How to Protect and Grow Wealth After Selling Your Business with Jay Jacobs – EP 252

Justin Donald: What’s up Jay? Good to have you on the show.

Jay Jacobs: Good to see you, Justin.

Justin Donald: Yeah, this is awesome. Well, we’ve been planning to do this for a while. We’ve had some reschedules and there is no time better than the present and I just can’t wait for people to hear your story.

Jay Jacobs: Yeah, it’s been a long time that we’ve worked together and developed both that working relationship and the friendship, so I’m really thrilled to be here.

Justin Donald: This is such a fun world for me because we started out in a coaching relationship, which blossomed this incredible friendship, and I now consider you one of my favorite people on planet Earth, and I’m just so thrilled to be able to share some of what we talk about behind closed doors with the rest of the world that has interest in some of the cool things that you’re doing, that we’re doing together. So, a little backstory for those of you that don’t know, Jay Jacobs is truly the OG of Lifestyle Investor. And when I say that, his early days of the mastermind, but even before that, he was my very first private client. And we are now in our sixth year of working together one-on-one. This is a program that, for a while, it was really the only program I did. At the beginning, I really only had, what, 5 to 10 people I coached a year. And Jay was the first one.

And I have since retired this program with everyone except Jay, because I leave our calls so fulfilled and have so much fun. And so, I think it’s kind of fun just to also throw out there a little piece of knowledge that most people don’t know. In the book I wrote, there is a section where I referenced you, but I kept it cryptic, right? So, if you read the book and you were wondering who is this JJ guy that Justin references. Who was his very first private client? Well, now, you know it. It’s Jay Jacobs, that’s where the JJ comes from and I’m just so glad to have you on the show, Jay.

Jay Jacobs: The secret’s out. Yeah, I think it’s so cool, Justin, to have been there literally at the beginning of your journey when you had your Zoom call with your friends and you were teaching everyone the secrets of your success. And then we connected. Mike Koenigs was helping you brand, and I was down in San Diego and I was like, “Hey Mike, you want to get together for a drink?” He’s like, “Yeah. You mind if I bring this guy along that I’m coaching? I think you’d really enjoy him.” So, yeah, that was burst in.

Justin Donald: Who would’ve ever thought? Thank you, Mike Koenigs, because one of my favorite friendships over the last six years has blossomed into someone I know I’m going to be a lifelong friend with here in Jay. So, this is fun, and I can’t wait to tell your story because it’s incredible. You’re an entrepreneur through and through in every sense. You had a large exit, a nine-figure exit of your very first company, and that had to be just kind of like an astronomical experience for you because you didn’t come from money. I mean, your business did well, so you lived a good life, but not in the early days. Like, there was a lot of hustle and a lot of grind. You eventually built that thing to be a very successful company in the manufacturing space. And then, a big company came in and said, “Hey, we love what you’re doing. We want to buy it. We want to buy it at a premium.”

And then it’s interesting because there’s one set of pros and cons, problems that exist as an entrepreneur. There’s a completely different set once you, all of a sudden, have nine figures sitting in your account and it’s like, uh-oh, my world has changed. And some people may say, oh, sob story. You have nine figures, Jay. Life is good. But what people don’t understand is there’s a lot of complexity that comes with that. It is a huge life change in many ways and it’s not all positive.

Jay Jacobs: There’s a lot of ability to or the potential ability to change and develop a new skill set. And you have a tremendous amount of money to manage now, and it’s a different skill set that, if you don’t do it right, you can blow it all. I think of it as in all aspects of our life, what you’ve done, what I think every entrepreneur and successful person does, you got to put in the reps, and we work together and we, with your guidance, put in the reps to get the right investment strategy for me.

And one of the things that I really respect you for is you don’t try to put a one picture, one strategy for everyone. It’s got to be comfortable for you and what’s important to you and what you’re trying to achieve. And you helped me develop that along the way. You put guardrails in place. I made a few mistakes, but they weren’t fatal. And that’s what I mean by putting the guardrails in. And I developed through the reps the ability where I was able and I’m able today to have an income that’s generated from my earnings because I don’t have a paycheck from any company. It’s strictly from the investments that I have made with your help.

Justin Donald: Yeah. It’s so fun watching your story and watching you blossom as an investor. You are a prolific, prolific entrepreneur, and that is great in the entrepreneurship realm. When you convert over to the lifestyle investor realm or just investor in general realm, it’s a totally different skill set. The things that got you to where you were as an entrepreneur are going to strip away everything that you’ve made as an investor. As an entrepreneur, you live a life of optimism. You live a life of, we’re going to figure it out. We’re on the brink of death as a company, but we’re going to make it happen, right?

