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

Somebody outside the U.S., they can invest in the U.S. as long as they comply to the tax code.
You know what's great about America that I love, and I tell people this, is I'll take an immigrant as a business partner over somebody from the United States nine times out of ten. And the reason why is because they're not jacked up with our schools, you know, because these guys come in and 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 rising because they don't understand this stuff because we spend 13,000 hours in school and they're never taught any of what our company is really built around. Dude, isn't that so true? Just how it's jacked up our schooling system is.
Oh man, our schooling system's bad. You got to be strategic in how you make your decisions because if you don't, it'll take you under.
And since money's so expensive, but we have the experience, the experience you can never get rid of. Like my mom told me when I was young, she said, look, the only thing you take with you when you die is what you have up here.
So Jerome, you have like $600 million in real estate right now. Tell us a little bit about what you got going on.
So 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 and 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 Ryan Pineda's WealthCon, right? And that's where we were talking behind the stage.
And you had said, I mean, you built this thing up over, what is it, like 20? How many years have you been in the real estate game? 28 years in real estate. 28.
And it's all just been like bootstrapped initially.

And then you recently started accessing outside capital, right?

Yeah.

We were self-performing 100% until 2018.

And then in 2018, I started working on understanding how to raise capital in 2016 and spent about

two years really learning the business of syndication, private SEC laws, and so forth. In 2018, we started raising capital, and that's where we really saw our growth, because I think we were worth maybe somewhere around $25 million to $50 million, depending on how you evaluated assets at that time.
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 whatnot. How much has 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 having ownership of 100%.
Where most syndications, they give away 70% of the equity. They hold on to 30%, but they still even raise 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 setup for most syndications right now. 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 in, day out operations. The goal for me was more long-term assets and having ownership and control of them.
So I didn'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 in 100% of our projects until this year.
This is the first year ever that we've given up equity. So you were just syndicating debt? Just debt on the equity stack only.
Wow. 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 where we would buy a lot that was five, six acres to do 150 to 200 units of apartments. And if the lot was 2 million, $3 million, I would just write a 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%.
percent then once we entitled the land, the land would be worth like $6 million under normal market conditions. And we would collateralize the equity from the land.
And we get our construction loan, we would exit out the debt, and then we would walk into the build with no investors, no debt on the equity stack. The land itself would carry the equity.
And the first draw that we'd get from the banks would be to pay off our investors the $2 million that I had exited out or 1.5 or whatever I paid for the land. And then we'd use the upside of the entitlements as the equity stack against the build.
And then we'd go build a $40 million development. Let me ask you.
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, as an entrepreneur and being in business for over 30 years, you hear about utilizing other people's money.
We're all trained from the same books, the same mentors. You know, it's just some facet.
but 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 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. It's 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 of what you do professionally. If I would have known 10 years prior that people would have really believed in me, you know, Jerome Maldonado 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'd have known 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 you know 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 know.
I never, I'd have a book that taught it. No one ever talks about it.
Where, where do you approach? Where do you find these, these investors? So now we do a lot of our investor pool from social media, but it's, it's putting yourself out there. You, 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 where 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's a lot of work to raise.
Yeah, $50,000. To raise $10 million in $50,000 at a time is a lot of freaking work.
Yeah, what is that? 200 investors? Oh, bro, it's a pain in the ass. And you know, the biggest thing is managing the emotion of all these $50,000 and $100,000 investors.
It sucks, man. You're like, you almost won out.
You're like, okay, I'll just give you your money back. Let me just, let me just go make the money myself and just screw the, screw the investing, man, the 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 was I was like, you know what? I don't want to deal with the investors. Um, you know, so we started focusing on high net worth people.
So we really started focusing. And a lot of the money comes from out of the country, a lot of people that made money in China, the Middle East, Mexico.
And so these guys that, you know, we, that's what's great about America is that right, that an outside immigrant could 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 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.
Somebody outside the U.S., they can invest in the U.S. as long as they comply to the tax code.
Yeah, and there's a little bit of, you know, there's a little bit of a... The reason I ask is I have several billionaire friends outside of the U.S.
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 and we position ourselves as it's an opportunity for them too, 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 get 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. It's a lot of dinners, a lot of frying, trust.
For sure. You know, it has to be key.
Where would you say like what country is represented most, like the largest in your portfolio? Right now, China. And we're working on some money that's coming in from the Middle East right now.

So, in fact, probably over the next, if things work out over the next two weeks,

two of our biggest projects we have going on, a lot of that money will be coming in from the Middle East.

When you say Middle East, are you talking UAE or are you talking Saudi?

What are you talking?

This happens to be Lebanese money.

Okay, cool.

