If Jay Z and Warren Buffett collaborated on a how to guide to building personal capital, then Jerry Ford’s book, Guns, Drugs, or Wealth, might well be the result. It’s a combination of financial expertise with street smart wisdom. Jerry should know, because he overcame inner city poverty, violence and tragedy and went on to achieve remarkable success.
In this episode, he’s going to share his inspiring true story and a powerful three pronged investment strategy that anyone can follow to financial security and peace of mind.
Even if you’re an inexperienced investor, you can still reap phenomenal rewards by establishing the streams of income that Jerry talks about. By the end of this episode, you’ll have proven investing strategies that can help you live the financial life of your dreams.
Get Jerry’s new book Guns, Drugs, or Wealth on Amazon.
Jerry Ford: As you guys know, I’m from Detroit, Michigan, but I’m from the ghetto. I am from the gutter. There’s no better way to put it. When I was 14, my brother was murdered on my mom’s birthday.
That was by far the hardest thing my family and I ever had to deal with.
Shortly, after that, my best friend was murdered. Seeing all of that negativity drove me to be one type of person, and that’s pretty much a product of my environment.
The first time I felt like I had a bit of luck is when I went to college. I was able expand my horizons and get out to Rutgers University, and after that, I started personal training where I saw a lot of those high end clients, high end net worth individuals and as anybody may know, when you get around people who are a lot wealthier than you are, you kind of start to wonder what are they doing that I’m not doing. What are they doing that I could be doing?
That’s what really got my wealth clock ticking.
Before that, I had only known loved ones leaving me though death and seeing all of these things on the street. I mean, I witnessed gun violence, witnessed drug abusers, witnessed murders. I witnessed a lot of things I can leave somebody down their own path.
Coming from there to seeing first hand these high net worth individuals and princes and royal family members and celebrities, that really motivated me to do something different.
Picking a Path
Charlie Hoehn: I’m curious, a lot of people who grew up in your circumstances, they end up staying, right? They go down the path—your book is called Guns, Drugs, or Wealth. They go down one of the first two paths. Maybe they did see some wealthy people but they decided for whatever reason, the story in their head stayed that this is the life I’m destined to live.
What do you think separates you from them? What do you think made you choose that path and ultimately succeed on it?
Jerry Ford: Well, you know what? It’s funny you mentioned that because my book is called Guns, Drugs, or Wealth specifically for that reason and it’s because where I’m from, there’s choices, right? There’s this choice of choosing the gun, which is the gangs and the territory. And then there is the choice of choosing the drugs, which is finding a way to take the pain away through drugs and alcohol. And then there is wealth, which is not really on the table.
What really made me go toward something different was, when I was younger, I competed in martial arts. We always got a chance to travel state to state and a country to country to compete. The first time I traveled outside of Detroit, just the surroundings, I said, “Man, the world is much bigger than Detroit.”
Then when I got different opportunities and I travelled out of America, I said, “Wow, the world is much bigger than America.”
So the more that I traveled and the more that I learned, the more I realized what I didn’t know. It kind of sucks, because where I‘m from, everybody lives within a city block or city blocks. They can only relate to and can only do what they see, right?
I was seeing different things outside of Detroit and outside of America, and it opened my mind a little bit more than what I was brought into.
Growing Up in Detroit
Charlie Hoehn: Just before we get into the life that you started to build, I want to dive a little bit into the daily rhythm of growing up in the ghetto of Detroit. What was it really like on a daily?
Jerry Ford: Well one, because growing up in the ghetto, you’re either a sheep or a wolf, right? You’re either struggling to find food, got to worry about being picked on or possibly being murdered, or the ghetto forces you to be the total opposite of that, which is very unfortunate but that’s a whole other conversation.
A lot of times, my family didn’t have heat, water, lights, you name it.
In the winter time in Detroit when it’s below zero. I remember weeks at a time where we would have to wake up and we would have to take snow and put it in a bucket, right? Put it on the electric hot plate just to get the water warm enough to pour it in a tub and take a bath in, you know?
This tub was so small that sometimes we had to fill it up four or five times, but the terrible part about that was is that the house is so cold, by the time you fill up the second, third, bucket of water, the water in the tub was already freezing again.
