Jerome Bell is the Founder and CEO Rajj Investments, a residential fix and flip and multifamily development firm based in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Vernon Beckford: Okay, Jerome. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. We met at the DCRE (Diversity in Real Estate) conference a couple of years ago and you were just bringing me up to speed on your most recent $6 million construction project. When we last spoke, you were in a bit of a bind. You needed three and a half million dollars in construction financing on a residential development and had a ton of your own personal tied up in the deal. Lenders didn’t want to fund the loan, largely because the project was in a very tough area.
But then a lender called you and offered you terms that frankly just seemed too good to be true. 100% of cost!! And I was trying to get to the bottom of what the heck happened that they felt so comfortable giving you those terms!! And you were just trying to give me a little game and make it make it make sense for me.
Jerome Bell: Thanks Vernon. Glad to be here. To answer your question, I try to be the best version of myself at all times. The lender you mentioned invited me out to spend three days at a conference they hosted in Asheville, North Carolina. I’m in Fayetteville, it’s an easy four-hour drive to the mountains. I spent a lot of time with them and was just my best version of me. Nothing different. I didn’t go out of my way to get attention. But when I had the opportunity to have a one-on-one with anyone in that organization, I asked questions, I made sure they knew why I was there. I made sure they knew my expectations. I made sure they knew what I was working on and exactly what I needed. I asked for that $3.5 million from every person that I spoke to. And I tell all my mentees, you got to know how to articulate your vision, and you got to be able to ask for what you want from everybody. I was not scared, brother. I went prepared.
Vernon Beckford: That’s great advice. One of the things my partner Eric and I also always tell the folks we work with is, if you’re not in a position to frame your offering the right way, to show you’ve done the homework and understand the risks, that you can understand what hesitations that they may have and can address them, then why should somebody invest in your project, right?
Jerome Bell: That’s right. There’s a book that I recommend people read it’s called Pitch Anything. You need an elevator pitch, and you should have two in my opinion. You should have a 30 second elevator pitch and you should have a 60 second elevator pitch. And you should practice, practice, practice, and know when to give each one!!! Articulate the vision, ask for what you need, and then you always end the pitch with the benefit to the other person that you’re asking to invest in you. Don’t end it with something about you. This is what Vernon will receive if it decides to invest in Jerome Bell. You always end with the other person’s interest in mind.
Vernon Beckford: That’s a very practical. Now, you’d been looking for refinance proceeds for some time. How many lenders do you think you’d spoken to before you got a loan? Was it a matter of you changing or revising your pitch as you went along? Or do you think that it was just a matter of getting in front of the right lender who would receive it?
Jerome Bell: Steve Jobs has a quote that I’ll always remember. “Be firm with your vision, be flexible with the details.” I had this vision inside of my head. I wanted to take the second highest crime-ridden neighborhood in Fayetteville, North Carolina, buy the block, knock everything down, and then build a class luxury apartment complex. The fact that it was the second highest crime neighborhood may immediately turn people off, but you know what, Vernon? It’s an important part of the story that I didn’t want to lie about, because I knew if I didn’t tell you upfront, as soon as you put the address in, there’s no telling what you were going to find. And I didn’t want to leave that piece out to be questioned about it later. I made sure I articulated exactly what the lender was going to be dealing with if they gave me the money because I needed my vision to come to fruition as I saw it in my head. I did not want to be flexible with that in any way whatsoever or leave room for somebody to curtail what I saw inside of my head. So just like this Steve Jobs quote that I love so much, be firm with your vision, be flexible with the details. I needed the right lender to help me make it come true.
Vernon Beckford: What I love about that feedback is that you took control of your own narrative, right? You can let somebody fill in the blanks for you. But no. You wanted to remove ambiguity.
Jerome Bell: Whenever I think about standing in front of somebody, I try to think about every question they’re going to ask me and then put the answer inside of the 60 second pitch. I don’t want you asking me, “Well, tell me about the area you want to build.” I already told you, “It’s the second highest crime neighborhood in the city of Fayetteville.” I’m letting you know upfront, but if you listen to what I’m saying, I want to tear that whole thing down and give a predominately black community better living conditions, Vernon. That’s what I want to do. We don’t deserve the hood just because we’re black. We deserve luxury just like any other race. Help me tear this down and give my people exactly what you expect to live in yourself.
