Podcast Transcription

Melina: I think that our music is awesome.

Dave: I think you’re awesome.

Melina: Thank you. I think you’re awesome.

Dave: Is that a $12 shirt or a $16 shirt?

Melina: Sixteen. I’m moving on up.

Melina: Welcome to “Flippin’ Off,” a purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference.

Dave: All right, well… Welcome, everyone. Dave and Melina Boswell from New Wealth Advisors Club, and in the studio today, we have a guest that’s been here, gosh, several times we were just speaking about. Mr. Peter Vanderlinde. Good morning.

Peter: Good morning to you.

Dave: How are you?

Melina: Pete in the house.

Peter: In the house.

Dave: So here we are. Happy anniversary, by the way.

Peter: Thank you, thank you.

Dave: We… I guess there’s no such thing as coincidence, but here we are recording this and dropping this on your five-year anniversary of first joining the Club. Yeah?

Peter: That is correct, yeah. 2012.

Melina: That’s incredible. Like, as if we planned it.

Dave: Right. We didn’t and had no idea. We were simply talking about who are we going to interview this week or feature, if you will, and Peter came up because of, you know, all the…well, we’ll share with you more, but all the different goals and different things that he had been talking about over years. We had a really deep conversation last week with him, and maybe a little fine-tuning, maybe a little slapping around, a little whatever we wanna call it.

Peter: Pruning.

Dave: Pruning.

Melina: Pruning, very good, very good.

Dave: Yeah. A little pruning, we can talk about that, but if you’re new to this podcast and you haven’t listened to us before, go back and there’s a really great one that’s about a lead in 2013. It’s episode number two and it’s called “Dead Men Tell No Tales.”

Melina: Dead men tell no tales.

Dave: I guess that’s…it’s Halloween, so it’s, you know, I guess it’s…

Melina: Appropriate.

Dave: Appropriate. Perfect. Well, anyways, that was about a lead that you actually made no money on.

Peter: That is correct.

Dave: Right?

Peter: Actually, in the end of it all, we spent money to have a mobile notary take care of, then sign the documents that had to be done to fix the situation she was in.

Dave: Yeah. So, we did that on episode two, so this podcast isn’t always about, you know, coming in here and flipping houses and you don’t always make money on every single lead that you get, and sometimes it’s just about… Well, it’s always about putting the homeowner in a better situation than you found him, and that was a really great podcast that’s had a ton of awesome feedback on it.

So, here we are today. Going to be talking about five years and… Well, maybe you can kinda share, Peter, because we were just talking about how we… You know, we’re doing this business day in and day out. The life of an entrepreneur, day in and day out, and sometimes, we just get, we get stuck in all the stuff of being of that entrepreneur, right?

Peter: Right. The mire, if you will.

Dave: Yeah.

Melina: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And then sometimes when you’re stuck, you don’t recognize and, I mean, I’m speaking to myself in this exact same conversation. I mean, we’ve… Melina and I have certainly been through this at different times, and you’re five years into this and you had some goals, right? And why don’t you share, like, what some of those were like? I know you shared with Melina a long time ago what some of those things you wanted to accomplish.

Peter: Right.

Dave: And then, I’m sure, honey, you can kinda chime in about those conversations you’ve had along the way.

Melina: Yes, for sure.

Peter: Well, I mean, it all started off initially with lead generation goals, like, “Hey, I need to have so many conversations at so many different time periods in order to produce any type of results. So first, my initial goal is like, “Hey, I just wanna have a conversation,” because, like, I was not very open, I was not very personable. When I first started in this business, it was very hard for me to have a conversation with somebody I didn’t know. Like, my whole thing, like, when my coach first took me out, I was like, “Dude, I’m not getting out of the car. Like, for real, like, if this is what I have to do, I’m not gonna do this.”

And we kinda got stuck in a spot where, “Hey, you know what, this is what I need to do.” I realized that there’s some changes that need to happen in me as a person, as an adult, as a husband. And in order to do that, I’m just gonna have to break through some of the things that are holding me back. And I have to attribute a lot of that to watching yours and Melina’s process and the guidance that you guys have helped me go under. You mentioned you’re talking to yourself. Part of my direction, or part of my influence to push through it, was watching you go through part of that process, but in the end, still persevering and pushing through.

