Birth to Net Worth with Jimmy Rex

Join us as we unravel our deep-rooted relationship with money, from earliest memories to eureka moments and building wealth. Birth to Net Worth, with me, Trystan Trenberth.

Joining me, pleasure to have him.

We're here at the Talking Stick Hotel. There's the Avengers Conference in town and Vertical Street Ventures, two real estate conferences in the same place this weekend. So it's a hive of activity and As you know from the first season, we talk about primarily financial literacy. It's really people's opinions with how they handle money, where they got those from. So let's get going, Jimmy. So Jimmy, you were raised in Utah. Tell me a bit about your family background.

Yeah, so I grew up in Utah, 7 kids in our house. So yeah, so money was always a little bit tight. You know, my dad drove an 18-wheeler for a while and so I—

Just for the kids?

Well, I mean, that's a good kid word. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, so, you know, from a very young age, we became very conscious of when mom and dad had money, when they didn't. My mom worked as a schoolteacher some of the year. Some years she wasn't able to with just all the kids and everything. But it was, you know, I remember from a very young age sitting at the bottom of the stairs and I could hear my parents fighting over money. And I just remember as a little kid, I was always very aware of how much money things were and how much things were costing because I kind of associated problems in the house with not having enough money. I think their issues probably went much deeper than that. As I got older, I figured that out. But at the time, yeah. And so, I really, from a very young age, knew I wanted to be very successful financially. I wanted to have a lot of money. And just for me, it was more about not having this chaos in the home. And so, for me, that was my driving factor from a very young age to motivate me to work towards it.

So where were you in the lineage of siblings?

Yeah, so I was the 6th out of 7 kids. Okay. Yes, pretty much at the end.

So how did that affect— did you notice anything about your other siblings being older? Did they have different opinions or a slightly different take on, on those things? Did you notice different things?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm very different from most of the people in my family. They were all married by age 21, 23, uh, all of them. Some of them at 19 and 20, and I'm 41 and never been married. And so I've just kind of gone this completely different route. You know, and I think it's allowed me to do some things financially that have been easier on me than, you know, maybe some of them, because I mean, when you're taking care of a family and you're trying to put yourself through that kind of stuff, you know, it's, it's just harder to build up savings to invest money and do some of those things. But overall, I think everyone in my family, like they're all, you know, kind of, we all kind of have the same ideas. Basically around money. But I think we pick a lot of that up from our parents. Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. So kind of what age did you start having— maybe did you have an allowance? Did you have money that you had to yourself that you could do things with?

And yeah, I mean, we got a little bit of a lot of— we're talking like a buck for like a week or whatever. My dad would, you know, send us to do chores a lot or like errands. So for example, we'd be at the baseball field and he wanted a drink. And he would forget to ask for his change. That was kind of how we collected money back then, or else I would just dig through his car and find all this change lying everywhere. So I remember that was kind of the first time I had money. But then I think when I got to be about probably even just 6 or 7 years old, I started to do lemonade stands. I started to sell baseball cards or candy. You know, I remember there was one time my sister told this story once and kind of reminded me, but I was probably 8 or 9 and I went to the Shopko, the local store. And they were selling hot tamales, the king-size ones, the bigger ones, for like $0.30 for some reason. So I borrowed $10 from my dad, bought like 30 of them, and I just went out and sold them, you know, and for a buck each and made a bunch of money. I mean, when you're 7 or 8, you got $20 from that. You see it as you're the richest guy, like at least back then. And, you know, we were always hustling baseball cards and lemonade stands and things like that. But so I'm more kind of really grinded to figure out ways to make a few bucks here, a few bucks there, and did that a lot. Yeah.

So when you went to your mid-teens, did you have sort of a newspaper round or delivering newspapers, something almost that was a level up from—