I just read an article about the founder of FedEx, how he was down to his last $5,000 and couldn’t figure out what to do. They were going to go bankrupt and he went to Vegas, played blackjack, and turned it into like 35 grand or something. So, it was like maybe not the best way to go about doing it, but it ended up working.

Jay Jacobs: You hit upon something there is that entrepreneurship is calculated risk, and that doesn’t really necessarily work real well in investing because as an entrepreneur, you have a lot of control over your own destiny. Once you turn your money over to someone else, you have lost that control. So, risk is something that definitely needs to be tampered down, mitigated if possible. And it is a different way of making a decision when you’re talking about investing your money.

Justin Donald: Yeah, so true. And the flip side is, as an investor, you have to be a little bit more pessimistic. You have to be a little more critical. You have to say no more than you say yes. And that’s a big difference.

Jay Jacobs: One of the things that I love that you taught me is there’ll always be another deal, and if it doesn’t feel right, even if the numbers make sense, if your gut doesn’t really buy into it, don’t force it. Walk away. There’ll always be another deal.

Justin Donald: That’s right. The deal of a lifetime is so cliche and it’s just not accurate. It’s a total fallacy because there’s so many deals of a lifetime and what you don’t want to do is put too much into a deal of what you think is a lifetime that ends up wiping you out. And so, I’ve just been so proud and excited and blown away at how quickly you have learned the investment game. You’ve become a great investor and that is a very hard transition for an entrepreneur, but you have bridged that gap well.

And you got to be careful, like some people listening to this would say, “Oh, well, he’s got nine figures,” but what you don’t take into mind, and I’m not talking about Jay here, I’m just saying in general, like, let’s just lay out a scenario where someone has $100 million. Let’s say they pay $50 million in taxes, so now it’s down to 50. Let’s say you get a divorce, now it’s down to 25. Let’s say you make a few bad investments, now it’s down to 15. Let’s say that your lifestyle, what you’ve become accustomed to living is $2 million a year or $1.5 million a year, you have less than 10 years to live on that lifestyle and everything could be gone.

And you see this all the time with pro athletes, with early young entrepreneurs that exit for a huge fortune, and they wasted away with bad choices. And so, just because it looks like on paper someone set, that’s just not the reality. You have to be careful. You have to be wise. You have to get around people that know what they’re doing and learn the game and it’s a different game.

Jay Jacobs: Sure is. What I like with our relationship over the years is I approach this with the 80/20 mentality. And I wanted to understand enough to make what I hope were really good choices and protect my money. I didn’t want to become an expert investor, so the 80/20 was where I have landed, where I feel comfortable. And what that income stream does is allows me to pursue things that are more passionate for me, where I get more joy and where I can hopefully make more impact in being better investor because man, there’s some really, really smart investors out there. I’m coming in late in the game. I’m never going to be anywhere close to them.

Justin Donald: But it’s great because you understand the importance of networking with them, building a relationship. You don’t have to be as good as them, but can you follow on to deals with them? Can you be in their ecosystem so you get access to deals you normally wouldn’t get? Can you pick up things here and there just by hanging out with them, which you can? When you surround yourself with a peer group that plays the game of life and business and wealth creation at a higher level and mentorship that does the same, it puts you in another stratosphere and it’s fun. It’s an absolute blast. You get to start over as a novice again, and there’s something beautiful about that.

Jay Jacobs: Yeah. One of the criteria that I’ve landed on, and again, you gave me the freedom to have this be a criteria, is I really want to feel like someone is going to be a good steward of my money. And I’ve learned this by making investments where people have not been good stewards of my money. And what I mean by that is that when there’s a choice to be made, is it going to benefit them or is it going to benefit me? And there’s the gray. Maybe it’s legally a decision they can make in their favor. However, it’s not in my interest.

I want the person who’s more interested in the long term who their reputation is more important, the relationship with me is more important, and I want to give a shout out to Levi at Harbor Capital. He, to me, embodies that. We had a situation this week where I approached him on something that I was concerned about in one of his deals, and he worked with me there and he understood where I was coming from and he didn’t have to do that. However, he is a good steward of my money and that was important for him to maintain our relationship.

Justin Donald: I love that. And by the way, Levi is a member of the Lifestyle Investor Mastermind, and we did a podcast with him. I’m so pleased with him as well and just think the world of him and his class and his character. So, I love hearing that, Jay, and that’s it. You’ve got to find those people because you and I, we’ve done enough investments to have not found those people that will do whatever it takes for them to benefit at your loss. There is even a scenario where both could benefit, but there is another scenario where they could benefit to your detriment. And that’s what they did, even though the other scenario was both people winning. To have the right jockey, the right sponsor, that is the most important thing in investing.