And a lot of the times, I’ve asked myself over the last couple of years of this, you’re gonna be like, “Hey, what would Dave Boswell do at this moment?” And it was a sense of, “Hey, you know what? It’s the right thing. No matter who benefits or who takes a loss, like, the right thing is gonna get done.” And that’s something that, over the last five years, it’s been really hard for me to transition to, but once I really, fully adopted and lived into that mentality, that’s when my business started taking off, and we started setting, okay, “Well, here’s numerical financial goals, and once we have this in the bank, it means this. And then, okay, once we have that, we wanna buy a house.”

Part of our thing was, initially, I was sick of the drive. I lived in L.A. County and was driving all the time, and as I started getting more and more in this business and having an office and stuff to go to, I purposed myself to, “Hey, I wanna find a spot closer to the office,” and my wife was like, “Well, hell, we’ve been married almost ten years and we’ve moved seven different times.” And I’m, like, her and I were just figuring this out the other night. Like, this is the seventh place we’ve lived since we’ve been, like, got married ten years ago. So part of her thing was, “Hey, if we’re going to move, then we need to buy a house. And I says, “Well, if we’re gonna buy a house, I’m not gonna qualify by myself because I run my own business and my life is my business, so I don’t make a lot of money. It’s the way it looks on paper because of the way…”

Dave: Sure. Write-offs and so forth.

Peter: Right, so it’s very hard to qualify as a self-employed person. Well, you’ve got a… We’ve met our financial goal that meant you could quit your job, but you’ve gotta keep your job to meet our goal to…”

Dave: Buy a house.

Peter: “…buy a house.” So that was kinda where some of our sitting down and planning and numbers and days, and… Then once we reached that goal, it was, “Okay, now you can quit your job,” and now it’s like, “Hey, I’m working on other projects and learning this business and doing other parts of it.” Now she’s showing interest of wanting to get involved and help me behind the scenes and be much more of a helpmate in that place, so…

Dave: So slow down a second. So…

Peter: Yeah.

Dave: So “meeting that goal” meaning you actually just acquired your first house, the house you’re living in, your primary residence now?

Peter: Correct, yes.

Dave: And you bought that in…? You didn’t pay full retail and go by an agent and drive around and try to find a, you know, a house that was already done and brought to market?

Peter: No, that was actually… Part of my intention of door-knocking in the neighborhood I wanted to live was I was not only looking for deals, but looking for a house that would be the perfect deal in being able to buy it and my profit literally be equity.

Dave: So instead of cashing out the profit, the profit’s now living in the house that you bought under market value, and then, did the work yourself ultimately or hired out different parts not to be able to get into your own house at a deeper discount with some equity?

Peter: Correct. And the really cool thing about is that, initially, we didn’t know it was the house I was gonna buy. It was, I was treating it like any other potential lead, talking to the homeowners, serving them, walked them through the loan modification process. Once they got denied, had them come in and meet with Melina, and once we realized, “Hey, selling is the best option,” originally, it wouldn’t have been a deal so to say, but because I was coming in, I was able to qualify for traditional financing, we were gonna live there, I did have some relationships that I’ve made with contractors and workers to come in and do good work…

Dave; At reasonable prices?

Peter: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah.

Peter: It worked.

Dave: Yeah. I mean, gosh, is that what we teach or something? I, I don’t…

Melina: I feel like it is. I was just thinking, you know, just maybe reducing it a tad bit. Thinking about, for me, one of the…I don’t know. One of the more poignant moments of your journey was I can remember asking you because I remember when we very first met, your number one goal was to get Ada out of her job, period. Like, you wanted her to be able to leave her job, and so, I remember asking you one day, like… I don’t know why. I just asked you randomly. Like, “So what’s the number? Do you know the number?” And you kinda looked at me like, “Yeah.” And I kinda knew you had hit that number.

Dave: The “number” meaning…

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: …how much money he needs in the bank or how much money you need to make to… Because she was in retail for, like, 20-something years or something?

Peter: 17, yeah.

Dave: 17 years?

Peter: The same job her entire life. It’s the only job she’s ever had. Mind you, the company went from… It was bought out by somebody, but she stayed in the same job.

Dave: For 17 years?

Peter: 17 years, yeah.

Dave: And so the num-,…you had a number in your mind?

Peter: Yeah.

