Jerome Myers is a survivor, literally and figuratively. He was living the good life with a career in corporate America, but it became clear that he and the company he worked for didn’t share the same values, so he left.
Jerome entered the world of developing multi-family housing, started a podcast, and taught others what he learned. He’s also a career coach helping people discover how to find their true path to personal and professional success.
In this episode, Jerome explains that most people have it all backward – they chase money first and come up short in other areas of life. He says if you first create the complete person, everything else, including the money, will follow.
Resources from the episode:
- Learn more about Jerome, his programs, and his journey here.
- Listen to Jerome’s podcasts, DreamCatchers and Myers Methods Presents Multifamily Missteps, here.
- Go here for free videos and reading material from Jerome on The Myers Method.
- Jerome’s blog is full of real estate content – check it out here.
- Connect with Jerome on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
Speakers: Jerome Myers, Mark Wright
JEROME MYERS 00:01
The world is counting on you to do the thing that’s been placed on your heart. Your dissatisfaction is a signal that you need to make an adjustment or a change. And a lot of times all we do is we ignore it. Though, I can get through it, I’ll make it. But each time you’re doing that, I think you can dig yourself in a deeper and deeper hole.
MARK WRIGHT 00:24
This is the BEATS WORKING Show. We are on a mission to redeem work. The word, the place, and the way. I’m your host, Mark Wright. Join us at winning the Game of Work.
MARK WRIGHT 00:39
Welcome to Beats. Working on today’s episode, Jerome Myers was living the good life with a career in corporate America, but it became clear at one point that he and the company he worked for, did not share the same values. So, Jerome left, and he entered the world of developing multi-family housing. He started a podcast and taught others what he learned. Jerome is also a career coach, helping people discover how to find their true path to personal and professional success. Jerome says, most of us have it all backward. We chase the money first, and then we come up short in other areas of life. He says, if you first create the complete person, everything else, including the money, will follow. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Jerome Myers. Jerome Myers, welcome to the BEATS WORKING Podcast. It’s good to have you on the show.
JEROME MYERS 01:38
Mark, it’s an honor and a pleasure man. So good to be here with you. Finally, put a face with the name.
MARK WRIGHT 01:44
So, we’re gonna cover a lot of ground with you today because you’ve done a lot of different things. You’re a personal coach, you’re a real estate mentor. Um, you spent some time in the corporate world and, uh, you also are an expert at helping people, um, attain their dreams. And I think this is gonna be such a fun conversation, Jerome. Let’s go back to the beginning. You were the first person in your family to graduate from college. Where did you go to college and, and take me through that process as you, as you got through college, and you headed out into the world.
JEROME MYERS 02:16
Yeah, so I went to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University here in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I currently reside. I, I came back in 2016 after spending time in corporate America. And you know, it was a transformational experience for me. I didn’t even know what an engineer was my junior year in high school. So, to go through school and get that degree while playing football for four years and then going on and becoming a professional engineer just seems like a long shot. Oh, I did well in math and science, but I got on that track because of a conversation I had with my high school physics teacher, and I walked in one day and said, Hey, Mr. Harrys. I gotta figure out what I’m gonna be when I grow up. I like solving people problems and I like solving problems with math and science. What do you think I should do? And he said, well, you know, psychologists, therapists, counselors help with the people problems. And an engineer would be somebody that does the math and science problems. And I said, okay, well which one do you think I should do? And he said, well, one pays a whole lot more in the beginning than the other one. And I said, oh, okay. Well, which one is that? He’s like, engineers probably make twice as much as those other degrees in the beginning. And so that was the beginning for me of that journey. Uh, I picked, based on the conversation I had with my mom when I was five in the front yard, every Thursday, the trash man would come pick up the trash, and this Thursday was no different than any of the ones that went before. And so, as they started coming down the street, we were the third house on the right in the cul-de-sac. Uh, they went to the first house. Stop, grab the trash. The second, then they got to the third one, Mark and when Lonnie hopped off the back of that truck, we ran over, or I ran over so I could see him do what I considered to be art. He flipped the lid off. It spent around like a quarter, fell flat. He did a little pirouette, dumped the trash into the back of the truck, and then he spent the trash can back to the corner like a frisbee and then he did what I was there for. He pulled the lever, and he crushed the trash, and I just went nuts, right? Because this was the thing that was just so amazing to me, to see the thing come down and crush the trash, to smell all the smells, to see the water ooze out. It was just like magic. How do they do that? And he’s so lucky cuz he gets to do it. So, I looked at my mom and I said, mommy, I wanna be a trash man when I grow up. And she looked at me as only a mother could do, and she said, baby, do you like your Nikes? Do you like your Jordache jeans? I said, yeah. She’s like, do you like your Guess shirt? And I was like, yeah, I, yeah. I like those things, mommy. She said, well, when you pick your career, you should pick one that’s gonna allow you to live the lifestyle that you want to live. And it was almost like it was an exorcism. I, all my innocence was being pulled outta me at that point. I was like, so I can’t pick what I want to do? Like Lonnie, he gets to do this all day and then he’s home when his kids get home from school, and so they can play. And daddy doesn’t come home till after dark sometimes cuz he works at Carolina half day, he works from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM He’s a soldier. And she said, yeah, but daddy’s job lets me stay home with you and it buys all of the things, and we have a nice car, and we have a house. And she was going down the list of all the things that my dad’s career allowed us to be able to enjoy. So that was a shift for me. And it’s funny because we talk about BEATS WORKING, that’s the title of the show, and it’s really interesting because I went on this journey doing things for money, and then when I walked out of Corporate America and really started doing the things that beat working and really working in my passion and being on purpose and on purpose, the income changed pretty dramatically and not that I didn’t do well in Corporate America. I mean, I broke six figures when I was 26, but this was something very different. And so, I feel like I’m rambling. But yeah, that that was a journey for me and how I decided to go into Engineering and it, it was a pretty fun run for sure.
