S3E30 – Jerry Fetta – Never work for the same dollar twice

Key Timecodes

• (00:44) – Show intro and background history
• (02:42) – Deeper into his business model
• (06:02) – His thoughts about education and business education
• (08:09) – Few comments about diversification
• (09:57) – Did he coach his customers about creating recurring revenue?
• (12:30) – What kind of real estate he recommends to his customers?
• (16:35) – Deeper into the seller financing real estate model
• (17:35) – Does she have any other hot sales she can tell us about?
• (18:56) – Deeper into this business model
• (21:24) – What are his strategies to leave the corporate job and have financial independence
• (24:37) – A bit about his book
• (30:15) – How to get the clients educated and working at a serious level
• (32:00) – What is the worst advice he ever received
• (32:23) – What is the best advice he ever received
• (33:42) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:04.500] – Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Pay Back Time, an approachable and transparent podcast on financial independence. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go. My next guest is a financial advisor turned financial coach who helps people get on the fast track to financial freedom. In this episode, we talk about various strategies you may use to achieve financial freedom, including starting a business and investing in real estate. We specifically deep dive into a real estate strategy known as seller financing, which can generate an estimated monthly income of $500 per property. Please welcome Jerry Feta. Jerry, welcome to.

[00:00:45.220] – Jerry

The show. Hey, Sean, thank you so much for having me on today.

[00:00:48.630] – Sean

Absolutely. Thanks for joining me. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

[00:00:52.990] – Jerry

Yeah. So I grew up in Alaska, so I moved there probably when I was five. And today with my business now, we work with families, individuals, entrepreneurs. And the big thing is helping people become financially educated, build solvency, and gain control of their finances, and achieve greater levels of financial freedom. So I grew up in a house where we didn’t have that. When I was eight years old, all in one summer, my mom and dad got divorced, the car got repowed, the house got foreclosed on, and my parents split up. I was homeless on both sides of the custody battle between mom and dad. So I grew up not knowing about money. It was really a pain point for me. And so as I got older, I actually became a licensed financial advisor. And I figured, what better way to learn about this? I realized it’s not one of those things you can opt out of. It’s like breathing. I can be like, I’m not going to do oxygen. It doesn’t matter. You need to. So I got licensed and I really did the basic, I would say, the retail side of the industry, doing a lot of 401 planning and mutual funds and retirement accounts.

[00:01:58.150] – Jerry

And I did several years worth of that and built a business there. And as I started doing that, I started seeing there were other ways of building wealth, things that when I would speak to the ultra wealthy, they weren’t always interested in the stuff that I was talking about. And that led me to go study what did people like the JP Morgan’s and the John Rockefeller’s and the Andrew Carnegie’s and the Vanderbilt’s and all these different historically wealthy families, what did they actually do? And so that was the background of me coming up in a household where we didn’t have a lot of money, having a lot of scarcity to then getting the basics and then learning, well, what do the wealthy actually do? And that’s what my business is today, Sean, is taking those historically proven principles and helping people learn them, apply them and succeed with them financially.

[00:02:42.760] – Sean

Got it. Thanks for that background. And this business today, is this still a financial advisory firm or has it transitioned to coaching and courses? What is the model?

[00:02:53.190] – Jerry

So it’s a bit of both. We don’t do any traditional stuff. So we don’t work with Wall Street, we don’t work with banks. And so we try and steer clear of those different avenues. So when we’re working with clients, we’re teaching them about there is financial literacy, we’re very big on education. And so if you study people like… I was emailing a client yesterday. There’s a couple of quotes that I was going over with him who’s very big into I need to diversify. I hit him with a quote from Mark Cuban, another quote from Warren Buffett, and another one from Andrew Carnegie. And all three of them basically said, don’t diversify. If you’re diversifying, it means you don’t know what you’re doing. I think that there’s an element of building financial independence where we lack education. And if you backtrack it, I didn’t learn about money in school. I don’t know if you had the benefit of ever being taught how does it work, but we go to school to get good grades, we get good grades, we go to college, we go to college to get a good job so we can earn good income, and we’re never taught what the income is, how it works, what to do with it.