Jay Jacobs: Yes. And it makes it a lot easier too, because you understand the framework of their deal, so there’s less time that you put in to an investment decision.

Justin Donald: Yeah, and you got to be careful how much you put into any given deal and how much you give to any single sponsor because there’s concentration risk there and you don’t ever want to get wiped out because of one poor choice or a collection of poor choices, one sponsor makes or one deal, kind of the trouble a deal could get into. But you had talked earlier about how you want to have enough money to live life on your terms, to do the things you’re passionate about, to focus on impact. And you’ve done marvelously at that.

And part of that is you had this killer lifestyle before selling your business. You wanted to maintain that lifestyle. So, we had to figure out how do we create the cash flow so that you have passive income covering lifestyles. You can live life and not worry about bills, not worry about the cool stuff that you want to do. And I think when you can do that, it frees you up to be able to think outside the box and to make decisions that have nothing to do with financial outcomes. And you model that really well, Jay.

Jay Jacobs: Well, thank you. Thank you. It’s given me the freedom to try different things, to expand my skills and capabilities to open doors that, and I like to say that sometimes you have to close doors for other doors to open or for you even to see that there is a door to open. And by selling my company, I felt like there was still a lot left on the table that I could do. However, it was time to close that door and open other doors, and I had no idea that the door would open with our friendship and relationship and that your financial mentorship and coaching would allow me to open so many other doors.

Give you an example, in 2023 in the fall, I had always wanted to live in another country, not just be a tourist for a period of time, but actually, sort of live with the folks there. So, I picked Buenos Aires, a city that I’d always wanted to go to, and I spent the month of October in 2023 down there. And I was able to comfortably do that because I had a passive income stream. And between Zoom and a telephone, people, unless I wanted them to know really didn’t know where I was.

Justin Donald: That’s right. You can game the system that way, which is so cool. And in the process of that, you had the mental bandwidth to really help take off another company that is creating ripples in the world of manufacturing software. And I’d love for you to talk a little bit about Paperless Parts, a company that you’ve given me the privilege to be able to invest in alongside you, but a company that is really changing the game and on a trajectory to the moon right now.

Jay Jacobs: Well, Paperless Parts came out of what we did at Rapid. And Rapid grew between 2010 and 2017 from roughly $5 million to roughly $50 million in revenue. And a lot of that was through software automation of what I called rote task, and a big one was the quoting and estimating of parts. We quoted over a hundred thousand unique part numbers, which in the manufacturing world is a really big number. We did that in 2017. And before we sold the company, before we were even approached to be acquired, we had spun out Paperless Parts because I wanted to give back to American manufacturing and help us retake the mantle of the leader globally in manufacturing.

So, I knew shops didn’t have the capacity to hire software to developers ourselves. So, I wanted to make what was to us a really important piece of our success available to all the other shops, and it took a while for it to get off the ground. And I was fortunate to have my co-founder, Jason Ray, reach out to me on LinkedIn and we started in a mentoring/coaching relationship. And it evolved into him saying yes, I want to take the idea and the vision of this to shops. Jason hired a team. And I have so much respect for him, what he has accomplished since 2017 in leading Paperless Parts. We’re over $25 million now, I think, in annual ARR.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Jay Jacobs: And we are having an impact in American manufacturing. We have some of the largest machine shops and sheet metal shops out there. And they’re using our quoting and estimating software, a lot of the workflow, not only coming up with pricing, but the workflow that’s around it. We have collaboration tools, viewing tools, and we are really changing the dynamics of how fast a quote can be turned around because that’s an important part of what the OEMs are looking for. Also, with our implementation of AI into some of the bill of material creation, the PDF and other things behind the scenes, we are making them more consistent. We are eliminating the mistakes that come from humans entering information and we are enabling the coast to be turned around super fast. It’s fun watching what Jason and the team have done.

We had a user conference in May and the energy, it was incredible. It was so palpable. The customers are such fans. And they were so excited to be in the room to meet other progressive and innovative shop owners to share what they’re doing. It was really open community, and I’ve said, yeah, the content of the user conference was important, but it’s more Us enabling the shops to connect with one another so that they can share. If you’re in Boston and you’re talking to a shop owner in California, there’s not much overlap in competitiveness there from a customer base. So, they’re so open and willing to help each other out.

