Jason Medley-Founder of the Collective Genius Real Estate Mastermind

Welcome to Compound Ideas, hosted by Ken Majmudar of Ridgewood Investments. This podcast will feature exceptional individuals to uncover deep insights into business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, investing and multi disciplinary thinking so that you can learn how to improve your finances, find better investments and pursue authentic, lifelong growth, wisdom and happiness. Learn more and stay up to date at Compound Idea Show Dotcom.

My guest today is Jason Medley, a personal friend, entrepreneur and the founder of the Collective Genius Mastermind. In our conversation today, we discussed Jason's upbringing and the lessons he learned in discipline that have shaped his life today. We talked about the empowerment that you can gain from hitting rock bottom and making the conscious choice to reprogram your life. And we also discussed Jason's wide ranging career journey that led him to founding the collective genius and the value that peer to peer mastermind networking groups like the Collective Genius offer to its members. Please enjoy my conversation with Jason Medley. For full show notes, transcripts and links to content described in this episode, refer to our episode page at our website www.compoundideasshow.com.

So tell us your origin story, sort of where you grew up, what that was like. What were those formative experiences during that phase of your life?

So originally born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, So I got a little hillbilly in me, which is completely not true. I lived in Tampa now. Louisville is about the same size as Tampa, or it was we just had a big spurt here. But needless to say, there's Louisville is a decent sized place. So I grew up in Louisville, was just really me and my mom from the time I was a year old to today when I'm 50, she was, is and will continue to be a huge influence in my life. So grew up single mom went to Catholic school and majority of my life, as much as I adore my mom was certainly very rigid and strict, if you will. As you can probably tell, don't have a big relationship with my dad per se. Not much at all. So that may be or may not be a topic of discussion. But, you know, I went to graduated college and then ended up coming down here to Florida back in 1994, I believe, and just really never looked back. Florida's an awesome place to live. The weather's phenomenal. I like to be outside every day, very active. And so got my professional career started in corporate America for the first six or seven years and then figure it out like I was the worst me with a steady paycheck, a much better meal, and I have to wake up and hunt every morning, if you will.

So, you know, work for some big companies, good companies, Johnson Johnson, MCI WorldCom, ET cetera. And then got my start in real estate and finance business 21, 22 years ago, started out as a mortgage broker, opened my own business, got my teeth kicked in in 2008, and got back on my feet with a niche boutique funding company called iVisionary Financial and then started CG, which I'm sure we'll talk about today, about 12 years ago. Been a great ride ever since. A little bit about me personally. I'm married to my wife Jennifer for what will be ten years here. In a few days, I've got a little girl, Ava, who's about eight and one half just a gem of a little girl. What I like to do, I love to be on the water. I love to play pickleball. I might as well be an addict at that. I love going to the gym a couple times a week. When I'm at my happiest is typically when I'm at the dinner table with my friend.

You covered a lot of ground there. So let me go back all the way to the beginning. You said your mom was a huge influence on you and growing up in Louisville, right?

Yep.

That would be pre college, I guess, Or through college.

Yeah. I was in Louisville until college. College was in Danville. A really small town in Kentucky. Worked first few years out of college in [00:04:10] Kentucky, [00:04:10] but then got transferred down here to Florida.

So let's go back to like elementary school, middle school, high school years probably for you, like for me, your parents or your parents are the center of your universe. It was for me.

Yeah.

You mentioned how much of an influence your mom had and has. So can you give us a couple of the main ways that your mom has influenced you, what you've learned from her, how she's helped you become the person you are?

I think my mom as a parent, I would suspect there's probably a lot of folks on here listening to parents as parents, very difficult to know the right balance between love and discipline. And on any given day, they can be one in the

same. My mom, I would say, had that figured out pretty good. She was a very loving, doting mother, if you would. But yet expectations were incredibly clear and very well defined. That to me. I mean, she was just always empowering me, but also helping me understand that without discipline in life, doesn't matter how much power you have, that power has to be harnessed. It has to be hedged, it has to be confined or contained, maybe a better word. It has to have bumpers and guardrails, otherwise it's unbridled. She was just a huge influence, always empowering me, pushing me to be excellent, and she always set the example. She always worked hard. She never did anything half-assed. So that's with me until this day.

Can you give any examples when you were in that formative phase where maybe that really sunk in for you, either from her example of something she was leading by example or something that you kind of went through where she jumped in and pushed you in one direction or another, like a story or any kind of anecdote come to mind.

I mean, it was such a part of who she was. It never really felt like an isolated incident per say.