Yeah. So I started, well, you know, I was very involved in sports. So my dad did pay for most things. But when I was probably, let's see, probably 14 or 15, I got into coaching, not, excuse me, not coaching, to umpiring football. Referee. Well, yeah. And so, I mean, you would go on a Saturday morning and, you know, umpire or sorry, referee like 3, 4 games, then you made $125. And so it was pretty good, you know. And then so like 14, 15, 16, I was doing that. And then I got my first job was at a place called Sumo Time Party Planners. And basically we went to parties and those people wore those big sumo costumes and we'd make sure they didn't like whack their heads and stuff. It was really fun and everything. And I think we're making $14 an hour. I was like my first. Yeah. And probably last salary job, but our hourly job. But yeah. So from there I just kind of started learning how to make money. So, you know, in high school I didn't have much time just playing baseball and being in school to have a job. And so what I would do, so for example, the concerts would come into Utah, right? And back then, I mean, now you just buy them on the internet, but back then you had to go to the arena. They were selling them. And you would sleep out for tickets. And this was one of my favorite. I made thousands of dollars in high school doing this. And so what I would do is me and my buddies would go sleep out. And I remember like the Tim McGraw concert was one that we did at Dixie Chicks. I mean, all sorts of concerts, but we would sleep out together and they give us to say if there's 1,500 people sleeping out in line, they give everybody a number 1 to 1,500 and then they pick one and that becomes the front of the line. And so it doesn't really necessarily matter when you get there. Interesting. Yeah. So what I would realize though, is everybody would go sleep out with friends. So I would always go to see whoever was first in the line and I'd bring $50 or $100 with me cash. And then whoever was with them, I'd say, hey, how many tickets are you buying? Because with each, you know, number, you could buy 8 tickets. And so I would always pay the second person in line, whoever was with them, and say, hey, I'll give you $50 for your ticket. And so I always was one of the first 4, and there's 4 booths. So when they open it, you're front of the line. And so I would get front row tickets at cost. To almost every concert. I mean, I had this thing on lockdown. Yeah, I had a nice little system going. So I was making thousands of bucks in high school. That was really what I— my, you know, I thought I was pretty rich. I mean, I had, I had more money than I needed. I did, you know, I was, I had money in the bank and yeah. And so that's how I kind of made money up through high school. Fantastic. Yeah.

So do your parents, how different were their attitudes towards money? What were their concepts? Did they, did they have a different—

were they in alignment with, with, um, I don't know how much they were different or in alignment. I mean, my parents always struggled. My dad actually made a lot money at times and then lost a lot of money at times. You know, there was— and he was— my dad always wanted to spoil us. He always wanted to do cool things, but he was always stressed about it. And so it kind of just soured it a little bit sometimes. But I give him credit. He really tried to do cool things. I remember, like, you know, we'd go on a Lake Powell houseboat trip, but the boat would break because we didn't have the best boat. And then he'd get all pissed. And yeah, or we'd go to like— I remember we went to Bear Lake to go boating one time and one of the WaveRunners we rented smashed into the boat and just, you know, because he was so stressed over money and became a huge issue. And so I don't know, like, you know, my dad made a lot of money towards like my later years when I was like 16, 17, 18, but would spend it like crazy too. So I think my parents had some pretty bad habits around money, if we're being honest. I know, you know, they— my dad, after like my youth when I was younger, he didn't make hardly any money. And so we just lived off of it. I remember like being— we were the poor kids. Like, I mean, I'd have my sandwich, you know, it'd be like 2 pieces of bread with mayonnaise and a piece of cheese. I mean, that is— that was my lunch, you know. And so I actually learned how to hustle. I guess I forgot this. When I was 12, 13, um, I'd get a buck or 2 for lunch every day. It wasn't really enough. Um, and so what I would do is my— like, for example, when I was 12, my best buddy Nick, he played the saxophone. He hated carrying it, so he I— his mom would give him like $10 a day for lunch. And so I would carry a saxophone and he paid me $2, $3 every time. And so I, you know, I made money doing that. And then I had another kid. He, he hated waiting for his burrito. His parents gave him like $10 too. And so every day I would sprint to the lunchroom, be the first in line. He'd give me $5 and then I'd buy mine and his burritos. So he waited for my burrito. So I did learn how to— how that was. Yeah, I was 13, 7th grade. And so that was kind of some other ways that I was hustling and things. But my parents, you know, they did what they could. I think having 7 kids, my dad was pretty aggressive with real estate. And then the early '80s hit with interest rates and really got knocked down. And he was down for quite a while. He didn't really— I talked to him recently about this and he just— it was really hard for him to get motivated again. And so we lived pretty, I mean, poor, I guess you would say, for quite a while. And But, you know, I think there's so much beauty in that. I wouldn't have it any other way as an adult looking back because I see gifts. Oh, I just learned to grind. I learned to hustle. I learned to sell. I learned to, you know, just find ways to make it happen. And yeah, I think it was a gift of my life that we didn't have more money. And so honestly, it's one of those things I think about when, you know, when I start to have my own family is like, how do you replicate those things without doing the disservice of the kids to giving them too much? Because obviously you know, they're going to come to a different situation with me now, just being older and having, you know, more financial means than my parents did.

Yeah, I think there's some value in kids seeing the struggle because otherwise they just think everything's plain sailing, but they don't understand why there's energy shifts at different times. And, you know, I've hidden it myself from my kids, not in a— almost to protect them from it in some ways. But I now realize that, you know, maybe if they had seen or understood— and it's not like we want to talk about every single thing with our kids, but understanding that there is a bright side on the end of a dark side. And I think for all the kids, same thinking, everything's pretty smooth. They think something's wrong when it's wrong. Well, rather than seeing, right, this breakdown is beginning of a breakthrough, where can we see the breakthrough from this and take the lesson from it at the time instead of maybe missing that lesson until later in life?