Justin Donald: Well, it’s so cool because not only have you created this proprietary software that is changing the game in the manufacturing space for these mom-and-pop shops, but you also are building a community where they can interact, they can make each other better, they can partner on things, and it’s awesome. I had the privilege of attending your big annual event last year and was just blown away, blown away with Jason who’s just a total stud, blown away with the whole operation, with the people coming in, your clients. It’s just an incredible ecosystem of people.

And what’s so great is, Jay, you do a good job of seeing things early. I always talk about invisible deals, the power of getting into industries before their mainstream. You are so good at this and your whole idea of like, hey, let’s bring manufacturing back to the US. You’ve been trumpeting this way before the government. And the political policy surrounding it was conducive for it. And so, I love that you’ve just been championing this and it’s really benefiting you guys because you’re an early mover.

Jay Jacobs: It’s necessary. And we’re looking at it from the really big picture. And then I think I had shared with you, I hired a fellow who was just a rockstar, possesses super high agency, and maybe we can talk about the concept of the high agency.

Justin Donald: We should.

Jay Jacobs: I don’t have the bandwidth to apply myself to learning AI every day, but there’s going to be a huge intersection in manufacturing with AI as well, and that’s his job. He is learning it, and we are working with a shop that, and this is one of the cool things, is the shop is owned by a fellow who used to work for me as well. He went out after Rapid was sold, bought a shop, and is super successful. However, he’s not focused on the technology implementation. He’s a Paperless Parts user. So, bottom line, we’re going to go in there. We’re going to help him accelerate with Paperless Parts. We’re also going to create some AI workflow tools for him.

And then I have some ideas on how AI might be leveraged with some of the data that’s within Paperless Parts. And we’re just playing with maybe creating some chrome widgets and using those to, software automation is where it’s at. And the no-code environment now, I made the investment, and it truly is an investment because it’s costing me money out of my passive income cash flow. However, I really believe, even though AI may not be there yet, that it is coming. And if we are not learning now, then when it is “real,” we will be behind the eight ball. So, we want to be ahead of the curve, sort of like what you said, always looking at the future. I think the AI application in every industry, it’s there, it’s real. We’re talking about it. If you’re not learning how to use it now, then you will be behind.

Justin Donald: Yeah. And by the way, you just gave a perfect example that I want to elaborate on. So, number one, you talked about someone that’s high agency and we need to explore that. Number two, I talked about seeing the things that might not be there. So, you hired someone not even knowing what the role was, just knowing that you liked working with this guy who was great at your past company. He was looking for a new challenge.

Number three, because you had the passive income and didn’t have any fear or scarcity around your money, you said, “Hey, I’m going to hire you. I don’t even know what you’re going to do. I just know that if you learn this niche, there’s going to be some way to apply it.” And so, to me, it still cracks me up because he doesn’t really have a job title. Like, we’re still kind of, I mean, maybe he has like a placeholder title, but like, you’re still figuring out exactly what it is that he’s going to do. But he’s tackled a bunch of things and has done some pretty neat innovations and has learned a bunch. But I envision his role continuing to morph, continuing to change. But you had the foresight to say, “Hey, this emerging market, we need to capitalize on it. I’m going to pay someone to figure it out. I don’t have the time. But I’m going to pay someone, I’m going to pay him well so that they stay around and then we’ll figure it out as we go.”

Jay Jacobs: Yeah. And where this may land, where he may land it, it’s all up in the air. However, if you look at ahead of the curve, humanoid robots, they’re coming. They’re coming fast. And I’ve actually made some investments in a couple of the humanoid companies because not so much for the return, although I think the return will be there in the long run. It’s, I want access to the teams. I want to be able to purchase one of the beta or production or pre-production humanoids and figure out how to apply those on the shop floor and…

Justin Donald: That’s cool.

Jay Jacobs: The shop owners, they’ve got enough going on. Again, they’re not technology people. I can assist them and I think between my experience of what Paperless Parts has done that we will be able to help the shop owners bring those in. And again, that’s just going to accelerate American manufacturing even more.

Justin Donald: Well, I love it. A lot of entrepreneurs are one-hit wonders. If they have a big exit, they either maintain it or they lose some money, or they try another business, they fail. Your next business is likely to be much more successful than your very first one. And I think by most people as estimates, they would say your first one was as successful as anyone could ever desire. And so, I love it. But you’re also really generous with the pie. So, with Rapid, you were the owner, founder, sole equity owner if memory serves me correctly, whereas here, you’ve divvied up some of that pie for key people to go out and run it and do good things. Well, now, the pie is going to grow even bigger because you have so many smart people involved.