MARK WRIGHT 6:36
That’s a pretty deep conversation for a, a little kid to have with a parent. I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s high-level stuff to be talking with a kid. But, but what I hear you saying though is here’s a guy who really enjoyed his job and, and took it to a, a level of, of art. And anytime I see people in, you know, in, in jobs that we might consider menial or things like that, and I see somebody who’s doing it with joy, I’m like, wow, that’s, that’s how we do it cuz we can’t have our dream job. At every step of the way in our journey. I mean, you’re pretty lucky if you do so, so have some joy and, and, and, and be your best all the way along. I wanna ask you about, uh, about sports because everybody that I’ve talked to who’s played sports at a pretty high level, um, I think that provides them with a, a structure that the average person doesn’t get because, uh, teamwork, um, discipline. The things that you have to do to succeed in collegiate sports is they’re very similar to what you need to succeed in the outside world, especially in business, right? Take, take me back to that time and do you think your time in football actually prepared you for, for business?
JEROME MYERS [00:07:47]
Oh, yeah. I, I tell, I told my parents and many other people. That I learned more from sports than I ever learned from school or church or any of the other things. I, it’s funny that you brought up the discipline piece that sports bring. I, I still remember the tw the waking up at 4:00 AM and staying up till midnight every day so that I could be at practice, be at weightlift, and get all of my meals, do study hall, do my homework. And didn’t do it all over again. And while other people were, I guess enjoying their experience, we were doing work. And it was that, that rigor that I think allowed us to accelerate income achievement, accomplishments, achievements, like those things. We’re a byproduct of actually doing that, the work, and I don’t think most people develop a tolerance for that. I think they’re, it’s funny. E, every now and again, every, I don’t know, every few years or so, maybe every three or four years, I get to this place where I look at myself and I say, you got soft. You got really comfortable. You stopped doing the things that helped you perform at the highest levels. And you need to roll up your sleeves and get back in there and get to it. And so, like I’ve adopted this thing lately of doing something really hard every day. Right. And that’s what was started when we were in work. That’s, I remember us doing winter training and they did it at four o’clock. Cuz people would be say, hey, I got class so I can’t come. And so, they would do it at four o’clock in the morning so nobody could say they have school and, they were trying to make us quit. Like literally we could see them plotting the, them being the coaches, plotting on making us give up. And I, I re, I remember saying to one of them, you can’t break me. And then another person that played, my physician said, you can’t break us. And it was almost like there was a revolt happening where they were trying to raise the bar for us, and we just raised it a level higher. We just kept improving and growing the standard and this was right after we won a championship, so there was a chip on the shoulder for a lot of the players that were there. But yeah, man, I, it’s funny. It, it is so funny that you asked that question. It, it, it brings back memories now. When I was going through it, I hated it, Mark.
MARK WRIGHT 10:42
Oh well, you know, because everybody else in college is, you know, going to parties and staying up late and sleeping in and being soft. Um, I wanna ask you about being, when you say you’re doing something hard every day, is that like physically hard or mentally hard or both?
JEROME MYERS 10:57
Both. But it starts with physical. So, for me it’s running, it’s lifting weights, it’s doing something that’s really uncomfortable. And the goal there for me is to build tolerance because I think this is an endurance game. I think a lot of people want to sprint and get to it as quickly as you can, but at the end of the day, the people who actually win are the ones who last the longest. It’s great that you did something in two months, but can you stay there? And most, most folks can’t stay there.
MARK WRIGHT 11:29
I’ve heard you told, tell the story, uh, of how you were in corporate, uh, America, in the corporate world and, and how and why you left, and I think it’s really interesting story because it showcases how a lot of companies are doing business right now in terms of just prioritizing the bottom line and really not caring at all about the people who make them the money. What was the job that you had and you, you, you had incredible success? Multimillion dollars in, in sales for the company. So, what was the job and, and take me through that story.
JEROME MYERS 12:03
Yeah, so I think the formal title was a Project Manager, but I’ve never really seen Project Managers with P and L responsibilities or reporting to a Senior Vice President. So,
MARK WRIGHT 12:14
And what kind of company was it?