Yeah, yeah, I think it's a fine mix because I think my parents could have hit it better. Like, I was always worried for them. I remember as a kid, like, every time the mail came, I'm like, oh no, I hope there's not bills in there. I remember thinking that, you know, I'm like ordering different things at the restaurant because I knew my parents didn't have enough money. I did that all the time. And as a very young kid, you know, so like, I think, yeah, but I agreed though. But then on the other side, you know, I have like some nephews now. I rent out a water park for my real estate clients every couple of times every summer. And, you know, we'll have 500,000 people show up to the water park. And there's this one slide that's pretty scary. And my nephew's like, I don't know, 7, you know, and I was like, hey, come do this slide with me. He's like, no way. And, you know, I was like, dude, I'll give you $10. I would have done about anything for $10 at his age, right? He's like, no way. I was like, dude, come on. And I was just messing, but I'm like, I'll give you $100. And he's like, no, I'm not doing it. I'm like, dude, I would have jumped off the side of the freaking slide for $100 at your age, you know. But he was serious. He didn't care. I mean, it was $100 and he just had no you know, no sense of what that value was. I mean, at his age to have $100 would've been like me having, I don't know, I guess $100 when I was a kid. But I would've done anything for that. I would've treasured that thing, you know? So who knows?

So talking about you having a buck for lunch and your friends having $10, how differently do you now look back and see their attitudes towards money where they maybe had enough or maybe they had more than enough? Do you look back or were you aware at the time that there were differences in I definitely knew there was differences.

I mean, my buddy Nick's a good example because we're to this day best friends. Yeah, he's in my coaching group. We're going to Sedona with some friends in like 3 weeks to hang out for the weekend. I talk to him a couple times a week. But so I really give him a lot of credit. You know, he came from a family where he was kind of the rich kid. I think he saw his dad kind of did some things that he didn't necessarily care for, just way of being, I guess. And I give him a lot of credit because he ended up going to medical school. He's a plastic surgeon now. And, and he's just— he really grinded for a long time to get himself where he's at now. And he's very generous, actually, still to this day. I think he was partially just being generous as a friend as a kid, right? Like, he could have carried his own saxophone. He probably saw my ass with a dollar and was like, I figured I'd give him a couple bucks. But so he's a super generous dude. So like, for him, you know, he does very well. Financially is very generous, very giving person. And so I think even at that young age, I think he just had a good heart. You know, I think he saw that money can be used as a tool for good because he does about as much as anyone I know to help others with it.

It's funny, money amplifies whoever we truly are.

Oh yeah, it's a magnifier.

I mean, you're a very generous human being, you know. Yeah. I played the saxophone at about the age of 12.

Oh yeah. I always carried your saxophone for you.

So, uh, But yeah, so you said that, you know, your sumo business was the only really last hourly job that you had before you— sounds like you launched into entrepreneur and self-employment very quickly.

I did, yeah. I mean, you know, like I said, in high school, all I did was buy and sell those movie tickets and just little side hustles. You know, I would referee football games every now and then or stuff like that. But yeah, so I went on a mission. For my church. Yeah, that's 2 years where you actually pay to go. They don't pay you. And so those 2 years, it was actually really nice. We lived— I was in Monterrey, Mexico, so I lived off $75 a month. Yeah. And I mean, our housing was paid for, our food was taken care of for lunch every day. And then our job was $75. We had to figure out transportation, breakfast and dinner. But we did. And, you know, and I— my dad gave me a credit card before I went and he said, hey, if you ever get in trouble, use this for whatever you need. Yeah. And I never used it. I just didn't need to, you know, I had it for an emergency, but I just, you know, I learned to really be able to live off of a very little amount of money. So I know I can do that, which is nice. But then when I got home from that, yeah, I really, you know, was super ambitious. I'd been knocking doors for 2 years, 10 hours a day. So I knew how to hustle. I knew how to work hard. And that's why that mission was such a gift because you really learn how to grind. And I got home and I, to be honest, at first I wanted to be a waiter because I just, I learned Spanish and I figured it'd be fun to talk to people. And, but I didn't want to work on Sundays as part of my religious beliefs back then. And so I, I wouldn't take any of the jobs that were hiring because they all want me to work on Sundays. So I ended up actually just answering an ad in the newspaper, a company that was selling steak and chicken door to door. I guess before that, I never— I got home in November from my mission at 21. And for 2 months I put up people's Christmas lights. That was my next— we made a lot doing that. I mean, you know, $6,000, $7,000 in a month.

A friend that does that every season.

Yeah, yeah. We would just— it was cool. Me and my brother Dale, and, you know, he was really good at getting the lights up and I was really good at selling them. And so we would go flyer a neighborhood and just ask them if they want a free bid to call us. So they'd call us and I'd just go over there and I was just trying to read the people based on what, you know, I think they'd pay. And we got anywhere from $300 to like $800 per house.

And so we both did pretty well then.