[00:03:48.320] – Jerry

So it’s like, why are we doing all these things? So I think the education piece is huge. We help families with our clients help. We help them with setting up their own banking systems, investing for passive income, reducing taxes, buying precious metals, all sorts of other, what we might call alternatives, but they’ve been around longer than most of the things we’re using today in the retail side of the world financially.

[00:04:10.630] – Sean

There’s so many little things I want to unpack with you here in a second, especially education. But your model still, so you’re not really an advisor, you’re more of a coach and you charge a flight fee or a project fee?

[00:04:23.110] – Jerry

Depending on what we’re working on, yes. So we might have some coaching or different services. My requirement is that everyone that becomes a client, first they read a book. So if someone’s not willing to read and study, I don’t want to work with them. I want them educated. I want them… You’re driving the car, it’s great to have a coach, but you still have to have your hands on the wheel and know what you’re doing. So we will coach people through that. We will help them with different strategies. Sometimes we charge to monetize. Sometimes we get paid commission or referral fee with various services we work with where we can have the company we’re working with pay us rather than the client. That’s usually money the client gets to keep in their pocket and put to work with them instead.

[00:05:02.150] – Sean

Got it. Just further understanding your model here. So if you refer them to like, would it be like referring to insurance product or some mutual fund? Is that where the commission is generated?

[00:05:16.510] – Jerry

Yeah. I do have an insurance license. So we do the… Are you familiar with the concept of becoming your own bank and using properly structured whole life insurance for that? So that’s a big thing we do. I believe that everyone should be in two businesses or two vocations. One of them should be the thing that you love doing to generate income. And then the other one should be the banking business. And so we teach people how to do that. And so we work with various insurers and we do make money doing that. And then we also do things like gold and silver, turnkey real estate seller finance, real estate. We do a lot with tax planning and estate planning. And so we really try and set ourselves up to be somewhat of a virtual family office where clients can cover all aspects. And we’ve got some of the best of the best to help them with those things.

[00:06:02.750] – Sean

Right on. Okay. That’s good context on your business model. I know a lot of listeners out there they’re looking to make a transition or maybe leave a full-time job. And what business can they create? Not saying they’d want to be your competitor, but give some ideas. Now, what I’d like to do is dive into some of the hot points you hit. College being number one, and you’re right. Like, growing up going to public schools my whole life, never taught me really anything applicable about how to create multiple streams of revenue, how to leverage compound interest. So money’s working for me as opposed to me working for money, and really how to invest at a young age. It’s really unfortunate that we don’t get that education, especially here in the United States. People, they’ll ask every once in a while, so do you have a business degree? Well, no. And two, business degrees, I don’t think they really teach you how to truly build a business because the evolution of building businesses can change from one year to the next so fast. You got to be in it. I’ll stop here in a second, but it’s like riding a bike.

[00:07:08.040] – Sean

You can read books on how to ride a bike until you’re blue in the face, but you’re not going to learn how to ride a bike until you actually go ride a bike.

[00:07:15.430] – Jerry

Right. Yeah, precisely. And if you look at some of my favorite people to study in business, they didn’t have college degrees. Some of them didn’t even pass high school. I think Henry Ford is one of those stories that I’m pretty sure the guy didn’t graduate school. He went bankrupt over and over and over. What better way to learn to run a business? And you look at the brand he’s built that’s still around today. So I think sometimes the business degree can work. I’ve got a buddy that he did his in South America. So I don’t know how different the curriculum is there, but he did a business degree down there. And so he runs a family office and he has several companies. And he’s the youngest family office founder in the world right now. But he’s very practical application. It’s not a lot of sit around and think and theory. And in the US, I think the statistic, Sean, is that when you get a college degree, you have about a 50-50 chance of getting a career in your degree field. So it’s a coin flip. It’s a five, six figure coin flip.

[00:08:09.120] – Sean

Right on. Also, I want to circle back to your comments on diversification. This may be the quote I want to deliver it to you and then see if it’s the one I’m thinking of, which is Warren Buffett has said diversification is an insurance policy for the ignorant. Is that the one?