JEROME MYERS 12:15
It was the Engineer for Procure and Construct Company. And so, our project, our task was to take overhead power lines and put them underground. I was employee number two on January 13th, and by the end of September we had 175 people on my team. By the end of the year, we’d done 20 million in revenue, 30% profit margins, and there we were.
MARK WRIGHT 12:43
So, you put 7 million bucks into that boss’s pocket. Ha ha ha. Literally that’s that’s wild.
JEROME MYERS 12:51
And I get a phone call. And, uh, it’s December 24th at 4:55 and it goes something like this. Hey, Jerome, I know you and I have been going back and forth for a while, a few weeks on this, but we’re gonna lay half the team off. Uh, that’s not the right answer, that’s why we’re going back and forth on it. Hey, Jerome, I called to inform you of a decision. This isn’t a negotiation; this isn’t a debate. I’m not even really looking to have a conversation. We’re gonna lay half the team off. I was like, no, you know, I’m stubborn, Mark. That’s not what we’re gonna do. These people have worked, they’ve sweated, some of them have bled in order to get this thing done for us. And he’s like, yeah, I, I understand that. But they got paid for the work that they did, and we don’t need all the people that we have. And so, I, I didn’t give up. I’m not used to giving up and, and he said, look man, it’s the, it’s Christmas Eve. I’m gonna spend the rest of here in my family. I’ll talk to you in the New Year. And he hung up the phone. And so there I was in the place of being the ax man.
MARK WRIGHT 13:59
So, you had to fire like half your team?
JEROME MYERS 14:02
Half the team had to go. And you know, for me, this was post 2008, 2009 recession. That didn’t impact me in any way. I was still, um, early in my career, so it was okay. Um, but yeah, now these people reported into me from every which away, and we were gonna tell them we didn’t need them anymore. They had to go find a new way to earn a living. And that hurt. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. In fact, uh, for a long time I hated the holidays cuz I knew every year some company was making an announcement that this was happening in the fourth quarter. And we made money. It wasn’t like we were trying to figure out how to break even for the year, like we literally made Apollo money. And so, I went through the experience cuz they were still my people and I tried to make it as objective as possible, but at the end of the day, it just didn’t feel right. And so, what I promised myself was I would never do that again. And the other thing that I told myself is it wasn’t my fault. They made me do it. And in hindsight, I realized that I gave up my agency and I passed the buck. See, leadership is personal, and I don’t care what business you’re in. I don’t care how you run that business. The moment that you say, oh, it’s just business. You are passing the buck and you’re looking for a way to be insensitive, inhumane, or unkind in some way. Before, just so that you can get away from it. I, it’s a sort of a cognitive dissonance, and I struggle with that. I really do, because it’s like, as long as it’s, I’m not gonna do something that’s gonna hurt your feelings, it’s, it’s all great. It’s hunky dory. But as soon as I’m gonna do something that I wouldn’t normally do, if I truly saw you as a person or cared about you, I’m gonna disassociate it and blame it on the entity, and it’s not right.
MARK WRIGHT 16:06
So, you decided to leave. It was, it was not for you. What, uh, what was that like when you left Corporate America? You were making good money, but it just sounds like the, you know, you had a stomachache about how you were being forced to treat people.
JEROME MYERS 16:18
Yeah. We, I stayed, uh, for another 10, 11 months after we put humpy dumpty back together again. And then what was it like, ugh, well, I had a corporate vehicle. I was making great money, I had good bonuses, I had all the things. Uh, it was awful, right? I went to zero cuz I didn’t have a great plan on how I was going to turn on revenue in my new business. I thought that the people who were so excited to talk to me when I had a position would be excited to talk to me when I was calling on them for potential work. They didn’t answer my calls, they didn’t have anything for me to do. Uh, the people who were on my network that I thought would be supportive and helpful, same situation. And so I went into the desert, as I call it. I, I consider being in a job in the jungle. It, it’s lush. There’s shade, there’s water, there’s fruit to eat. Like you might have to worry about a snake every now and again but for all intents and purposes, you got all the stuff you need. And I went out into the desert by myself. I didn’t really have a great map, but I was following this star. Uh, I was following this moon, the, and I was just chasing it, trying to find my way to paradise. And it was hard. I mean, the first year I made $0 and no, I made $0, and I was investing in real estate. And so all of my money was going the wrong way. Not only did I not make any money, but I was putting money into properties, so hoping that when I sold them, I would make more money than I put into ’em cuz I was doing fix and flip because my multi-family experience wasn’t playing panning out in the early parts of it. And so,
MARK WRIGHT 18:06
What was it, what got you into real estate in the first place, Jerome?