Christmas, some sketchy times, but, you know, made several thousand bucks. And then I did the meat thing. I remember when I got the job, they explained to me, you know, look, you're going to sell this door to door. Here's your cost per case. Anything over that you get to keep. I remember thinking like, man, I could make $200, $300 a day doing this from my, you know, first time I interviewed. And it was interesting. I told my mom, you know, and she literally kind of was like, okay, Jimmy. She's like, if you make $300 a day, I'll quit my job and you can just pay for everything. My first day I went out and in 45 minutes I sold out all my meat. And it was a life-changing experience because when you're little, you want to have money. When you're adult, you want to, you know, have a good life financially, but you don't really know what that's going to look like or how you're going to achieve that. And that day just blew the doors open on my imagination because I went out and I made $300 in about 45 minutes, you know, $250, $300. And all of a sudden I knew that my worst case scenario in life is I was going to make six figures selling steak and chicken door-to-door. I knew that was my worst case scenario. And sure enough, and so from that day, you know, I hustled doing that for the next several months, learned how the business works, started my own company 5 months later doing the same thing. I'm actually partnered with my old boss and then he and I ran a company and what I would do is I was going to college. So you know, we would have these little steak parties like every Tuesday. Yeah, actually worked out really good because me and my friends, if you ever, you know, if we ever met a girl at school and we want to invite her, it's very like you ask someone out right away. It was like puts you at a disadvantage. But if you're like, hey, we're throwing this barbecue, you should come.

Yeah.

And we had all the, you know, cutest girls and the guys. And so we'd throw these barbecues every week. And what would happen is we get all these guys would be like, how are we having like 100 steaks? Who's cooking this? Like, who's paying for this? Yeah. So Jimmy has a meat company.. And so I'd hire all my sales guys from those parties, get all my dance there. And yeah, it worked out really good. So I literally, I bought a condo at 21 and I had 3 big freezers. I had like a backyard to it and I, I put in a hot tub and then I had freezers stacked up and was all full of meat. And so every day I had 5 to 15 dudes running around selling meat for me.

Yeah.

And, and yeah, I mean, I was making, you know, as a 22-year-old selling meat, making several hundred thousand dollars a year. I mean, it's just figured out that little grind and did that for a few years. Amazing.

Yeah, amazing. So what led you to the next stage of your career?

Oh, unfortunately, the guy I partnered with, his name was Herman. He's from the Netherlands, from Argentina, lived in St. George, Utah, about 4 hours south where I was at. And he wanted to be our first franchisee. And so, I mean, we were making a couple of— sorry, a couple of thousand dollars a day selling meat. No, I mean, we were— it was going well. And, you know, nowadays you have these solid companies, pest companies, security companies, you could go out and any sales guy could make $2,000 a day. I mean, pretty easily, actually, if you're any good at all. But back then, you know, we were just hawking meat. And I remember this guy's name was Martin, and we ended up franchising it to him. But we didn't have our legal docs ready yet. And Herman, again, my partner, he was on drugs and I just— I had no idea. So he ended up taking the week and got $35,000 upfront from this guy. And Herman just took it and disappeared and I couldn't get a hold of him. He was living in one of my rental properties. By now I bought several real estate properties. I was pretty aggressive kid. I mean, I was, I was going to be retired by 30. That was the goal. Yeah. And, and so I had all this real estate. Again, he's living in one house and, and he just was gone. His family's calling me. They can't get a hold of him. 2 weeks he was gone and he went on this drug binge with $35,000, which was a lot for us back then. I mean, it was like And it hurt a lot. And I remember he came back 2 weeks later wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he left. And he's crying. He's like, I'm so sorry, Jimmy. It's gone. Like, me and my friends were on a drug binge. And I just didn't want to handle it. I was 23, I think then. And I'm just like, dude, I don't need this in my life. I was like, I love you. I'll take care of this. I'll fix it. But you need to go. And the last time I ever saw him. But now I had about $110,000 total debt because we'd taken some bank loans to buy this big, you know, warehouse freezer, really nice lease. And we had these big trucks and we wrapped them with— it was like cows with their arms hanging out the window. I mean, it was cool. This thing was rolling. And again, I'm like 23 and I just look back now too and I'm like, I grew up fast because it was a mess. But I had started doing real estate about 6 months earlier as well. Thankfully I got my real estate license and I was also doing a TV show just for fun. If you remember the TV show Blind Date used to be on, they'd follow a couple around on a date, a blind date. They'd film it and make fun of them with pop-up bubbles. So I thought it'd be fun to make a Mormon version of that. So that's what I did because my friend, I just was like, how funny would that be? And he goes, we'll do it. I was like, okay. So I did. I literally bought all the equipment, hired a guy, and we started making it. We ended up becoming the number one show in our local market, KJazz TV, on Sunday nights. And, and that kind of took off this TV show as well. But I wasn't making any money because I was paying everyone else. And long story short, I was getting stretched thin. I was doing all three of those things at the same time. And the meat company— so when Herman took that money and, you know, and left, I basically just cut ties with him. And I was— I had this debt was, I think, $110,000. I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do real estate.. And it was interesting, it kind of became a gift because I was in so much debt. I was in debt. I mean, every person I knew my age had more money than me because I had over $100,000 debt and nothing to show for it. It's not like I had a house. And so I just had to grind. And, you know, I went to work selling real estate. I shut down the meat company. I called every one of the people. I called the landlord. I called the propane company, the meat company who'd sent us meat. I called Mountain America, then my bank that I had $60,000 loans with. I called this guy Martin from Argentina. I had to pay him back first because, oh my gosh, it was like his life savings. Yes. I was like, I just felt so terrible. I remember I made a poster board and put it behind my wall in my closet, and it was just all the debts, everyone I owed money to and how much. And then every month I started selling real estate. I really just started grinding in real estate, and it was a gift of my life because I had that debt hanging over me. So I worked 80, 90 hours a week when I got into it. My first full year as an agent, I sold 60 homes. I mean, just by myself. Next year with one assistant, I sold 98 homes. And, you know, every time I got a check, I just paid $2,000 off, $4,000 off, $1,000 off. And yeah, it took me about a year and a half, 2 years, and I paid off all the debt. And I remember when I finally finished. And the worst part was like right when I finished that debt, the real estate market collapsed, right? It's so— it was like '05 when I got my license. Yeah. That's when that all went down. And yeah, so the market tanks and I got rid of— I had a really good mentor, a guy named Mike Ferry, and he had warned me the market was going to tank. So November of '06, he warned me. I had 13 homes at the time. I mean, I was super aggressive and back then you could buy a house with nothing down. And so I just keep buying houses. Yeah, but they weren't cash flowing. They were— I wasn't doing it the right way. Right. It's like all the things we teach people now, I did all of them the wrong way. That's the only reason I'm qualified to teach people on this stuff is because I did it all the wrong way.