Vernon Beckford: Exactly. How many lenders do you think you shared that message with?
Jerome Bell: If I had to be conservative with the number, I would say at least 32 before I got a yes.
Vernon Beckford So, so the audience should be aware that you get refinanced in late 2022, in a much better market than today. if you just were to assume that it’s twice as hard now, that would mean that you would have heard “no” from 60 lenders. I think the lesson that I walk away from when I hear you speak is you were not discouraged by the fact that you got the 10th, 15th, 20th or 30th “no.: Was that because you just had no option because you put so much money into the deal? What led you to a point where you weren’t just throwing your hands up and maybe say I’m going to sell the project or maybe this just was not, you know, this this wasn’t the one??
Jerome Bell: In my prior life I was a salesman. And it is very difficult. You get hung up on a lot. You get a lot of no-show appointments. And at some point, when I had my real estate license and I was having these no shows, having people say they was going to do one thing and did something else, and I had all of this adversity. I just looked in the mirror one day and said, “You know what? I’m going to prepare my mind for 99 “nos” and focus on that “yes” that’s going to come when I do the same thing 100 times.” And that’s also what I teach my mentees Vernon. If you can’t take 99 “nos,” you shouldn’t call yourself a salesman. That’s not what you are. You’re a delusional person who only wants to sell when the answer is “yes.” You got to have thick skin to play this game. I’ve been doing this since 1997. This is going on 27 years now. To last that long, you got to get comfortable with the word “no.” And I even came up with a pitch for when they say “no.”
One day I pitched this guy who was just real, real nasty with me. I was sitting there when he was yelling and cursing and screaming, and I was just sitting there thinking “Okay, Jerome. Be cool, be cool. Don’t stoop to his level.” As soon as he finished the yelling and screaming, I said, “You know what? Today you gave me a no. What can I do to come back and get a yes?” And that man sat down, looked at me and he said, “You know what? Number one, usually when I start yelling and cursing, people get up and run out of my office. You’re still here. Number two, you just did something nobody’s ever done to me.” And I said, “Well, sir, I’m not the average person. Regardless of why you said no, I didn’t hear a damn thing you said, not one word. But I would like to know what I can do to get a yes out of you?” And so, and so this same man now, who was yelling, screaming, jumping up and down, cursing me, this same man started laughing and said, “Jerome, can I take you to lunch?” I said, “Of course, let’s go. Ha!” But you know what he did? He took me to lunch, and he told me everything I did wrong in my presentation, what he’d recommend I’d change, and told me what I had to do to come back and get a “yes” from him. And so fast forward two hours later, I’m shaking his hand and I’m getting ready to leave. And I said, “Bro, was all that necessary? Like you could have answered my question way sooner.” And he said, “You know what? I like to test people for their authenticity, Jerome. The people who are scared and take off running just because I raised my voice, they’re never going accomplish their dreams. It’s not going to happen. If that’s all it took, it’s not going happen. He said, man, honestly, I don’t know who you are, but I’ll be damned if you don’t get everything done that you want to.”
Vernon Beckford: What a great story. I mean, I’m just sitting here visualizing. And one of the things that I would say that as a salesperson that you’ve honed is being a great storyteller. You take someone on a journey, and it becomes more than just a routine conversation. And you clearly have a knack at transporting people because I’m sitting here just visualizing this interaction and seeing it happen in real time. It’s such a good skill to have.
Can you tell the readers a little bit more about your background. because this now begs the question, how did you get to where you are now? Where did you start?