JEROME MYERS 18:10
Yes, so me and my buddy Deron were sitting on the stoop sophomore year of college and, I knew at that point I didn’t really want to, I knew I didn’t want to be an engineer. It wasn’t, I didn’t really want to be an engineer. I did not want to be an engineer, but I had a scholarship. And so, the scholarship was paying for an engineering degree. So, I, I paid, I paid for school by having that, finishing that degree. And so, we’re sitting there and I’m like, I’m paying 395. I have two roommates. They’re paying 395 downstairs. You’re doing the same thing. How many units are in this complex? Okay. And so, by the time we did the math, the guy was making $700,000 a year, but we never saw him or talk to him. How on earth, I just wanted to make $70,000, right? Because that would’ve been more than my dad had ever made at that point. So, to, to make $700,000 and never see the person that owns it, I wanna do that. He decoupled his time for money. All these things made sense. But my dad was enlisted man. I mean, he ended up being a, a first sergeant, right? A master sergeant. But people who had multimillion dollar real estate portfolios were not coming to our house for the cookout. Right? I, and we never saw the person, so how could I ask him how he did it? They didn’t teach it at school. So, it was like, okay, well I’ll finish this. I’ll go get some credit score, I’ll go get some money in the bank, and then I’ll figure out how to do this. And so, we took that dream off the shelf and went and did that.
MARK WRIGHT 19:38
There is a, um, obviously a history of discrimination when it comes to, um, the real estate industry. You know, many communities have literal red lines where people of color couldn’t live in this neighborhood, and they had to live in this neighborhood. Um, and also, you know, um, I studied mortgages for a while and, you know, the federal laws had to be changed, uh, because there was outright discrimination when it came to lending. Um, so when you got into the real estate business. What was it like being a person of color breaking into this industry? Largely probably dominated, I know here in the northwest, largely dominated by, you know, wealthy white men and, and that network because I mean, to to learn that trade, you gotta have somebody mentoring you, right?
JEROME MYERS 20:24
Yeah. It’s that way everywhere. Right? And I think there’s always gonna be a concentration of middle-aged white guys. Wherever wealth is being created. Right? And I think that’s probably a signal that you’re going to the right place in a, in a lot of instances. Um, it’s, it’s really interesting. When I got connected with some of the folks that were larger owners here in Greensboro. I would go to their, I went to their offices just to see what this thing could grow into. And I’ll never forget, one of the guys, his son came down the hallway and he was like, hey dad, we’re getting ready to work on this deal. I was like, oh, okay. And he’s like, yeah, this is my son. His first deal is 200 units outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, I just wanna buy 20. Hey, how do, and it, the head start was just interesting, right. With that said, the kid was a second-generation wealth builder, and his dad was started in the place that I was starting, and so it gave me hope. I just realized that I was a generation behind, and that for me was sobering, but also exciting, it, it was exciting because it gave me a roadmap for what I could create for my daughters. Um, I, I don’t have, and people get upset with me when I say this. I don’t have a great example of discrimination for me. And if it happened, I ignored it and I put it away and I can’t remember it and it’s not something that I can change, right? And if the person didn’t want to do something with me because of my skin color or because of the length of my hair, or cuz I have facial hair, God bless ’em, right. But at the end of the day, I’ve just seen so many people create opportunities and open doors, and I think part of that is just the way that I show up with doubt, expectation, but excited and eager to find a way to provide benefit. And knowing that when you do enough of that for other people, it happens for you as well. It, it’s funny. No, I was just thinking back to, uh, to elementary school and there being a white guy, Mr. Blackwell, who was my third-grade teacher, who paid enough attention to me to realize that I had some gifts and he recommended me to the gifted program, and I just find that, you know, there are always, I think we always meet the people who are supposed to meet, and I don’t think it matters what their outward appearance is. I think it’s all about getting to spirit, soul, and seeing the humanity and the human.
MARK WRIGHT 23:28
When did you turn the corner in the real estate business? Was there, was there a season? Was there a year? When you said, wow! I think I can make it at this.
JEROME MYERS 23:36
Yeah, so we closed our first deal in November of 2017. Uh, and then in July of 2018, we closed the first deal that I was the lead on the contract. And so, when that happened, I got really excited. We bought a property right behind a Chick-fil-A, like it was like all the things aligned. We ended up buying two different properties from one property owner. And so, everything that I’ve been working on, led up to that moment so that we could actually execute. And man, did we get surprised by what we bought. But when I look back at it, like being delayed was a gift. Um, the experiences that I learned in the single-family fix and flip business allowed me to be a better leader for the stuff that we did in multi-family. And so, we went on a run from that July 2018 purchase, and we bought up until Covid. And then when we got into Covid, we were like, I don’t know if we should keep growing. Maybe we should pause for a minute and just see what happens. And um, so we did that and, we’re pretty excited and happy that we did that because last year we started to sell off some of the stuff that we bought, and we got rewarded pretty handsomely for it.
MARK WRIGHT 25:16
You talked to hundreds of people in your podcast, multi-family missteps, and I’m guessing there was a lot of wisdom that came through in those, in those episodes. Was there a common theme in terms of missteps as people get into commercial real estate development, that it’s a really common thing to do wrong?