Well, if you want any of that, more of that Middle East money, we got quite a bit of connections there. Do you? Oh, yeah.
Dude, these guys are great. You know what's great about America that I love, and I tell people this, is I'll take an immigrant as a business partner over somebody from the United States nine times out of ten.
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 right.

Cause they don't understand this stuff.

Cause we spend 13,000 hours in school and they don't know.

They're never taught any,

any of what our company is really built around.

Dude.

Isn't that so true? Just how it's jacked schooling system is. Oh, man, our schooling system is bad.
That's one of my, like, and Chris does this too, 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, there's just such a lack, and people that have the hunger are looking for.
So I have my son son he's a he's gonna be a sophomore he's he started homeschool this year so and the only way that we could get him in the sports program they wanted to play in was he had to sign up through their homeschool program because he was a transfer and all this crap we went through all that with my kids all right so so So he's got to take these required classes, which suck.

But outside of that, having him come and hang out with us here at the office and shadow business and everything else. And he's got this little group of kids.
They nicknamed themselves, they're the Bit Boys. And it stands for Billionaires in Training.
And so it's 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've got them reading books, different things like that.
And they're launching a YouTube channel with it where they're going to document them trying all these different hustles and everything else. So it's pretty fun.
That's cool. See, ours is a little different with our kids.
We've utilized sports in such a magnitude to just build discipline because our kids are spoiled to death, man. We homeschooled them all the way until they were in high school.
And then my kids, they want to play high school sports. So my son's playing football.
My son's a two-time nationally ranked gymnast. My daughter isn't ranked yet, but she'll get there.
She's in eighth grade. And now, 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 $30,000 to $50,000 a year. Oh, you can't be involved in gymnasts if you're not extremely wealthy.
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've got to be worth money. So everybody's, 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 the total contrary.
So now that my son's in football, we sit back, and there's a couple parents that do really well, and then there's everybody else. And so now we have these kids that come to our house, and 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. Dad don't know shit.
Right. So when I talked um to my son before he didn't want to have anything to do with dad has to do but then because his font his friends now follow dad's content and what we're doing um all of a sudden what dad does is pretty cool and they they get i'm having the same experience right now so one of the it's pretty crazy i had a very similar experience um 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, no one would speak the whole way there and the whole way back. And then finally, like, I'm just starting 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 topics to talk about. And I'm thinking, okay, how could I, this is our last trip.
How do I 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 everyone 50 bucks to finish the book, but you have to tell me what you learned.
And what was cool about it, I realized, is 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 need your 50 bucks you know so so I've done that too I've done it too yeah yeah like all right got your 50 bucks every single second of every day but it was really cool because I was able to um you know my my main goal is to teach my 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.
They'll listen through your friends. 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, where I caught it big is when we're going through the 2008 recession, I bought a bunch of subway stores.
And I thought being in construction that we were dealing with, and I even say it 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 I owned my subway stores, now those.
That's when you were dealing with the bottom of the barrel. Oh, my God.
The garbage that we were dealing with there. And we had to set some major standards on how to hire and who to hire because we had so many stores, so many employees.
How many stores did you have? We had 15 stores and 13 of which we ran and operated and two that we owner-financed and sold off that we controlled. And so we had over 200 and we had 210 employees, subway employees, and we had.
Dude, that is a lot of bottom of the barrel. And it was crazy because it was constant every day, like every single day.
You got what? I mean, what were your main problems? People not showing up? Yeah, not showing up. Drugs.
Deft was a big deal. Drugs weren't as big of a deal.
You could come in stoned if you wanted to, as long as you were going to work. I didn't care.
Take a little, take rail a line of cocaine and come work or something, for God's sake. Just show up.
Just get there, right? So yeah, I don't know if drugs were an issue. They weren't an issue in ours, and I'm sure that maybe they were, but just getting them to show up and produce was more of the biggest thing.
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. They have 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.
They have to be in something, some type of extracurricular activity. And the managers would go, well, they're too busy.

They don't have no availability.

I said, 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, then just hire two extra employees.

And between the mixture of their schedules, you'll fill your schedules.

But at least you have people that show up.

Instead of having three people scheduled and two people don't show up and you're you're running a store by yourself you know yeah i mean sports teach i mean any type of extracurricular teaches some level of discipline right yeah i mean it's it's the same same reason like growing up that's all i had was was sports football wrestling all the poor kid sports you know yeah i was a wrestler you know 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 uh doing door-to-door sales emotionally it's it's one of the hardest things you can do yeah been there we found uh wrestlers have the mentality if you're a wrestler you're a competitive wrestler like you're gonna do well in sales because you've had to go through the scrutiny 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, you live your whole life.
You end up living your whole life like that. You kind of live in it.
My wife always tells me, she goes, you like living your own little world. I was like, I know.
I love my own little world. It's fun.
It's fun. Yeah.
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.
whether whether it's how we're involved

in our community that's in our associations it's education that's attached to economic right like working out eating right obviously the physique so thinking about those like four areas um i'd love to hear like the struggles that you're going through right now because obviously you've been successful.