Yeah.

On my own. And I needed the mentor. That's honestly what I do with my coaching program. I try to be the guy that I needed when I was younger with all aspects, finance and investing, all these things. But anyway, how to partner with somebody, what to look for, all these different mistakes that I made. I made all of them. And you kind of just assume people are honest and they're just in awe. And so you got taken advantage of a lot. I remember I invested in, at that time, a Ponzi scheme with a guy that my brother was close with. And I invested in a dental clinic in Arizona that never even existed. And I mean, I was like, sat down with this man, $50,000. He knew it was most of my money and convinced me to give it to him. And he'd never even had dental clinic. I just stole it. And it's just like, you look back and you're like, who would do that to a 23, 24-year-old that's just trying to hustle, you know? And so anyway, I got taken advantage of and it actually forced me eventually. What happened was I sold 11 of those 13 houses before the market tanked. I got stuck with 2 and I was making a lot of money. Now, like I said, I sell a lot of houses. And so the bank, I was like, you know, I own these 2 homes in the same neighborhood and picture like every house in the neighborhood and my house is— I think I'm into it like $280K or something like that. Everyone's selling them for $200K, even though they're into them $350K, $350K, whatever. You know, they took out second loans and all sorts of stuff and you're just sitting there like, I'm upside down $100K, $150K on this house. And unfortunately, because we did 80/20 loans, you know, you get a 20% second at a 9% rate. So I mean, my payment was $2,500 a month. I was renting it for $1,600, $1,700 a month, and I didn't have enough money to cover this. And so I had to short sell these two houses, the two I got stuck with. But the crazy part was, is the bank said, look, we know you make enough money, so you have to keep the loans. We'll give you a— because most people, they just forgive the loan, right? So with me, with both houses, they made me keep the loan. I'm actually glad it went this way because I ended up paying it back. But so I have two loans. True story. I've added up to about $150 grand, 0% interest. So every dollar I paid into it each month went towards the principal, but no houses. So as soon as within months of getting the meat paid off, I got another $150 grand debt and nothing to show for it. Again, I'm just like, this money game is a disaster. Oh my gosh. And so So what was cool, I started flipping homes about that time and we bought a couple. I bought a meth house for like $11,000 that we sold it for like $140,000 fixed up after we remediated it and had another really good sale. And so I actually paid off that $150,000 in about 6 months and just started grinding. And then my real estate team started to form and then it kind of flipped in 2— I was making a couple hundred grand a year in real estate. I was doing well. In 2012, it really took off. I got in with a hedge fund that was buying up all sorts of properties, and I set up a team going door to door. I ended up selling in like a 3-month period. I think I sold almost 100 homes, and it kind of took off from there and became the number one agent in my county, one of the 2 or 3 best in the state, top sales, at least number of sales. So for the next 4 or 5 years, I just kept doing that. And I was, you know, the smartest thing I ever did is my Well, after 3 or 4 years of selling real estate, I was broke. I'd made probably a million bucks, probably more, you know, and I was broke and I was like, why am I going broke here? I'd never had a budget. I didn't realize how much money I was spending. And if you don't watch it, you end up spending a lot more of it, right? And so I was just kind of like, geez Louise, how much money have I spent? And I remember when I first hired an accountant and he's like, how much would you guess you're spending a month? I think I was like $7,000. It was like $22,000 a month. I mean, it was way off. Yeah, that's right. I mean, And anyway, long story short, so I started doing one thing that was so smart after that. And about 2007, '08, '09, I started taking 30% of every check and I put it in a separate bank. So because I saw the money in my account, I would spend it. But if I didn't see it, I wasn't wasting it. I was buying real estate coaching. I was trying to invest. I was, you know, I was buying these marketing pieces that help you be a better realtor. I was buying all the software. I mean, I was a sucker for everything because I wanted to be in 2 years where it takes most agents to go in 20. And I did it, but it was really expensive to do that. And so I just had a lot of, you know, money spent. But when I started putting that money away, I was making a lot of money now in real estate, you know, $400,000 or $500,000, $600,000 a year. And so when you're putting 30% away and then anytime I had a big chunk, if I did a big deal or if I had an investment property I sold or something, or I flipped a home that worked really well, I'd put the whole thing into that account. And what happened was pretty quickly I had several hundred thousand dollars in there and you start buying real estate. Well, actually, so in 2013, no, 2012, because when I was 31, I finally got back to zero. All my debts were gone. All my properties were sold off. That was a tough moment because I'd made so much money and I had nothing to show for it. But I'd learned so many lessons that you cannot pay for. I mean, you can't. About what I paid. And if you're expensive, be sure. And so I really dug in and learned how to buy real estate the right way. I started with that nest egg that I had saved up. Every time I'd get 50 or 60 grand more, I'd put it down on a property, always putting 20% down. Now, you know, making sure the cash flows were really good. Back then, I mean, homes had crashed, so I was buying homes in the mid-150s that were cash flowing $800, $900 a month. So I started buying some really good homes, get some really good bank deals. And then, yeah, I guess that's a good place to see if you want to ask me any follow-up questions before I go into the next part of my journey.