Jay Jacobs: Yeah, and it’s fun sharing that there were some other small equity owners at Rapid when we sold. One of the things I did, if anybody is looking at selling a company, I got the acquirer to, it was their money, but I got to spend a million dollars in giving, I called it their– you want to give this money to the team as a retention bonus to show them that you are coming in as a good player. And so, I’ll say, gave me a million dollars and I got to allocate it how I thought it should be distributed to my team. And if you worked at Rapid for over a year, you got some money. The guy who was with us from day one, employee number one, Scott Reynolds, he got over I think $20,000.

Justin Donald: That’s awesome.

Jay Jacobs: That was a lot of fun.

Justin Donald: That’s so cool. And I love that you want to pay it forward and you’re always looking out for your people. And then it’s also fun watching you dive into passion projects. So, I’d love for you to talk about Airfield Place because one of the ideas you had is like, hey, what about a one-stop shop? You live in New Hampshire, it gets cold. You love to run. You’re actually one of the fastest runners in your age group, which is cool. You’ve won several races in your category. And so, for you, it was hard to train for some of these races year round. And so, I love that you turned like passion projects into your own business. I also love that you learned a bunch from that business and said, “Hey, maybe this isn’t where I want to be spending time, but I’m glad I ventured out to do it.”

Jay Jacobs: Yeah. Airfield Place is a fitness and wellness mecca on the seacoast of New Hampshire. And the goal was, it’s about 65,000 square feet, was to create a one-stop shop so that, and we include co-working in there because my office is in there, that you can work and be physically fit in the same place. And it was selfish as well. I was tired of getting in my car and driving around all these people. I said, wouldn’t it be great if they’re all under one roof? And really, even the catalyst was in New Hampshire, you’re not going to go out on the track when it’s 10 degrees out and shovel the snow off.

So, in the middle of the building, it’s 250 feet long, we have about a 70-meter sprint lane where you can sprint at full speed for pretty much 60 meters. And that, I sense of decided to winter in Phoenix and I’m down in Phoenix at that time. However, when I’m back in the spring or holidays and it’s raining out, it’s cold out, I have a place where I can really work on acceleration. And we incorporate into the gym who’s leasing space there. It’s by far the best gym on the sea coast. It’s called Flight House. And what’s really cool, again, is how all this stuff evolves. The owner there, he’s looking at a franchise model. He’s opening up a gym in the Boston area and another location in New Hampshire, and he is also looking at several locations in other places in the country. The model that he’s created, there is a lot of demand for it.

So, this was the genesis for him to be able to put his idea into place and to liberate that passion of his. Same thing, we have 15,000 square feet, six pickleball courts indoors. The owner’s, he now has a second location in Massachusetts. The first one’s been so successful. And we haven’t fully built it out. There’s things that I would like to see there than that you alluded to. My priorities have changed a little bit. However, it’s so much fun walking in and feeling the energy and being able to literally walk out the door of my office if we’re having a conversation and go over and walk on a treadmill, put the headphones in, walk on a treadmill. And if it’s depending on the situation, if it’s a casual enough conversation, I’ll go out into the gym area. I’d love to hang. I try to hang seven minutes a day, so I’ll go hang and stretch and do other things with the headphones in. And incorporating that, the fitness into the work, I think that it’s fun and it’s important that we sit too much and we can be doing other things.

Justin Donald: Yeah. I love that you do that and I love that you’ve built all the things there that you want, the cold plunge, I mean, anything that you want for health and wellness, I mean, it’s all there. And I feel like this is a great opportunity to talk a little bit about lifestyle because I think sometimes it’s hard to get permission to spend money on yourself, whether it be investing in your education, investing in your relationships, investing in experiences. And so, this is something I think you’ve done beautifully, but it’s almost like you have to give yourself permission if you grew up with this mindset of scarcity, which I did, I think you did as well.

Jay Jacobs: Sure.

Justin Donald: I love what you’ve done with your lifestyle. You’ve just said yes to so many more cool things for life experiences. Last time I was in town, I got to ride in your Bentley, which is beautiful. You’ve got your main house, you’ve got a lake house, you’ve got your winter house, and each of our beautiful properties, and I mean the list goes on and on and on, and you travel all over. You go to cool places for long stretches, but I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what that was like because I think in the beginning, you kind of had a hard time spending money on yourself.