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 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 they've clearly done all these different things and and so then the discussion shifted and I kind of pushed it. I was like, so the discussion was like, man, how can these guys be good dudes? Right? Like they, they clearly done all these different things.

And, 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.
It's like, 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'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 a hundred billion dollars and if my trajectory from a financial standpoint or productivity standpoint within my economics is trending down i'm miserable right like yeah like that 100 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 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 the things that you're plateauing or maybe trajectory down that you're trying, that you're working on right now? Yeah, banking has been a big cusp for us.
And you're 100% right. You hit the nail on 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 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 know, and you're- You're feeling like, oh yeah.
You're feeling like you're broke. You're like, damn, I've worked 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 hard at it, you know, just to keep things stabilized. And today is very similar, right? And so I always 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 probing us.
Give us some detail on that. What do you mean? Like what challenges are you facing with the bank? Well, money is expensive, you know, and I know people don't really live.
They hear about it and they live in there and they think it's mortgages tied to a residential house because that's where most people in their brains live when money is expensive is the expense of money as it relates to like a single family home, but they don't see the entire ecosystem that revolves around that house. And they especially don't see if they got a fixed rate that they signed up for in 2020, 2021, right? They're 3%, right? 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't afford a $4,000 mortgage and they'd much rather have a $2,500 mortgage.
And that $1,500 cusp is what's keeping them from buying a home. But then they find alternatives, right? So people don't really see it.
What we're living right now is the magnitude of the macro scale of what's happening in banking. And it's cusping for us.
I mean, when you have a deal that's a $70 million development and every frigging bank in the country has seen it, you know that something's going on. And literally, that's the type of stuff that we're going through right now because we're building institutional assets that are hundreds of units big.
And when you're going after a $50 million loan or better and you can't get money for cheaper than 11% interest, you know, 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. 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 bank. Is that what you're paying right now is four points over SOFR? That's where a lot of banks are right now.
It's not what we're paying, but to find less than that is challenging right now. But yeah, there's some that are like 6% and 7% over SOFR.
And SOFR is what, 7% right now? Yeah, SOFR is like up at like 7%, you know. 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 it's based on cap rates. So because anytime money is expensive, yes, you have that debt service that puts downward pressure on you, right? Because you're servicing more debt.
So you look at it like, okay, we're going to service an extra $1.2 million in just debt because of the increased premium of money. But now you're trying to service that debt when values just got pressed down.
So now it's a scales of balance because we have this asset that one time would have been worth $80 million is now is only going to to be worth $50 million. 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, now you have increased interest rates and the value's coming down.
And so just this gap is really the value that you have in the business. And so it becomes increasingly more difficult to say, yeah, I want to go invest $100 million in this project that's only going to be worth $120 million where previously it to be worth 180 yeah so for like people that are watching they're trying to understand anytime the cost of money goes up that debt has to get serviced 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, values of properties go way, way up.
And now all 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 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 of mine years ago had told me, you know, Jerome, as 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 and change is hard for people and if you get too stubborn um you're going to lose especially in a game as big as um is 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 playing monopoly or poker or anything else um you. You got to be strategic in how you make your decisions because if you don't, it'll take you under.
It's a big boy game. So obviously there's a lot of risk associated with what's going on right now.
There is, yeah. Basically your margin of error is just...
Yeah, yeah. You have less room to make mistakes, right? This is where the the talented 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 talented prevails, so I'm just going to go where everybody else is going to like what most people are retracting out of uh ground up development because of the cost we've been 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 manager 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 is 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 as 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 and flexibility, where I was willing to take all that 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? My wife, she goes, okay, but when do we get to enjoy all this? Because we've become a slave to our businesses and we're working, right? And my wife goes, she goes, look, all I ask for is, she goes, when the kids go to college, 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 and 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.
How old are you now? I'm 50. Okay.
Wow. You look good for 50, Drew.
Dang, dude. I would have guessed 44.
Yeah. Well, good, 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.
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, take on some 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 continue moving.
And then so deal flow was important because now I could scale. Yeah.
Because we had capital. We had the right partners.
I didn't have a lot of staff. I was able to have more freedom and 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.
And like my mom told me when I was young, she said, look, the only thing you take with you when you die is what you have up here. You know, so what you learn and the information.
So we were able to go in and X out all of the development fees. We're not charging development fees for the developments.
So that scrubs right there alone, two and a half to 30%. 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 as long as we can get these assets stabilized, the benefit to us is we can cost segregate 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 our other assets and what we've 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 three to five years, we're good, you know? 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 doing economically goes in the direction that we were at and it continues going where we need it.
Speaking of which, when was the last time you paid taxes? I don't pay federal income taxes. I mean, I pay taxes, property taxes and stuff.
Sure, sure. Obviously, there's all the other taxes, but I'm talking income tax.
I'm assuming you don't pay anything. I haven't paid income taxes since 2018.
It's awesome. I've paid no federal income taxes.
Yeah, I mean, and to really understand that if you're a viewer, it's not that this guy's evading 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?

