Triple Digit Flip, Near Death Experience & Building a Real Estate Empire I Jamil Damji DSH #441

I'm really good at understanding value.

Like I'm known as like the guy who can comp a house in 30 seconds.

I need some pieces of information, but in terms of like figuring out its as-is value or its after repair value, I'm up.

And then I'm showing him what the values are on all of the house.

There is no chance that you come out of this in good standing.

So my suggestion, cut bait and run.

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It helps a lot with the algorithm.

It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team.

Truly means a lot.

Thank you guys for supporting.

And here's the episode.

Ladies and gentlemen, he is back.

He is back.

What a crazy story.

We're going to dive into it, but we'll also talk real estate.

We're here with Jamil Dhamji.

How's it going, my man?

Oh, dude.

It's going.

What a journey you've been on, man.

It has been.

You know, 2023 was one of the, well, it was my best year financially,

but my worst year personally.

Wow.

January 1st, I I lose my dog.

Damn.

My dad gets diagnosed with cancer.

I

end up

getting this terrible spinal injury.

And I split up with my wife of nearly 10 years.

That's so insane because you're doing the best you've ever done financially, but at the same time, all that's happening.

So you can't even enjoy the success.

I mean, no.

It's one of the weirdest, it's one of the weirdest

feelings to to be accomplished and feel like a failure at the same time yeah you know it's it was an interesting dichotomy that i had to really process and i i have i'm you know one of the one of the most beautiful things about the split is that um

we are uh we we're like best friends oh nice and and we'll remain close friends so um you know we'll do it with the with the most grace that you can possibly ever do that you know um which is hard right it's it's easier to be mad.

It's easier to like fight.

Way easier.

Yeah, but but that's not that's not us.

So

but you know, otherwise,

everything's been, you know, things have been really good watching that.

You know, I got a new dog.

Nice.

So that was that was fun.

And he's a handful and business is booming.

So I'm looking forward.

I have a renewed faith in my purpose and why I do what I do.

And and I have more time on my hands now because you know I I used to have to come home right

I don't really have to do that anymore right so I'm I'm a free bird were there signs that that split was coming or was it super unexpected for you oh man um

i wasn't intending to get into it but i'm i'm i'm okay too it was yeah no no it's cool it's cool it was you know

Yeah, you know, it's just one of those things where you like, you, you, you distance, create, you create distance, right?

When, when, when you're going the way that I was going, right?

TV show,

you know, the astro flipping popping off the way it has, Keegly franchising, you know, 100 markets.

When that happens to you and you get a level of success that requires you to be away so long, so much, it's hard to be the spouse of that guy.

Yep.

And

that, I think, really weighed on the relationship.

I own that.

I own it, you know?

And

if I had the opportunity to go back and redo a thousand things, I would.

But I don't think that's how life's supposed to work, right?

The waves I got, I rode the way I rode, and I end up where I ended up.

And I accept it.

And I think the best thing about it is the acceptance at this point right now, because I have accepted it.

I am

moving through it, which I learned.

You can't numb yourself out of grief.

You can't distract yourself out of grief.

You have to actually grieve.

But then, once you grieve and you actually process it and you surrender and you accept it, and these things happen,

beautiful things just start to happen, you know, and it's the synchronicities of life, the

opportunities that present themselves, the people who find you because your energy changes in such a dramatic fashion when you just surrender and

let yourself raise up a little bit.

I super believe in

the power of ourselves, right?

I think I've manifested everything that's happened in my life.

One of the very few real estate

types that feel that way or think that way, but I came from nothing.

And so I came from nothing with a grandmother who told us that

we would never be anything.

Wow.

Her mantra was we have no money and

we will never have money.

And so

when you have that seed planted in your your subconscious at a young age it takes a lot of work to reprogram yourself right and so i had to do that and and in so doing i i was able to you know create a beautiful life and um i'm i'm proud of it yeah yeah i mean what you've done is incredible you were selling 70 homes a month recently right yeah we're we average anywhere between um you know 60 to 80 depending and that's just our corporate stores you know then there's the franchises and that's its own volume and you know We we we just collect a royalty on that amazing volume, so it's different than our own Yeah, yeah, number one show on AE.

Yeah, astro flipping is crushing it.

I get your ads every day by the way.

I'm sure you get that a lot.

I mean they're good they're good ads.

Yeah, thank you.