Jay Jacobs: I sure did. And if you don’t come from money, there is that scarcity. However, I’m going to go back to having a passive income stream that has become predictable, has made me comfortable with spending it. Okay, I make X amount of dollars a year and I know it’s going to happen next year. Let’s spend the money. And not that I spend it frivolously; however, the things that bring me joy, I try to put the money there. And one of the things that talked about is my sprinting. For me, a hobby is the biohacking longevity. And I’m really curious. I’m 61 now. I am in probably still the best shape of my life. Maybe, I’m not as fast as I used to be. I’m strong though, I think, as I have ever been. And I’m so curious, what can I still do at this age as I continue to age with my body? And so, I’ve made a lot of investments with a concierge doctor with trying different modalities, and some of them work, some of them don’t. However, what’s it, Wayne Gretzky, and all the shots that he didn’t take and he’s never going to score on.

Justin Donald: That’s right.

Jay Jacobs: And the ability to try things to let your curiosity be explored. And to me, that’s how I want to use the money that I created. And I also use it to give back to some of the other entrepreneurs who are there because I don’t have to spend my time working and generating income. So, I love to work with young entrepreneurs and again, trying to figure out how do you mix that with your other passions. So, one of the things that I’ve taken up to doing now in Phoenix, which has been really incredibly well received, is if people want to have a meeting with me, I’m like, come on over. I’m very close to a huge city park and we go out and we walk around the desert and talk instead of sitting in a coffee shop or a bar or at lunch and…

Justin Donald: That’s great.

Jay Jacobs: Yeah. And people really enjoy it, so making it happen.

Justin Donald: I love that. And the other things that I really love and appreciate is that you create these epic memories and experiences for your family and for other loved ones. And one of my favorite places that I’ve taken my family is Blackberry Farm. It’s just a magical place if you’ve never been and just beautiful. Always rated a top three resort in the US and I remember telling you about just how epic this place was, and then I remember you saying, well, I’m going to do this really cool trip and I’m going to invite all of my family and I’m just going to pay for it because they probably can’t or wouldn’t, would choose not to spend their money that way because it is expensive there. It’s like, I don’t know, $2,000 a night or something. And I’d love to hear you share some of that story because you had big takeaways relationally from that experience.

Jay Jacobs: Well, the book that has definitely taken me from a scarcity to an abundance mindset is Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. And one of the points that he makes is there’s seasons in life, and some of the seasons you know when they’re going to end and some you don’t. However, I am really fortunate my folks are still alive. They’re 89 and 91 now. And this was Blackberry Farm, and thank you so much for that recommendation. They don’t travel now. They will not get on a plane. So, I think it was three years ago, though, they would, and we all went down the Blackberry Farm. We were able to rent one of the big homes there. And there’s activities there for our every age. So, my brother and I went trail running. Some people went horseback riding. There was a wine tasting or one of the cellars there that we got into, the food is incredible. And we had a private dinner on the porch of our home there the last night, and sort of to bring it all together, my dad stood up at the end and gave a toast and he raised his glass and said, “This is one of the best days of my life.” All his family was there. It was such a special occasion. And yeah, to be able to do that for my family, I’ve felt really proud and honored.

Justin Donald: It’s just amazing to be able to help family and friends have those experiences and help people live their best day ever, which I think is awesome. And you’re going to remember that. And you know what? Had you not taken the initiative to do that, they probably wouldn’t travel there today. And so, it’s a good thing you did it when you did. I love that. You take massive action on whatever the thing is, and I love that about you. You’re like, you learn something new, you put it in play. You hear about a place, you go there. I mean, we can even talk on longevity, like you love the biohacking space and you heard about people going to this stem cell clinic in Buenos Aires, and so, you went and you’ve had tremendous success with these stem cells, harvesting your own stem cells. And I think that’d be worth talking about as a lot of people that listen to this are big time into health and wellness.

Jay Jacobs: Well, I think what I’ve seen with my body with stem cells, in my mind, it’s criminal that we cannot do this in the US. And what I mean by that is I tore my rotator cuff, the supraspinatus pretty severely last May. I have had two injections. I just went down for a third one of my stem cells that were differentiated into the tendon tissue. And I am back to exercising. The MRIs show that my supraspinatus is almost healed. After this third injection, it will probably fully be healed. And this is without surgery. Surgery is a 12 to 15-month recovery with lots of PT, and that doesn’t have to happen. I’ve had brain IV stem cells and I’ve had a lot of, through my concierge doctor, measurements of my brain function through the years. We have shown, and it’s pretty attributable to the stem cells that as you age, speed of your brain decreases. Well, mine has sped back up to a 20 something. The stem cells, they’re just miraculous. And it’s your own stem cells. In this case, it’s your body’s repairing itself, which just needs a little help getting in the right places.

Justin Donald: That’s right. And it’s just a matter of time until this passes. So, the FDA considers your own body’s stem cells a drug. So, it’s just really backwards, but at some point in time, I mean, the success that they’re having, there’s just no way this doesn’t become mainstream in the US. I’ve had a lot of success with stem cells as well, injuries that I’ve recovered from that should have required surgery that I did not need to have surgery. And so, this is the wave of the future. There is absolutely no doubt about that in my mind.