JEROME MYERS 25:36
Yeah. Trying to figure it out on your own, or through disjointed education. So, listening to a podcast is one thing. Going through a course is something very different. Having a mentor or a coach or somebody to apprentice under is still something very different. And so, each one of those steps, a podcast or some YouTube channel, a course, and a mentor is a different level of engagement with somebody who’s actually doing the thing, and each one is more expensive. From a monetary standpoint. As you step up, you either pay with time or you pay with money, and I found that the people who decided to pay with money can press the timeframe. There’s one guy who I started out with around, like we both started in the space at a similar time, two different strategies. He paid for mentorship, I didn’t, and like he manages over a billion dollars of assets right now. Now he’s got two partners and some other stuff. So that com further complicates the thing. But the fact of the matter is I went and did it the most inefficient and ineffective way. Which is through self-education, right? podcasts, creating my own podcast, reading books, etcetera. And I just think for people who are trying to get to that next level and they want to get there fast, if they’re looking for a hack or a shortcut, spending time with somebody who’s already done what you want to do is the fastest way. And for most people, that’s gonna cost money.
MARK WRIGHT 27:17
How did you get into personal coaching?
JEROME MYERS 27:20
So, I was in a head on accident with a dump truck going about 60 miles per hour. I left to go get a haircut and I, I moved to a new city, and this was a random Saturday, I was gonna go get a haircut and on my way back home after not being able to find a barbershop, which sounds really ridiculous, uh, I ha don’t truck across the center line. And it was a pretty traumatic experience I was trapped in a car for an hour and a half with the dashboard on my legs. I broke both my femurs, my kneecap, on my heel, and one of my feet, and spent a couple of, um, three days in ICU, 14 hours in surgery, etcetera, etcetera. I was in a wheelchair for a while. I had to learn how to walk again. But when I got back to work, um, one of the executives decided that he was gonna be my mentor. And or agreed to be my mentor. I asked him, I said, man, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I need help. And he said, okay, we’ll start meeting once a month and a few months.
MARK WRIGHT 28:24
And this is what? What job was this, Jerome? What job were you doing?
JEROME MYERS 28:26
This was my entry level engineering job. And so, I was working for a power company designing foundations for transmission line structures. And so that was the first job that I got outta school. A guy named Mark Allen placed a bed on me and I did everything I could to prove him right cuz I, I was one of the first hires that they had in probably a really long time, cuz that group didn’t hire for like a decade, maybe a decade and a half. So, I wanted to come in and prove them right. Um, so yeah, Gary, Gary agreed to be my mentor and we were, we were talking one day, and he was like, you know what? One of the best gifts I can give you is my coach. And so, the company had an organizational development person that worked with all the executives, and he was like, I’m gonna have her meet with you. And I’ll never forget Miriam, because she tore into me, and she had all the assessments, and she was asking all the questions. I was like, this is amazing! And you know, we worked together for like two years and I just saw my career accelerating at a different pace than my peers. I saw the way that I thought about problems being more, I, I’d like to call it advanced without trying to be boastful or bragging, and it just allowed me to have a level of conversation that I don’t think most people at the tenure that I was in my career were having. I, I got to influence strategy for recruiting new folks onto the team and so on. And so that was transf a transformational experience for me. And I was hooked, man. So, I was reading leadership books. I was trying to figure out how I was going to move from being an engineer to being on the business side of the organization. And I, I just kept reading voraciously. And then back to my buddy Deron, we reconnected. On a chance meeting in Richmond, Virginia, and we were both kind of on the same journey where we would play like YouTube videos in the background when we were doing our work. And you know, they were motivational, educational, developmental, however you want to classify ’em. And so, we would just start trading resources. And so that started that journey. And then I had a financial advisor, and we were talking one day, and he was telling me he just ended his relationship with his coach, and he didn’t know what he was gonna do next. And I said, hey, why don’t you give me a shot? And so, he gave me a shot and we worked together for 10 years and then, Covid happened, and he had his best year ever. Like he continued to have best years ever. But there, there was a market change there. And so there, there was a question of, well, if we can do this, can you help other people that are on my team? Because he went from being like a field director to uh, a district director, which reported right into the person who ran the whole state for the organization and so we tried working with some of the folks on his team, and then I ended up working with the guy that was running the whole state, and then it just kind of grew from there and it, it just got really exciting because I was seeing people have very different experiences than the folks who weren’t intentionally working on themselves or their business. Cuz, I think they’re two separate things. I, I’ve watched so many folks say, oh well we’re just gonna work on the organism, the, the business and we’re just gonna leave the person over here. But I think the people are the thing that makes the organism go. They’re the thing that may grow the organism. And so, I like to focus on the person, cuz if we can grow the person, then the organism by default is going to grow cuz they’re an extension of the person.
MARK WRIGHT 32:42
So, when you come in as a coach Jerome, where do you start in terms of getting people, I, you know, I’ve read that you advocate a centered life, and you start with the person. What, what does that look like when you’re coaching?
