How He Built a $50 Million Finance Business Without Cold Calling

Jermane Cheathem (00:00)

Every day I wake up and I only question I ask myself is where’s the leverage? And so if I’m doing any activity, if it’s not leveraged, then I shouldn’t be doing it. And so that’s just kind of the little litmus test.

So, it kind of goes back to my original premise. The product has to be extremely lucrative. The person buying it has to have a lot of money to buy it and paying. And then if I just leverage strategic partners to bring me those clients because they already have a network of them and their trust, I get all my time back because I’m tapping into the psychology of trust.

Scott Bursey (02:09)

Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re joined by Jermane Cheathem, the visionary behind Creators Learn. Jermane has cracked the code in high-level finance, facilitating over $50 million in equipment financing while working just four hours a day. All with zero employees and zero cold calling. He’s here to show us how to stop chasing and start leveraging the relationships you already have.

Pros get ready to unlock the hidden capital sitting right in your current network. Jermane, welcome to the show.

Jermane Cheathem (02:47)

Scott, thank you for having me. Looking forward to our conversation, man.

Scott Bursey (02:51)

Yes, let’s chop it up. And Jermane, to help our listeners get up to speed, please give us the ninety second highlight reel and how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Jermane Cheathem (03:03)

Well, I guess I started from a place of scarcity, of fear, growing up on the wrong side of the track. So I had to figure out a way out. And so the only way I figured is I have to figure this out myself. And so I got into sales, and sales was like one of the best methods to really see what the world is all about and what I’m all about and what I’m capable of. After getting my teeth kicked in, I I decided, you know, sales is great, but you have to make sure you’re laser focused on what you’re selling.

So I got into financial services because it’s highly leveraged, it’s lucrative, and it’s pretty straightforward and people always need it. And so that led me to you know building an infrastructure that allowed me to get deals, but they weren’t the easiest deals to get because I was going after people directly instead of backing up and thinking strategically how can I get referral partners to send me their deals. And I built such a great finance business.

based on that model with strategic referral partners, I teach other professionals in real estate and in financial services is exactly how to build a business just like that in the commercial finance space.

Scott Bursey (04:12)

That’s incredible, Jermane. It’s a masterclass in efficiency. And I know our listeners are ready to apply that kind of leverage immediately. Thank you for sharing that journey with us.

Jermane Cheathem (04:25)

Yeah, no problem.

Scott Bursey (04:26)

And what caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to scale a fifty million dollar finance machine without any typical overhead of employees or the grind of cold calling. That’s not easy.

Jermane Cheathem (05:27)

No, it’s well actually it’s easy, it’s way easier. It’s actually way easier than cold calling or doing ads or any other nonsense. you know, it people just don’t understand that the most important first decision is what are you gonna sell? So it needs to be leveraged, it needs to be high-ticket, it needs to be lucrative. That’s why I got into financial services. But there’s many different things you can sell, right? So I niched down into equipment finance only because equipment is evergreen, it’s always needed by businesses.

It’s tax deductible, so it’s a no-brainer for them to finance it. But then how am I going to get these equipment deals to finance? That’s when I figured out strategic partners. I just partner with equipment dealers and sellers to send me deal after deal instead of me chasing business owners to see if they need to finance equipment. And so it became a much higher leverage, a much easier, much you don’t have to even pitch anybody. It’s just like the deals are ready to sign because you’re brought in from a strategic trusted referral partner.

So it makes life a hundred times easier.

Scott Bursey (06:28)

Talk about working efficiently. That was an excellent breakdown. Thank you for that. And, curious to know, Jermane, when you look at the transformative achievement, what was the mindset shift that allowed you to break away from the traditional sales model?

Jermane Cheathem (06:47)

Well, I saw it wasn’t working. I looked around at my office and I saw fifty sales reps there and they were all just banging their heads against the wall, making 300 cold calls. And it’s like life is short. There has to be a better way to do this. And if you just look around the business world, you see this type of leverage in other arenas. For example, if you look at Nike, Nike built their entire empire based on one person.

One strategic partner, Michael Jordan. So you can use the same thing in business, is you need to find one person that has a network of your ideal clients in their network and their trust and have the incentive structure where everybody wins if they send you the deal. And that’s the way I thought about my business. And so I realized these sheep are just gonna fall off a cliff and I’m gonna go a different direction and build a leveraged business.

Scott Bursey (07:45)

I love that. It’s all about working smarter, not harder. Thanks for peeling back the curtain on that mindset. And Jermane, digging a bit deeper, I’d love to know how do you identify which specific relationships in your existing network are ready to be converted into a leveraged income stream?