But I mean, I work with Matthew Ferry, Mike. So yeah, yeah, Mike over there, his brand.

Oh, so yeah.

But yeah, I've, I bought in 2005 just after I landed here and my dad got sick, moved to the UK. So I had a foreclosure in 2009 and went to like $109,000 after we paid $250,000. And then when I came back, foreclosure forgiveness was there. So I picked up a house in 2013 and sold it 3 years ago now. But yeah, I totally understand those times.

They're really— Oh yeah. And if you weren't there, you can never understand it. It felt so normal to just buy everything. I mean, everyone was doing it. Real estate was just shooting up. And I mean, hindsight, it actually helped me a lot with this last time because our market turned about a year ago. It's real estate again. I— every single property I've sold now, between me and my partner Tyler, over 7,000 real estate deals, and mostly investors. And there's not a single investor that was in a single bad property when the market turned. Amazing. You know, because we learned cash flow, we learned about making sure that you protect your downside. What's my worst-case scenario? All those things. And, and, you know, a lot of people got greedy and started buying stuff, but we just kept the patience, you know, and just saw it.

Amazing. Yeah. So from, from that real estate, what was your next transition in, in life and business?

Yeah, I mean, I was still doing real estate full time, but I was always doing side things and doing a lot of investing. I invested in some funds. I invested in, you know, a lot of real estate. I invested in some private companies. But, you know, I had a friend back then, a guy by the name of Trevor, and one of my other buddies, Johnny, had told me, he's like, dude, you need to see what Trevor's doing. He's doing some crazy stuff. Pretty cool. And so, I talked to this guy and he was starting a company. It was basically going to make electric diesel trucks. And I was a little bit familiar with the industry just because my dad was in that. He ended up selling insurance in that as well. And so, I looked at it. It was electricity, technology, and transportation all in one. He was like, "Man, this is going to work." So, I asked him, "Hey, is there an opportunity to invest?" And he's like, "Well, only if you're willing to do $500,000." the time I had probably about $350,000 cash. And then I said, well, if you let me give me some time, I'll sell some properties. And so I did and sold a few properties that had done really well that I bought. And then I borrowed some money from a friend actually to complete the $500,000. And so I invested as a seed round investor, $500,000 in this company that he was starting that turned into Nikola Motors. And so if you're familiar with that, I was what? So I was $500,000 of the original $2.5 million invested.

Oh, you know. Yeah, yeah.