I mean you're obviously killing it with the that's a coaching business, right?

It is.

Yeah, so we did phenomenal in our coaching last year.

We crossed 25 or maybe 30 million in it.

Damn, that was your first year too?

No, that's my now second.

Still crazy.

Second year, 25 million.

Wow.

We did really well and we're continuing to do really well.

Keegly,

you know,

it's tough because I have to be very careful with quoting numbers for Keegly because of franchise stuff.

So I don't want to be, I don't want to ever have it be like, hey, you said,

but we did many millions.

Wow.

And what is Keegly?

Keegly is the wholesale real estate company that I co-founded with Josiah Grimes, Hunter Runyon, and my sister.

And for those who don't understand what wholesaling is,

we are arbitrage.

We're the guys in the streets out there knocking on the ugliest houses in America, trying to secure the rights to buy that house in hopes of being able to sell that opportunity to another investor who would then come in and beautify it for the neighborhood.

And so I feel wholesalers have gotten a little bit of a bad rap in the past just because of

weird practices or maybe not being super on the up and up with respect to, you know, being honest with people with value, with about value.

I think it's an easy conversation to have with a homeowner who wants speed and convenience, especially when property has distress, to say, look,

you can only sell this to a cash buyer.

This is not a financeable home.

Now, a cash buyer is someone like me who has the cash to do it, but I need an upside.

I'm not going to just risk money for nothing.

So you have to understand that I'm needing to make a profit.

Now, I'm not going to try to

take everything out of it.

I want to pay you as much as I can pay you.

But beyond that, you got to know that I have to still eat.

I got to pay a team.

I got to do things.

And so one of the beauties of being a wholesaler is it gives me the opportunity to cherry-pick incredible opportunities for our own fix-and-flip business, sell off the rest, so there's no waste.

What I don't want, I sell.

What I want, I flip.

And

we enjoy the fruits of that.

We employ hundreds of people,

thousands of family members members are eating off of the work we do.

Incredible.

It is.

And I'm proud of it.

I really am.

That's a great feeling, being able to take care of thousands of people.

Yeah, it is.

And you don't truly get it until you come up for air sometimes.

You know, and building it, because I remember it was, you know, the funniest thing, because

a lot of people don't know that I was once a...

like aspiring stand-up comic.

Oh, you were?

Yeah, which is why my ads are the way they are.

So a stand-up and sketch comedian, right?

And so I spent years in L.A.

doing open mics.

I finally got to the comedy store, finally got to the Laugh Factory, finally got to

put beautiful, like, funny sketches on Funnier Die.

Like, I was,

but comedians don't make money.

Right.

They don't make money until you're Kevin Hart.

Yeah, you need 10 years, I heard about that.

Yeah, it takes forever, right?

And I had just gotten engaged.

And I

wanted to show up for my future family.

And so it was my birthday, actually.

Oddly enough,

I leave LA.

It was 12, 12, 12.

And that was the day I left.

And I moved to Phoenix thinking I'm giving up my dreams of fame and fortune to go do this real estate thing that I'm just naturally talented at so that I can provide for my family.

And what an incredible detour that was because it actually materialized all the things that I wanted in my life, but in another door.

And I'll forever be grateful to to Phoenix.

I'll forever be grateful for the decision I made for my family at that time.

Nice.

Is that when you met Pace Morby around that time in Phoenix?

Actually, so Pace and I met a little bit later.

We've been, we've been, we've been friends.

When did we really meet?

So he slid into my DMs

right around like 2016.

Okay.

And

so about eight years.

And he was going through a situation, man.

Some

dude in Phoenix,

you know, a well-known like grifter style guy, right?

Just a rounder.

Well, at the time,

not so well-known to be a not super legit.

Got it, got it.

But I had done business with him, and I quickly learned that he wasn't somebody I wanted to continue to do business with.

So I removed myself from the situation pretty rapidly.

Pace had seen that, right?

He saw that, hey, Jamil kind of like distanced himself from this guy really quick.

So one day he shoots me a DM.

Now, at that time, I had no social media presence.

Pace was kind of already doing his social media thing.

I used to like watch him every once in a while.

I liked his renovation style, so I'd copy some of the things he'd do in the offices that he was flipping or helping people flip.

And I end up finally answering this DM.

My profile picture was an owl.

And two weeks after he DMs me, he's like, I need your help.

And then I respond, I'm like, what can I do?