So you're still paying taxes.

Yeah.

You're paying a lot of taxes.

You just paid in a different way.

Well,

the hope,

the hope is that you're not paying those,

that your tenants are paying your property tax,

right?

For you.

So,

you know,

you're cash flowing these assets,

but then you're getting the depreciation writing off, uh, you, you know, these huge, and then you're doing cost segregation, which is... You know what, all that stuff and all the taxes, you know what I still, and I'll tell you, this is where we lose half the viewers.
They'll be pissed because that's like that whole thing where Trump, when discloses taxes, is that I still, this tickles me because we were paying about $1,500 a month for health insurance for our family. Right.
To have good health insurance for the family. We pay $50 a month because we're low income because our net taxable income is so low, we're at poverty level.
And so, so we get like $50 a month. We have the best insurance we've ever had.
You have the Apple. $50 a month.
I don't even know what it is. My wife deals with all 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, ah. That's when we lose half the viewers man especially health insurance man that's uh that's a dude health insurance is such a oh my gosh so i'm type one 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 Christian Healthcare Ministries or something like that, where you have to pay cash for some of your prescriptions.
Yeah. 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 pay 20 to 30 bucks a bottle down there.
Meanwhile, up here in the United States, it was $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. And everything revolved around the pharmaceutical companies fund our medical programs.
Most people don't know that. Oh yeah.
And so it's a, so anyways, I am not going to run down that. No, no, it's, it's a fun, it's a fun rabbit hole.
Yeah. It's like, it's crazy, man.
And, and I recognized it when I was in college 32 years ago. And I remember sitting back and we were teaching, 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 it is wild and and frankly like difficult if you're in the medical space because like you have this weird dichotomy of i'm in health care to be able to help people yet if i cure them i will lose my patient or my customer right yeah or 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 it like i've always talked about this like there's no incentive to cure diabetes right like like that Or cancer, right? These are two huge money makers. All the things that you can keep somebody alive for a very long time, getting medication, don't cure that.
That's where it's so hard because I don't think there's a political party that has the right solution what's what's interesting though for the first time like i know uh rfk just dropped out but like he's talking about like going after right the fda and yeah and the medical and they need to you know that like if you you guys travel out of the country sometimes oh 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 sashimi and the sushi everything that you have out there is is so much more pronounced because it doesn't have all of the um it doesn't have um all the sodium and preservatives and stuff that we have here in the united states our food and drug administration is killing us is killing us Because we're literally eating preservatives, and it's going into our bodies, and we're eating all that, those toxins, right? 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 1 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 right i can see I can see how things impact my blood sugar.
Right. Like does this spike my blood sugar? Does it not? Right.
And so like I'm, 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 any, anything else over there. And guess what? It doesn't have the same impact that it does here in the United States.
Why? Exactly. There's a racer.
He does motocross. And he's from Australia.
And he started racing in the United States. So he came over.
I want to say he's within the first year of being here, type 2 diabetes. What? And this is a who's like fit is top of the 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 s 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 260, 270. 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 a just the amount of but because it was organic because it wasn't this this lack of process holding on to all that stuff it's all the preserves our bodies hold all that stuff they preserve it yeah it preserves it in you you know so me ask you, you're pretty fit. You're very healthy looking.
What do you do to like, like what's your Yeah, what's your regimen that's getting you through that? It's changed over the course of time. My wife's like, God, we're late everywhere because of you.
I've changed my regimen 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 religious regimen that I do. Or according to my kids and my wife, they're like, oh, my God, Dad's stretching again.
And 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 there on ATVs and I want to be doing the stuff that I've always done and um and 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 t-bands are tight and stuff I have before I even get out of bed because of my plantar fasciitis and everything else that you as you get older and being an athlete you beat your body up yeah my 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 regimen

before I leave the house because I don't feel human until I do this stretching regimen.

So I do part yoga, all stretching, where I stretch my back, my legs, my hamstrings.

I roll my spine.

