Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Jones
Hi Kimberly, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Sorry, but I am not a brief person. I started small but every time I read what I had written, I thought of something else. It was a very cathartic exercise and even if it is of no use for your project, I’m thankful for you having asked me to participate. This has been needed in my life for some time. God bless you!
I was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, where most of my family on my mother’s side had lived since 1649 and I had planned to live there until I died. I had an older brother, younger sister and both of our parents were alcoholics. Mom was a happy drunk while Dad fulfilled the role of the angry drunk. Being the proverbial middle child, I was singled out as the scapegoat to assuage Dad’s frustrations in life. It started with over the top corporal punishment when I was young and grew into downright beatings and one-sided slugfests as I got older.
2 days before my 8th birthday, I was riding with my local YMCA group on a float in a Halloween Parade, when I tried to sit down, the beam that surrounded the trailer as a guard rail gave way and I fell under the truck. My right thigh got pinned under the tire and my screams caused the driver to stop and back up the rig with 31 children riding on it. Thankfully there was an ambulance just 1 unit away and I was rushed to the hospital. The ER Dr said that I would need to stay overnight but he drastically underestimated my admission. I became a resident of the pediatric unit of St. Joseph’s Hospital for 4-½ months, had 15 surgeries, 1,000’s of needles and many units of blood. I weighed 102 lbs and by all rights, my leg should have been crushed to smithereens but I was the beneficiary of an outright miracle and not 1 bone was broken!. I lost nothing but flesh and to this day, I have no muscular or skeletal deficiencies.
I was left with a severely disfigured leg that was one third smaller than the other and became the subject of tremendous ridicule. This combined with my increasing weight gain was the perfect storm to put a target on my back for drawing bullies out of the woodwork. During the summers, at the public pool, people would stare and point at my leg, even adults. At 10 years old, I would walk right up and confront them by saying, “If you have any questions about my leg, I am happy to answer them but it is very rude to stare and point.”
I decided that if I couldn’t stop my dad from beating me, at least I didn’t have to let him win by breaking me down to tears. Although it caused me to get beat longer and harder, I retained the ultimate psychological victory by refusing to cry. That instilled in me a very determined will, which has served me well in my life.
My Dad was a salesman and taught me that a person’s name was very important to them. Pronouncing it properly, using it in conversation and remembering it each time you met, had the potential to endear you to them. I started babysitting when I was just 10 years old, and although that is unusually young, caring for my 7 year old sister while our parents were off drinking, caused me to grow up and mature rather quickly. I was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug after joining the local Junior Achievement chapter. We formed a company, sold stock shares for $2, made and sold products like plastic film flowers and baby food jar snow globes and generally learned about running a business.
I spent the summer before my Jr. year in high school babysitting 5 children from 3 families, ages 2 – 8 in my home. I got the 1st child at 8 am and took the last 2 to their house, so I could put them to bed and wait til their Mom got home around 10 pm. Oh yes and the whopping pay back then in 1975 was $.50 per hour. I was able to care for them in the same way I would have liked for someone to have cared for me.
Let’s fast forward to 2004, I had been married for 21 years, had 5 children [including twin girls] ages 9-19 years old. I had been blessed to be able to be a stay at home Mom until our youngest children, twin girls, were 9 years old. My husband had worked for his father for over 25 years but when he retired, in order to reduce stress in his life, my husband took a 65% pay cut in the jobs that were to come his way. I started by working in the Missions Department of our church, Greater Grace World Outreach where, we had been attending since 1992.It’s a non-denominational, evangelical, mission-oriented church with over 700 branches in more than 70 countries around the world. I helped to support missionaries all over the world and coordinated sponsorships for orphans in our orphanages across Africa. Hospitality is my middle name and we opened our home to over 5,000 people over a period of 15 years for various events and celebrations. We also housed over 200 people for 1 night to 2 years while they visited Baltimore.