[00:08:24.580] – Jerry

Yes. There’s that. Mark Cuban comes right out with the gloves off and says diversification is for idiot. And then Andrew Carnegie says put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

[00:08:37.860] – Sean

Yes. I’ve had several people on this podcast before that how they really built their first million, especially with a stock market, is buying one stock and going all in on one good business. Now, they’re not gambling and taking a speculative risk on a penny stock. It’s like, for example, one guy was Ford. He bought Ford during the recession because automotive companies all took bailouts except for Ford, meaning they had the strongest balance sheet. Another one was a guy who went it all in on travelers insurance. Warren Buffett has been big on Giko, but insurance is a great business model because it’s homeowners and auto is pretty much mandatory in every US state. And it’s a recurring revenue model. So he’s like, Well, both boxes are checked. I’m going all in. So he, yeah, over 10 years, I built that up to about a million dollars and I’m retired.

[00:09:33.360] – Jerry

That’s amazing. And you hear stats like, the average millionaire has seven income streams, whether that’s an active stream or an investing stream. They didn’t get there by having seven. That’s usually you got there, then you added more. And it’s not often diversification. It’s I’ve completed this project, it’s now going, let me go start the next one. Rather than I don’t know what I’m doing, let me spread it all out.

[00:09:57.340] – Sean

Yes. I’d like to dive into that a little bit. I made a mistake in my 20s. I had an agency and it was a very service model project based building software websites, doing video for businesses. But the problem I quickly learned is you do a project for a customer and then the project ends and what also ends is the revenue against that project. So you got to go hunt more. And I’m like, how do I create one project that is creating residual or reoccurring revenue thereafter? So you coach your customers on the type of business models they should look at?

[00:10:35.200] – Jerry

Yeah. Now we’re a bit more on the investing side with people. And so we have on the entrepreneur side, we’ve got clients that do software development, construction. I talked with a guy today, his main business is they do kitchen remodeling in Los Angeles. So the focus is what’s your active income stream going to be? And so sometimes it’s a business model like you mentioned, where you can build in recurring revenue. And I think that that’s a beautiful thing when you study the top 1 % historically, their net worth, the majority of it has been in small business equity. And that doesn’t always mean they’re the founder. It doesn’t always mean they’re the main guy. But it means that in some way or another, they own a small business that produces income for them. And that also does help with the net worth as the valuation grows. Now, I also have clients where I’ve got a guy, he flies for United Airlines, and he makes three, four hundred thousand dollars a year W2. And if you do the math on just the backwards math on what’s the average profit margin on a business and you reverse that back and think about, well, how much revenue would he need to generate in order to create that income?

[00:11:34.170] – Jerry

He’s doing pretty well for himself, too. And so we teach clients, whether you’re on the W2 side or whether you’re on the business side, it’s about three things. It’s about earn, save, invest. And when you’re earning, that can be a business, that can be W2. When you’re saving, it’s not as much about what you save. So if you want to have that answer, the top 1 % have historically saved about 40 % of their pre tax income. But it’s also about where we save it, the location of it. And that’s the part of using a banking system and actually being your own bank rather than saving in someone else’s. But the investing really is where it comes together on that investment does need to produce passive and residual income. And so whether that’s your own company or whether that’s doing that through real estate or seller finance or private lending or rental properties. All of those are their own business activity in one level or another. But you do need to have something that produces consistent recurring passive income so that you don’t have to keep trading your time for money. You can actually back off and enjoy life and not have that obligation.

[00:12:31.470] – Sean

Right on. I’ve had other people on the show that if they have a service business, they found a successful path to create a model. Like, for example, an agency that provides ongoing service and therefore an ongoing revenue stream like a monthly revenue model. And that can work out well. But we’ve also had a lot of people on the show that talk about real estate investments and all over the board. For example, a lot of people we found that they start with maybe the single family or maybe two properties, but they get sick of fixing toilets and dealing with tenants. So they graduate to the we’re going to go with syndicates now. And we’re talking like big properties, 100 units, 500 units, sometimes more. And then you build a fund around that, that gets a little more complex but very much recurring. So I’d love to hear what real estate type deals or investment models are you talking about with your customers?