Oftentimes, I would just throw the snow in the tub and then just sit in the snow until it turned to water, or when we did have water and we didn’t have heat, I would just take a cold shower in say, zero degree weather, and that was the start of my day.
Charlie Hoehn: Man, that’s brutal.
Jerry Ford: Then, it’s funny because as I mentioned, I was in martial arts so this entire time, I’m thinking, you know what? My master would say, this is mind over matter. Of course, he didn’t see my circumstances, but this whole time that I was doing this, taking these could showers, sitting in the snow, I was thinking, this is what master was talking about when he was saying mind over matter, you know?
Going outside was like going to war, but it was no fear because that’s where I was from. It didn’t seem like it was dangerous, because that was everyday life.
Before I had a car, I had to walk to school. I had to decide if I wanted to take a shortcut which probably led to me seeing a dead body—which I saw a few times when I was younger, walking to school, trying to take a shortcut—or if I wanted to take the longer route and feel a little bit safer.
Definitely, every day, I got into a fight—100%, got into a fight.
It’s kind of sad, because I am a martial artist, fighting was kind of fun to me. It’s like something that I practiced seven days a week, and we trained seven hours a day. I definitely got into a fight.
At school, I mean, the teachers were always great but it’s the Detroit public school. Law enforcement and teachers are way under paid, and there’s the saying you get what you pay for.
Sometimes as I got older, a lot of times, I didn’t go to school because I was out doing other things to help put food on my table and to help keep me alive. Because after all, as I mentioned before, where I’m from, you’re either a sheep or a wolf. People who try to play it in between often don’t survive.
Meeting Bill
Charlie Hoehn: You had this life changing experience. You met Bill—tell me about it.
Jerry Ford: This was after I was already training, I was training in New York City for about two years, and I was already one of the top trainers at my company ,which was the New York Health and Racket Club.
I had already had a super nice car, and I thought I was the best thing since sliced bread when it came to personal training. I was so young, and then I remember my personal training manager coming to me and saying, “Hey, I have a hot lead for you. This guy, he’s like a wolf of wall street and he bought 200 sessions.”
Now, any gym worldwide, maximum 48 sessions to a package, maximum a hundred sessions, but even somebody buying a hundred sessions was farfetched, unknown.
The minute that my personal trainer manager told me that this guy came in and bought 200 sessions.
I’m thinking, what type of idiot will come in here and buy 200 sessions?
The best thing about this story is that, Bill wanted to train six days a week every morning. A guy with 200 sessions training six days a week is like a trainer’s dream when you’re working for a corporate gym.
It’s Monday morning, and I’m waiting on Bill. I had never seen this guy before in my life prior to this. He walks in with his briefcase and his suit on and I’m thinking, this is going to be a piece of cake, you know? I introduced myself, I said, “Hello, are you Bill? He’s like, “Yeah.” “I’m Jerry Ford.”
He looks at me and he’s like, “How old are you kid?” I’m like, “I’m 23 going on 40,” you know, trying to make myself appear a little bit older.
He’s like, “Yeah, that’s what she said.”
We finally get the training, and this guy is a complete prick. I went through months and months of him just making comments, trying to tell me to tell him what we were going to do for the entire hour, and this lasted for six months.
Everything I asked him to do, he would ask me to explain in a full detail, right? Imagine everybody knows that super setting is a really good way to build muscle and shred up. Which means, if you do a set of bench press and you do a set of pushups after that, that’s super set.
I would say okay, bench-press, and I would say, do the pushups. But before he did the pushups, he would ask me to explain in full detail why he had to do the bench press. Or he would say, this didn’t work.
It made it really hard for me to get him to a really good workout. The thing that he said that really pissed me off one time was after the session, he goes, “You should be a more difficult and harder trainer. Your training session should be harder.”
Now, this is the worst thing that you can ever tell a trainer and I’m thinking like, if you just do the exercise…
This went on for six months, and it was bad. I mean, if you ever try to play scenarios in your head of like you know what? My boss said this, the next time he says this, I’m going to say XY and Z and it’s going to be it.
I would play these scenarios in my head over and over again.
This went on for six months, and then finally, one day, I just strongly confronted him about a particular exercise, and it shut him up.