You were an only child. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you were the one that was 100% focus of her attention, I would assume. Yeah.

As much as I could be. Right. was a single mom trying to raise a child, and I was a latchkey kid. When? Once I got to a certain age, which, for those of you are listening, if you're younger than Ken, and I may not know what that is, but it's typically a kid that comes home from school and their parents aren't home.

Yeah, one or both. Working right? In the case of a single parent, I was that way. Definitely to jog it a different way. Like, were there any instances where you were either resistant or going in a different direction where she kind of set you straight?

So as I stated, I walked this very rigid line through high school and them and I went away to college, even though it was only an hour, an hour away from home, might as well be four states over. You're not at home. And so I had amazing grades all the way through high school, I went to one of the most respected high schools, probably in all of Kentucky and maybe even across the country. Got amazing grades, got into a very well-respected school. However, when I went to school, I majored in party because my mom was so strict prior.

Like free finally, you know, get take advantage, right?

Yes. No.

I'm sure a lot of college kids have that same experience.

Yeah. So needless to say, that did not translate to very good grades. And I remember having a fairly disappointing report card and telling my mom like, Mom, just let me go to the University of Kentucky, just let me go to a public school and I can do what I'm doing, but I can get a 4.0. Let's not get lost in the semantics here. If you need a 4.0, I can easily still have a lot of fun and get that at University of Kentucky.

So your proposal was transfer to an easier program, basically.

And I'm going to save you some money. Yeah, a less expensive school. And I'll get good grades and I'm still going to still have some fun, right? Because the school I went to was difficult and I could just remember her looking at me and saying, there's no place for anything less than excellent in your life. I'm not going to save any money. Right? Because put me through school as a stress for her. You are not going to be mediocre. You are going to graduate from this college. And I can very distinctly remember that conversation where she just, you know, no, we operate from a place of excellent in this house.

How did that go over with you at that age? And given that you were still interested in partying.

It did not go over all that great. I still managed to continue getting average grades, but there was kind of a breakpoint in that conversation. I think I had a 1.8 GPA average, and if I didn't get it to a 2.0 that I was going to have to, you know, kind of like, stay, at my junior year of college. And so my grades did not improve dramatically, but they improved enough to get me over that hump to where, you know, hey, get to see me here and get out. So I think that was kind of the middle ground. But needless to say, she certainly was not happy about that, although she maintained faith. I also had a very entrepreneurial stepfather who was constantly pitching the fact that, hey, education is important, but it's not going to have any real bearing on whether or not Jason is going to be able to take care of himself and thrive at life. He was an entrepreneur. He. Is used to risk. My mom was confined to us like, Hey, I'm a single mom. I got to take care of this child. I got to do my best job with them. And if you don't get the best of grades and then he doesn't do well, then that's going to be my fault. Then I've got to take responsibility for it. And just a very different mindset between the two of them.

So coming out of college then you went into the corporate world. Now, was that easy to get a job given your focus on partying and so forth?

My first job was actually pretty easy. I was still aggressive. My mom had taught me the fundamentals of asking for what you want, going after what you want. Following up with recruiters, I stood out from the crowd.

That would serve anybody well. Not too many people do that.

That did serve me well, and I got a pretty good job coming out of school. I worked for a chemical distribution company and I had a company car and a base salary and commission. And I had a pretty good job coming out of school. But again, it was because I was, for lack of a better term, aggressive on the things that mattered.

So I don't want to spend too much time on the corporate side. But you had several corporate jobs before you went into, I guess, the mortgage business. Some of that whole experience in terms of Jason, in this corporate world, good, bad, ugly.

Yeah. So I was enamored with you know, I came out making pretty good money. Most of my initial jobs had company cars and expense accounts. Like, I thought that was cool, but yet it wasn't challenging enough for me. The way I would sum it up is kind of what I mentioned earlier. I'm the better me. When I first went out and tried something on my own where you eat what you kill, for lack of a better term. That's when I figured out I'm way better than if someone's bringing me a steady paycheck on a regular basis.

Got it. What was the catalyst that led you to say, okay, you know what? I'm going to leave the corporate world behind and start something that I can do that with? What year was that and what caused you to say, You know what, I'm going to give up this cushy job and do this thing? I think I can make a go of it.

Yeah, that is a story. I got really, really super sick with the digestive disorder that dominated my life over a two and a half year period or so.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. It took me kind of wrecked me physically, I weighed I think 120 lbs. And, you know, right now an average walk around one 170-175. It wrecked me. I spent a tremendous amount of time in the hospital and even got to a point where I was on short term disability.