He said, you want to meet me at this grocery store?

I'll buy you a sandwich.

I just want to ask you some questions.

I said, sure.

Right.

So I meet him and he asked me about this guy and he says, you know, I'm about a quarter million dollars in financing this guy's renovations.

He's always behind on payments, but I'm so far in right now.

It's like, I don't know if I got to keep going or what should I do.

And I said, Pace,

I've uncovered that he's running a massive Ponzi scheme.

Wow.

Come over for dinner tomorrow.

I'm going to show it to you.

Nobody else had put it together yet.

Right.

And he said, okay.

So he comes to my house for dinner the next day.

And we are in my office.

And I literally pull up every property that this person owns.

And I'm really good at understanding value.

Like I'm known as like the guy who can comp a house in 30 seconds.

Oh, wow.

Without looking at it?

No, I have to look at the house.

I need some pieces of information, but in terms of like figuring out its as-is value or its after repair value, I'm

like a wizard at it.

Nice.

Just something I can do.

So I'm showing pace all of the properties that this gentleman owns.

And then I'm showing him the deeds of trust on all of the properties.

And then I'm showing him what the values are on all of the houses.

And he's over-mortgaged them all by 120%.

Damn.

And I have showed him that there is no chance that you come out of this in good standing.

So my suggestion, cut bait and run.

But he's like, I'm $275,000 in.

I'm like, bro.

You're going to throw good money at bad money.

Now, Pace, he's a wonderful guy.

And like, I consider myself, you know, not only his like best friend, brother, but like sometimes protector in a way, because like he's so trusting, he's so giving, he's such a he's such a wonderful dude, right?

That

people can take advantage of him, right?

And in that circumstance, he was taken advantage of, right?

So he kept throwing good money at this situation.

Oh, he kept doing it?

He kept doing it.

He got to a little over a million bucks.

Oh, my God.

And then the guy files BK

on like 60 people, you know, takes Pace out.

And then Pace actually, I helped Pace pull himself out of that, right?

So Pace began, he stopped flipping houses, he stopped being a contractor.

He finally stopped being a service provider to the real estate industry and became a real estate investor.

And, you know, his first hundred deals or so, he sold through me.

Nice.

And that's when we sparked up a really good friendship.

We would compete.

Pace and I aren't partners in really anything.

Oh, yeah.

But the TV show.

But the TV show.

We're actually like fierce competitors.

Really?

Fierce competitors.

That's an interesting dynamic.

It is.

And it's, but it's one of the things that's really interesting about what we compete about is who can bring more value to the relationship.

That is a cool thing to compete.

It is a do.

It is a doozy because you're always trying to one-up the guy on a gift.

So here's a car or just a thing.

Like he bought me a $44,000 tree.

Right?

No, it wasn't a Christmas tree.

It was a canary palm.

Wow.

And they, you know, I had, we were actually shooting the filming the television show, and I, and I wanted these three date palms for my home that I just finished building.

But I, and I walked over to this canary palm.

It was this beautiful palm tree.

I don't know if, like, you know, canary palm looks like the pineapple.

Oh, I've seen those.

Yeah, yeah.

They're just gorgeous, right?

And I look at the price tag, and it's like 44 grand, and I'm like, I'm not on a tree, you know?

Yeah.

I walk off.

He saw that I loved the tree, though.

and quietly

buys it.

Wow.

And so when they came to deliver the three date palms, they came with the canary palms.

That's crazy.

And it wasn't even your house.

It was a house you were selling.

No, no, it was my house.

Oh, yeah.

They came to, he came in.

They actually never even aired the, this was going to be like B-roll for some other.

You know,

a lot of what you shoot when you're making a TV show ends up on the cutting room floor.

That was one of the things I wish they had shown.

Right.

Probably one of the most touching moments for me as a,

in, in our friendship.

That and

being the getting to be the godfather of his firstborn daughter was also

touching.

that's incredible.

I think competition is very healthy if you do it in that way.

I think some people get a little carried away, but

there's healthy competition for sure.

Of course, it keeps us both on our toes.

Yeah.

And it sharpens our pencils, right?

It makes us really, really efficient.

It makes us really good.

And he shares tactics with me.

He's not the kind of guy who's like, hey, I'm going to, you know, this is my plan.

And I'm not going to tell you my plan because I'm going to beat you, right?

It's not, that's not him.