Jay Jacobs: I’ll throw out a couple other things. My Achilles, they literally were my Achilles heel that I’d get calf strains and prevent me from training and reaching my capacity in the sprinting sense. Those have been rejuvenated. The tissue is much younger. And they also have injected cartilage cells into my hips and shoulders. They saw signs of early arthritis there. They said, you’re good for another 20 years. So, I will not need a hip or shoulder replacement.

Justin Donald: This is powerful stuff, and I just encourage those of you that are struggling with some of these physical limitations, look into stem cells and the different places that do it and the difference between using umbilical cord stem cells from someone else versus using your own stem cells. If you’re using your own stem cells, there are some places in the US that will do it, but they’re kind of undercover. Generally speaking, you got to go out of the country to do that and there’s a few places in Latin America that’s doing it and doing it well and have a great track record. So, I love that you’re doing that.

I’m curious from your standpoint, you’ve made a lot of investments in your health. You’ve made a lot of investments in your knowledge. I’m curious what you see as some of the best investments that you’ve made to your personal growth, to your success, like things that have gotten you to where you are now and things that are going to get you to where you want to go.

Jay Jacobs: Oh, that’s a big question. I think it’s the scarcity mindset, I think the switch to the abundance and the predictability of the income have given me the freedom to say, okay, if you don’t have your health, then everything else sort of doesn’t matter. So, I’ve put a lot of time and energy there. And I will continue to do that. I want to try different techniques. I belong to an age reversal mastermind. There’s some cutting-edge stuff going on there, and the whole idea is the founder says, he wants to be first in line, then we can be right behind him. So, we didn’t talk about it. I have a goal of living to 136. And I’ll give a plug for Strategic Coach that comes from Dan Sullivan. I share his desire to live to 2100, which was when I’ll be 136, and that way, I’ll live a full calendar century.

I think though it’s being willing to fail. Everybody has things they want to do and sometimes they’re scary. I moved down to Phoenix here in the winters to, didn’t know anyone, so I rejoined Entrepreneurs’ Organization, joined an organization called Tiger 21, and I’ve just put myself out there in different ways to meet people, but they’re aligned with my interest in the entrepreneurship and the desire to have a real leverage, the types of people you find in Tiger 21 to help me be a savvy investor.

So, putting yourself in the path of luck, of serendipity, and being open. I’ll say you that one of the things that I have really tried to, I’m a left-brain person. I’m a degreed engineer, and I’ve really tried to open up the access to the right brain. And over the last four or five years, the synchronicities that have started to happen because I see them and I accept them and I’m willing to surrender to them. In many ways, those have created some really cool experiences and opportunities, and it’s not comfortable, but I’m getting more comfortable being uncomfortable.

Justin Donald: Yeah, I love that. Find comfort in being uncomfortable. I love that. You got to get out of your comfort zone to be able to grow. And I know you do that with a lot of the groups you’re in. I guess, a follow-up question, since you just mentioned a whole bunch of masterminds you’re a part of, why spend the money on all these masterminds? You’re in Strategic Coach. I’ve joined you for a bunch of Free Zone Frontier events. That’s 50k a year. Lifestyle Investor is 55k a year. Tiger 21 is 33k a year. The daVinci50 is 30k to 50k a year. I mean, you’re in all these groups.

You pay for coaching, you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, why? Because there are people out there that haven’t cracked this code. This, for me, was one of the– I was just on a podcast, my buddy Jon Vroman’s podcast. And he said, like, “What’s your biggest key to success?” And this was my biggest key to success was access and information and relationships and upgrading my peer group and my intellectual peer group and my own intellect and my mentorship. And so, I’m curious why you continue to spend so much on masterminds.

Jay Jacobs: I think, first of all, as you said it, you outlined it really accurately. It is the people you meet though, and you are, they say, the average of the five people you hang out with the most. So, if you want to achieve whatever it is, find those people who you can hang out with and they will bring you up to that level. And just fun people too. The organizations I joined, they’re sort of my tribe in the different ways. Like The daVinci, we have such nerdy conversations about all sorts of the longevity stuff and we challenge one another and the opinions, this is not an exact science, so we are on the cutting edge though, and that’s fun to be a pioneer in that space. The entrepreneurs, the people who are in Lifestyle Investor. The people, I guess that’s one of the things is these types of organizations, the people who have had success are successful in many cases are on their way to more success. And at the same time, they’re very open and willing to share and answer questions, help in any way that they can. And those are the types of people I want to hang out with.