Jerome Bell: I was in the United States Marine Corps. I got stationed in Tallahassee, Florida with a tank, reserve tank battalion. And there are like four major universities in Tallahassee. I decided to go to Florida A &M University, a HBCU. And I was taking this finance class and got introduced to the stock market. I’m from the projects, my entire family. We are straight hood, burning straight hood, but I wanted something different. And I always wanted something different. I always walked outside and looked around and was like, “Why do we live here?” I’m seeing these beautiful homes on television. I’m seeing trees. We ain’t had no trees where I lived at, brother. It’s just the concrete jungle for real. But the one big thing that happened to me growing up was my mom would send me to different aunts and uncles for the summer. And some of those aunts and uncles made it out the hood. When I went to this aunt’s house for the summer, she lived in the suburbs, and she had grass and this big, beautiful tree in her front yard. So that was my exposure. That’s one. Number two, I’m a book reader. I think I was born with a book in my hand. I’ve been reading a book a week for as long as I’ve been alive. I have a tremendous amount of knowledge inside of my head. That was also exposure. I was in the Marine Corps. And that provided social exposure. I’m meeting white people, Native Americans, Asians, etc. I’m meeting other brothers and sisters from different parts of America. And that really, really opened my eyes. Just learning empathy. I’ve never been to West Virginia. I’ve never been on a farm. I’ve never met cows. But I got a Marine who’s standing in front of me, who’s from West Virginia. and grew up on the farm and we’re getting ready to do this exercise. And now me and this man are going to be sleeping in this tent for the next six weeks. We’re talking every day, eating together. And you at some point you learn the bond, you learn to ask questions, you perfect your ability to listen and remember key details about other people. Mix all that in the pot Vernon and you got a Jerome Bell.
Now how I got into real estate is really, really, cool. Back to Florida A&M. In this finance class, the professor introduced us to the stock market. He broke us up into teams and we had this mock portfolio stock portfolio contest. I fell in love with the stock market. I took out a student loan and invested the whole thing in the market. We had to we had to be at PT like five o ‘clock in the morning. I would wake up at four just so I could check how the market did the day before. I mean, every chance I got to peak at anything pertaining to stocks. I was all over it. My first two years dabbling in stocks, I did pretty good. So fast forward two years, I go back to the professor, and I said, “Look, I took $4,400 and now I have $52,000 and I did this in two years with the stock market.” But I don’t always have time to be watching that television and chasing these stocks. What’s something that I could just put my money in and watch it grow? The professor said, “Learn about investing in rental property.” We’re talking about 1997. There was no HGTD. We didn’t even call it flipping. He explained the whole process to me. I linked up with a loan officer at the bank. I was 22 years old. I bought my first investment real estate investment property. Now the loan officer looked at me and said, “You sound like a high-risk taker” and I said, “Hell yeah let’s play poker.” He said, “Instead of investing in rental property why don’t you buy a house for $20 ,000 put in $20,000 of renovation and then sell it for $100,000.” I said “I can do that? He said “Yeah, I’ll help you. My first flip Vernon, I was 22 years old I made $92 ,000 brother. It was a turning point. The light came on, it truly came on. I did not spend the money on anything except more real estate. And that’s the most important part about my story. Yes, I was 22 years old, but I’m reading all these different autobiographies on rich people. And what’s really, really cool about books that I love, you can take notes and go back to them to remind yourself of what the lesson was. They all got this “I wish” chapter. And the one commonality that I found that’s truly amazing, it doesn’t matter the color of the person’s skin, it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female. That one statement was, “I wish I invested in real estate when I turned 18.” All of them said it. Every single person said that same damn thing. And so that really struck me like, wow, I got this wisdom, “I’m young, I’m 22. Man, if real estate is the key to financial freedom, this is what I’m gonna rock with. And then I’ve been rocking with it for 26 years.”
Vernon Beckford: Absolutely amazing! This was not a blip. This was not just a little side hustle that evolved into something bigger. You threw yourself into it. You realized what you could get out of it, and you’ve been doing it ever since.
Jerome Bell: Well, let me say this. You talk about cool stories. I’m in college, we’re in class, and I think the class was sociology, I think. And the professor said, “I want every person in here to stand up, look around the room and then say, why are you here?” Right? That’s the assignment. Everybody’s going around the room and everybody said the same thing. “I want a good job in the profession that I’m going into. You’re not going to make any money without an undergrad.” Like that was the number one statement. Check this out. I stand up in class. I look around. I take my time. I look around, I look around and said, “I came to college to learn how not to work.”
Vernon Beckford: Did they understand what you meant when you said that?
Jerome Bell: Dude, the professor did. The professor was wise enough to catch it because he wanted to talk to me. I’m the only student he said, “I want to talk to you after class.” They didn’t get it, Vernon.