And you would have been how old at this point?

28. 29.

Wow. That's pretty rare that someone in their late twenties is suffering from a health crisis like that. So that's yeah, that must have been tough.

It was tough. You know, when you go to the hospital sometimes and they hook you up with machines, the IV, the heart, you know, I've been in there for so long now. Every time I would go anywhere to just walk down the hall to the restroom, whatever, I had to take those machines, those poles with those machines on them. I had to take them with me. I had two of them.

Wow.

And I remember the day when they sent me home and I was unhooked, but I was in the process of waiting for the nurse to come and check me out of the hospital. I got up to go and use the bathroom and I grabbed those two poles with those machines, even though I was no longer hooked up to them.

That's got to be just a terrible feeling, like not knowing. Did you know what was going on, whether there was a cure? Like, how did you just cope with the situation?

Yeah, I mean, it was tough. I had a digestive disorder that was called

ulcerative colitis. A lot of people have what's called Crohn's.

Oh Crohn's. Yeah, I've heard. I've actually been to some benefits for that to contribute to raise money.

Yeah. So UC is very similar to Crohn's. The long and short of it is Crohn's affects your entire digestive system, whereas ulcerative colitis is isolated, which was a blessing for me that it was isolated because I had that section taken out from my body. Right? No, it's one of the most difficult times in my life. You got went for two and a half years where you're just like, Am I going to live? And if I'm going to live this way, do I want to live? Wow. The crazier thing was before that happened, I was the picture of health.

I mean, I consider you pretty super healthy as somebody that sees you at least four times a year, you know?

Yeah, I was a soldier. Ate clean. I worked out. I was doing everything right. So to have something come in where you feel like, how can I bear burden? The digestive illness, when I'm taking care of myself at a high level, and so it's difficult to process.

Who helped you through that? Just your mom or were there other folks that were there for you?

My mom helped me through that, and then I met a gentleman at the hospital named Richard. He didn't have UC, but he did have Crohn's and he had walked that walk for many, many, many years. And he kind of befriended me in the hospital during that process. When something is affecting your life like that, no one can understand except someone who's walked the walk.

Absolutely. Yeah.

No one can relate. No one can understand. No one can empathize. No one can sympathize. So he was a big influence. And then I had a phenomenal doctor, a phenomenal surgeon. I tell you, that was, what, 20 something years ago. And to this day, on Thanksgiving, which is next week, I usually call, I don't usually get to talk to him, but I call his office and just say, Hey, thanks.

That's amazing that 20 years later you're doing that. That's incredible.

He saved my life.

Wow.

Not only didn't save it, but he improved it in a way, like I'm back to, I'm normal.

You were back. So that experience. So you sort of got through that. How did that impact what you did next then.

Going through all of that. I was on short term disability, and it was about to run out because I had been knocked down for so long. Short term disability is called short term for a reason. The company I was with at the time was basically saying, Hey, you got to come back to work. And I was like, I can crawl, but I can't run. And I know they're going to want me to run. And so right about that time I was refinancing my home and the gentleman, his office was close to my home. And so he came over to the house and get the documents. When I gave him the documents I'd glanced out the driveway. And he was a year or two younger than I was. So he was maybe 26, 27. He had a black on black-on-black Porsche Carrera, 911 Turbo. At the time, I was still impressed with fancy things, you know. I said, How did you get that? And he said, Doing mortgages. And I was like, Well, you know, I would be interested in that. You know, I've been talking to the guy for a couple of weeks already. At that point, he said, Well, maybe see if we have a spot here. And so stepped out on my own instead of going back after my short term disability ran out. And that was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey.

So this would have been early 2000s.

Right at 2000, yeah.

Ok, You jump into the mortgage business and I guess initially as a producer or a representative of this other company that this gentleman worked at. So take us quickly through your mortgage experience. Were you good at it? What did you learn from that? What challenges did you encounter?

Well, I started out working for someone else. You had to have your license for a year before you could start your own shop. I think 366 days after I got my license, I started my own shop. I think I was a great originator and up to a certain point I would have said I was great at running a mortgage brokerage business until 2008 hit, and then I realized I'm really wasn't that good at running a business. I was just in the way of momentum.

That was that rising real estate market, the bubble that happened in the mid 2000s. Right?

Right.

So your shop that you started, I guess in 2001, then you had other producers, you hired people and they were working with you too.

Yes. Yeah. We got to where we were doing anywhere between 75 to 100 loans a month, a pretty good little shop. But again, the reality of it was we were in the way of momentum. And when it stopped, I was ill prepared to deal with it.