Dave: And Melina had to prompt you to…

Melina: Yeah. I kinda knew, you know, but I just, I knew that he had met that goal. You know, I knew that because I believe this. I think that it’s a great idea to retire, like, somebody out of their job or get somebody out of their job, right, or people, I hear people say things like, “Oh, I wanna help our parents retire. That’s a great goal, but if you don’t know what that actually takes, then it’s just an idea. It’s a dream, right? It can’t ever really be a goal. So I remember saying, “Do you know the number? What is the number that it’s going to take, the amount of money in the bank for you to be able to get Ada out of her job?” And, in my mind, I already knew the answer, but I was more of a prompting question, I suppose, because my number one goal is, you know, like, the whole person. So I knew you were doing really well at your job or, you know, in your business, I knew you were making money, I knew, at this point, you’re gonna be probably doing this forever. You’re an entrepreneur, you’ve got it.

And so, in my mind, one of the most important things is what’s happening behind the scenes in your family life. You know, your marriage, in my mind, is the most important relationship that you have, and I know that when you have one person working at a, you know, regular job, and then you’re the entrepreneur, like, your lives are so not connected, and it’s very easy to become, you know, two separate lives or roommates and not really understanding what’s happening with the others, so my concern has always been that you have the ability to get Ada home. And when I asked you that and you said, “Yeah,” I just kinda looked at you, like, “I feel like you made that.”

Peter: Yeah, that was… I actually remember that time in your office, and it was… I mean, the number was always 50,000. It was an idea of, “Okay, that’s more than an annual salary. You’ve got six to a year to get things done. Like, at this pace, with what you have going on, with what’s in your pipeline, if you can maintain that, that’s the number.” And it was once that number was hit, it was like, ” Okay. Well, we didn’t make plans after that. We just said that was our goal.” So then we had to sit and go, “Okay, well…”

Melina: Now what?

Peter: Now, we can move.

Melina: Right. Oh, gosh.

Peter: Well, that was when the idea came… “Okay, well, if we’re going to move, well, then, you need to stay,” and that’s was when we’re like, “Okay.” Like, I’ll never forget the time that I’m sitting in my office and Ada called and she’s like, “Hey, can I put in my two weeks’ notice today?”

Melina: I remember that.

Peter: And I literally, like, froze. And in my mind, I went, “Okay, health insurance we’re losing. Okay, I’ve gotta replace this, I’ve gotta figure out how to do this, all of this.” And in her mind, she heard the hesitation and she’s like, “Oh, oh,” like…

Dave: Sorry.

Peter: Yeah, and I was like, “No, no, no, no. ” Like, inside, I was, like, jumping for joy because there was a part of me that just says, “She believes in me.”

Melina: Yeah.

Peter: Like, that’s what I heard when she said, “Can I quit my job?” It was… Because, mind you, when I first started this, there was a year of pruning, a year of massive character change that had to happen in order for this. So she’s getting up going to work, thinking that I’m sitting at home playing in my underwear on the computer…

Melina: Right.

Peter: …making offers and doing personal development stuff. So there’s that level of resentment.

Melina: Of course.

Peter: And then, to hear her go, “Well, hey, like, can I do the one thing that I’ve been wanting to do, and so afraid to do, and step up and do? Is that okay?” But what was really cool was when she heard that hesitation, then we started talking. She realized, “Well, maybe it’s not the right time right now,” but at least she had entered that mentality of it now being a potential reality.

Melina: That’s, like, so huge. I mean, I know, I know that there’s people listening to this podcast right now that are experiencing exactly… Like, they’re still stuck in the… Or maybe not stuck, that maybe they’re just in this season of their significant other having resentment toward them for this, you know, adventure or journey or whatever you want to call it that the other person is embarking on. And it’s really not easy, it’s really, really difficult, so… And it’s difficult on both people, so I really love what you just said. Like, I love what you just said what you heard her say was that she believes in you. That’s…

Dave: Well, that’s a big deal and we hear it a lot.

Melina: Yes, yes.

Dave: Because a lot of people find us after they’ve been down the journey of, “I wanna be an entrepreneur, I wanna be in real estate,” so they go to, you know, I hate to say traditional route, but that’s kinda the only option that’s out there, right? You get online and you find seminars and webinars and go to hotel rooms and conferences, and then you buy classes and then you’re kinda on your own, and we hear a lot of spouses or significant others, you know, that are reluctant, and probably rightfully so.

Melina: Yes. Sure. Absolutely.

Dave: I mean, people spend a lot of money chasing this dream, you know, and then people are selling people dreams.

Melina; Absolutely.