[00:13:27.360] – Jerry

So I really like to go two different routes. I’m very big on being direct to asset. So when you look at the word investing, if you study the root of where that word came from, it actually had its origin. It means to clothe your capital. And so when you think about clothing, I think about it, I’m clothing myself. I’m going to wear clothes that first off, I control them. I don’t want to be wearing pants and I go to the office and all of a sudden someone can take them away from me. That’s not the experience I want to have at 9 AM on a Monday morning. And so control is a big point. I want to only wear things I like, things that I understand, things that fit me personally. They fit the things I’m going to use it for. For example, I grew up in Alaska. I’m not going to go snowboarding in board shorts. There’s a certain thing I’ve got to have to complete that job. And then I also want to have clothing that’s vital. So back to the pants thing, I’m going to wear pants before I wear a belt.

[00:14:15.530] – Jerry

It’s out sequence if I put a belt on and I don’t have pants in the first place. Then finally, I’m not going to put on clothing that’s overpriced. Investing would be the same. It’s got to be stuff that I control. I like it. I understand it. It fits me as an investor. It fits my goals and purposes. It’s vital. I want to invest in things like shelter and education and things that everyone will need. Like you mentioned with the travelers insurance, people need car insurance. That’s a great investment. Then ultimately, things that aren’t overpriced, and that’s the conversation of knowing the difference between price and value. I really am big on one side, depending on what we’re looking for. If I’ve got a really high W2 client, there isn’t a ton in the tax code for them compared to maybe a business owner. That’s where maybe doing turnkey real estate would be a good idea, where they’re able to own and control the property. Management is fully outsourced because let’s face it, none of us want to be a landlord. And then we’ve got the tenants already in. And so because of that, we get passive income, we get appreciation, we get debt pay down, but we also get significant tax benefits.

[00:15:21.540] – Jerry

We can write off paper losses called depreciation against the value of that property. And in many cases, we can accelerate those. So that’s a great way to go, especially for someone that wants income and a tax benefit. My favorite one is actually called seller finance. So seller finance means I’m going to buy the house. Typically, I’m going to buy it in bulk from a foreclosure from a bank. We’re going to do minimum essential repairs to it. I’ve got a team that does all this for me, so I’m not running contractors or swinging a hammer or looking for homes. And so basically, they’ll fix it up, do minimum essential repairs, market it, find a family, put that family in there, and then we’ll lock that in on a 20 year mortgage. And now I’m the bank. I get paid a mortgage payment every month. They cover their taxes, they cover their insurance. We don’t need to worry about whether they broke the toilet because I’m the bank. You don’t call the bank when you broke your toilet, that’s your toilet. That’s your toilet. So that’s the model I really like. And I love that one because it’s very scalable.

[00:16:15.420] – Jerry

When I’m thinking investing, it’s a lot like I’m franchising my income and I don’t want things… One of my rules is I’ll never work for the same dollar twice. So if I already worked for it, I don’t want to work for it again. I want to put that somewhere where it does its thing and it can just scale out and I can go focus on my active source and just repeating and putting more money into that system.

[00:16:35.600] – Sean

I love that quote. Actually, that might be the title of this video. Never worked for the same dollar twice. That’s good. I love it. That’s so smart because it’s like, yes, if you’re putting effort into something, it immediately puts you in that framework of how does this effort create ongoing revenue? And real estate, we do like that. It’s a great way to create passive income. Let’s drill into the seller financing a little bit. I think I have one other person on the show over the last few years that talked about it, but we didn’t go too deep in detail. The risk is really on the seller because they’re putting forward the capital. Is that how it works?