Were you focused on any segment like investors or homebuyers or commercial? Like what was your focus as a mortgage broker?

It was primarily just retail homebuyers.

When you had started out like you didn't know the mortgage business, you see this guy with a Porsche, so you go and work with his company and then you start your own. How did you build up your base of clients then, having not been in the business? Talk us about that first two or three years, how you built the momentum there.

I was just getting to the point where agents were sending me deals, but the reality of it was the majority of the business was through marketing. And at that time it was such a boom that all you had to do was put your ad in the newspaper under the business section and they published rates in there and there'd be a bunch of companies in there and this is our rate for this and our rate for that, and it would generate phone calls. And that's how I did it. It was, by and large, the newspaper, believe it or not. All I had to do was run those ads and the calls came in.

Now, by this time were you also you had a family like you were married or you were still single?

No, at that time I was married, but I had not had my little girl. I was a workaholic 100%. I learned a lot of lessons from then. It probably cost me my first marriage, to be honest with you. It would be very easy for me to say what happened was her fault. She did it. But I think in any life changing situation, you have to step back from it and figure out what maybe you had been responsible for and who would want to be with someone who works until 11, 12 or 1:00 night after night for a few years in a row. You walk them down the plank one inch at a time to where they "I don't want to be with you anymore". Not that you're a bad person. It's just that you're not around there anymore. I would imagine that's probably a similar path for a lot of entrepreneurs when they're young.

That makes sense. If I could go back in a time machine and meet Jason circa end of 06 when everything was booming or maybe early 07, what would that Jason be like compared to today's Jason? What would I experience?

I was young and dumb. Probably a little bit arrogant. I thought I had it all figured out, even though I was just in the way of momentum from a marketplace perspective.

That you would have been like mid thirties by this point. Roughly, right?

Yeah, yeah. In my mid thirties, actually in my mid thirties, that's when really kind of everything got sideways. I lost everything, right? I lost the business, I got divorced, I was on the bottom.

So talk about that. Let's fast forward to that now. So how did things go from great to bottoming out? What was that journey?

You know, the market shuts down, your source of income shuts down. That brings stress that was already in my marriage from working too much to an elevated position because now I got to keep working because I'm trying to figure this out. But now we ain't got no money.

Had you also dabbled in real estate because you're in the mortgage business and everybody's making money. Like, did you go and buy some stuff, too?

At that time? No, obviously I do now, but.

That's lucky.

Yeah. At that time, no, I had a short sale my house, got divorced. I had to figure out something else to do. Even though it was one of the lowest moments of my life, it was one of the most impactful moments in my life because I'd been born and raised in Catholic school and stuff, but never really would say I felt I had a relationship per se with God. And when everything is stripped from you, there's a reality check of what's left. And for me, I felt more at peace at that point in my life. It was a turning point and I had to see myself again. How you look at your children, I would assume, is how he would see you. I had to begin to look at myself in that light again, instead of being full of condemnation of, you know, I'm a failure, I'm, you know, I've lost everything. And I had to go through the process of picking myself back up off the bottom.

So would this have been around oh nine ish?

Yeah.

Yeah?

Yeah.

And some people, you know, they get very down on themselves. They never really pull out of it. It sounds like you had some of that in the beginning and then you found some way to build a base psychologically and then obviously physically in the world. How did you do that for somebody else that might be listening who was going through a tough time? How do you do that.

To get real nitty gritty and not be superficial? I kind of re declared who I was as a human being and what I wanted from life. I kind of wrote myself a letter of what my story would look like in a year from that moment. And I would take that letter and I had it in the bathroom you know when I would get cleaned up every day and try to get going and had momentum. I would read that letter to myself in the crazy thing about it is I would literally at times take some of the sentences in that letter. I know this is probably going to sound a little crazy, but I was might have been a little crazy. I would get about an inch away from the mirror in my bathroom and look into my own eyes and begin reprogramming myself and declaring who I was and what I wanted.

You know what? I'm a big believer in that. I tell a bunch of people like the power of affirmations, the power of writing things down, specifically your vision for yourself. I mean, I read a book called Thinking Grow Rich when I was really young, which a lot of people have read, and there's a lot of this commonality in a lot of different areas. It's also in the Sermon on the Mount, like it's in a lot of places. This idea that your thoughts become real, you know.

I still do it to this day. I write my story every year. There are times when I was yelling, screaming, crying, looking at myself, and I was reprogramming myself on a daily basis.

Now, somebody who doesn't know this idea say they're listening to us the first time. I mean, I'm somewhat familiar with it. Can you give us like what works for Jason? Like, how do you do this?