JEROME MYERS 32:54
Yeah, so it’s, it all starts with self-image. And there’s a couple of, there’s probably four different factors that we look at when we’re talking about self-image, but the first one is self-love. I think it’s really difficult for people to go out into the world and be amazing if they don’t love themselves first. If you don’t appreciate what you do or how you do it, how can anybody else do it? Cuz, I believe that we teach the world how to interact and engage or treat us. And so, We, we, we dive into that then we, we talk about how others perceive us and it’s not how they actually perceive us, it’s how we think they perceive us. We don’t ever know what somebody else is thinking. I think intuitive people might know what the other person’s feeling, but they don’t actually, we don’t, we don’t know what they’re thinking. And so, if you think everybody thinks you’re silly or not smart, or some of the other self-talk that is negative, that can be placed in us by our parents or our siblings, or people who are supposed to be our friends. Then you’re gonna have a really hard time showing up with a positive self-image. And then one of the other things that we look at is just promises kept to self. Because if you can keep a promise to yourself, then you can count on yourself. And the ability to count on yourself gives you a sense of pride. It gives you a sense of confidence, and probably also gives you a sense of calmness. Because you know that if you say you’re gonna do it, it’s gonna happen. And so just take those three things. If we can bolster somebody’s self-image and make it such that the self-image serves the place or the person that they want to be or grow into, then we can actually start the process of moving it after self-image, we go to relationships. If you can’t hold yourself accountable, you’re never gonna hold anybody else accountable. And so, we fix the relationship with ourselves, then we fix the relationship with other people. And we’ve got this really cool exercise where we drop in what we call a two C matrix, and it’s just a two-by-two matrix where you have capacity on the vertical axis and co, um, contribution on the horizontal axis. And the person can either be high or low in either one of those categories. And we have people take the five folks that they spend the most time with and put plot them on there. So, like if they’re high contribution, high capacity, they’ll be in the upper right-hand corner. If they’re low contribution, low capacity will be in the lower left-hand quadrant, and we just have ’em put them in and we say, hey, if you’re nervous about doing this, just put initials. Don’t write their names out. If the case, they might see it. And what we found is if you can find somebody in your world who is high capacity and low contribution, you can grow your income by about 20%, maybe more. If you can get that high-capacity person to be a, a bigger contributor to your life. And that is the easiest harvesting we can do in making that, just that one small adjustment. Um, the other thing that we do is we have folks who end up in a low, low quadrant. We ask people to limit the amount of time they spend with them, and eventually we want that relationship to end because it’s a draining relationship. The, in the ideal world, we want everybody in a top right-hand quadrant. The high, high quadrant, high contribution, high capacity, cuz if that is happening, then the relationships mutually beneficial. What I found with a lot of peak performers, apex performers, as we call ’em, is their source, their source for everybody else. And in being sourced for everybody else, they get drained. Cause everybody’s plugging in the source to get their little jolt. They’re bringing the problem, they’re asking for the favor and, but nobody’s pouring back into their cup. And some people say, oh, well, God will do it, or whatever, higher power they believe in. And I just don’t know that you can survive on that alone. I think you’ve gotta create a relationship, relationships that fill you up so that the battery doesn’t drain completely.
MARK WRIGHT 37:10
Yeah. I think we have a tendency to think that super successful leaders are like nuclear reactors, that, you know, they’re self-generating and, and they don’t need, you know, all that energy from from other people, but but what you’re saying is they absolutely do.
JEROME MYERS 37:27
Yeah. Yeah. 1000%. And even like the nuclear reactor, right? You’ve gotta keep it at a certain temperature. You’ve gotta drain off a certain amount of the energy, or it will become volatile. Like there is so many things that go into actually keeping that in a state of balance or a state of centeredness that most people don’t begin to comprehend. I’ll never forget my first trip to a nuclear power plant. It was one of the most scariest experiences I’ve had. It felt like almost I was going into prison. I mean, there were guards with AK 47s, and I mean, it’s, it’s pretty tight and you better not get out of line or go somewhere you’re not supposed to go. People following you around. It’s, it was intense for sure.
MARK WRIGHT 38:12
One of the things that you, um, put out there in terms of your services is you help people kind of take the journey that you did. Um, going from Corporate America to, to whatever is most significant, um, help me understand who those people are because I think during the pandemic, I think a lot of us had a mental, uh, sort of reset. In that we really reevaluated what work was, how we spend our time, where we spend our time. And I think also you, you add to that a new generation, the Gen Zs that are just coming up now are really starting to push back, um, against corporations and demanding certain things that they need to be happy in life. Which is a really interesting point in our country right now. So, who, who is, who is trying to escape and, and what does that look like right now?
JEROME MYERS 39:08
Yeah, we, we call it an escape plan from the Matrix. I think the person that’s trying to escape is the one who probably followed the same path I did. Hey, this pays well, so I’m gonna go do this for money and they’re finding that it’s empty. It’s so, I, I spend so much time with doctors and attorneys, uh, engineers, people who are making north of $10,000 a month, but saying, this isn’t what I thought it was gonna be. I thought I was gonna be helping people. I was gonna be impacting people. I think for work to be inspired, you’ve gotta have four eyes, right? The first one is income, the second one is impact, the third one is influence, and the last one is interests, right? You’ve gotta be interested in what you’re actually working on, and I’m finding people are leaning towards income. They might have some impact. But maybe they can’t see the influence. Maybe they don’t know how they’re making a difference in the outcome, or maybe they’re not really interested in what they actually end up doing on a day-to-day basis. But if you think about a Venn diagram and if you can get those four circles to align and you can get in that space of overlap, you end up with inspired work. And so that is actually level three of our model. And so, we go self-image, relationship, and work and we, we help once we help people get to that inspired work, amazing things happen because the stress turns down, right? When you’re doing things just cuz they pay you. You, you’re, you’re intense, you’re, you’re frustrated, you’re irritated, you’re not excited about it, but you’re addicted to the direct deposit that happens every two weeks or once a month. And so, you feel like you have to live in this state, but you don’t. And so, our goal is to go out, go in and extract people from the matrix and show them how they can bottle up their talents and then represent them to the universe so that it’s in purpose and on purpose.