[00:17:14.040] – Jerry

So yeah, there’s a couple of methods to do it. Now, the one that I use, it’s with a company called Equity and Health, and your listeners can Google them. It’s a phenomenal program. But with seller finance, the downside from an investing standpoint, for me, just my own personal ethics, it can tend to get predatory. Meaning these people have low credit scores, low income, they can’t afford a mortgage, they’re going to have to rent. And it can tend to get in the direction of, okay, let’s goug them because there’s no other choice. I don’t want to ever go in that direction of it. So the company that I use is called Equity & Health, and they’re big on helping families. And it actually turns out 51 % or more of Americans cannot qualify for home ownership due to credit and income. So the majority of people can’t actually own a home. And so the way this works is the company Equity & Health, they work with banks all over the country. They’re in 32 different states, I think 300 some odd counties and cities. And so they work with banks where they’ll buy homes in bulk as is.

[00:18:10.150] – Jerry

And so it’s from the foreclosure, right? And they’re taking properties at auction that are maybe $30,000, $40,000. They’re doing minimum essential repairs just so that home will pass inspection. And then I’ll buy it from them for maybe 45 or 50,000. And so I’ve paid cash for a home. We put it in a double layer trust that I’ve got. And I’m not monimity, I’m protected from an asset level. And then we basically will put that home on market and it’s already paid for. I own it. My name is on the title through the trust and that doesn’t change till that family pays me off. But they’ll move in with a down payment. And generally, the average payment that I’m going to receive on a property is going to be maybe $5 or $600 a month mortgage payment. And that’s free and clear. Now, the beauty in this model is I’m buying it for 50 or 60, but I’m selling it for usually 20 to 30 % of percent more than what I paid. And so if I bought it for 50, I might sell it for 60 or 65. And so that mortgage note is being charged off of 60 or 65.

[00:19:10.100] – Jerry

So I just took 50,000 and it’s yielding me as if it were 65,000 just because we locked in that mortgage payment. Now, what we do with the families is the after repair value of the home is actually higher than what we sold it to them for. So it might actually have an after repair value of 70, 75,000. And we’re telling them, hey, we’re going to give you five or 10,000 equity day one. We’re not going to sell it to you for 75 like we could. We’re going to sell it to you for 65. So you’re stepping into equity. And so the risk with seller finance is, well, what if that family doesn’t pay? And so in our scenario, they’re gaining equity. So if they don’t pay, they’re physically losing five or $10,000. And so they’ve got positive incentive to keep the payments going. It’s cheaper than their rent. They’re building equity as they go. And because we didn’t do a full HGTV remodel, we just did minimal essential repairs. We have an agreement with them that as they’re living there, they’re going to beautify the home. They’re going to make that their dream home. And so I actually get progress updates to see the families.

[00:20:08.910] – Jerry

They’re super happy when they move in, but they’re fixing up the carpets, they’re painting, they’re making it theirs. And so because of that, you have a family that really wants to keep the payments going. They really want to make sure they do a good job versus we’re gouging them with interest rates, we’re not giving them much. And it creates a more negative experience, if that makes sense. And then that’s where the default risk comes from is they’re like, I don’t care. And so we want to have that factor of I do care. You guys helped me out and I want to reciprocate that back.

[00:20:36.760] – Sean

Yeah, thanks for breaking that down. And there’s a few moving pieces there. So I would definitely recommend any listeners out there reach out to Jerry if you want more questions or have more questions on that. Let’s take a quick commercial break. Hey, this is a quick heads up that we have a second podcast titled Top Stocks. With Top Stocks podcast, I talk about investing, business and finance. The audio content is published on your favorite podcast platforms such as Apple, Spotify, Google, or Amazon. And the video content is published on the Tykr YouTube channel, so you can either watch or listen to each episode. These episodes are just me, so no interviews. And the overall goal is to help you become a better investor. Go ahead and look up Top Stock’s podcast or check out the Tykr YouTube channel. All right, back to the show. Let’s put it into a real world situation. There are a lot of listeners on the show that are trying to think about their next move to get out of their corporate job or find some way to replace their income. Is this a pretty solid strategy or do you have other paths that might be a little quicker?