So I break this down into different phases of my life. What is my relationship with God look like? What is my relationship with my wife look like? What is my relationship with my daughter look like? What is my relationship with my body look like? So I break it down into chunks. I kind of start out with bullets. But then as you filter through this, you'll see it start to transition. There I express my gratitude today as I woke up by hitting my knees first, not my feet like I do that I go over and kiss my wife even if I'm pissed at her, you know.

But you create one of these every year.

Yeah. And then there are times when I modify it.

Okay, so you're actually writing an actual story in your case?

Yeah. Like, right now, this goes to show you. This is all relevant to right now. I am aggressive but never reckless, ever, leader. My business is amazing profitable. It gives me my family, its members tremendous blessing. It comes with frequent challenges and adjustments, and I ruthlessly and relentlessly attack those challenges and adjustments. They are all blessing. I am inspirational. I am powerful. I pour power into my members and remind them that we are here to serve them. This a big one right here. I am a wartime CEO. I am low during peaceful times. I am high intensity during times of war and we are at war right now. That's me referring to a shift in the economy.

Yeah, the real estate market in particular. Right. Which is a lot of the members are engaged in real estate.

Yeah. And so I just write this story and it just talks to you know like this phase right here is about my relationship with my daughter. She's learning that with things come responsibility. If she wants to have, she has to earn. This is the year that she's begun to have a specific set of chores, a disciplinarian, a soft but firm voice.

And this is a what, like right now it's towards the end of 2022. So this is like ten pages or something.

It's five pages long.

Five pages, okay and you read this every day or you work on it, or how does it impact you?

I work off of a morning ritual.

Oh, interesting.

Reading this story. That is part of my morning now five pages takes like 15 minutes. So if I read that three times a week, I'm happy even though I have a lot on here. Right. But it is part of my routine because it's my programming, which I think right now is pivotal, critical, instrumental. If you are someone in life trying to move forward in a time when everyone wants to retract in contract that you are continuing to pour power into your mind and find your own life.

By the way, this says wake up at 5:30 a.m. for those listening and you're at the gym or you're heading to the gym by 620.

There's two days a week where I play pickleball, right? Like on Tuesdays and Thursdays I play pickleball, but I'm on the pickleball courts at 6:00.

I like pickleball, by the way. I've only played a couple of times. It's a really cool game.

We'll have to play in December at CG.

Yes, we need to do that. I saw this last few. There's been pickleball as one of the activities, we're going back to where you said you were reprogramming yourself from the negative thoughts that you were having in light of what had just happened with the economy and your business. And I think a lot of millions and millions of people can relate to that. How did the idea of what you're doing now come from the ashes of that experience? How did you build it up?

So at that time, I was trying to figure out like, what do I do with the skill set that I've got as a mortgage broker? And at the time everybody was all the houses were underwater and they were short sales. They had bigger mortgages on them than they were worth from a value perspective. And so I started negotiating short sales for real estate agents, but I'm a people pleaser, and those took 12 to 18 months. And no matter how good of a job you did, no one was happy because of the length of time it took. And I was like, This is not going to work for me. So I started actually flipping a few short sales and at the time you could do what was called dry funding, like, I'm going to buy the house for 200 bucks and later today I'm going to sell it for $250. But the person who's going to buy you can use their money when they bring it to the title company it passes through. Well, they changed the rules. So you can't do that got to have wet funds, not dry funds. So I was like two days out from a closing. I was going to make like 40 something grand on a check and I needed money at the time because I was broke. Title company called and said, Jason, hey, you're selling a house for 495,000. You're buying it for 402. You've got to bring the 402 this time. And I was like, Well, that's problem because I don't have 402.

And this is somewhere in like 2010.

Yeah, somewhere in that arena. And I said, Well, I don't have 402,000. And so I got busy trying to find $402,000. I called a friend of mine who was wealthy and said, Hey, I need $402,000 for about 4 hours. And I explained the deal to him. He's like, Well, what do I get in exchange? And I said, How about two points? Two points on the money? He's like, for 4 hours? And I was like, Yes, He goes, All right, I trust you. So. Later that day, I sent him back a little bit over 410,000, and you could probably imagine what his first question was, is.

When could he do this again?

From that point forward, we started a new business called iVisionary Financial. We opened a business that provided transactional funding. It wasn't underwritten around credit. It was underwritten around the transaction. The fact that someone else is going to buy it as soon as you purchased it. We grew that business funding 75 to $100 Million a year for like four years. And the crazy thing is we did that on a $5 million credit facility.