I don’t know what it was, but it shut him up. He looked at me and he looked at the other trainers, he’s like, “Kid’s 23, what are you going to do?”
From that moment on, I don’t know what happened. We started talking every day, he started helping me build my portfolio, he started helping me learn more about investments.
He got in the best shape of his life because he wasn’t being such a prick. I met his wife, I met his kids, I started going over his house, literally like we became brothers. It’s so nuts.
Up to this day, I still talk to this man every single day. But we somehow became the best of friends, and then that’s where it really started.
The Billionaire Track
Charlie Hoehn: Then you move to LA and you really got started on what you call the billionaire track, tell me about that.
Jerry Ford: Yeah, you know, first of all, I love cars and I love watches. When I got to LA, you know, anybody that moves to LA, the stigma is that it’s all about what you drive.
I had my car shipped to LA, I was already a celebrity trainer, I had investments that Bill helped me with. I had a few Royal family members that I was training.
I was what I like to call living. I was working at Equinox gym. I think within one year, I broke every record that they had at that gym.
Like sales, training sessions, they got like an algorithm of how they rate trainers worldwide.
Charlie Hoehn: How’d you do it? Was it your reputation had built because of the caliber of people you were working with?
Jerry Ford: Yeah, mostly it was reputation. A lot of people found out that I was in LA, so they came to Equinox and were like, Jerry Ford works here.
I brought a lot of people to Equinox and they joined Equinox to train with me ,and then the people that were at Equinox wanted to train with me. I was selling so much personal training but also getting people to where they wanted to be as far as their bodies.
It was nuts. And I’m a workaholic, my work ethic is nuts. I work from 5 AM to, still to this day, 8 PM sometimes. And I’m totally okay afterwards.
Charlie Hoehn: It’s easy when you actually like what you do.
Jerry Ford: Yeah. I was working at Equinox and then I had a conflict with Equinox and they fired me. Literally the day after, I called Bill and I was like, “You know man, not a lot of people but most people can make a million dollars in their career, but what you’ve made is like 1% of people make what you make. How did you do it? How did you do this?”
I think he made a joke about you got to be good looking, and I just straight up didn’t laugh.
He’s like, “All right, well, the next time you’re in New York, we’ll talk.”
I said, “Bro, I’m on my way.”
I hopped on a red eye flight that day.
I get to New York, I remember going straight to Bill’s crib, you know? He answered the door and I was like “Bro, let’s get to work. We got dead presidents to make, let’s get to work.”
He’s known me for ages up to this point. He’s looking at me like, this kid is out of his mind. We sat down and he’s like, all right, write all your liabilities down on one side and all your assets down on one side. He’s asking me questions, “What’s a difference between a liability and an asset?”
I’m like, “Bro, we gone over this a million times.”
At this point, he’s dead serious, he’s like, “What’s the difference between asset and liability?”
I’m like, “Asset puts money in your pocket, it’s passive income, doesn’t lose equity, liability, your obligations, take money out of your pocket.”
He’s like, “As soon as you get rid of all of your liabilities, you come back to New York and you see me and we can talk about building some serious wealth.”
I go back to LA, no lie Charlie, I sold every single car that I had. I got rid of everything that was locked. I paid my credit card off. Literally I got rid of every single liability that I had.
I start Uber pooling because it was super cheap, especially in a big city like LA. I set aside like $300 bucks a month for transportation.
Within six or seven months, I saved enough cash to buy four properties, cash money. Each property is like 100,000, 50,000, 150,000, 20,000.
I was literally working nonstop.
I was training and then I was also day trading.
The First Steps toward Investment
Charlie Hoehn: That was Bill’s first recommendation to you was to buy assets, it was to buy real estate?
Jerry Ford: No. After I sold off all my liabilities, I called Bill this time because I was on a strict budget and I couldn’t fly to New York, so I called him.
He told me every CEO reads one book a week. Now he lost me there. Reading? I’ve never read a book cover to cover in my life. I told him this and he’s like, that’s okay. He’s like, “I hate reading too. Why don’t you try audio books?”
He’s like, “Listen to books, take notes, and every Sunday we can meet up and talk about how to implement these timeless principles into your life.”
I set aside specific blocks of time throughout the day to listen to these books. The very first book was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and it got me thinking about these three forms of income.