Vernon Beckford: That’s a great transition to the present. More recently, you’ve decided to apply your learnings to take on a massive goal, which is, and you alluded to it earlier, turning around Fayetteville, North Carolina, specifically a really tough part of the town. Can you share with folks just how tough it was when you decided to get in there? And what you’re doing to change Fayetteville?
Jerome Bell: There’s a book, Let the Trumpet Sound by Stephen Oates. It’s a biography on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I had read other books on Dr. King, but this book was like held as the pinnacle if you wanted a more in-depth observation of Dr. King’s life, right? There’s a chapter in there where Dr. King talks, where the author Stephen Oates talks about any time Dr. King had to give a speech in the city, he would always go two days early and he would make his rounds with the drug dealers, the pimps, and the hustlers. I was reading this, and I was like, “Dr. King talked to pimps? He talked to like what?” What was amazing about this chapter was Dr. King would go to the hood, the street, and he would tell the men who were pulling strings on the street, he would go to them and in the humblest manner and say, “I’m giving a speech on Thursday. I need two things. One, no crime can happen on Thursday. None, zero. That’s number one. Number two, I need security. So not only can there not be any crime, but I’m asking you, the pimp, I’m asking you to put on a suit and walk by my side, make sure nothing happens to me.” And when I read that, it just, it blew me away. It was something about that chapter that I said, “You know what, I need to remember this.” For some reason, it was just foreshadowing.
Fast forward to 2021. I’m buying up lots on Adam Street, where I have this vision to build these apartments. There is a house where this notorious drug dealer had a trap house on Adam Street. These boys are selling drugs like McDonald’s. Okay? They literally had a drive -through. A police officer came to me because I’m very well known in this city. He came to me and said, “Look, I understand you want to clean up Adam Street. I’m just letting you know. If you have a problem, do not call us. Okay?” He told me, “Do not call us.” Anyway, I bought 10 lots on Adams Street, which is about 70% of the ownership of that one street. But it was wild. Prostitutes. Drugs. Everything you could imagine. I put on a suit. I put together this letter that explained who I am. And I went door to door introducing myself. I went into people’s homes who allowed me. I sat on the couch. I talked to them. I said, look, “I just bought the home you live in. I’m the new owner. This is my vision. Yes, I’m tearing it down. Yes, you got to move. This is the timeline. Let me just answer all the questions popping up in your head right now. I’m going to answer all of it before you say anything.” I literally told them “Yes, I’m tearing it down. You will have to move. Yes, I’m going to help you move. This is how I’m going to help.” I told them everything, Vernon. I go to all the houses and save the trap house for last, right? I’m walking toward the house, it’s like maybe eight or nine brothers outside. They “mean mugging” me, scowling looking like they are about to take me out, right? As I get closer to the house one of the guys on a bike says “Stop right there. Don’t come no closer. Somebody gonna come and say something to you.” He goes in the house and another guy comes over. He was like “Man (without all the expletives) what do you want?” I handed him one of my letters and my business card and I said “Look, I own this house now and I need to talk to the person you work for.” He balls up my letter, throws it in my face and he was like “Nah, you don’t want to do that.” I said “Look, I own that house. He has to see me. He don’t have a choice. One of us is gonna have to stop doing business on this street and it’s not me. So he’s gonna have to come and see me.” The guy was like “Man, whatever.”