He's like, this is my plan, and now I'm going to beat you.

So he's like Larry Bird with it.

Yeah.

Larry Bird always announced his moves.

And I don't, and I don't, I, you know, I, I love that.

Yeah.

Right.

Because he shares with me, right?

And, and, and sometimes I take the plan.

Sometimes I just take the play.

I'm like, cool, thanks, bro.

And he doesn't care either.

He's not like, you know, he, when he shares it with me, he shares it with the intent that, hey, put this to use.

It's working for me.

This will work for you too.

And, you know, those are the kinds of friends that I want in my life.

And that's, you know, I've got one.

You only need a few.

Yeah.

People try to get too many friends, I think, but I keep mine on one hand and I like it that way.

I agree.

Do you do any of this creative financing stuff or no?

You know,

I have an interesting relationship with creative finance.

I did real estate in Canada, and that's where I came up.

And

I

had done creative finance in Canada, what they would call sub-2 there.

And it didn't work out well for me when the market turned.

Yeah,

I couldn't keep up.

There were 42 houses that I owned, you know, essentially subject to.

and I just couldn't keep up.

You couldn't find tenants?

No, I couldn't rent them out.

The market crashed, right?

I was 08.

Got it.

I couldn't find tenants, couldn't sell them, couldn't do anything.

They were just done.

Right.

And

that was when I, you know, became really frightened of leverage.

And so him and I are very different from each other

because he collects as much leverage as he possibly can.

While I'm the guy who owns out, who owns all of my homes outright.

I own 100% on all of them.

There's no mortgages, bro.

Wow.

I own my cars outright.

I'm a cash man.

You're Dave Ramsey.

I know.

And

when I see him and I, you know, I know he's going farther than I am with respect to his holdings and whatnot, but I feel that I'm safer in a way, right?

I keep it safe.

Now, again, nothing against the creative.

I do.

I have bought into the narrative that the two, three, and 4% loan is an asset class now.

And I believe that.

I truly believe in it.

And so

what I see Pace teach, I feel is true teaching.

Because he's not telling people to go and take over 6%, 7%, 8% mortgages.

He's like, go after the people that have no equity or a little bit upside down.

They got a 2%, 3% loan.

Go get that deal.

Go do 100% seller finance at 0% interest and overpay a little bit.

You know what the amortization schedule is on a house when you're paying 5% on a loan, how much interest you paid on that house.

If you overpay by 40 grand, 50 grand on this house, what you'll saved in interest

will have been hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So he understands the math at a level that I think is pretty unique and gifted.

So

no, I don't do the creative stuff.

I hand that to him.

I'm a cash guy.

I wholesale.

I like making big checks.

I like flipping my contracts and making my money.

And that's the high I chase.

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We'll click the application link below in the description of this video.

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So, no leverage.

So, you're not even borrowing other people's money?

It's all your money.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, that's

I have used hard money on some flips.

Um, so that, you know, I want to clarify that.

I have used hard money on some flips, but I, but, um,

but that's like,

my flipping business is, I, I, it's not me.

It's non-recourse, right?

Hard money loans are non-recourse, meaning I can walk away.

Oh, you can?

Oh, yeah, I lose my down payment, but it's a non-recourse loan, so I can walk away from this thing.

Now, I wouldn't suggest you do that to your hard money lenders because they're not going to want to do business with you in the future.

But when I know that if they're like something completely disrupts the way it did in 2008, if I'm in a non-recourse loan, that means there's no personal guarantee, that means I don't lose my house.

Because when 2008 happened, I had asked my family to,

I was so desperate to do something big at that time that when I first started wholesaling,

I started doing really well.

I thought I invented wholesaling, to be honest with you, because I was doing it back in like 2002 in Canada and there was no Cody Sperber.

There was no internet was brand new.

I actually

solved a problem for a builder who was looking for a specific type of house that he needed to knock down so he could build luxury duplexes.

And when I was walking my dog one day, I called a for rent sign of a house that I had tried to rent a few months earlier, but it was like 200 bucks out of my budget.

Just to kind of tell you an idea of like where I was economically at the time.

And so I called the woman and I asked her, well, you know, you've had this for rent for a while and it hasn't rented.

Would you sell it?

She said, for the right price.

Well, what is it?

$350,000.

So my mind works a little different than most people's minds, right?

Because I had heard that these guys had a need for this type of property.

