we were talking about earlier. Just live your life strong. Live it strong.

What I mean by live it strong is live every aspect of every day of your life strong and everything that you do. Some days you're going to be exhausting, but it's worth it and the fulfillment that you'll get out of it is just amazing. And it doesn't have revolve around money. Money is a byproduct of all of everything else that you do. It's taken me a long time to learn that. So I just leave people with the fact that wake up each morning trying to be the best version of you.

You can be in every aspect of your life and money will fall into the right place as an entrepreneur and business. Whatever you need it, if you're doing everything else you need to be doing in life right. I love it. You heard it here. Live strong. Identify the areas in your life. Get real. Get truthful with where you're at whether physically, economically with your associations or your spirituality so you can take it to the next level until next time.