I routinely walked the properties daily and about three months later I’m out talking to the tenants. When I head towards my truck, these guys ran up on me, and formed a circle around me, right? But I but I was cool because I knew what was about to happen. I’m standing there and the guy that they work for, he comes into the circle, and he says, “Who are you? What are you doing?!!” I explained everything to him, and I said, “Look, I own this, not a white man, me, I own this. This is my vision, what I’m about to do.” I explained everything to him, Vernon. Now back to the book, just like Dr. King, I told him, I asked him, I said, “Look, with all humility, I’m asking for your help. My vision for this road cannot come together without your permission. You understand?” I told him my vision can’t happen without his permission. In the humblest manner, I asked him, I said, “When I tear everything down, I’m gonna have about a half a million dollars in construction of supplies laying on the ground. Your people, y’all could climb that fence. That fence ain’t stopping nobody. Y’all could climb that fence. Y’all could steal from me. Y’all could damage stuff. You could make my life very, very difficult. I’m asking you with all humility, help me.” And he started laughing. He said, “You buy my neighborhood, you go tear down my trap house. And then you interrupt business, and now you want me to help you?” And I said, “Yeah, I do. I’m asking for your help.” He said, “How much time do I have? I said, “No, sir, no, sir. How much time do you need? How much time do you need?” I said, “Bro, I’m like these boys out here. I work for you.” He started laughing. And he said, “Man, if you gonna give me the time I need, he said, give me 90 days.” I was really shocked, Vernon. I was very shocked he said 90 days. That man could have said a year. You know what I’m saying? He said, “Give me 90 days.” I said, “Yes, sir.” And so, we shook hands, man. And he actually moved out 30 to 45 days later. It wasn’t even the whole 90. And he got up out of there. Once he left, he took his drugs with him. He took the prostitutes with him. And I’m going to tell you right now, I did not have one problem, Vernon, the entire construction period. Not one.
Vernon Beckford: Wow! What I’m hearing you say is you, you know, you’re certainly impact focused, but you were not presumptuous enough to think that you were going to be able to stroll into that community and just shift it because you decided it needed to change.
Jerome Bell: No, no, you got to stay humble. You got to. I grew up in the streets I knew I was walking on somebody’s turf. Number one. Number two, I knew I was going to interrupt somebody’s money. You don’t what direction that’s going to go. You can’t show up and be billy badass just because you own the house. Those guys don’t care about that. You got to humble yourself and understand them boys control everything. My goal was to get on the good side and replicate, emulate Dr. King’s method and just be as humble as possible. Let him know he’s in charge. I understand that. I need his help and I can’t do anything until he gives me permission. And that’s exactly what I did. And it worked out beautifully.
Vernon Beckford: For many of the readers who are passionate about or pursuing either urban redevelopment or adaptive reuse projects, this really is a master class. When you’re going into well-entrenched communities with a whole set of personalities, actors, and challenges you have to be thoughtful in navigating the landscape the very same way that you do when engaging with the local zoning department or local politicians. But the university urban studies departments don’t teach is how do you interact with the local “street politicians,” do they? And those are the people that actually control the streets that you’re so passionate about revitalizing. What you’ve done is taken what I would describe as a really ground up approach to figuring out who do I need to work with and work around? And how do I incentivize them in such a way and acknowledge their role, so they want to do business to me, regardless of how I feel about their business? Because I need them, and I need their buy-in to get anything done.
Jerome Bell: That’s it. It’s all about one, humanity and two, respect. They are still human, regardless of whether or not you like what they do or not. They’re still human.
Vernon Beckford: Absolutely. OK, so let’s fast forward. So where has that taken you now and what’s next in that in that road ahead?
Jerome Bell: The project is 100% complete. I’m sitting in my office now that I converted for my tax company as well as my real estate company. I Have some amazing people living out here. I got a nice mix of races, so it is diverse. But it’s predominantly black and I’m proud of that because I’m giving my people better living conditions than what was being offered in the same neighborhood just three years ago. I’m very proud of that. Now that I have the apartments done, my next focus is buying up hotels and converting them to affordable housing. Our city council has a revitalization program. I mean they’re throwing millions at affordable housing. And I’ve been keeping up with it. I finally think they figured out a way to get real estate developers like me involved in affordable housing. For a long time, you couldn’t make any money. It didn’t even make sense to look at it. I mean, all the rules, all the red tape, it was just ridiculous. It’s almost like they didn’t want real estate developers to participate. They’ve listened to our complaints. They’ve made a lot of adjustments. And so now I see a way to carve a niche for myself in hotel conversions that could be very lucrative for myself moving forward.
Vernon Beckford: Tell me a little bit about the process of interacting with the local political players and navigating that process. I know for many people, that part of real estate can be quite daunting and intimidating.