Jermane Cheathem (08:04)

Well, again, it goes back to what you picked. So for example, in my financial services business, I picked equipment finance, but then I niched down into a specific vertical within equipment finance, which was medical equipment. So when you niche down into that vertical, then you know, okay, who has all the people that need to finance medical equipment? Well, the medical device salespeople. So all I did was target the medical device salespeople. So you’re thinking ultrasound salespeople, MRI salespeople, CT scanner salespeople.

So makes it extremely easy to find these people, talk to them about what they need from a finance partner, and get them to start sending you business. So it the most important thing is you have to niche down as far as humanly possible. Otherwise, you’re not gonna know who your strategic partners are. Plus, your strategic partners must benefit from using you. My thing must help them sell their thing. And that’s what happens when I offer my financing.

To the dealers, it helps them sell more of their equipment

Scott Bursey (09:07)

I just love that framing. And wondering about the other side of things, what is the biggest trap or weakness you see sales pros falling into when they first try to move away from cold calling?

Jermane Cheathem (09:22)

Think they try to follow people on stage 10 of their career when they’re still on stage one. So they think, they look at Alex Hormozi and they I better start doing ads. Well, you’re not where he is at. Ads are a bad idea unless you have an extremely targeted avatar messaging that works and an offer that converts. And so this I, you know, from most people in A don’t ever.

deviate from cold calling because it will work, but you will burn your whole life away. So it depends on how you want to spend your time. so most people will just stay in the cold calling because they know it will work eventually, which is fine if that’s the life you want to live. Or people go to the other extreme and they start spending thousands of dollars on ads and branding when again that’s not that’s later. Branding and ads come after something’s proven.

Scott Bursey (10:48)

That’s some great advice. And we’re interested to hear where do you see the biggest untapped opportunity for someone in the real estate game that should be applying like a financial model to their own deals?

Jermane Cheathem (11:04)

Well, I don’t know, man. It real estate is interesting because you’re either, you know, maybe you’re a realtor or maybe you’re a mortgage broker. And so it’s a very volatile industry just from the simple fact it’s a boom and bust industry. Things are really good or they’re really bad. And the rest of the time it’s kind of like indifferent. It’s kind of, you know, tepid water, if you will. And so I always I always think to myself, like, I would never be in any other industry besides equipment financing because

The nature of how I get my deals and the simplicity of the deals. And so I would always implore people, anyone that’s in the real estate game, is to at least explore the commercial financing part of it because you’re not a finance expert. You’re actually just a middleman. You’re just connecting the buyers to the underwriters and the banks, and you take a cut of the commission, which is pretty hefty compared to what you’d see in real estate for a fraction of the work.

Scott Bursey (12:03)

Thank you for highlighting that. Thinking about the landscape, what do you consider the biggest threat to a professional who refuses to modernize their sales approach right now?

Jermane Cheathem (12:17)

I don’t I mean, I don’t really know what modernize a a sales approach even means.

I don’t actually believe in modernizing sales approaches. I believe in having conversations with people, number one. But not just anybody. Only with people that would have a network of your ideal client. That is as modern as you need to have because business is only done with other business people. It’s not done with businesses. They’re done with people. So as long as you know what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to, and who you sell it to, they must have money. They must be the highest end client you can find.

Because you wanna make as much money with the least amount of effort and work. And then once you figure out those two things, then you figure out who has a network of those folks and you infiltrate that network where it’s win-win-win scenarios. So there’s nothing that you don’t need any fancy stuff, you don’t need any AI. You just need to talk to people.

Scott Bursey (13:13)

That is some laser focused transparency right there. Let me ask you this. How do you handle pushback or skepticism from peers who are stuck in the old school grind mentality?

Jermane Cheathem (13:28)

I ignore them. Because anyone that is a skeptic is just gonna waste your time. I’ve had, I don’t know, hundreds of thousands of conversations with people. You start to see patterns, and the patterns start to become blaringly obvious after that many conversations. 99% of the best clients and the best deals, you hit it off immediately. There’s no friction, there’s no questions, it’s just like let’s do business together.

I like the way you think. Let’s move forward. Same thing with friends. Same thing with anybody in the world. It’s just, it just, it’s easy. And anytime I find friction in any relationship, I exit stage left immediately. It’s just not worth your time to chase deadbeat clients and prospects and try to convince them or hey, any skeptics, it’s just a waste of time. You might flip one out of a hundred thousand, but I would much rather just go take a nap or something.

