Jerome Myers

Introduction: From Surviving to Thriving

Taryell Simmons: Welcome, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. I've got my brother in the building today, Jerome Myers. Jerome, how are you doing, good sir?

Jerome Myers: My brother, it's good to be with you on this fabulous Tuesday.

Taryell Simmons: Like my granddaddy said, any day above ground is a good day, son.

Jerome Myers: I think we can do more than that these days. There was a point in our lives when surviving was the thing. Those days are over. It's time to thrive.

Taryell Simmons: Even while our people are trying to get basic needs met, we still find a way to get into our creative genius. We're just magic people, I guess.

Jerome Myers: It's the inner God. Creation is the closest thing to being God, and it's in us. Look at kids. When they come into the classroom, they're super creative. Then somewhere along the way they get taught that they can or can't, and when they believe that, they end up just doing enough to get by. And you don't get to a billion having ordinary ideas or thinking like the masses.

Who Is Jerome Myers? Decoupling Time From Money

Taryell Simmons: For those who don't know, who is Jerome Myers?

Jerome Myers: The preeminent authority on dream realization. As a kid, Thursdays were my favorite, because I'd hear the trash truck coming. Lonnie would hop off the back, flip the lid so it spun like a quarter, do a pirouette, dump the trash and spin the can back to the corner like a frisbee. Every week he pulled the lever to crush the trash, and I went nuts. One day I told my mom, I want to be a trash man. She said, baby, don't you like your Nikes? If you're a trash man, you probably won't be able to afford those things. I said, but Daddy goes to work in the dark and comes home after dark. I want to be home when the kids get home, like Lonnie. She said, maybe you can own the trash company. Right there I realized people trade their hours for dollars. They trade their life for money.

Jerome Myers: In college I worked at a gym on campus. Nobody had come in all afternoon, so I closed fifteen minutes early. My supervisor knocked on my door and said, somebody came to work out. We pay you for your time. Don't ever leave early again. I thought, I'm selling my time for money. So I went on a quest to decouple my time from money. But I'm the son of a soldier and a stay-at-home mom. The only people I knew who made six figures were my dentist and my doctor, and we weren't having those conversations around the kitchen table.

Jerome Myers: So I followed the American dream: good grades, good school, good job, the white picket fence, and after 40 years you might retire. In my last role I built a $20 million division for a Fortune 550 company. My reward was a phone call at 4:55 on December 24th: we're going to lay half the team off. I pushed back, and he said, I'm calling to inform you of a decision. This isn't a negotiation. I realized the buck doesn't stop with me. They make decisions, I implement them. I was still not free, so I left corporate America the following year.

Jerome Myers: I took the dream of owning an apartment building off the shelf and went to the banks with my MBA, engineering license and Six Sigma Master Black Belt. They wanted to know I'd bought a property of similar size and executed the business plan. After ten banks told me no, I asked how you get experience with no experience. They said, get a partner. So I started fixing and flipping, and eventually got into a partnership and into deals. The only thing I missed from corporate America was developing people, so in 2020 I started spending about 20 to 25 hours a week on business leader development. Today I earn my income between real estate and business leader development.

Taryell Simmons: I see parallels with my own journey. I did the American dream route, had money and was miserable. The key is living life on your own terms, with the freedom to use your time how you want.

Flipping, Persistence and the First Big Deal

Taryell Simmons: When you got into flipping, were you able to find that freedom of time?

Jerome Myers: No. I remember driving into the city at five in the morning to help with landscaping, looking in the rearview mirror and saying, I'm working harder now than when I had a job, and everybody's getting paid but me. Flipping is a job. Anything that requires your active participation is a job. The question is whether it pays you well or like a pauper.

Jerome Myers: But it was a necessary part of the journey. I got my contractor's license, which gave me credibility, and I learned how renovation really works, which makes me a better planner. One day I was sitting on the stoop of a $90,000 construction project, and a guy hopped out of his white Dodge Ram and asked to see our finishes. He loved the period-correct French doors on a house built in the 1920s. On his way out he asked about a twenty-three-unit apartment building I had tried to buy months earlier. He was about to make an offer. I said, don't leave me out of the deal. He kept asking what I would bring to the table, and I kept saying we'd figure it out. He drove off frustrated, and I didn't even get his number.

Jerome Myers: Weeks later, a contractor I used to lend money to called and said he'd been invited to partner on that deal, and he'd only do it if I was involved. That got my foot back in the door, because I didn't know how to articulate my value. I became the asset manager, keeping everything on schedule and on budget, and I got quoted in the business review. Suddenly the banks that wouldn't lend me money wanted to know what was in my pipeline and take me to lunch. We left Richmond for Greensboro, North Carolina, bought two separate addresses in one day, then more deals, and then got into development. Doing something adjacent to what I wanted until I could do the thing itself was a necessary step.