MARK WRIGHT 41:13
It’s really interesting that you say that about income. I was talking with a doctor the other day who was lecturing at a university. And he asked the students in the room, he said, if I gave each of you 300 million, who would continue on this career path to become a doctor? And do you know how many out of a hundred guess, guess how many out of a hundred raised their hand that they would continue that career path?
JEROME MYERS 41:37
One? One maybe
MARK WRIGHT 41:38
Three. So, three out of a hundred, you’re close. So, three out of a hundred people. Who were going into the profession of, of healing people and helping people and it’s a very honorable profession, but 97 people out of a hundred were going into it because it paid well or maybe it was, you know, rewards, you know, was rewarding from a societal standpoint or something else.
JEROME MYERS 42:03
Yeah. One of my favorite clients, actually, two of them are female physicians and they talk about how insurances ruin the industry and how they’re not actually allowed to heal people. They’re just allowed to treat symptoms. And that for me is disheartening, right? Because there is a money component to it for sure, but I’m finding more and more folks are living in a world where they aren’t actually feeling like they can do the work that they thought they would do when they enter the system. And so, they’re having to find ways to do it outside of it.
MARK WRIGHT 42:41
Yeah, I’ve heard that too, that the more that these large corporations that come in to buy doctor groups, you know, they’re looking at the metrics. How many patients do you see a day? How many minutes are you spending with each patient? What are you prescribing? Um, you know, and it’s, it’s, uh, I’ve heard that from so many people in healthcare now that, uh, that the money is driving is driving everything. Um, Jerome, I want to kind of start to wrap things up with you, but I would love your best advice for that person who might be listening to the podcast and saying to themselves, I’m really not feeling rewarded at work right now, and I don’t know what to do about it.
JEROME MYERS 43:21
Yeah, you do know what to do about it. You just don’t want to consider all the options. Yes. And so, I encourage you not to be like me and say, oh, well, I make too much money, or the corporate vehicle is too much for me to give up, or I’ve got this family that I have to provide for, and if I go do this other thing, then I may create pain for them. I’ll never forget interviewing a guy named Josh Macallan. And he had eight kids, I think at the time, and he was like, I just can’t make enough money in corporate, so I’ve gotta start my own thing so I can provide for the my family the way that I would love to and so, everybody’s not meant to be entrepreneur, and I don’t want to paint that picture. But if you have this level of dissatisfaction, if you have this, this thing for what you’re doing, then you need to really spend time getting clear on what you want. And then figuring out what it’s going to take in order for you to be in a situation where you can have that, the world is counting on you to do the thing that’s been placed on your heart. Your dissatisfaction is a signal that you need to make an adjustment or a change. It’s almost like pain, right? And so, it’s a signal that you need to pay attention to this. And a lot of times all we do is we ignore it. We say, oh, I can get through it, I’ll make it. But each time you’re doing that, I think you can dig yourself in a deeper and deeper hole. And the thing I like to tell people is there’s a voice that each one of us is being impacted by and we hear it, but sometimes we ignore it. And so it whispers in the beginning and then it speaks probably at your inside voice. Uh, volume next, and then it yells at you, and if you still don’t listen, then it picks up a two by four and it hits you right smack dab in the middle of your face, and so you can avoid the pain of getting hit in the face by listening to the voice when it’s whispering. Definitely want to pay attention when it’s talking to you at Inside voice, and if it yells at you, you better get in line because at the end of the day, you’re going to be pushed into the direction. I tell people, you either jump out the plane or you get kicked out, but you’re going to go out the plane. So, if the voice is directing you to do something, you probably wanna do it on your own terms.
MARK WRIGHT 45:46
And I also thought it was really interesting in, in the six levels of, of change that you, that you coach people through that that personal health is really an important, uh, thing for people. And I know that you spend a lot of time meditating every day and you take care of yourself. You exercise, you run six days a week. Uh, give us some, you know, talk to that executive who’s like, oh, I’m too busy to, to, you know, to exercise. I’m too busy to meditate. I’m too busy to do that.