And then I do 150 push-ups every single morning, seven days a week. Never let loose on it.
If I'm in a huge rush, I'm missing a flight 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, wherever.
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 if I do it in the middle of the night. 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 push-ups in the morning and just being done. So you're 150 push-ups 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 i get it done throughout the day but but 95 of the time or better i get it done in the morning are you a daily weight room guy or just yeah four days a week i hit the weight so i go to the gym four days a week and that was one thing even thing even 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 you have to give yourself that time every day because it makes you better. Absolutely.
It makes you feel better. It's like you're a better dad, you you're a better husband when i don't get hit the gym and i don't get my gym time in um 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 you're more irritable less patient you know because in the back of the mind it weighs on you and if you accept that yep um it takes away from everything else i couldn't agree more i just never accepted the fact that um that i can't do it so four days a week and i do cardio every night i do 25 minutes of uh of cardio every night are we talking like runs walks just just fast-paced walks i did it when i was competing in bodybuilding after i finished wrestling in college um it was the way i'd stay lean i'd do um it's how i trim trim 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 metazolone does tend to slow down a little bit so in lieu of just staying lean um i just that that 25 minutes every night is really a disciplinary action to stay lean yeah 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 right so i kind of drag her along with me so anything that she does just adds to what she already does too yeah and but my kids see me do it right yeah so we got like one of those uh swim spas at the house and I did it because sometimes just riding the bike gets boring.
And so I'll jump. So one day if I jump in a swim spa.
So are you saying one of those wave pools that you swim against it type deal? Yeah, it's not strong enough, man. So my wife's like, she goes, you're too intense for absolutely everything that you do.
She's like, you can't even use a wave runner. It's like, that's what it's built for is for sports and athletes.
I go, I know, but I keep pounding my head against the top of the. You swim too fast.
Because I'm swimming too hard. She goes, everything you do, you do with too much intensity.
And she goes, so I have to, so they have these bands. So I hold on to 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 we have a full gym at home. Or I'll just do a fast-paced walk.
Like last night, it was gorgeous. I was right down the road here and I was right over the… Did you stay at the lodge? Yeah, I stayed at the lodge.
They have that walking trail on the bottom. Yeah, that's nice.
So I just go and do my 20… I did it. And I actually walked like 35 minutes.
I walked all the way outside of the area, 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 walk back and forth was like 30 some odd minutes and um and just a fast-paced 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 and everything else what are you doing as far as like TRT blood work like what what so I do blood work once a year I should probably be doing it every six months that's why I should be doing it at least every six months yeah but we um and I will probe like for testosterone now I'm taking any supplements. I'm a little bit apprehensive to take testosterone replacement.

And my testosterone level was always super high.

It's a little bit 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 increased estrogen.

So you've been able to do it without TRT?

Yes, I've been able to just do it.

Yeah, so I'm just doing it with diet.

That's pretty uncommon, right?

Like most people have to have something.

I know Darryl hasn't had to. I've had to, you know, do TRT just because my testosterone has been so low, and like battling diabetes and everything else.
I was going to say, that might be why for you. 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 kinesiologists and people that are dealing with natural homeopathic ways. And they said, you know, your sex drive, if you have sex more, if you eat certain foods, it increases your testosterone level.
So you just try to practice things that will increase your testosterone level. And it does take some research.
And it's like anything in life, anything that if it holds any value to you you, you just have to take the time to learn it. And so I've just taken the time to learn, okay, what foods? There's certain nuts that I shouldn't eat that increase estrogen and decrease testosterone.
Don't eat that. There's certain nuts like almonds that are really good.
They help increase and promote testosterone. Certain vegetables.
And same thing, mixing. I didn't know this, but if you mix vegetables.
And the reason I learned because i i got on these big uh juicing craze where i was like okay i'm gonna start uh juicing and then my stomach was jacked bro like i was going in and my stomach

so many different things 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 i and

so i ended up finding out that um like spinach and some of these other greens if you mix them