[00:21:41.760] – Jerry

So if you’ve got enough cash to start, then this is a good solid strategy. But per property, you’re looking at maybe $5 or $600 a month. So depending on what your monthly number is, that’s your financial independence passive income number, you might need 20 homes, 30 homes, 40 homes. And for someone that has that already, if I’m coming from corporate, one of the first things I’m looking at is I’m looking at my retirement account. Many folks aren’t aware of the fact that you can do something called a self directed retirement account where you can roll over an old plan from an employer and put that into your IRA and self direct it where you actually could go invested in real estate. It doesn’t need to go into the stock market or mutual funds. So that’s an easy way where if I have 400, 500,000 a million, whatever that might be, we have a client right now that’s got just over 500,000. So you do the math on that and he’s going to have 10 homes. And if each home is paying him five or six hundred a month, there’s five, six thousand a month in cash flow right there.

[00:22:38.890] – Jerry

Now, if I don’t have that yet, then I need to go get active. I need to go build a business that produces the income. And I think for someone that’s leaving their corporate job, I would look for what am I good at already? What are my skill sets already? And how do I repurpose those in an entrepreneurial way? And that way you have a very quick pathway to revenue rather than maybe I was a copywriter for a newspaper company and that’s my skill set. But I would rather be doing insurance sales. Well, now you need to go learn insurance sales. And there’s going to be a communication lag of how long did it take you to learn insurance sales before the money shows up? Versus how could I reuse my copy? Maybe I go work with an insurance company as a partner and I do all their marketing copy, someone else does the sales and I’m still involved and therefore I’ve got the revenue.

[00:23:25.220] – Sean

That’s smart. Think about how do you shorten the bridge between point A and point B on how to… Let’s say these are your skill sets at the Corporation and how do you apply those skills to the real world? But you get to control your schedule, you get to set your fees and then of course, you get to determine where you put your money because you’re not paying any taxes immediately. As employees, W2s, they’re paying taxes first, whereas business owners, they get to choose when they pay their taxes, essentially.

[00:23:55.230] – Jerry

Yeah. And I think really a big thing for me that’s been helpful as a business owner, Sean, is distinctly different hats. At some points, I’m the business owner, and at some points, I’m the employee. And so when I’m leaving a company and I’m like, I want to start my own business. Well, now I need to take on the role of I’m the business owner. Would I hire myself for that job? And if the answer is no, would I hire someone else for that job if they were me? Let’s say they didn’t have the skill set, probably not. I would want them to have some experience. And that’s where we have a lot of leniency as business owners. But we also need to put on the hat of being the business owner and run it like a true CEO and not have some of those exceptions that we could get away with. But it’s not maybe the most beneficial thing for the growth of our own company.

[00:24:37.530] – Sean

Right on. Okay. All right, let’s transition to your book. Can you give us the name of the book and what is it about?

[00:24:45.110] – Jerry

So the book is called Blueprint of Financial Freedom. I’ve been working with clients one on one since I was 18 years old. I’m turning 31 this weekend. One of the things that I started seeing was that, A, most families on the retail side or individuals or entrepreneurs, whoever I’m working with, they’re planning for age 60, but they’re not set up now. P art of my story is I was my mom’s financial advisor. She was my very first client. I did her retirement planning. Age 59 and a half is the age that we’re often allowed to withdraw from these plans. S he turned age 59 and a half. She was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at age 60 and passed away six months later. At 21, 22 years old, I’m watching everything I just learned, all of the licenses I took, all the tests I passed. This is what you’re supposed to do. And on the first swing, it’s a miss. And it’s with someone that I love very much in my life. And so I looked at that and I was like, Hey, I don’t want that. And I don’t think most people want that.

[00:25:42.590] – Jerry

And even if we don’t die at age 60, I would rather be having fun and enjoying life when I’m 30 and 40. Travel, hiking, exercising, experiencing stuff like I want to have food and not have to worry about my cholesterol when I have it. So I would rather build wealth now. And that’s a big part of what the book is about is, let’s stop this deferment theory of life. It’s actually a relatively new concept. The 401 plan only came out in 1979. The traditional IRA came out in the 1970s. The idea of work for a company for 40 years and they give you a pension, that’s an industrial age concept. And so prior to that, if we rewind maybe 100, 150 years, that’s not how it was. Most people had their own business or they worked for a small company and they were able to do life now. They didn’t have this idea of, well, let me put it off till I’m 60. And I had a friend of mine last night, they explained this in a way that I’d never heard before. And I’ll share it with you guys because I love this analogy.