Then, on that Sunday, I met with Bill via phone and we talked about Rich Dad, Poor Dad and talked about how it can start creating these three forms of income.
The first one was real estate.
Charlie Hoehn: Give us a break down here of what this specifically means to you, passive income from real estate investing.
Jerry Ford: There’s a lot of different ways you can purchase real estate, as you definitely know. What it means is that I am purchasing real estate and then I am getting money out of real estate regardless if it’s renting it out to tenants, regardless if it’s Airbnbing the real estate, regardless if you’re buying the tax land cert and you still get the money back after somebody doesn’t pay the taxes.
But what it definitely means to me is putting a tenant inside of that unit or that property that I bought, and every single month I am receiving their rent as passive income.
Charlie Hoehn: You bought four at once, or did you buy one after the other?
Jerry Ford: So I bought four properties in the first year. I bought them within maybe months of each other.
Making It Work
Charlie Hoehn: Okay, so you’re a workaholic right? So you are able to work long stretches—not everyone is wanting to do that. How difficult did you find it? Was it a bit of a scramble or was it pretty easy for you?
Jerry Ford: Well it definitely wasn’t easy. I mean I worked my butt off and I literally owned these properties. Anything that wasn’t tied up in an investment that I had already created with Bill was going into these properties.
I remember the second property that we bought was a duplex, and I remember that I lived off $30 for a few weeks to make sure I was able to buy it.
Charlie Hoehn: What were you eating?
Jerry Ford: I would have a Greek yogurt, which is like a dollar and it’s super healthy. After that I would have four egg whites and carrots and string cheese. After that I would have a half of a chicken breast from Trader Joe’s that’s pre-cooked and then I would literally repeat that and have a protein shake at the end of the day.
Charlie Hoehn: That solid for 30 bucks? Dang.
Life on the Other Side
Charlie Hoehn: So you hustled during this first month but that first year you are getting tenants in. What was the adjustment like to suddenly be a landlord?
Jerry Ford: Well see, the funny thing is I forget which book I read that said this but they hit this spot on is an investor who does not hire a management company as the landlord is an investor who’s lost his way. Because that’s a waste of an investor’s time. You don’t want to be spending your nights waking up, unclogging toilets or putting light bulbs in.
So you want to hire a management company. I did learn that you usually spend five to 10% of what the rent is for management companies. So I am always trying to figure out how can I get the best bang for my buck.
I’m saying, well you know what? I don’t want to hire a management company because actually, a few of the spots that I bought the management companies were talking crazy, like I am talking about 15%.
So I said you know what? My brother was my first partner. He was my COO of my investment real estate company because I actually formed the actual entity, separate entity and started buying the properties on there.
I said, “You know what? Why don’t you take care of the management company side, so you can hire everybody for that?” It could be our own people who can create emails and we can put in some type of a slide, a plumber, an electrician, contractors. So we can have an assistant call them anytime a landlord calls the Google line and leaves a message.”
So we kind of created our own management company. It was a lot cheaper than paying five to 10% because honestly, if you screen your properties correctly and your tenants correctly, of course things will always happen but the likelihood of something going wrong is slim to none.
Passive Real Estate Income
Charlie Hoehn: So before we dive into the next income form, which is stocks, is there anything else that you really wanted to share about real estate investing?
Jerry Ford: Well a lot of people were scared to get into real estate honestly because I think they just don’t know enough to be interested in it.
But as an investor, I would say forget about being a landlord. Hire a property manager to do that or hire somebody who can do that for you and screen your tenants and go through the steps, step by step, in buying properties.
There’s nothing like waking up on the first and having six to 10 different people pay you a thousand or $2,000 a month.
That’s straight passive income that you did not have to work for.
Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, so the first time you had this experience what did you do that day? I mean did you run off and I don’t know, buy a new car—or had Bill changed your mind about the liabilities?
Jerry Ford: You know what? Actually it was funny, I was going to try to shy away from this but I’ve got to be honest right? So I trained a couple of Royal family members of actually a few different countries, and I was with some of these guys at a lounge.
Their rent had just been paid and in Los Angeles, if you were at a club or a lounge, you decide to get your own private table, it is so expensive. It’s ridiculous. It can be $3,500 to $10,000.
