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GUEST: Jack MillerEmail: jackmiller@geltfinancial.comWeb: www.geltfinancial.comLinked In: Jack MillerTwitter: HJackMiller1Phone: (561) 221-0900 x.238
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THE SOPHISTICATED INVESTOR EPISODE 003 Investors Die From Ingestion Rather Than StarvationEP: Hello, everyone. This is Edwin Epperson, your host of The Sophisticated Investor. The Sophisticated Investor is an incredible community, which is focused on education, training and collaboration to help each of our members, and that includes you, to build, protect and preserve your families generational wealth. Now, I believe that we truly have a unique and one-of-a-kind educational community. For one, I believe that there are four primary markets, not just one. I believe that those four primary markets include your personal finance and mindset market. I believe the second market is your hard, tangible asset market. I believe that the third market is your stock and paper market. I believe the fourth market is your business investing market. Now those four markets are imperative to be able to understand and then call yourself a sophisticated investor. Today, we have an incredible guest who is going to educate us on their preferred market of investing, as well as the assets that they like to invest in. Please join me as we welcome today's guest.EE: Hello, everyone. This is Edwin Epperson, host of The Sophisticated Investor, and today we’re going to have an incredible conversation with Mr. Jack Miller. Jack, welcome to the show.JM: My pleasure, thank you for having me on. Hopefully you're having a great day.EE: Absolutely. Thank you for taking us the time out of your day to be on the show with us and real briefly, I want to introduce you to our listening audience for those of them who don’t know. Jack Miller has been in the real estate investing timeframe since 1987. You have completed over a billion dollars’ worth of loans in the lending sphere, over tens and tens and tens of thousands of loans. You have managed your company, which manages hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage portfolio currently and you are actively involved in the commercial real estate and that covers a very broad spectrum of assets under management. So, thank you sir, we know you’re very busy and we want to thank you again for taking the time to come on the show and divulge some of your wisdom and knowledge to our listening audience. Welcome again.JM: My pleasure.EE: One of the things that – just wanted to dive into, you know, when somebody reads your resume or when they maybe meet you, connect with you on LinkedIn, which I know you have a LinkedIn profile that I will give to listening audience to connect with you on. When they read what you’ve done, what you’ve accomplished, some people may assume that you were born that way, you were born into this wealth, you had all this knowledge, you had all these advantages. Could you walk us through sort of where or how you started, what was life, what was a childhood like for you and were you a privileged, advantaged person as some may think?JM: I believe anyone who was born in this country has certain privileges by itself. I certainly wasn’t a privileged child. While I did have great parents and grandparents and brothers and it’s a close family network, the reality is, my childhood wasn’t particularly pleasant one. I’m dyslexic and in the 60s, dyslexia, when I went to school you were called brain damaged. I really did terribly at school and my public education, my schooling, every day was a torturous day. The truth is, I don’t want to get too much into the school system, dyslexia and how it’s treated. But the truth is, it wasn’t a great childhood for that reason. I started to thrive when I got in the working world and from the time I was of very young age I’m guessing 10 or 11, I used to sell pretzels on the street corners of Philadelphia, sell coins, take summer jobs, sold pencils, literally, anything you name it, to make money. I could and to me, the pure opportunity that someone could say, "Hey, with your hard work, no skills, no education, you know, a lousy reader, terrible grammar, terrible spelling," this was way before spell check. "Your determination and your gut brute force can go out and make a living," was unbelievable to me so I viewed everything as an opportunity and I make mine, if it took someone five minutes to do something, I didn’t mind spending five hours on it or I didn’t mind keep swinging, you know, certain people seem to go through life and they always hit the nail on the head the first time. I’m the guy who hits the nail on the head the 20th time, you know? Just a story, yesterday, out of the blue, I was paid on something that came out of the blue, that I’ve worked my butt off for probably seven, eight years on. It’s the typical saying, you know, it takes about 10, 20 years to be an overnight success and that’s my story. Nothing has ever come easy for me.EE: I want to dive into that because I think a lot of people, especially in today’s – and the proponent and we’re in this age where the university, a degree and you may have a degree but when you started, it sounds like you didn’t have any formal education beyond high school?JM: I have no degree whatsoever except the school of hard knocks and being beaten up. That’s the only degree I have. EE: That’s awesome. Again, I want to remind people that are listening, that right here, you’ve just heard from a man and you will hear from a man for the rest of the time who doesn’t have a college degree, he doesn’t fit within the mold of what a lot of people maybe telling you as a listener that this is what defines a successful individual and what type – only, this type of individual has the opportunity to succeed as someone who goes to a university or college. They have a four, six, eight year degree, they get a job, work at it, make someone else wealthy and then they can retire and live off their pension. Jack, you completely broke that mold and I think that there is a shift happening underneath the bedrock of a higher learning right now that says, you know, not everybody needs to have a college education. There’s certain jobs that in my opinion, if I would have heard about you. Let’s say, 10 years ago, I would have thought, Jack Miller, he manages his companies, got hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, under management. He’s done over a billion dollars in lending. Well, you have to have a master’s degree from the Wharton’s business school or Harvard or Yale or something and so, very incredible to hear that you’ve accomplished where you’re at today without what the rest of the world if you will, deems as necessary to succeed. That’s really incredible. As speaking to dyslexia, I grew up at a family, I have a little bit of, but my brother struggled very much with dyslexia and even for them growing up in the 90s, it was still the stigma that we’re going to put you in the special school and this special class and you know, it’s done damage to them as their self-esteem if you will as they’ve grown up and trying to overcome the stigma that was placed on them. Absolutely, it’s amazing to hear your story that that’s something you start with and yet you're still able to accomplish what you’ve accomplished right now.JM: I appreciate it but I really don’t’ struggle with it. People around me may struggle with it because my grammar’s terrible, my spelling’s terrible but no struggles, I’ve learned, I have so many weaknesses and so many problems, I need to focus on my strengths. I don’t give really, my weakness or my problems too much attention. Or focus, I need to focus on the task and solving my mission and using my strengths to do that. Those who have to deal when we struggle with it, frankly, more than that too. I appreciate it.EE: Absolutely. You started of basically as a salesman on the streets of Philly, selling whatever you could get your hands on and that – sold pretzels and then on the coins and anything else and so where was the pivotal moment that you said, man, I see this opportunity in the commercial real estate space and even more like becoming the lender like a lot of people think that there’s such a barrier to entry to that. What was the – was there a catalyst, was there a moment that really spurred you into wanting to get into that industry?JM: I think it was multiple moments, you know, my first real experience was probably 17 or 18 during the Jimmy Carter era, give or take with 15, 16%. I was buying a lot of homes in Philadelphia with a friend of mine. I love the field, unfortunately, the partnership didn’t work out, it was all kinds of issues, I don’t want to go into them right now but all kinds of issues and everything went bust and that exited quickly but I got a taste or again, it’s unbelievable to me that someone could wake up in the morning, go out and through their hard work, make money. I thought the real estate business and the lending business and the finance business was a great way to do it. You don’t need a medical degree, you don’t need anything. Just through your sheer determination and a lot of hard work and a lot of failures. I could tell you, one failure after another. You just keep getting hit in the head with a two by four and say, why the heck did I go back in the ring? But one failure after another led to successful careers. But for me, it was, I was very lucky when I met my now wife of 32, 33 years. I really wasn’t employed, I was making money any which way I can and I applied for a job and I got a job, I don’t know why they hired me, I know still, no education, in the mortgage business and all of a sudden, they hired me on a Friday and start Monday, go out. I didn’t know anything. But it was again opportunity was largely commissioned but it was an