And at its peak. I mean, I'll fast forward the story. 4 years later, it was kind of hush-hush for a few years, and then a couple of years later it went public and it shot up. It had this crazy run, and for a minute it was worth more than Ford. It was over a $32 billion company. Yeah. And I didn't read the paperwork. I made some mistakes. I was— my money was tied up in stock. I couldn't sell it. I'd gotten a much lower valuation than the other investors that put in when I did, which I was told was not the case. And then just there's a lot of things that were kind of crooked that he did, unfortunately. But at my peak, my value alone— and it was in my— I mean, it's in your account, you can watch it. I had, you know, it was worth over $30 million, mine, my own value of that. You know, the guy that put in the exact same amount as me, well, the exact same amount about 3 weeks earlier, but he didn't get the crappy valuation like he got the one that I thought I was getting. He was able to sell for $700 million. Just to give you an idea. Yeah. But so I ended up that whole summer of 2020 during COVID and by then I'd had a lot of success. I'd sold, you know, I had a million-dollar day where I sold, you know, the most expensive home I would in Utah. I sold several hundred homes a year. So, I mean, I had a lot of other good things going financially. But in 2020, that summer, starting on June 9th is when the stock shot up. And then every day I'd wake up and the stock was either up or down. I mean, my portion over $1 million in value almost every day. And then towards the end of that summer in September came out, there was some fraud, some things they were lying about. And the stock fell, I think about $12, $15 million in one day. I lost my portion. And you're just like watching and you can't do anything. I couldn't sell it. I was tied up. I'm just like, ah, this is for a painkill. And then towards the end of the year, they had a deal with GM that they pulled out the day before I could sell my shares. And I think it fell another $6 or $7 million, my portion. So I still ended up walking away with a couple million, which was really nice. But at the same time, you know, it was interesting because I'd gotten to play this game where I truly didn't think I'd ever have to worry about money again. So I was like, okay, well, if money is no longer an issue, what do you want to do with your life? Right. And that whole summer for 4 months, I got to play this game. I really thought about it a lot and dug into it, and that's where I created what I'm doing now, which is my men's coaching group.

We are the best.

Yeah. And so I just knew, you know, I was like, well, I don't want to do day-to-day real estate. I mean, I've got $30 million, you know, $20 million, whatever it's going to be. And I was like, the last thing I'm going to do is go show houses, you know? And so I started really diving into, you know, how do I want to invest, how do I want to spend my time? And what I realized I wanted to do, really cool adventure trips and coach men and kind of help people. And so anyway, once the stock crashed or whatever else, I did sell everything and got out of it. And again, it was enough to be able to make that next move. It was enough to be comfortable a little bit, but I'd already been making pretty good money. It didn't change my life at all. I couldn't even move into the house I wanted, to be honest. I had a house picked out that I was going to buy, like $4.2 million, and I didn't even move into it. But it was all right. It was a gift because I probably never would have created really what I was doing, what I'm doing now, and certainly wouldn't have been as motivated. And so, yeah, so I ended up about a year later towards the end of 2021, I knew I wanted to go all in on this coaching program called We Are the Day. And what had happened is, well, where I get the name from, I years earlier had worked with a nonprofit that would go undercover in foreign countries and find people that were sex trafficking kids and do these rescues and stuff. And I had a chance to be a part of almost a dozen of those rescues and help, you know, rescue over 100 kids. And I was a very small piece of this. Like, I was just— would go on the trips. But it was really cool because I speak Spanish because of my Mormon mission. And so I had a chance to really participate and talk with these traffickers and do some stuff. And Anyway, one particular op, we came back and my girlfriend at the time had picked me up from the airport and I started telling her about this op and it was a really dangerous one. That was one of our most dangerous ops we ever had. And, you know, the guys, they had guns on them and they had their bodyguards. At any moment they thought we were anything other than what we were, we were in deep shit, you know. And, but we ended up doing the rescue. We got these kids out. And so I'm telling her about this and she pulls over. And she's like, hey, my girlfriend, she's like, hey, I don't want you to do this anymore. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I just hear like about our rescue. She goes, I know, but it's like, you know, it's a really dangerous environment. And it's just, I don't know. It's like, it's just, it's not good. You know, it's dangerous. And she goes, why don't they just go do it? And without even thinking, I just said, I said, well, there is no they.

We are the way.

Yeah. And then when he said it, I was like, oh my gosh. Like it shot shivers down my arms, you know? And I was like, oh, that's gonna be my motto for life. So I'd been kind of had the idea to do this coaching program. That was the obvious name for it, but that's what it stands for. And that's what my group stands for, is like, we want to be the people that change. We show what it looks like to be this new order of man and just lead out and do these things. And so anyway, so yeah, so we're, we've been, I launched that in December of 2021 and turned my real estate. Well, I guess I didn't do it. I ended up turning my real estate over to my team about 6 months later. So at the beginning or middle of 2022 last year, But when I launched my program, you know, I wanted to be very experiential. The pillars of it are warble, authentic, and integrity. I really wanted to go deep with people and, you know, help men connect on a deep level. I knew that was my gift, was helping men connect. And so forming these, you know, brotherhoods of friends and brothers and stuff. And so when I launched the program, I had 50 spots. I didn't want it to be any bigger than that because I thought it was about the max you can have. Before it starts to dilute. Yeah. You know how much you can go deep with people. And so I put it out there and just sent it out on my social media. And in 8 hours I had 147 people apply to be a part of it. So I knew I was on to something. And so now, I mean, fast forward, it's been a year and a half since I launched the program and I've got 3 of those leadership groups with 50 guys each. And then I have another group called My Tribe. It's got a couple hundred people in it. We formed a women's group called the Queen's Edition, and we just launched the Next Gen for kids, young men, 14 to 17.