Thank you. I was sitting back going, holy shit, man, my stomach's jacked.
And so I ended up finding out that spinach and some of these other greens, if you mix them, they create gas. So now I went down to single vegetables.
And if you eat single vegetables at a given time mixed with some fruit, it increases your testosterone level, but you can't mix them. And so there's just 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 eat, what you scrape off the plate at the restaurant when they bring it out, and what you set aside, your 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 and 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, with So do you, do you have any weaknesses when it comes to your diet? Like, are there times that you're just like, Hey man, I'm going off course for a week on a cruise or whatever else? Like, yeah, you know, what's cool about being disciplined in every other area? I almost eat wherever, whatever I want.
Like I don't need a lot of sugar. So like I don't eat sweets.
I, you know, my wife and I go out and my wife loves creme brulee. So if we get a restaurant, they have like the old school regular burnt sugar creme brulee 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 don't, we're not big coffee.
Well, she, she drinks coffee. I'm 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.
Yeah. I'll have it? 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. What about alcohol? Are you an alcohol drinker? I'm not an alcohol drinker.
We'll drink a glass of wine when 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. Now that I don't even like them.
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.
That's good. But I'll have a glass of wine at dinner.
Every day or just? No, no. We'll go out like on Saturday night or something.
My wife and I, yeah. You know, we'll have a glass of wine.
You bring up your wife a lot. Yeah.
What do you do to preserve and improve that relationship? Yeah, like when we talk about trajectorying up, plateauing or trajectorying down, where are you at with your wife right now? We're good, man. I love my wife.
Mine changes every week. 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 in 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 on my entrepreneurial journey four years before I even met her to my benefit because those are my real hard, struggling years.
And we've ridden the roller coaster like all couples do, the man riding the ego, feeling that force against each other, feeling like if you let in that you're giving up your manlyhood. And you learn um is like what you what i've learned and i don't know if everybody learns this is that my wife's not against me man like i've just learned over the years like um because there's like this pride thing i think that we have as men 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 like you don't even think you're doing, but you're doing it.
You know, um, I've kind of just let that go. I understand that my wife has, um, a lot more authority in the house than I do.
And I've accepted that with the kids. They just, um, like when dad puts his foot down with the kids, the kids know, right? Like when 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 they i talk i i tell them something then they go ask mom and i'm like i'm like chopped liver you know like what like what the heck you know and um and you just learn you know it's just like mom's with them man like mom's been there like they just they're gonna go to mom and because mom's been there with them homeschooling them and she's been the disciplinarian and dad's the fun guy that comes home at the end of the day that plays with them, right? So they don't take dad as serious as they do until dad puts his foot down.
So dad is the hard disciplinarian, but mom is really the boss in the house, right? And as a man, I've learned that, you know? What are two best practices you're doing right now to preserve that relationship? Or not preserve, but it yeah um just respect each other um there's there's things you learn not to do through your relationship that you just know um really irks them and um examples give us examples yeah so so like for example like with my wife um she chose we had a dance school she ran um i opened it up for the the physician she worked for passed away when we were real 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 an entrepreneur, right? Like, what do you want to do? She goes, I want to open up a dance school. I was like, okay, cool.
So we had buildings. I opened up her dance school.
We had an 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.
But then when my daughter was born, it became more challenging. I said, okay, we're working.
The recession had hit. And 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 decided to shut that thing down.
She felt she lost her sense of identity because she's like this stay-at-home mom now. And 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 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. You're a mother.
And if a man doesn't respect the fact of what they're doing, I've learned this because we've all said stupid things at the wrong time, all of us, every single day. There's not a man out there that hasn't, right? 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'd do it if I had to because I would do anything if God put me in 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 deal.
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 can't empty a damn trash can, right? We have the dishwashers. We have two dishwashers.
Absolute worst thing you could ever say. Yeah.
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 to meet and I got to run out. And I'm like, okay, I'll just leave them slightly opened.
Every once in a while, put a little sticky note that says empty dishwasher and put it on there. Like, can you open it? It'd be a damn dishwasher, right? But you just learn that if you get home and that dishwasher isn't empty you just shut up you don't say anything you don't you like and inside it's boiling your blood like i'm like going down like i'm like i just had a hell of a day you but you can't come home and you can't say that yeah because you don't know what their day was like yeah and um 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've had during the day she's peeling all that stuff off and you haven't even considered what they've went through on that day you know and so I've just learned to 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. I'm talking about this.
Oh, for sure. I mean, this is all a work in progress.
Oh, man, it's a lifetime. You'll sit back and one day you just do it on.
Like, damn, I shouldn't have done that. And so it's all a 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 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.
Because I'll sit back and go I go yeah she goes you were cranky last night don't even talk to me and I'll be like you know I'll be like yeah you know I was you know sorry you know that was all that was 100% me and it's just taking accountability for your actions yeah 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 this healthy home? And what are you displaying to your kids? Because we've all done dumb shit in front of our kids that we're less than proud of, right? And you sit back and go, damn, I really screwed that up. And so you sit back and go, okay, how do I want my kids to walk away from this? And what kind of examples do I want? You have two kids? Yep.
Yeah, I have two. That's right.
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? Dude, it's a lifelong battle in a good direction, right? Yeah.
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 everyone in a relationship deals with the struggle of, you know.
Social media would make us believe that everyone's got to figure it out, right? From fitness, from relationships. You see a good relationship, you're like, that's perfect all the time, right? And it's not.
I mean, think about it. Your health is always changing as you age, right? It is.
Things change. Constantly.
Your relationships are always changing as you change. Yeah, constantly.
Financial. So you're always learning new things, and you always have to learn new things in order to optimize it.
Yeah, 100%. And I think recognizing that, I think people get stubborn in that.
I had a buddy who, he's single. He's going to die single, I think..
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.
But if, 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, um, 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.
Right. 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 to worry or we've starved either. Yeah.
Some of these entrepreneurs, man, they put their wives in a position where they're broke, their families, their kids, their wives to support them well if you want your wife support you you need to 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 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 pascal washington not

the ideal place for like entrepreneurs albuquerque new mexico not usually considered on the map for