Well, you only need it for like a day, right?

Right.

You could totally do that.

So that's how I kind of got back on my feet. But I can tell you that getting back on my feet and going from where I was then to where I am today, and I think this is really a great description of what success takes. And when I say success, I don't mean one dimensionally. I don't mean from a money perspective. I mean just like that letter addressed every facet of my life. If you want to be well rounded and successful in multiple facets of your life, you have to wake up on a daily basis and make sound decisions every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, year after year. And I think that's something that people discount. There's not a big margin of error. If you want long term success, if you want to have long term prosperity in all the facets of your life.

So you're talking about discipline and sustaining action in one focused area for a while, right?

I think in all areas.

Right. Actually yeah business, personal, family.

Yeah. Yeah.

Spiritual maybe, which you might put under personal. So you have this funding business, which sounds like a great business. I mean, financially, that would have been pretty good, right? For you?

Was very good.

That's really related to the wholesale market. People are wholesaling houses or is that where they're coming from, the houses that are being flipped?

Working.

Now we're finally at CG. You're the founder of CG. I guess it's been around now, what, since 2012?

12 years yeah.

12 years. So 2010 was when you started it.

Mmmhmm

Where did you come up with the idea of CG as a mastermind or a peer-to-peer group? Where did you come up with the idea and what was the original idea and how did you turn it into what it is today? And you could tell people what it is today.

I was actually in another mastermind that wasn't niche specific and I was a part of that mastermind to try and grow the funding company, which I just talked to you about.

Which mastermind was that?

Oh gosh, it was just like a guy named Jeff Adams, very small.

Oh, okay. But that's where you were first introduced to the idea that there are these mastermind groups and people get together and yeah.

And somebody in the group says, hey, you know, like your position to do this for real estate investors, you've got the asset, not assets like dollar wise. But I had a list.

Relationships.

Yeah you know I have the assets to pull it off and uh that's what I did.

Initially, you created the group while you had the iVision funding, right? Because that was four years and CG was started right at the beginning of that four years, it sounds like.

Yes.

Interesting. I didn't know that. So how did you get it off the ground and what was your vision for it then? And tell people who don't know what a mastermind or a peer to peer group is like what it's like.

How I got off the ground was I knew from a funding perspective at the funding business who our customers were. Okay, this person is borrowing money seven times a month, this person borrowing money 12 times a month. I knew their deal flow production, if you will. So I invited some of the top customers to it. And then in addition to that, the way that we would attract customers is we had an opt in page on our website. We would build a list. I would have our customers come in and do webinars about how they found the deal and negotiated the deal, close the deal, etc. And then we would tell the participants like, Hey, when you get to the point where you've got a deal and you need the funding will fund it. And so we used an educational underpinning to grow the funding business. And then I got very kind of connected, if you will, in the investor community. And so that's how I started it, got it off the ground. I think there was ten or so members at the first one, and now here we are approaching 330 probably this month. It's been a great journey. And for those of you who don't know what a mastermind is, it's a network that you join that you pay to be a part of because the return you get is going to be a great yield on your investment. But the best way to describe it is, is that you surround yourself with other highly talented, high caliber entrepreneurs and what you get in the mix of all of them, you kind of start doing deals and doing business together in the way that we create that interaction or that churn.

To get that spark started is we put you in a room with 25 or 30 other folks. You kind of have like a board of advisors where each person talks about, Here's what I'm doing really well. Here are my system is my strategy and my resources. I'm going to share them with you. You can have them. Now, I've given. But I need to get here the things I'm struggling with so that I need help with. And then someone else in that room has likely been there, done that, figured it out and can help you get there, do that and figure it out. And the ultimate goal would be to do that in a compressed time frame. If you were to go at it alone and take 18 months and you say, Oh my gosh, I met this person and I got that done in five months. You buy time, you compress time. It's much more than that. It's just a community of people too above all the business stuff that you end up doing life with. Our members, they travel the world together. They play pickleball together. We'll golf, take vacations with their families? They take philanthropic journeys together, whether it's to Mexico to build houses or in Guatemala, and it's served orphanages. It's just a big community where people have a lot in common and they better themselves, hopefully in all aspects by being a part of that community.