Justin Donald: Oh, amen to that. I love successful, humble people willing to teach and hungry to learn themselves, no matter how much success they’ve had, not letting ego get in the way. I just, I love it. I know another key to your success I feel like we have to touch on, is you have an incredible chief of staff. Carrie Hooper is a world beater in the realm of like running and organizing your life. And so, I’d love for you to just take a moment to share the importance of having some sort of executive role. It could be an executive assistant, it could be a chief of staff, but someone that just basically helps you keep your life in order because she is amazing.

Jay Jacobs: Yeah. For the longest time at Rapid, resisted that. I was like, well, I can do that myself. And the answer is sort of like many roles at Rapid, yeah, I could do that. So, she came on board at Rapid and then when we sold the company, she continued with me. And she has the ability, she’s her with the bandwidth, the different types of tasks that she manages for me. She helps with my podcast. She is producing it. It’s not very polished because she’s not a podcast producer. However, we get out there. And we, in our little niche, have lots of listeners. That’s her, that’s her. She helps me manage my finances, keep track of everything, execute on the funds that I enter into, helps me manage many aspects of my personal life, the homes, the coordination of some of this health stuff, the travel. And I think what’s really freeing that, ooh, scary at first, however, we’ve done it for so long now, she manages my inbox.

Justin Donald: Oh, I love it.

Jay Jacobs: I do not look at my inbox. Underneath my inbox, there’s a folder called Inbox Jay, and that’s for the really important stuff. And then there’s another folder called Once a Day that I look at when I have the time. She keeps me in the loop. There’s stuff that I get copied on, so there’s another folder for that. And not having to be in your InMail constantly, and I have actually a message in my signature that says, I don’t get email on my phone, and I don’t. So, if you want to connect with me, text me or call me. Don’t assume that I’m going to be looking at my email.

Now, Carrie may look at it and say, Jay, this is important. You got to connect or do this. She’s the glue though. She enabled me to go down to Buenos Aires. I would encourage anyone who has the financial capacity to have an executive assistant in Strategic Coach where we call a strategic assistant. It is an incredible investment and do it.

Justin Donald: Yeah. I couldn’t function without one. I hired my first one when I was, let’s see, I think I was 20 years old.

Jay Jacobs: Wow.

Justin Donald: And I’ve had a virtual assistant since then and I’ve had an executive assistant since then. And one of the hacks that I like to share with people is that when I do aptitude tests or behavioral assessments, I always like to find people that have– they need to be able to do the role well, but I want to find a skill set that allows them to advance in the organization as they move up, grow their skills, understand things more. And so, many of my executive assistants have moved up to larger roles inside of different businesses. And I just can’t stress the importance of having some sort of like, at a minimum, a virtual assistant, ideally an executive assistant, and at a certain point in time, it makes sense to have a chief of staff that can handle a lot more than what just an executive assistant. I mean, a chief of staff can kind of sit in on your behalf for meetings with the acumen and ability to make decisions or relay things back for you to decide on, but I think that’s huge. Jay, this has been so much fun. Thank you for joining. Where can people learn more about you and more about Paperless Parts?

Jay Jacobs: Well, definitely check out Paperless Parts, PaperlessParts.com. And I’m really not on social media. If you want to find me, you can check me out on LinkedIn and connect with me there. Mention that you heard me on the Lifestyle Investor podcast because Carrie’s the one who manages my LinkedIn, and if it doesn’t look like it’s a fit, then she’s probably going to delete that request.

Justin Donald: Perfect. Well, hey, everyone now knows they’ve got a secret in to connecting with Jay and I just highly recommend digging in and learning some of the cool stuff that Jay’s up to. Check out Paperless Parts. I’m a huge fan. I’m an investor, but I’m a huge advocate because they’re doing things in the software and manufacturing space that no other company is doing, and because of that, there’s a lot of interest overseas, inside the US. It’s taken off, and I think it’s on a rocket ship right now that’s headed somewhere really special.

So, thanks for allowing me to join on the ride there. And I like ending every podcast episode with a question for our audience. So, if you’re watching this, if you’re listening, my question is this, it’s the same question each week. What is one step you can take today to move towards financial freedom and move towards living the life that you truly desire? One that is on your terms. So, not a life by default like most people, but a life by design. Pick one thing from Jay, put it into action. And we’ll catch you next week.

Jay Jacobs: Thank you for being here, Justin. Really appreciate it.

Justin Donald: Hey, my pleasure. So glad to spend some time with you any way I can.

Jay Jacobs: Thanks, buddy.