It was actually my business partner's father.

I run to the office.

I talk to my partner and I'm like, what would your dad pay for this?

Instead of saying, hey, I found one, where they would have given me like a $2,500 finder's fee.

I'm like, what would your dad pay for this house?

He's like, $400,000 all day.

Wow.

So now I have a $50,000 problem to solve, right?

Because I don't got $350,000, but I have the opportunity to buy a house for $350,000 that I could sell sell for 400 grand.

So what do I do?

So I start calling family and I'm asking my uncles and my aunts,

would you guys lend me money?

I have this for sure thing.

I have a for sure thing.

Like I can buy it for 350.

I can sell for 400.

We'll make 50,000.

You can take half.

And nobody wanted to give me the money.

Right.

But I was the guy who didn't become the doctor.

I'm the only non-dr.

Damgee in my family.

You serious?

I'm the only non-dr.

Damgee in my family, right?

I'm the black sheep, right?

So

it's crazy because

I don't get into medical school, which was again one of the bigger detours in my world, which ended up being the biggest, one of the biggest blessings in my life.

So

I start cold calling real estate lawyers and I get all the way to the letter Aspro.

Wow.

The lawyer's last name was Steed, David Steed, been since disparate.

Don't know why, but anyways, because I wanted to look him up and like thank him, right?

Yeah.

Because I call him and I said, and he was so fresh out of law school, dude didn't even have a legal secretary on his phone.

And he didn't even have an ad in the yellow pages.

He just had a name and a phone number, right?

So I called him up and I just said, hey, dude,

I got the situation.

I can buy a house for $350,000 and I can sell the house for $400,000 and I have no money.

Do you have any ideas for me?

He's like, oh, that's easy.

Okay, well, what do you do that?

What do you do?

He's like, it's called a skip transfer.

And I'm like, oh, a skip transfer.

Yeah.

Means we're just going to skip and transfer the deed into the other person.

So it's, he said, this is how you do it.

You get two of the same contract.

On one of them, you're the buyer.

And on the second one, you're the seller.

And the first one, you're buying it for the 350.

On the second one, you're selling it for the 400.

Everything else has to stay the same.

The only thing you need to know is on your buyer name, you have to write and/or nominee.

Right?

That was it.

He's like, everything else has to be exactly the same.

Close date, inspection times, everything's got to match.

He's like, if you get those things filled out, bring those two contracts to me.

And

if things work, in a couple of weeks, I'll have a check for you.

Wow.

And I did it.

And in a couple of weeks, there was like 47,000 in change in a bank draft in my name.

Nice.

And like, this is coming from a guy who, you know, couldn't rent a house that was $200 out of his budget.

So, you know, for me, that was a life-changing moment, right?

And it taught me something and a skill that now I learned is actually called wholesaling.

Yeah.

And it had been happening in America for a long time.

But in Canada, there was no thing.

So I literally thought I invented this thing, but I wanted to get into development so bad that I got my family involved in these construction projects, which ended up going belly up in 08.

And so, you know, prior to that, we had made millions of dollars.

I bought my mom a house on a lake.

I bought myself a house on the top of the hill in my city, overlooking the city.

I'm feeling like the king of the world.

And then all of a sudden, it all goes bust.

08.

08 happens.

And I got these 42 subject twos that I can't cover anymore.

And the bank is calling all of my, all of my loans.

And in Canada, the banks and the government are one.

So, like, when they come, they just take your.

Wow.

And they did.

And so, you know, from going from a lake house and a house on the hill overlooking town, we went to all of us, my mom, my dad, my sister, my niece, 150-pound dog, cat, myself, into a two-bed, one-bath, like, apartment.

Jeez.

And it was the the worst, best time of my life

because

I learned a lot.

I learned about my family then because they didn't blame me.

Oh, they weren't mad at you?

If they were, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't make me feel like they were mad at me.

Wow.

Nobody said, you ruined us.

Nobody said, you screwed us.

They just loved me.

Everybody, my sister, my mom, everybody just loved me.

you know and and i we had tender moments in that crappy little apartment

and there are moments I'll never forget.

Right.

And it's the foundation that I think I've been able to build what's happened and why I felt this drive, this need to redeem our family, to like get us back.

Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense why you buy everything in cash now.

Yeah.

After hearing that story, you don't want to experience that again.

You know, I PTSD with dogs, you know?