I'm going to us. Pasco, Washington, not the ideal place for entrepreneurs.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, not usually considered on the map for the big entrepreneurial city. Why do you live in Albuquerque? Why haven't you guys relocated? Tell us about that.
Yeah, it's all family stuff. My wife's family's there.
My family's there, too. But my wife's family, we're really close to them.
And I just couldn't. My in-laws help us out tremendously and they they're a big part of our lives and so I couldn't imagine pulling both my kids you grew up there 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 really 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... 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 and Austin.
I looked at UTSA and it was going to take me like three years where I could just go back and in two semesters 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. Flying back and forth.
Is it a direct flight? Yeah. Oh, 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 to happen, right? And so, yeah, I was flying back every single week, and my wife was in college at the time, and we knew each other, some mutual friends, when she was younger, and that's where we met,

and then, and I was like, I kept telling,

okay, I'm just gonna be here for six more months,

six more months, and I'm out of here,

I'm still there, so.

So, I mean, what is it about Albuquerque,

that, obviously, family, is there,

for me, I love, like, going to other cities,

doing the work, and then coming home,

and, like, having, like, just this place of refuge, that's, like, 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 Jerome.
I just want to be dad. I don't want someone coming up to me and asking me questions when I'm at home about it.
And so I've kind of withdrawn. People say, why don't you do a meetup in Albuquerque? I'm like, that's my home, man.
I just want to 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. You know, I just want to live my life and do it.
So it's been good. It's a great place to raise a family.
It's like this. It's pretty.
A lot of hiking, a lot of outdoor stuff. If you're an outdoor person, it's a gorgeous place to live.
Nice. What's present for you right now is so obviously banking and all this stuff like but personally like if you like okay these are the things that i'm really working on being better at overcoming or whatnot or some things that i sometimes struggle with like what are those for right you right now jerome at 50 years old yeah um time um freeing up my time i I think I'm still struggling with that.
Anytime that economics work against me, I land up finding myself work hard again. It's always been my struggle.
I'm just a workhorse. So, like, yeah, give us more detail when you say time.
Is it because, like, you're spending too much time working and not enough with your family? I do a decent job with that. I think just personally, know health-wise because i worry about also being 50 years old um i i have friends that have passed on like my attorney well my asset protection attorney passed on at 49 years old um from a massive heart he literally worked himself to death you know and so i don't want to work this hard and then die of a massive heart attack either right so i think I think I do good balancing family for the most part.

You know, like I won't miss my kids' games. I'll schedule, 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.

Like that's important for me to be there.

So I'll come on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday

in as much of an inconvenience as it is. So I do good with trying to balance that stuff.
It's my own, and because I think sometimes I'm balancing for everybody else, sometimes it compromises my own well-being because I'm doing it for everybody else, trying to find balance in other positions in my life. So what I struggle with probably the most right now is saying, okay, enough's enough, Jerome.
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 core 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 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 dude. It's yeah.
I grew 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 until 11 o'clock. Thank you.
You know, like 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 and seven o'clock in the morning. The days, like my kids come home from like my son comes home from two a days or he's out of the house at 6 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, how are you doing? Give me a hug.
What are you doing at home? Come here and give me a hug. I'm proud that I'm home today.
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 at the office. But that comes with maturity.
It comes with you earn that too. There's a level of that that you earn.
So like for entrepreneurs are looking right now, and if you need to be in the office and you're in build mode, you can't do what I'm doing. I mean, I've done that grind for 30 years.
So there's a flip to it too. Now I'm on the opposite side going, okay, 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.
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, the whole goal that my wife set for us,

and that's just having that freedom and 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, because 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 simple. You know, she's happy.
God bless her heart. I've never had to worry about any of that stuff.
But if I can't fulfill that, I feel like all this, like, why did I do all this for? I failed my wife, my family. Like I can't be there for my kids.
I'm buried. I buried myself in a job, in a profession that I'm sunk.
You brought up like your lawyer dying at 49. I think 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 one of the recent mind shifts I'd have is it doesn't get better than this.

Like you're living in the best moment you could possibly live. Yeah.
Cause tomorrow doesn't exist yet. And in the past is gone.
So like live the best moment today, cause this is the best it gets. Yep.
And me and my wife were talking about that and it's like, we got to change your, you know, change your mindset. Like I absolutely love every stage my girls are in.
I absolutely love where my relationship with my wife and where we're going. It's like find gratitude and enjoying absolutely everything.
Cause everything, man, every stage, man, every stage is good with the kids. And, um, yeah, we, cause I, sometimes in moments I think I'm like, damn, I only got like, I'm going to count to how many football games I'm going to this this year, next year.
And God willing, he stays healthy.