I was reading that.

And so in all, I got about 500 people in the program now, and we're just getting started. And so, yeah, I've gone all in on this. It's— I love it. It's my favorite thing I've ever done. I, you know, we go on these crazy adventures, crazy trips, but we also really focus on the internal parts, the things that, you know, people aren't used to doing. So we do a lot of breathwork, meditation. Yeah, we, you know, I help them. We get up and share a lot. We talk about our feelings and do a lot of exercises to help people be seen and understood and feel safe with the group that we're with and hold that container. And so, yeah, it's been, it's been amazing. But yeah, that's my whole journey. That's kind of why guys are where I'm at.

Yeah. So teenagers, we were talking a little earlier, I think it's so impactful on teenagers to understand communicating feelings, not necessarily understanding them at the time, but being able to communicate something about them because at least that hearing others do it, it allows them to feel it's okay. Of course, as men, we grow up and we, you know, either disguise things or just kind of hold it in. Even as my brother, I'm so proud of him, he lives in Texas, one of my brothers lives in Texas, he's got a massive journey of health and, you know, just working on so much. And, you know, it's just incredible to see people open up and have different conversations with human beings that you connect deeply with them instead of just being the superficial stuff that we generally have on an everyday basis. Yeah, we usually just depth to our conversations.

We're afraid to really go there, right? And challenge our own beliefs, challenge our own thoughts and things like that. And that's really what we're able to do with this group. And it just forms such a deeper connection. It really, really changes the game.

I mean, I moved to the States and I, from my childhood, I grew up in a smaller town, as I mentioned, but connections are so deeper then because, you know, you had to pay fun. If I wasn't going to turn up somewhere, when you were at a pub or a bar or wherever it was, Jimmy didn't turn up, right? Jimmy must have had something else tonight. 5 minutes late now. Jimmy, where the hell are you? You know, it's a different thing, but people connect differently these days, and it's, and it's just so good to be able to get back to basics and, you know, allow people to know that there are people around them experiencing either similar things or different things that unlock a little trigger within them that allows them to see something they didn't see before.

Yeah. Well, one of the things I did the first time we get together with the men, we call it step in the circle. I have all 50 guys get in a circle and I read a list of things. And if it applies to you, you take 2 steps into the circle, right? And then you step back out just to be seen. And I read questions like, you know, if you're afraid you're going to let your kids down, step in the circle. If you've ever lost a close friend to suicide, step in the circle. If you've ever thought waking up that you were going to kill yourself that day, it'll be your last day, step in the circle. You know, if you've ever had cancer, step in the circle. If you know, just some really deep questions that I, you know, get into. Like, if you've ever been cheated on, step in the circle. If you've ever cheated on your spouse, step in the circle. And all of a sudden what you realize is we feel alone as men, but every single question there's multiple people stepping in the circle and everyone's just crying because they're being seen and you're like, you're feeling loved in that state. It's really a beautiful thing. And it kind of changes the entire atmosphere of that group going forward in one day.

And I think, you know, we, we live so much in our pride, what other people think of us. That's a situation where you're not being judged, you're just in a group of people, and it's vulnerability, like you said.

Yeah, there's no judgment, and the more that you share, the more you're going to feel loved, you know.

So yeah, is there anything else that you want to share, Jimmy? I mean, this has been an amazing conversation. I'm emotional now. It's just really good to connect with you this way. Anything else you might want to share?

Yeah, I mean, if anything, I, you know, if I can ever help in any way, you know, I reach up to a lot of people for help. It's one of the coolest things about my program is I've had guest speakers, you know, I've had in my life Andy Frisella. I mean, you name it, you know, I had, I could reach out to so many people that are so willing to help me. And so for every person I reach up to, I try to reach down and help somebody else. So if you're listening to this and something resonated, feel free to reach out to me. Best way to reach me is through Instagram. Mr. Jimmy Rex is my Instagram and I post, you know, every time I open my program, we put it through there. Any of my travels when I'm, you know, whenever I'm putting out a new podcast, I put up 2 to 3 a week, put that all on there. And so that's the best way to stay in touch on testnet.

Brilliant. You'll see Jimmy's information on the closing captions. Jimmy, thanks for this time with me. I really appreciate it.

Appreciate you.

Thank you so much. Follow these links to check out more of Jimmy's work, his community, and most importantly, the impact. See how you can join the movement Join Jimmy and impact the world in ways you'd never thought before. This has been Birth to Net Worth with me, Trystan Trenberth.