So I've never been in a mastermind before CG, oddly enough, and I'm not even in the wholesale business, though obviously a good chunk of what I do like 35% is real estate investing, usually more in the commercial multifamily level for my multifamily office firm. But, you know, when I first was referred in, it was from a member who had met me in a different context. And then I ended up really loving the people that you put together and the culture, the giver culture that was there. And so even though I wasn't directly in the business and I was learning stuff about a business that I'm really not really in, so I didn't even understand half the lingo that was in the rooms. Eventually I was like, Hey, you know, let me just try it because I like good people. And then obviously it took about a year and then people started to get to know me. And in that second year, a few more things started happening. And now, you know, obviously I have done deals in the room and have invested, I would say, millions of dollars in things that are good investments. It was really my experience in CG, which I think is exceptionally well run, thanks to Jason and the other key players that he has put together on his team. So to me that's been my entrée into the world of masterminds and I think a lot of the folks in the room, including I think Jason, right, you're yourself a part of multiple groups like this, or at least historically used to be.

Yeah, used to be, yeah.

And CG, of course, has a group for the really higher volume folks, and then it has a minor league concept, which is relatively new, right? A couple of years old, maybe.

Two years old. Yeah.

When you put together a mastermind, obviously getting anything going is really hard. So how do you somebody out there that might be listening who wants to put together a mastermind of their own or just wants to be a part of one? How do you put one together? I would intuitively guess that picking the right type of folks like I think everybody in CG is basically a go giver type. That seems to me to be critical to to the culture that you have to put together. So maybe in just like a minute or two, I think you're a master of putting together these groups, running them the way you communicate the culture you've created, the people you brought together everything. I think it's like a master class.

I appreciate that. I guess it should be after 12 years if I don't have it figured out by now. But no, I truly appreciate that. I mean, I think if you were going to start something like this, you should probably already be connected in your industry. If you're not established in some way or don't have some level of influence or connectivity to other people, it could be, I think, probably difficult to get one going. Like I said, I invited real estate investors, but I had a funding company that had created the relationships with those investors. Right? So there's got to be this leverage point, I think, where you have a good network or you have some type of influence. I think that is probably the key underpinning. I think before you even get into marketing and lead generation, like when you get one going, you just got to get old school and call up people and invite them. You got to bang the phones. It starts out with a low level of sophistication, if you will. I do think that one of the core things that you put some focus on, Ken, is you have to declare a value set that your organization, your community is going to operate within.

And when you create that value set, the right people are either going to be attracted to that value set or the wrong people will be repelled by it. And that may cost you some money in the short term because, hey, maybe this person would have joined and I would have got a check. In reality, I think you have to understand you're building a community and a building a community takes time. It takes selection. You know, having a set of core values that are kind of the guiding principles of what you stand for, what you stand against, and how the members of that community would function together, I think is pivotal because you know, there is a danger zone, especially like at the level of guys and gals that are at CG if there aren't borders or guidelines or bumpers, guardrails, and you get a bunch of hard charging A-type personality people that could go really, really, really, really good. Or it could go really, really, really, really bad. I think having a set of core values is pivotal to starting an organization, a community.

We haven't really talked about What is CG itself for, Who is it for? Give me the 30 second elevator spiel. Who's it for? What's the value proposition, etc.. Because I think some people listening to this may find this because they're thinking about joining or whatever, and probably see this somewhere on the Internet.

I mean, CG, our typical member at our premiere level group is probably 35 to 60 A-type entrepreneur, business owner. Most of them are in the real estate niche, at least from a CG perspective. They are looking to advance in most every aspect of their life and are looking to compress the amount of time it takes to do so. That typically takes place by everyone sharing their systems, their strategies, their connections, their resources at a very deep level. Right? Like literally like, hey, here's my entire SOP, my entire standard operating procedure manual. You can have it. And then a lot of times that's difficult for people to get their heads around. But it's not just real estate investors. There's folks like Ken who either have capital deploy or who want to raise money. For example, the deal that you and I did together, some young gentlemen, they're probably in their early thirties, they came to CG. They said one of their biggest problem was capital constraints. They've been in CG now for, I think, two and a half years, and they probably raised, I don't know, I'd guesstimate 8 million bucks from what's in the group. And it was absolutely pivotal to their growth. And they have been a rocket ship to understand the web and how it's woven. You have one person who's a member who needed capital. You had a bunch of other members with capital that helped them get the capital they need. And then as they're growing, they need new systems, new strategies, new people on their team. And CG is helping them shortcut their systems because they're getting it from someone else, figuring out who they need next in their org chart and helping them find them through headhunters and recruiters and just every step of the way. The right fit for someone in CG, CG will have its fingerprints all over every component of the business.

I can back that up because I think that the relationships that happen, because you're spending this quality time together and the format obviously, which we haven't talked about, the hot seats and so forth, it just creates trust and bonds. And then obviously once you have trust, a lot of value can flow.