Yeah.

That's a big, big change, man.

Going from nice house to just two-bedroom apartment with six people and a 150-pound dog.

Sounds like you like dogs a lot.

I do.

I'm a dog guy.

I love love

an animal person.

Yeah.

I'm an animal person for sure.

I will say getting dogs has almost, because I used to have bad anxiety.

It really helped with it, honestly.

They help with everything.

Yeah.

There's, you know, even like, you know, with the split with

my wife, right?

Like,

the dog has been my home, my buddy, right?

You got to keep it?

Well, she took her dog.

Okay.

And there was a dog that we got together as a puppy.

When the other puppy passed away, away, you know,

in the beginning of the year, we got this labradoodle, Henry.

And

Natalie didn't want to part with him, but she knew that

I was going to need somebody, something, you know, to get through it.

And so she left me the dog.

That's cool.

And he's my best friend, man.

Like that, you know, I get to, I walk him every morning.

I walk him every evening.

He sleeps with me in the bed, you know.

He's my, he's my, he's my boy.

I love that.

Yeah, I sleep with my dogs in bed.

Some people don't do that.

I'm like, I'm like, you're missing out.

Weird people.

Absolutely.

I want to talk about the spinal surgery because you were supposed to come on the podcast that week and then that happened.

So what exactly went down?

So I wake up one morning and I'm numb from the neck down.

My fingers are numb.

My chest is numb.

My like, you know, I couldn't feel going to the bathroom.

It felt like my

feet were tingling.

Like, you know, when your feet are asleep?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That feeling, like the tingles, right?

So, that's what I'm experiencing.

So, we make an appointment with the primary care doctor, which is like a week out, and so I'm just suffering for the week with this numbness, wondering, like, what's going on?

You know,

go into the primary care doctor, and he says, You

he says, I think you have Guillaume-Beret syndrome.

And I'm like, What is that?

And he's like, Look it up, but it's a neurological disorder that is really, really dangerous.

I'm suggesting you go straight to the ER, have an MRI, and get this looked at.

I can't help you.

Okay.

So I don't go to the ER.

I go home and I tell my wife.

My wife was with me in the appointment, but she's like arguing with me, right?

She's like, dude, what are you doing, man?

You know, like, you got to go.

And so

I relent.

We go in the evening that night.

You know, there's less people.

It was like, you know, I'm like, okay,

we get there.

We finally get into the MRI.

I hate MRIs, man.

I'm so so claustrophobic.

They give me a Valium to just.

Oh, they have to knock you out?

Not knock me out, but they got to drug me to get me into one of those machines because I just freak out, right?

So I'm in that machine.

And it's like it's an hour-long MRI.

An hour?

An hour-long.

Jeez, I was the whole thing.

The whole thing, right?

Yeah, I thought it was 10 minutes.

They can be.

But this was an hour long.

54 minutes in total, actually.

So

I'm in this.

I get the result.

And the neurologist says,

In a week, one of two things are going to happen.

You're either going to have a stroke or you're going to be paralyzed.

And I'm like, what?

He's like, your spine, look, look at this, look at this MRI.

You're 98% impinged.

Like, there's no cerebral spinal fluid getting to your brain.

Like, and your brain requires, like, the CSF flushes in our body every 24 hours and it like nourishes your brain with salts and minerals and all kinds of things to keep you, you know, neurologically and mentally stable, functional, and, you know, all the things.

And oddly enough, I had fallen that week in a really weird way, right?

I just ate for no reason.

So that's what caused it?

The fall?

No, I was already numb.

Okay.

But I fell.

So like my motor function was starting to get like impaired, right?

And so.

And I didn't think anything of it.

I'm a clumsy guy, so I just put it to that, right?

I'm like, oh, it was just me being clumsy.

But

ultimately, we find out the doctor says, I got to get the surgery.

And he says, and I'm like, well, when?

And his answer was, tomorrow.

And I say, well, well, dude, I can't do it tomorrow.

Because here's why.

I have a mastermind on, it starts on Friday.

And I sold it out 100 people at $10,000 a head.

Damn.

I'm not, I can't refund a million bucks.

Like, I got to show up for my people.

I can't.

He's like, are you negotiating with me right now?

I'm like, I can't do it in two weeks.

He's like, well, yeah, if you want to, but I'm going to bring a binder worth of release forms for you to sign saying that I told you that you shouldn't.