2 years later, with 3 children still in private school, I had to find a way to earn more money and decided to enter the world of real estate. Upon getting licensed, I decided that my Unique Value Proposition would be to become as well educated about as many aspects of the industry as I could so I would be an asset to my clients and not a detriment. I have since obtained 17 certifications and designations and continue to dedicate myself to excellence through education. I organized education and training for REALTORS who were new in the business but eventually it became apparent that good information was GGRREAT for everyone and we wound up having seasoned agents attend as well. I became an Educator, Advocate and REALTOR with a mission of turning renters into Homeowners. I have had the privilege of serving immigrants and refugees from 5 of the 7 continents of the world and have guided them on the road to their American Dream of Homeownership.
While overseas at an international real estate conference in France, I was offered the answer to a 40+ year dream. I was invited to be the guest speaker at an Awards Celebration for an 18 office real estate company in RUSSIA! I had studied the language for 5 years in high school and the bits that were left in my memory were enough to make me stand out and given this honor. I spoke in an auditorium that held 500 people with a production that was like a rock show and I was treated like a true STAR! Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
In 2016, my son and daughter-in-law made the decision to move their 4 children to Texas and as much as it broke my heart to have them so far away, it became obvious very quickly that it was the right thing for them. Every year they would encourage my husband and I to make the move ourselves, but my husband was not a man into change at all. During a family vacation at the beach in Lewes, DE in 2020, my son made his annual appeal and shockingly was greeted with a yes from his father! OMGoodness, I couldn’t believe it!!! Less than 2 months later he and my husband were driving his truck with a 24′ trailer across the country, packed with our household goods, while I flew to Love Field.
Moving to Texas was a terrific decision and we’ve since been joined by 2 of our daughters and 4 more grandchildren [including twin boys]. Our oldest daughter’s family lives in Baltimore and the youngest’s in Romania. We now have a total of 12 grandchildren from 1-20 years old and a newborn GGRREAT granddaughter. My priorities are based upon my faith in God, after which family, and then financial endeavors follow. Upon arriving in Texas, I did some driving for Lyft and used it as a ministry to uplyft those whom I had the privilege to encounter. I encouraged young people in their endeavors and pursuits, assisted some in dire situations, prayed with those in despair and for those in unfortunate circumstances as a result of their choices. I welcomed visitors arriving at the airports and folks who were moving here from across the country and around the world, offering whatever assistance I could. It was my goal to make a difference, no matter how slight, and brighten all of their days.
I am currently exploring land development and hope to inspire financially comfortable individuals and organizations to invest in affordable housing for 1st THB. When people hear that expression, I often hear the response that we do need houses starting in the upper $200Ks but I’m talking about houses starting in the low $200K’s. I dreamt of becoming an architect, but didn’t have the patience for the years of study it would take, because I saw so many flaws in houses being built. Form, function and flow need to supersede the easiest way to layout a floorplan that leaves you few options for furniture placement or wasted space. Today we have so many options for finishes that look terrific, are durable and are not very expensive. A starter home doesn’t need granite countertops, luxury vinyl is being used on even higher end homes and you can have tile without it looking industrial in order to save money.
One of my favorite songs from my youth is Carole King’s “Tapestry”. God sees the finished work of our lives from HIs heavenly perspective and sees the beauty in its fullness. We see the side from our earthly perspective below and can only see the mess of knots and loose threads. As time passes, the tapestry begins to turn under little by little, revealing the beauty of how things worked together for our good in the past. Not that we aren’t left with pain and scars from what we have encountered but often our hardest lessons reap benefits that protect us from making worse mistakes down the road. It’s not so much what happens to us in life that is detrimental, but rather our perspective and the narrative we choose to associate with it.
I believe that the deepest parts of our character come from the hardest things that God brings us through and that we rob our children of becoming resilient humans by trying to protect them from every bump or bruise from the consequences of their choices. I certainly do not prefer to have learned my lessons in the manner in which I did, but in the long run God has turned the lemons of my life into lemonade. ROMANS 8:37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
The purpose of my life is to bring glory to God and my life’s verse is MATTHEW 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Surviving physical, mental and emotional abuse was definitely an obstacle. That and my family genetics have been partially responsible for the resulting depression that challenges me as well. Unfortunately, it took a very long time to realize that my 0-100 mph level of anger to rage was an outward manifestation of depression and not just a character flaw. Fortunately, after much trial and error, we found a medication that acted as a guard rail and allowed me to recognize when those feelings were creeping up on me, so that I could be in control. Despite the efforts by my father to make me feel inferior, I am usually able to think about myself more along the lines of how God thinks of me and so I don’t suffer from low self-esteem.