He can play in college.

But it's like he's got to enjoy every phase, man.

Yeah.

You know, like we're doing the tailgating things on Friday.

And like last week was our first tailgate.

We did it all wrong.

And so next week I'm like, okay, I'm pulling out the grill.

We're doing this, you know.

And it's like preparing for that stuff to make that stuff more successful, more enjoyable. Something, so last year I, my wife, or my wife, 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 alone 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 X me out because I can't do her frigging hair right, man.
So she's like, Dad, you're not allowed to come with me no more because you don't know how to do hair. She got just old enough to her.
The hair thing was like a big deal. And so now 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 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 in uh wyoming or wherever every weekend we we were traveling when they were both competing.

And so we'd get these weekends alone with each of them.

And then sometimes we'd fly,

like if she competed on a Friday

and my son competed on a Saturday,

my wife would fly all the way across with my daughter

to be back at the other one.

And we just did that, you know?

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 know, you sit back and my, so let me tell you guys this joke, okay? So my friend Bill, not my friend, my mentor Bill. Bill was one of my mentors.
And he goes, and we used to do these briefings for like our multi-level marketing company. And he goes, so you go up to, you die, you go to St.
Peter, and you get to the pearly goes, Hey, welcome to heaven. You know? And he goes, he goes, you, you have a choice.
You can either go to heaven or hell. And there's this big giant elevator.
And, um, and, uh, and so you, and so you go up to the elevator and you're like, well, you know, I've always kind of been a man of choice. You know, I mean, um, I know the heavens like, you know, I just want to make sure that I have all my options right.
And it's, and it's getting painted out the way, uh, the, the way heaven and hell really way heaven and hell really is. Can I go up and see both? And so St.
Peter goes, yeah, why not? So he gets in the elevator and he hits hell on there. And the elevator drops it.
Goes down to the fiery flames of hell, man. The doors 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, 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. Yeah, it's hot, but 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 heaven's like.
He goes, he hits the elevator. He goes all the way back up, and you get up to heaven, the elevator opens up at heaven, and it's real calm and serene, you know, it's real just

easygoing, and everybody's on their cloud, and just everything is just picture perfect, right?

So they go down to purgatory, the elevator opens up, St. Peter asks him, he goes,

he goes, he goes, so what's your choice? And he goes, wow, you know, man, heaven's beautiful. But damn, I'm kind of a guy that likes to party a little bit, man.
I mean, hell doesn't seem too bad. He goes, I think I fit better down below.
So St. Peter shoves him back in the elevator, 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 partying. Nothing's happening.
He says, oh, hold on. What happened? Where's all the partying? He goes, oh, you must have been here during a briefing.
He goes, that's like your sales time. You're going here like everybody's happy, right? Fake it till you make it.
Everybody's happy partying. 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, all you tell us, 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 time of my life.
Amen. And so you look back at what you're doing with the kids, and at the time, it seems like you're traveling all over the place and it's crazy.
Yeah. And you sit back and you look back and you're like, man, best time of our lives.
Yeah. You know, cause now like it's living in every single piece of, of enjoying every little piece of the ride.
What I, what I loved with my daughter, right? She's in the car with just me and her and we're talking things, and she's very open to me. So we're talking about some deep things of what she's thinking and her future and how she sees things.
I'm like, man, I could have never created this moment, and I'm just eating it up. It's awesome.
I've had a few of those with her traveling that have made it all worth it because Because watching the volleyball, oh my gosh.

Imagine being in a gym with 40 courts

and you've got whistles blowing nonstop.

Oh yeah, man.

It's wild.

The parents are nasty.

Everything's crazy, man.

I mean, it's nutty, man.

We'd sit by ourselves.

I told my wife when our kids were little,

I told them when 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, 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 that when they were little and they were just born, you know? And so my wife's like, whatever.
Right. And, um, and then she became friends with everybody.
And then as soon as my son started beating people in gymnastics, they all freaking hated us.

We would like the family to beat.

No one liked us.

Oh, Jerome thinks he's special because he's rich and entitled.

They have meetings about us like that.

Like if we did something where I did something with the kids or something,

and they're like, oh, yeah, the Maldonados, they're the entitled family

because they do well or something.

I'm like, come on, guys.

Jerome, dude, I 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,

for all those things.

So appreciate you sharing your words of wisdom.

Thank you,

man.

Where, where's a good spot that our viewers,

our listeners can,

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, but we're on the show notes, I'm sure. And if you go to Instagram,

it's the Jerome Maldonado, but 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, whatnot, 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.
And what I mean by live it strong is live every aspect of every day of your life strong in everything that you do. Some days are 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 to 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 in business where 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.