[00:26:38.240] – Jerry

And so the idea of deferring my lifestyle, it’s like if I went to the store and I bought a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. And I’m like, I’ve got this loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. And let’s say that I’ve got a magical freezer and I’m like, I’m going to put this in there and save it for later. And if I save it long enough, let’s say 15, 20, 30 years, they’re going to double and I’m going to have two loaves of bread and two gallons of milk. And so I do this. I put it in there for 30 years. I’m 31 years old. I got to wait 29 years before I can use this gallon of milk and loaf of bread. I get there and it does double and I’ve got two of them. But now I’ve got two freezer burn loaves of bread and two nasty gallons of milk that when I throw them out, the milk is chunky and the bread doesn’t taste good anymore. And that’s what we want to avoid with life with this deferment concept.

[00:27:23.960] – Sean

I love that. I’m laughing here as you can tell. That metaphor of a story right there is brilliant. And you’re speaking my language because I’ve been telling people for years, stop waiting, enjoy life now, because you just don’t know what can happen. Perfect example with your mother, very sorry to hear she passed at such a young age. My mom was 56 with cancer. And it’s like, yeah, it’s a reminder that life is so short. Get out there, live now.

[00:27:55.610] – Jerry

Yeah, don’t wait. And the other aspect of it, too, just back to the book is that that’s an aspect. Then the other thing I would see is people were very messy with their finances. This book is very about sequence. We understand different tools. Even on this podcast today, we’ve talked about three or four different tools. People tend to be like, Oh, that sounds ounds interesting. Let me grab that. Oh, that sounds interesting. Let me grab that. Oh, that sounds interesting. Let me grab that. It’s similar in a business. I need a hire, I need a market. And it’s like, Well, some of this stuff has a sequence. And if you don’t do the right thing the right way at the right time and in the right sequence, you end up with this jumbled mess. And that’s where a lot of people are at with their finances. So the book lays out sequence step by step. Here’s what you should do in order. And if you follow those steps, it’s like dominoes. You knock the first one down and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The rest of them will fall.

[00:28:43.420] – Sean

Makes perfect sense. And then you mentioned that you work with clients that are reading now specifically reading this book or any book?

[00:28:52.950] – Jerry

So we want to see that they’re reading books on finances that align with what we do. And I would say for entrepreneurs, especially if you’re going to be business to consumer facing, this is a brilliant move. Write an eBook. Put that out there. That’s a great way to market, but it’s also a great way to filter. Especially if you’re in a business like mine where a lot of what I do rests on the client’s discipline level. Financial success is a lot like working out. I used to be a personal trainer and a body builder as well. And it’s like, Okay, are you actually going to go to the gym and do the diet? I can preach it to you. I can coach you. I can be your best friend. But if you don’t go pick up a weight and you don’t monitor your food, nothing’s going to happen. Actually, I think at this point, I’ve got five or six books published. And so we have a number of our own. And then we have some recommended reading where we’ll recommend, hey, read Becoming Your Own Banker by Aranaldo Nache. That’s a great one. That just gets people either on your ship or off.

[00:29:51.990] – Jerry

That way you don’t have these maybes. It’s like this person is like, this resounds with me. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for, or it’s not. That saves you a lot of time on the sales side of things. Every business does have to have a sales cycle. But if I can qualify that a little bit better by creating that dissonance of I either love this or I don’t before they ever get on a call, before they ever book an appointment, that really streamlines things for the company.

[00:30:15.210] – Sean

I love that because you’re really getting people in the right framework that if you want on this train and you want to move forward with speed, you got to be all in. We can’t have you in this wishy washy, maybe I’ll work with you and listen to 5 % of the things you say. No, not going to cut it. We want you all the way in. So I love that you really qualify them if they’re ready to take this serious.