And, you know, then I have the conversation with Natalie and she's like, you got to do this.

And I, and I come to terms with the reality of what's happening right now, right?

And so I say, okay, tomorrow morning.

Sis, tomorrow morning.

So away we go.

I go in.

They fused C three, four, five, six, seven.

Wow.

It was

massively invasive.

You know, they go into your neck.

I got this, you know, and they move your esophagus over.

Oh, my gosh.

And then they go in and they, you know, tinker with your spine, right?

And it's, it's, it was incredibly painful afterwards.

Um,

you know, the, the split with my, my wife happens very soon after as well.

Um, and it was just the hardest time of my life, man.

Wow.

Like it was so,

it was just so hard.

I, I, I, I didn't, I didn't know or think.

There were moments where I was like, I don't know that I'm going to recover.

Like, I don't think I'm going to get out of this.

The sadness, you know, just the like, like, what is happening through life, right?

But, but you do.

And I'm grateful, dude.

I'm grateful that I'm moving.

And I'm grateful that I'm not paralyzed.

I'm grateful that I didn't have a stroke.

I'm grateful that the doctor was as,

you know, real with me as he was.

He could have just let me push the surgery a week, you know, and I don't know if I'd be here again.

Insane.

And you would have been like, you know, we were going to have that guy, Jamil, on the podcast, but he died.

You know, insane.

It's insane.

It's insane to know.

Yeah.

And so

I'm really grateful.

And this is not the first time that this has happened to me.

I broke my neck in a motor vehicle accident 15 years ago.

Yeah, you said you were paralyzed, right?

I was paralyzed in that accident.

Wow.

I had a spinal fusion at that time.

Oh, so you've got two now.

It was at that time they fused 5.6.

They had to refuse 5.6 again.

Wow.

And in fact, they believe that it was the 5.6 fusion that caused the vertebrae above it to degenerate.

And that's why this happened.

It was a result of the first fusion.

Interesting.

And so,

you know, just one of those things, but like, it's a full circle moment, right?

Yeah.

Funny enough, I had that car accident a week after meeting the woman I married.

So, you know, real close after we meet, I'm in a neck brace.

And then when she leaves, I'm in a neck.

Wow, full circle moment.

Full circle moments.

That is insane.

And, you know, it's just like, you know, patterns, right?

It's, it's, it's, um,

yeah, I think we just almost take our health for granted until like a bad incident happens and then no money's enough.

Like you gave up a million dollars.

I mean, because your health is.

No, I didn't.

Oh, you didn't?

I showed up.

Oh, you still showed up?

Oh, dude.

I, I, like, this was the thing.

This is what I'm so like, it is foolish

because I should have been at home recovering.

Yeah.

But

I get discharged out of the hospital and I, I, you know, I can't walk well, but I can walk.

I got a cane.

I got my neck braced.

And I went and I did those, that three-day mastermind.

And I tell you what, when I walked into that room, they didn't think I was going to be there.

They did not think I was going to show up because they had been following, but they all came.

They all came to the mastermind.

They weren't sure.

They weren't sure what was going to happen.

They figured something's going to happen.

They didn't cancel it.

And, you know, they'd been emailing and calling, like, hey, we're following Jamil on social media.

And like, is this going to happen?

And, and, you know, the publisher wasn't sure.

I wasn't sure.

My team wasn't sure.

But Thursday.

Like Wednesday, Thursday, I was like, I'm, I'm going to make it.

I'm going to go.

And I showed up.

And, you know,

they like jumped to their feet when I walked in there at the cane.

It was the coolest thing, dude.

Legendary.

Yeah, man.

You're a trooper, man.

Thank you.

I must have hurt, but I can't wait to see your comeback this year.

I'm going to be watching your ads every day.

Appreciate it.

Where can people find you, man?

If you

want to find me on YouTube, I teach people how to wholesale real estate in a really ethical way.

You can find me at Jamil Damgee or just youtube.com/slash Jamil Damgee.

That's spelled J-A-M-I-L-D-A-M-J-I.

I'm on Instagram at J-D-A-M-J-I.

Send me a DM.

You know, I like to just kick it with anybody.

You know, I want to know who you are, what you're about, and

let's be friends.

Awesome.

Yeah, that's how we met, man.

Appreciate you coming on.

As always, we'll see you guys tomorrow.

Thanks for watching.

Later.