Jerome Bell: That’s a great question.The first thing I thought about, volunteering in your community is very important. I’m a staunch believer in volunteering in the community that you live in. I was homeless before I joined the Marine Corps. Then once I joined Marine Corps, I immediately volunteered, no matter where I was stationed at, I performed volunteer service. Once I got out the Marine Corps and relocated to Fayetteville, I immediately went into volunteering for my community. I served on an advisory council for two terms, so six years. And in that aspect, I was able to shake hands with a lot of the political figureheads. When I finished my tenure, I moved over to the board of directors on four different nonprofit organizations. Two of them specifically focused on homelessness. One of the many accolades I have, and the only one that I brag about, Vernon, is in 2016, President Barack Obama awarded me the highest volunteer citizen award that you could possibly get. I have this beautiful award that President Obama gave me framed, of course, in my office. So, I’ve gained some notoriety on the volunteer side. That’s the best way to answer that question. That’s number one. Number two, all city councils have meetings, monthly meetings, I highly advise, if you’re gonna get into the commercial real estate side, and when we’re talking about project development, I highly advise, find out who the city council member is for your district specifically, and then show your face monthly at those meetings so that you build a rapport with them. You have to have that 30 second pitch, and you spit that pitch to everybody you shake hands with to let them know you’re not just a tax paying citizen, you’re a tax paying citizen with a vision, with a plan to contribute on a large scale, and when the time comes, you’re going to need their support.
Vernon Beckford: I appreciate you sharing that because as I think about it, it almost sounds too obvious saying go to a city council meeting or community board meeting. But I think there’s a big disconnect between the lofty business plan in someone’s mind and how they build civic relationships to bring it to fruition. One of the best gifts you can give yourself, and I’m sure you’ve learned this in volunteering, is just being in the room a lot of times, goes a long way. And if you’re in the room enough time, people start to ask, who is this person and why are they here and what’s their story and what are they trying to do.
Given that you’ve done so much and that you’ve seen, was there anything during this process that you’d look back and say, wow, I really wish that I’d done differently? Or anything that you, now that you know and have the gift of knowledge, if you had a time machine would have changed?
Jerome Bell: No, honestly, Vernon, I’ve never wanted to go backwards for any reason. I sincerely believe we are where we are because of all the decisions made prior, right? And so, the goal isn’t to wish you can go backwards. The goal is what lessons can I learn from yesterday to make me better man today and tomorrow? The fact that I’ve accomplished this $6 million total project from the ground up, tore everything down, rebuilt, rebuilt higher, it just builds my confidence moving forward. I don’t want to change anything. I learned a lot, but I will not go back and change anything. I’m just more confident in the future that the next apartment complex is going to be four times bigger, 10 times bigger, 100 times bigger. So, I’m happy. I don’t want to go back and change anything. I want to take what I have and keep pressing forward. And there’s plenty of reason to feel excited about.
Vernon Beckford: Well said. With that, what’s 2024 hold in store for you and your business?
Jerome Bell: When you read as many books as I have at some point, you want to start writing them. So, 2024, I got three goals. The first one is I want to publish two books this year, two of my own books I want to publish this year. And then I want to get my first hotel conversion deal. That’s number two and number three. Lastly, the one thing that I realized would help facilitate my vision staying my vision is I need to get my contractor’s license.
Vernon Beckford: It sounds like you’re going to have a very quiet year. Not much to do. Ha!
Well, based off of the stories that you’ve shared up to this point, I don’t think that the readers would be surprised by any of those goals. And based off how much you’ve already accomplished, I’m sure there isn’t any doubt that you’re going to accomplish them in quick order. Is there anything before we leave that you want to leave with our readers?
Jerome Bell: Yes. Definitely. You know you’re on the path to success when you fail. You don’t, you don’t have a grand vision and succeed the first time. Don’t be scared of failure. Failure means progress. Don’t try to run from it. You know you’re on the path to success when you fail. Embrace failure and you can achieve whatever you want to. I’m so blessed to have you here sharing and imparting the wisdom that you accumulated over the years.
Vernon Beckford: Jerome, I’m so blessed to have you here sharing and imparting the wisdom that you accumulated over the years. Thank you so much. I hope that you will come back because you’ve shared so many, I think, practical tools that people can incorporate as they continue to build. And I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished, excited for you, and can’t wait to continue to follow the next stage of the journey.
Jerome Bell: Thank you so much, Vernon. Same here.