[00:30:39.470] – Jerry

Yeah. And it’s a great value add too. If you can give away a free book or a very inexpensive book, that’s a great way to just that value scale, make that a little bit unequal in your favor before you even talk to them, where they’ve gotten the good stuff. And a lot of our things is stuff that is the secret, but we go ahead and give it away in a book because we’re like, Hey, this is the value, and we know that someone’s going to reciprocate it that helps them.

[00:31:03.610] – Sean

Awesome. Well, you’ve given us a ton of great takeaways. What I want to do next is transition to the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we could find out who Jerry really is.

[00:31:13.880] – Jerry

Let’s do it.

[00:31:14.990] – Sean

All right. Try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less. You ready?

[00:31:20.270] – Jerry

Let’s go.

[00:31:21.040] – Sean

All right. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:31:23.380] – Jerry

My favorite podcast is called Business Wise.

[00:31:26.410] – Sean

I’ve heard of it. Yep. All right. What is the recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:31:31.690] – Jerry

Recent book that I read. So I would say, and I reviewed this one. I actually mentioned it. It’s called Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nasch. I’ve read that one several times. My favorite books, I read them more than once. I get new things every time. So that’s a good recent one and that’s a good read for anyone.

[00:31:48.090] – Sean

Great recommendation. All right, movie question. What is your favorite movie?

[00:31:53.710] – Jerry

My favorite movie is Dumb and Dumber.

[00:31:56.370] – Sean

Nice. Classic 90s comedy. There you go. All right, few business questions here. What is the worst advice you ever received?

[00:32:05.420] – Jerry

The worst advice that I ever received, I had early on a mentor of mine that told me not to go independent with my business to stay with another company because it was safer. And if I would have followed that, I would not be where I’m at today.

[00:32:21.070] – Sean

Yes, I love it. All right, flip the equation here. What is the best advice you ever received?

[00:32:27.090] – Jerry

The best advice I ever received, hire from the top down. Try and find your partners and executives first. And it makes scaling so much easier rather than hiring entry level. And then you’ve got a bunch of people you’ve got a babysit that can’t quite fully do the job. And also you’ve still got to do all the other functions. Just get your A team from the get go.

[00:32:46.480] – Sean

Amen. That is so true. I was there with that company in my 20s. It was bringing people with not a lot of experience. You got to coach them, you got to mentor them, you got to be training on going. That was a pain in the butt.

[00:32:58.720] – Jerry

It’s a lot.

[00:32:59.570] – Sean

Yeah, it’s a lot. Right on. All right. And last question here is the time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

[00:33:10.790] – Jerry

So I got my insurance license and my financial license at 18 years old. And so I would revisit myself then, and I would teach myself the banking concept at that age because I spent five, six years building a national financial services agency with the other stuff that once I learned this, I tore it down and gave it away. Sean, I just said I’m not doing this anymore. I gave it to a colleague and it was reset from zero. So if I could get those five, six years back, tack them on to 18 years old, give myself the right concept and just run, I would be a lot further than I am today.

[00:33:43.060] – Sean

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. All right. Where can the audience reach you?

[00:33:46.850] – Jerry

So I’m on social media. We’re probably the most active on TikTok and Instagram. So find me @ Jerry Feta. And then if you want to get a free copy of the book, if you don’t mind, we could maybe put this in the showhouse, the Blueprint to Financial Freedom book. So if you go to Jerry Feta. Com B2F promo, that’s the letter B, the number 2, the letter F, the word promo, you can get a free copy of the book there.

[00:34:08.890] – Sean

Awesome. We’ll make sure to share that.

[00:34:10.920] – Jerry

Awesome.

[00:34:11.690] – Sean

All right, Jerry, thanks a lot for your time. This is great.

[00:34:14.440] – Jerry

Hey, thanks, Sean. It’s been awesome. I look forward to seeing you again on the show, maybe sometime soon.

[00:34:18.350] – Sean

Absolutely. We’ll see you. Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. Also, if you’re e you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple podcast and leave a review? The more reviews we get, the more Apple will share this podcast with the world. So thanks for doing that. And last thing, if you do hear any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please keep in mind this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not make a buyer sell decision based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. Talk to you later. See you. Please check out our previous episode with Bob Diamond – A Roadmap To Exit The Rat Race.