Scott Bursey (14:26)

It’s all about that chemistry it sounds like.

Jermane Cheathem (14:30)

I don’t even know if it’s chemistry. It’s just like either they pick up on your energy and they want to work with you or they don’t. Either they trust you or they don’t. and a lot of people have a lot of mental barriers about, you know, being skeptics or being burned or what they believe is possible within themselves or society. And I’m not here to convince people. I’m just here to let the people that are hungry and want to win help them win.

Scott Bursey (14:53)

And that’s a winning formula right there. Jermane, what is the vision of Creators Learn, let’s say the next twelve to twenty-four months?

Jermane Cheathem (15:44)

Well, I personally believe everyone that is in sales and has access to commercial clients, commercial businesses, can become their own independent mini bank, if you will. And not necessarily facilitating the money themselves, but they’re just organizing the transaction. So they bring the people with the money, the banks, the underwriters, and the businesses that need it together.

And then they make a cut of it. I don’t I don’t I don’t understand why people are letting the banks directly take all the profits when they don’t even have the manpower to find these deals. They don’t even know how to find these deals. And so I believe everyone has already connected with so many different businesses, with so many people that sell commercial equipment. Why wouldn’t normal salespeople, normal business people, get a cut of this pie? And so I believe.

there’s gonna be hundreds of thousands of people that are able to get these little pieces and you know build an extra six, seven, six, six or seven figure business on the back end of this the relationships they already have.

Scott Bursey (16:53)

That is powerful. Thanks for sharing. And examining the future. If you had to start from scratch tomorrow, Jermane, with nothing but your phone and your current knowledge, what is the first move you’d make to generate income within 30 days?

Jermane Cheathem (17:10)

First thing I would do is I would go on LinkedIn and start DMing people that have a network of my ideal avatar and start having conversations with them immediately.

Scott Bursey (17:24)

That is gold mine strategy right there. Thank you for sharing that with us as well. And following up on that, what is the absolute non-negotiable for you to keep that four-hour workday intact while scaling?

Jermane Cheathem (17:45)

the non-negotiable, well, I don’t I don’t know what that exactly means, but what do you mean by that?

Scott Bursey (17:54)

Well, to keep your workday at four hours a day, what element would you do, what strategy would you implement so you can continue to grow?

Jermane Cheathem (18:06)

Well, every okay, this is this is interesting. So every day I wake up and I only question I ask myself is where’s the leverage? And so if I’m doing any activity, if it’s not leveraged, then I shouldn’t be doing it. And so that’s just kind of the little litmus test. So

It kind of goes back to my original premise. The product has to be extremely lucrative. The person buying it has to have a lot of money to buy it and paying. And then if I just leverage strategic partners to bring me those clients because they already have a network of them and their trust, I get all my time back because I’m tapping into the psychology of trust.

And so any other activity outside of that, it has to be leveraged. It everything has to be a leverage point.

Where you put a little in, you get a lot out. and so even though you’re gonna make mistakes trying to figure out where the leverage is, you have to always think from the lens, where is the leverage? And you’re gonna do certain things that you realize that wasn’t very leveraged. I’m not doing that shit again. But as long as you’re looking from a lens of like where can I get as much bang from my buck, then you can’t lose.

Scott Bursey (19:19)

That is exactly the kind of fuel our listeners needed. Thank you for sharing that. And you have shared a lot of very valuable advice today, Jermane. But is there any additional words of wisdom that you can leave with our pros?

Jermane Cheathem (19:34)

I would say that don’t discount.

your network. And I have a I have a saying. I believe in this idea of two degrees of separation. You know, they there’s that whole idea of seven degrees of separation. You’re seven degrees away from anybody in the world. I believe you’re two degrees, if not one degree away from in your network, having a a very big business that you don’t even really have to do anything in because you’re just tapping into people that already have connections that need something that is universal in the business world.

which is cash and financing, and you’re just not monetizing it. So I think sometimes there’s a gold mine just under your feet but you haven’t you haven’t looked down.

Scott Bursey (20:23)

Jermane, thank you so much for sharing that. And for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Jermane Cheathem (20:35)

Best way is go to my website, Creators Learn, and they can check out my free training on my commercial finance methodology and how it actually works.

Scott Bursey (20:47)

Jermane, you really brought the fuel today. Thank you for joining us.

Jermane Cheathem (20:51)

Thanks for having me, Scott. Appreciate it, man.

Scott Bursey (20:53)

And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with a lineup of elite guest, just like Jermane, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you on next episode, everyone.