Nuts. And so I decided that you know what? I am going to get our table tonight. I am going to get our table at this lounge tonight and I spent maybe half of the monthly rent just like that. It’s nuts because just like that it’s $3,500 but the great thing about it was I wasn’t expecting it, I didn’t work for it, it was just there.
Getting Started in Stocks
Charlie Hoehn: So tell me about stocks.
Jerry Ford: Yeah so actually the second book that I am working on is talking about day trading. But I definitely don’t want my new investors to day trade. That is the quickest way to a poor house, especially if you don’t know how.
But on stocks, Bill broke this down for me—for the last 100 plus years the most money on average, the most money has been made in the stock market.
I grew up again in the ghetto and with a southern family. I was always told stay away from stocks, they will take your money. Now I realized I don’t want to stay away from stocks. If this is the way that most people have made the most money, the stocks is where I want to be, you know?
I’ve read countless amount of books on stocks, but my main resource are my clients and finance including Bill.
The first thing that I learned is dollar cost averaging.
And when I first heard that at that time I was like, “What the heck is that?” but dollar cost averaging is actually the best way to invest in stocks. So what dollar cost averaging is if you don’t know, is you take the exact same amount of money every month and you invest it into the stock market.
That’s often a lot of times where people say is that, “Well stocks are too high right now so I am not going to invest.” But then when stocks are going low they say, “No stocks are going low so the market is crashing.”
They say that when you wait so long, waiting usually becomes a habit.
I always tell people that if you bought a share of the S&P 500, which is like 280 or 270, 280 right now this month and then it drops 50%—which I pray to God it doesn’t—next month you buy a share again and it drops again, and you buy a share again.
Charlie Hoehn: Just got a discount.
Jerry Ford: Yeah, you’re getting it on a discount and if you just continue to buy it for 10, 15, 20 years, it has been proven for the last 100 plus years it has been proven that if you dollar cost average into a stock or into the stock market that does better than any savings account.
Charlie Hoehn: Oh yeah, unquestionably. Savings accounts are a joke. They don’t even keep up with inflation.
Jerry Ford: Not at all. Not at all. So the first thing that I really love is dollar cost averaging, and even if it’s 50 bucks, even if it is a 100 bucks that you take and you put in that stock market every single month, that’s my very first thing.
The next thing is don’t let the fluctuation of the market scare you.
Like literally do nothing. I mean I still tell myself this when I am day training and using some serious cash, I tell myself this. Do nothing.
Because the more you mess around with the stocks, the more you do stuff the more you lose money, but if you can just do nothing and not look at it, you will win.
Advanced Investing: Day Trading
Charlie Hoehn: So I am curious, why do you day trade? Because it sounds like you know a lot about stocks and everything I’ve read, well I am not as well versed is exactly what you said, do nothing. Be as passive as possible but automate it.
Jerry Ford: I’ll tell you how I started day trading. So again, we’re dealing with the stock market and I am talking to Bill. He’s like, “Dude I made so much money today.” And I’m like, “How?” And he’s like, “Day trading.” And I’m like, “That’s the total opposite of what you told me to do.”
He’s like, “All right, it’s because I wanted you to get this. I wanted you to learn how to ride the bike before you can drive the car basically.”
I day trade because there are super volatile markets out there. I am talking about super volatile markets that can drop 50% in one day that can go up 50% in one day. I have found a strategy and a formula that really, really works.
So now what I do is I day trade with the intention of holding onto the stock. All stocks are linked to something. It’s not like a stock is out there and it’s by itself. All stocks have mother stocks and is linked to something else to where, if this is going good, this is going to go good.
There’s no stock out there that’s just floating in the universe.
If something happens and I think that that’s going to impact that stock, then I’ll definitely day trade it with a lot of money, and then I will rip it.
This is going to a whole other level, but using something called a Bloomberg Terminal, I’ll rip it whenever I am happy. I don’t day trade every day because sometimes it’s best to just leave it for a day or two. But I do day trade and I am happy, really happy with it.
Making the Most of Your Income
Charlie Hoehn: So let’s talk about income form number three, which may not be the most surprising but it’s just as important as the other two, which is money that you earn daily from your job or business.
Jerry Ford: Yes, so one I think everybody should own their own business, but as you are working for someone else, I think it’s super important to know the difference between a liability and an asset and to spend your money very wise.