Advice: Education, Coaching and Patience

Taryell Simmons: What advice would you give a young person just out of high school or in college who hears this?

Jerome Myers: Education is the first step. If you have money and no knowledge and you spend time with somebody with knowledge and no money, your money ends up in their pocket. People try to make million-dollar business decisions on free advice from someone with no vested interest in their success. Make your decisions from the place you plan to be instead of the place you're in. When my last coach told me it would be a hundred grand for a year, I thought, the audacity. Then I thought about my goals, and if he could get me there, it was a drop in the bucket. In most businesses, including real estate, there's no specialized degree that makes you successful. Getting that consultant on your team is the X factor. And be patient. Too many people are looking for the microwave. The success that lasts longest is cooked in the crock pot.

Taryell Simmons: That's why grandma's cooking tasted so good. It wasn't overnight. Now, for a reality check, what was your first job?

Jerome Myers: Carhop at Sonic. I quit the third day. They wanted me to clean out the trash, and there was no bag in the trash can. But I learned that when you have a job, you'll do things you don't want to do because somebody told you to, and that person either had to do it and never wants to again, or never did it and that's why they hired you.

Your Dreams Should Be Real: Exposure, Energy and Purpose

Taryell Simmons: What's one good lesson life has taught you?

Jerome Myers: Your dreams should be real. A lot of people ask, who am I to believe I can have this? They've been taught to be practical and reasonable, but you don't change the world that way. Spending time with business leaders and multimillionaires, I've found you can have anything in this life if you're willing to pay the price of admission. A man I talked to yesterday, worth over nine figures, has a private jet, and his father was a soldier, just like mine.

Taryell Simmons: Growing up in Washington, DC, I was in survival mode. It wasn't until I got exposed to something different that I started to think differently. How do people elevate their mindset?

Jerome Myers: Exposure makes it real. If you want that car, go to the dealership, sit in it and test drive it. Everything happens twice, first in the mental and then in the physical. Touching it compresses the distance between you and that thing. Nothing happens by coincidence. It's all attraction, it's all energy. Nothing is placed in you without the resources being provided. When you're in purpose and on purpose, everything happens in a condensed period of time. When things get drawn out, you're either not in purpose or not on purpose. On purpose is about intentionality and clarity. In purpose means we've all been placed here to serve the world in a specific way. If you're doing something contrary to that, you won't enjoy flow, where things feel almost effortless.

Taryell Simmons: What advice would you give someone in a dead-end career who wants to make that transition?

Jerome Myers: I always come back to the desert. In the jungle there's just enough: shade, water and some fruit. You leave it for an arduous journey through the desert, looking for an oasis to sustain you on the way to paradise. A lot of people don't find the oasis and turn back to the jungle, or they die in the desert. But with a skilled guide who's made the journey, you can make it to paradise. Once you experience the freedom to do what you want with who you want, when you want, you can't ever go back. The fastest way to get there is to have a guide go with you.

Taryell Simmons: So invest in yourself and in a coach or mentor.

Jerome Myers: One thousand percent. There is no other option.

The Future, Current Projects and Final Words

Taryell Simmons: What does the future hold for people who look like us to build wealth and rebuild community through your industry?

Jerome Myers: I started doing podcasts and speaking because at my corporate company we had eighteen thousand employees and eighty-eight executives, and only one African American male executive, Craig. I told him, because you run a business unit, I believe I can run one too. He said, it's got nothing to do with skin color. Be the best engineer you can be, then the best supervisor, manager, director and vice president. I told him, you eliminated all the excuses for me because you did it. My goal is that anyone who hears this feels the excuses are eliminated for them to succeed as a house flipper or multifamily investor, because I've done both and helped people make millions partnering with me. The only reason you don't have what you want is something you don't know. Get around people who know what you don't, and you condense the time to get there.

Taryell Simmons: What projects are you working on, and where can people find you?

Jerome Myers: The DreamCatchers podcast tells the stories of people who've exited the Matrix, with the tools, tips and techniques they used to leave corporate America and live the life of their wildest dreams. It's on every podcast platform and YouTube. Our mastermind, the Pow Wow at the Mountaintop, is a group of 15 to 20 people who meet quarterly and work through the six levels of our model: self-image, relationships, work, health, prosperity and significance. And we have a six-acre development project in Greensboro, deciding between industrial and an apartment building. Find out more at jeromemyers.co, where you can download a fifteen-point checklist to see if you're ready to leave corporate.

Taryell Simmons: Any last words of wisdom?

Jerome Myers: Your dreams should be real. If you made it to this part of the episode, you heard something that touched you. Share this with somebody else, and tell them the dream you want to make a reality in the next twelve months.

Taryell Simmons: Your dreams can be real. Thank you again, brother. This has been another episode of Rise Urban Nation. I'm your host, Taryell Simmons, signing off, and we'll see you next time.