JEROME MYERS 46:14
Yeah. The reason, so if you’re too busy to take care of yourself, how can you take care of everybody else? And you, you just took a sip from your, your cup, right? If your cup’s empty and it will eventually go empty. Because you’re not putting anything into it. You’re gonna be of service to nobody. And I know that many of us have this ego where we feel like we’re invincible and we can always do the things and so on. I’ve found just that it ends up being the ugliest wreck when we don’t make sure that we’re taking care of the one body that we get. We don’t, we don’t get. To replenish this, and it’s almost the same thing with our time, right? People will prioritize their money over their time. They’ll prioritize their money over their health. And so, health, and I love the way you’re doing this interview, Mark is level four for us, and you know, it comes after we reduce the stress with work relationship and self-image, and we do health next because we don’t want people to figure out prosperity and then have to give all their money back in order to buy back their health. A person who’s not well only has one wish. And that’s to get their health back and they will pay whatever price that it costs to get it back. But if you have it, it’s your job as the steward to manage it, to maintain it, to improve it, and pouring it into another hour at work is not going to be the thing that anybody remembers, and you’re certainly not going to evaluate when you’re towards the end of life and your quality of life is poor because you’d then take care of the body.
MARK WRIGHT 48:08
So, the last two levels are prosperity and significance and what’s so ironic about this is that’s where most people start. Especially the prosperity. So, to, to kind of wind things down, Jerome, what, what’s your best advice for people who want prosperity and significance? Um, help us understand the best way to get there.
JEROME MYERS 48:33
Yeah, so the beautiful thing about the last two things is it is the end result. Most of us just see what somebody did at the end, and we try to emulate the end result, but it’s very much an iceberg. And so that’s why the first four levels are necessary and we walk people through that so that when you build that, it doesn’t shake or crumble or fall down because you’ve got a poor foundation. Money is simply an amplifier, but when we think about prosperity, it’s not just money, its time, talent, and treasures. Right, and it’s another Venn diagram where you get all three of those things overlapping in a way where you can actually enjoy the fruits of your labor. You can actually use the talents that you’ve been blessed with in order to serve the world. And so, we believe first, you know, you want to go in and make sure that you put your mask on first. So, you, you’ve said they go to that first I, I see really generous people who don’t have the wherewithal to give the way that they’re giving. And then once they give, they find themselves in a situation where they need to be given to. So, we want to give out of our abundance. So, we want to grow our prosperity and we measure that with days off. Uh, the amount of revenue that we earn on an annual basis and our net worth. We like metrics, right? So, I’m an engineer. You gotta, you gotta measure it. And so, we, we’d look to grow those and then out of the overflow, out of our abundance we give to others, and the goal there is to make it such that we can continue to give even if we aren’t writing a check year after year to do the thing. And so, an example of that is at my alma mater, we have a engineering scholarship that we endow for second year students that they can continue to earn as long as they’re, um, matriculating through school. And that full engineering scholarship pays for room board booked. And the goal there is if you do well in your first year, you don’t have student debt when you leave college. If we never write another check to the university, that will go on in perpetuity because of the way that it was set up because we endowed the scholarship. So, our goal is to set up things that are self-sustaining and help people figure out what that is so that it truly becomes a piece and part of their legacy. And I think so many of us just create jobs for ourselves. We create a situation where we have to go out and fundraise, and then it becomes a burden instead of a gift to the world. It becomes a burden for us or for the people we’re asking to contribute to it instead of it being the true gift that we desired for it to be when we set out to solve whatever this worthy problem was.
MARK WRIGHT 51:30
Yeah, that’s, that’s, I, I really think there’s wisdom in that, that most of us start out. Trying to chase the money and thinking that that’s the goal. But what you’re saying is that if you do everything else right, the money is just a result of a life that’s, uh, centered. Jerome, any final, uh, any final tidbits? This has been super fun. Um, what, you know, I, I, I guess I’d like to ask if you had to go back and give your younger self advice. What would it be?
JEROME MYERS 52:01
Yeah. Start now. We put things off thinking we’re not qualified or we, we, we can’t do it because we don’t have permission, and that’s usually not true. There are few professions where you have to have specific training and pass specific tests, and there’s certain amounts of time that you have to do apprenticeship type work, but for just about everything else, you can go do the thing that you want to do right now. And so, start now, I, I look at the people who went directly into entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship shortly after university instead of wasting a decade and a half in corporate. And yeah, I learned a lot of stuff there, but my life would probably be pretty different had I started earlier on that journey and, uh, I, I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago and they were like, yeah, I’ve been an entrepreneur for 15 years. I was like, man, you’re so far ahead of me. And just being in the world of business and figuring things out on your own, and yeah, I, I, I think that is at the start now, man. Like, what are you waiting for? It’s available to you. Technology has just leveled the playing field so much where you have access to information. You have access to an audience if you’re willing to put in the work to build it. And so do it. And do it now.
MARK WRIGHT 53:33
Jerome Myers, it’s been a pleasure spending some time with you. Hope we keep in touch. Thank you so much.
JEROME MYERS 53:38
Mark, this has been awesome. Thank you, brother.
MARK WRIGHT 53:41
I’m Mark Wright. Thanks for listening to BEATS WORKING, part of the WORK P2P family. New episodes drop every Monday, and if you’ve enjoyed the conversation, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Special thanks to show producer and web editor Tamar Medford. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from our Contributor’s Corner and Sidekick sessions. Join us next week for another episode of BEATS WORKING, where we are winning the game of work.