One of the things that Robert T. Kiyosaki talks about that stuck with me and that sticks with me and that I remind myself every day is the rat race.
It is the combination of fear and greed. He puts it in such a beautiful way. So it’s like a lot of people get money, and they fear that they are not making enough. So they work, work, work for money, and when they get the money, the greed kicks in and they think of all these nice things that they can buy and then do it again, and then they have a fear of not having the money. So they work hard, work hard and then they get it, and then it just becomes a big rat race, right?
I think having a great work ethic but spending your money in the right ways while knowing the difference between liabilities and assets is very key.
Even for myself, this is an everyday struggle.
I don’t want people to think that I got it figured out. I struggle with this every single day of, “Okay, what is smart spending today? Do I need this?”
And not to get that confused with treating yourself but smart spending and good habits of money management is the difference between the rich and the poor.
Another thing that he says in Rich Dad Poor Dad is, “The difference between the rich and the poor is that rich people buy assets and poor people buy liabilities that they think are assets.”
For a second, Charlie, that was me.
I was rationalizing.
I mean, I have a nice car now but that money doesn’t come out of my pocket. It’s through investments. But before, I was saying, you know what? I have this nice car. I need this nice car, because it’s all about what you drive.
It’s the conversation starter right? It’s coming out of my pocket, I need this nice watch and this nice suit because it is all about what people think. But it is coming out of my pocket. And it was literally the liabilities that I thought were assets.
A Letter to Black America
Charlie Hoehn: There’s obviously a few chapters that we are not going to cover but I do want to touch on your final chapter in your book is titled, “A Letter to Black America”. Tell me about this.
Jerry Ford: So I hate statistics but I love numbers because the numbers don’t lie. They say that 80% of America is poor or middle class. And then the majority of the 80% of that is minority, and the majority of that minority are African-Americans. I’m also aware of the mass incarceration in America, and I mentioned this in the book.
One of my favorite books is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and there also was a show on Netflix called 13th.
I was definitely talking to everybody when I said let’s build wealth, but specifically as an African-American man I wanted to specifically talk to my people especially, because we make up the majority of that 80%.
In a lot of these neighborhoods, people where we’re from don’t come back and say, “Hey this is how you are to be successful, this is how you build wealth.”
Usually anytime a motivational speaker or a rich dude comes back to the ghetto or any inner city, they’ve never lived there a day in their life.
So a lot of these kids are thinking, “Well how are you going to tell me how to be happy?” Or “How are you going to tell me what to do, let alone build wealth, when you never walked in my shoes? You’re not where I’m from. You don’t know nothing.”
I figured that they may be more receptive to someone who’s from where they’re from and has done what they’ve done.
I thought it was so important for me to put that chapter, A Letter to Black America, in there because it’s a huge problem in the world right now still from law enforcement, from cops killing young African-American people.
I just want to let them know that although all this stuff is going on, that we can move past this and still build wealth. I am trying to talk without exactly giving everything away, but it’s definitely one of my favorite chapters.
Connect with Jerry Ford
Charlie Hoehn: So Jerry let’s wrap up with two more questions. The first question is how can our listeners connect with you and follow you?
Jerry Ford: Yeah, so I am on all three platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I use Instagram the most, Facebook second most, Twitter sometimes. But my Instagram handle is @realjerryford and they can hit me up on one of the social media handles.
Charlie Hoehn: Awesome and final question is give our listeners a challenge, what is the one thing from your book that they can do this week that will have a positive impact on their life?
Jerry Ford: They should pick two things that they want to become a habit. And force themselves to do it for one hour a day.
Now in a week it may not help because it takes on average 66 days to create a habit, I think is the new statistic. But if they take two things, whether they are listening to an audiobook or working out, whatever they think is going to help them become a better version of themselves, pick two things and do those things for an hour a day for seven days.
Get Jerry’s new book Guns, Drugs, or Wealth on Amazon.
Listen to more authors on wealth-building:
Building Wealth and Living in Faith: Mark Aho
Hey I Forgot to Tell You: Kelly Lauterjung and Terry Lineberger
The post Guns, Drugs, or Wealth: Jerry Ford appeared first on Author Hour.