I actually have the reverse perspective than that of a large majority of women. Usually, no matter how thin a woman is, they often feel that they are too fat. If I keep my head up and don’t look lower than my nose, I imagine that I look fairly OK as far as weight goes. When my sight dips down slightly, I’m reminded that I’m actually fat, weighing in at over 250 lbs. Oh well, being fat doesn’t make me a bad person, it actually has helped me to become a very empathetic person who is generally very kind and helpful to others. My weight may have a negative impact on superficial people but they aren’t people whose opinions would matter to me in the first place. Other people’s negative opinions about me are none of my business.
There are all sorts of everyday challenges and obstacles that arise but relying on my relationship with God and being able to view things in unique ways has helped me tremendously to come up with ways to overcome the hurdles.
We’ve been impressed with The GPS Group of Epique Realty, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The GPS Group is your guide on the road to the American Dream of Homeownership. We work with trusted residential mortgage loan officers who are well-versed in First Time Home Buyer programs that assist with down payment and closing costs, as well as products that can potentially save you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of your loan. It’s simple, though not easy, to buy a house, but it is nowhere near as impossible as the media would lead you to believe. Take a moment to consider this: wherever you live, you are paying a mortgage. Would you prefer to invest in your own personal wealth and build a legacy of generational wealth for your family, or continue allowing your landlord to reap the benefits of the equity in the years to come?
It is often said that knowledge is power, but the caveat to that statement is that it must be based on accurate information. It baffles me to encounter the myths and fallacies that people come across when they are exploring the possibility of buying their first home. Margaret Fuller once said, “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” My priority in this industry is to consistently seek training and education, so I can provide my clients with the most up-to-date information possible. Armed with this knowledge, they can make the best decisions for their financial future. Acting as a detective and researching various aspects of a property or purchase that could put my Buyers at ease, brings me GGRREAT satisfaction.
I am zealous about helping renters become Homeowners. I believe that Homeownership is a right to be afforded to those who are mentally competent, have been steadily employed for at least 2 years, manage to spend less than they earn and have established a history of responsibly handling their credit obligations. Everyone is paying a mortgage, the only difference is who is benefitting from the equity that those payments are amassing? The tenacity and perseverance I developed while growing up has served me well and I rarely accept no for an answer. Situations usually boil down to how something can be accomplished, so I look at obstacles from different perspectives in order to come up with out of the box solutions..
If their employment, assets or credit are not what is needed to qualify for a mortgage today, by following steps that we can plan out, you could achieve your dream in a matter of months. How many months it will take, will be determined by how much work is needed and how committed you are to accomplishing your goal. First Time Home Buyers are my passion and my goal is to help them discover resources that provide down payment and closing costs, as well as little-known programs that could help them to qualify for a mortgage and save them thousands of dollars over the life of their loan. I understand how hard it is to make $1 and with having such a large family, I also understand how challenging it is to stretch those valuable $1’s. I am a big woman with a big heart, who does things in a big way and I care for my clients like family.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Sorry, not sorry! I don’t believe in luck but I do believe that we often find that which we seek. I try to be as positive and open minded as possible and always look for solutions in challenges I come upon in life and business. I am a woman of faith and credit my blessings both small and large to the grace of God. Blessings can come by way of raindrops to water the dry earth or through tears shed over a loss. It took the loss of Louis Braille’s sight before we had the Braille alphabet to enlighten the minds of hundred’s of thousands of people with low to no vision through print media. Most wouldn’t choose this for themselves but, it shows what is possible with the right attitude.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kimberlyjones.epiquerealty.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealdealkgj/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGPSGroup.Org
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@therealdealkgj
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@therealdealkgj