Well, who besides your family do you spend more time with than people at CG on an annual basis?

Nobody really, especially not such a big group.

Yeah, we have four meetings a year and thier, three or four days at a time. And so who else do you spend more than 12 days with a year besides your family? Maybe the people you work at your office. But other than that, there is a bond that takes place and it's much deeper than just the money side of things. You get to know each other, who you are as human beings, and you share your struggle. You know, it's not just a big Oh, we're all knocking it out of the park. I mean, there's struggles along the way. There's hardships along the way. And these are folks who can walk it out with you.

We're almost at that time for the show today. Let's end on two things. One is what's something you're reading or a person you're following or something you're doing that's having a big impact on you right now that other people should check out? And then also, just to end on CG, what's the future that you're working on for the group, the mastermind that you're the founder of?

I just made a big move here recently, bringing in a partner to begin acquisition. There's a lot of settling and administrative things that have to kind of simmer down. But once that's done, I mean, we already have meetings in January to begin looking at other groups.

Nice.

And I'm looking to create a roll up or a holding company, if you will, of other masterminds and not just to build the business itself, but I have a kind of a master plan of a project that I have called. iwillriseup.com that is going to be put into works in Q1 of next year, where I want to help all of those people continue to grow, be more successful. What I want to harness all of that brainpower into teaching children at a young age about the entrepreneurial journey, as well as obviously none of us are in control, but there are certainly parts of our lives where we can make decisions and act out those decisions and march towards what we're after for in our lives. And so to share that with kids, I had a profound experience. I was in the Big Brother Little Brother program. He was 16 years old. I remember him sitting in the back seat, me looking in the rearview mirror at him and saying, you know, if you put your mind to something, you can do just about anything you want to do. And I just remember that dumbfounded look that he gave me. Like what?

Yeah.

And when I look at the world, the problems at the top are too big. But if I can have an influence on kids. At a young age. That's like where I feel like I can make a dent. So that's kind of where we're headed as an organization. And then I think something that I am reading right now that's impacted me is a book called "The Gap And The Gain" by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy. Ben Hardy will actually be keynoting in December at CG. But as entrepreneurs. Even if you're not an entrepreneur, anyone who is a high performing human being, we spend the majority of our time looking at the future. Even I can see a better tomorrow. I could see a better tomorrow. I could see a better tomorrow. So often, after spending many, many years of creating a better tomorrow, we can lose sight of the fact that today is already pretty good. If you have any type of vision that is a side effect, you're always, always looking forward, sometimes losing sight of referencing the book title. You are living in the gap between your today and your vision for tomorrow and never feeling like you're today is good enough because you have that focus on a vision for tomorrow where the game is, Hey, I'm going to keep growing. But today is really, really good and I've already accomplished a lot.

Like a lot of us, we don't take enough time to live in the gratitude for what we've already got, which is a lot just starting out. If we're living in the United States, we've got a lot compared to what people around the world have to deal with. One other thing that came to mind, I think that initiative of the I Will Rise Up with the kids. That sounds awesome and I'd love to hear more about it when it's live. You know, I'm a big Warren Buffett student and he created a series of cartoons called Warren Buffett's Secret Millionaires Club. You may just want to check that out. They've done a good job with sort of explaining certain concepts and things that could maybe be part of your curriculum for the kids that you're going to create all this content for.

Yeah, it's going to be a heavy lift, but I can see all of the content, the curriculum coming from members of like CG and it being streamed out. Other members of CG, hundreds of CG members are having that content streamed into their conference rooms at their office, hosting children and their parents.

That's an exciting vision. Well, that's a great place to end our conversation today. So Jason, thanks so much for doing this. I think a lot of people are going to benefit from the thoughts, the ideas, the vulnerability that you showed and the openness with which you approach this. So thanks again for doing it on behalf of everyone who gets to benefit from it.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the invitation. I hope we brought some value to some folks.

For more episodes of compound ideas, visit our website at CompoundIdeasShow.com. For more insights like these and to contribute to the conversation, go to my firm website at RidgewoodInvestments.com and click on the link to Insights at the top of the page. Also, please follow me on social media. I'm under Ken Majumdar on LinkedIn @KenMajumdar, Twitter @KMajumdar, Instagram @KenMajumdar, and on YouTube we have a new YouTube channel Investing with Ken Majumdar.

Ken Majumdar is the founder of Ridgewood Investments and several other affiliated companies. All opinions expressed by Ken and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ridgewood Investments or any of its affiliates. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Ridgewood Investments and its affiliates may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.