Peter: Right.

Dave: And, you know…

Melina: It’s the worst.

Dave: We, you know, we don’t sell a dream.

Melina: No.

Dave: You know, like, there’s no… Like, this is hard work, and it’s rewarding, you know, if you’re willing to put in the work, but it’s hard work. And so rightfully so, when we hear spouses say, “Hey, you know, I’m apprehensive because he or she, you know, they tried this before and they tried that before.” You know, and what that really says is they tried by, you know, they paid whatever the financial cost was, right?

Melina: Right. But nobody really told them, like, the work that needs to be done. Right?

Dave: Right. And you just heard Peter say, “For a year I was sitting in my underwear working on personal development and making offers,” right?

Melina: Right.

Dave: And… Yes?

Peter: So studying class material, learning, like, going over what I’m supposed to know… Mind you, I was still afraid to have a conversation. So I’m rehearsing, like, coming from a theater background and things like that. Like, I’m rehearsing, “Okay, this is what I’m supposed to say when they say this.” Not even attempting to really be present in the conversation, but, “Hey, I just need to check the box because when I knock on the door, I’m…” So.

Dave: Right. Yeah.

Melina: Yeah. It’s like learning an entirely new language, right?

Peter: Absolutely.

Melina: It really is.

Peter: I mean, literally, like, I just have went to school. Mind you, I was, like, in pre-med and going, really taking organic chemistry, calculus, physics, biology classes, and I feel like I’ve gotten a higher quality of education and a much better ability to use that information in the last five years that I’ve invested dealing in learning this business, but not only, like you said, being an entrepreneur.

Melina: Yeah.

Peter: And that was the hardest part for her and I is I had failed things before when I tried to launch a website and great ideas and not having any idea how to manage, like, thinking I can do it all my own. And it was, “Oh, no, I need a developer. Okay, well, I’ll just go to school and take a side class to learn how to develop… Holy crap, that’s really hard. Like, that’s what… No, I’m gonna… I don’t have money to pay somebody to do that. Well, I guess that dream’s closed.” So.

Melina: That’s huge. That’s really, really big.

Dave: Yeah, that’s pretty crazy. Weird. The… Everything you just said, and I just had this flashback and I don’t know how many… We didn’t get your permission to really talk about you and this stuff, but, like, I remember Sunday of, you know, standing in our, you know, whatever you wanna call it, our training facility at the office, and, you know, you’re on your way out, and I just remember you, you know, I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t get your permission to share.

Peter: Full disclosure, yeah.

Dave: But, you know…

Melina: You mean five years ago?

Dave: Five years ago, yeah

Melina: Five years ago, his first…

Dave: Sorry. Five years ago, his first…

Melina: …three-day training.

Dave: The end of our first initial three days of training.

Peter: Yeah.

Dave: So, which we still do, initial three days of training, right? And…

Peter: I actually get to teach on that day now.

Melina: It’s incredible. That is incredible.

Dave: Right?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: From, you know, being there, but you were broken at that time. I mean, would you agree?

Peter: Yeah. I mean, I’ve been broken a good portion of my life. I was definitely on the rebound, I was definitely in a spot where, like, I’d hit rock bottom. I’d hit places where, like, I don’t ever wanna go again, and it was just the place that I was coming from and the place that I was at in my own walk, in my own life, in my own spirituality. Like, it just felt too good to be true, and that was, like, where my biggest… Because I knew it was where I needed to be, I knew it was where life was taking me, and I just didn’t believe it. Like, it was, I couldn’t rectify that with everything that had come before it.

Dave: Yeah. I remember you saying something to the effect of, and correct me if I’m wrong because we didn’t talk about this ahead of time, but something to the effect of. at the end of three days, like, “Please tell me that this is real because I don’t think I can take, you know, another heartbreak, another, you know, betrayal, another something in my life.” Was that, was that correct?

Peter: Yeah, exactly. It was very much along the lines like, “Hey, this is everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I’ve ever been looking for. Like, it better be real.”

Dave: Right. “Otherwise, I’m done.”

Peter: Yeah. Like, literally, like postal. I was at the place where I was fully surrendered to a place, and I was, like, “You know what, Lord? If this is where you’re leading me, then I’m here. If not, then I’ve just absolutely been betrayed and everything I believe is a lie.”

Dave: Wow.

Melina: Man, how many people live there?

Dave: All the time.

Melina: I think a lot of people live there. I don’t think that, I know you are not alone in that place. I just don’t think everybody has enough courage to, you know, share that, that clearly, right? Because it’s…

Dave: Or they’re not clear themselves.

Melina: That could be. Yeah. Maybe they don’t even have the ability to articulate it in the way that, you know, Peter is obviously intelligent and articulate, but for you to able to put that into words and really, like, look Dave straight in the face and just say it to him was a really big deal.

Peter: And every time I tell that story, I always specify that you looked me dead in my eyes, man-to-man, like, exactly what needed to happen in that moment. Because every other person that would have turned their back, that would have been shining a golden smile would not have been able to maintain the intensity of the glare that we exchanged that day.

Dave: Right.

Melina: Right.

Peter: And I said, “This dude is for real and I’m jumping in, Nestea plunge, head first, better not break my neck because I’m swimming.”

Melina: “Nestea plunge.” Yes.

Dave: So everybody hears this clearly because I don’t want this to sound like this is some sort of, you know, rainbow and at the end of it, there’s this pot of gold and, like, you know, “If I can just get over that hump, then that it’s just gonna be perfect,” and so forth, you know? Last week, we had a conversation because…we can just say it, you know. Peter was kind of… We’ll call it in a valley, maybe, or I don’t know. We’ll… Just for the sake of time, we can, you know, just call it that and, you know, you reached out and said, “I need help, and I,” you know, “I’m stuck.” And he’s stuck in being an entrepreneur. I mean, it’s really what it came down to. Like, he’s running, you know, he’s bought his own house and fixing that one up, he’s got two other fix and flips happening at the same time, he’s coaching, you know, new students in that fix and flip. That fix and flip has no other mentors in it. There’s nobody else really… I mean, I’ve been there a couple times and maybe gave you a couple of pointers here or there, but really, you took it on yourself.

Melina: He is the mentor.

Peter: Yeah. If I’m actually honest with everyone, this is one that I brought to you and you said, “Hey, you wouldn’t do that deal.”

Dave: Yeah.

Peter: And looking at it and looking at your plate and everything, I says, “Yeah, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t because the spread is, it doesn’t match what you need right now for your deals.”

Dave: Right.

Peter: And looking at it and sitting down and using some of the creative strategies that we’ve talked about, that I’ve learned and getting some of the student involved and being that exactly how it worked out, I was like, “You know what? I think I can take this one on.” And do I regret it? Not at all. I think it’s gonna be a great deal. I’m absolutely amazed and super-excited about what it’s gonna be like when it’s finished, but it’s been a pain in the butt.

Dave: Yeah.

Peter: Like, all of things that you’ve said could go wrong are going wrong.

Melina: Yeah.

Peter: What’s really is there hasn’t been any, like, major emergencies. Like, it’s been things that, hey, either a phone call, or a, “Hey, you know what? I haven’t experienced this, how do I handle it?”

Melina: Right.

Peter: And it was, “Okay, do this, do this, do this.”

Dave: Right.

Peter: And it’s been a huge learning experience. It’s definitely boosted my confidence to being able to handle things, but at the same time, coupled with remodeling our old place that we moved out of and fixing, flipping our place, it was a lot for me to handle at one time.

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Right. Right, and then that juggling act of being able to prioritize. “What do I need to do,” and then… Even, you know, like you said, pruning. So the pruning process, right, which none of us like, right?

Melina: No, pruning sucks. With people.

Dave: We don’t like, right, but… And we talk about pruning, those of you that… We’re talking about, really, like, with trees, you know, we prune them, you know, in the wintertime because it’s, you know, we want them to produce fruit come spring and summer, right, so we cut the branches down. It actually hurts the tree, right? It hurts the tree. The tree, you know, bleeds, and then, but the roots ultimately go down and get stronger. The foundation of that tree gets stronger so it can endure the seasons it’s going to go through and the weather it’s going to be challenged with and so forth. And then, it can ultimately produce fruit that allows us to eat off that tree, right? So Peter’s kinda went through that pruning process, you know, and five years, it’s not too bad. You haven’t been through it too much. And made a bunch of money along the way, got your wife out of her job now. She works with you day in and day out. I’m certain she’s helped on the projects you’re working on right now.

Peter: Yeah. It was actually cool. She got really hands-on on our place. Like, she says, like, she did all the caulking on the baseboards and the door jambs and the…everything there. So she’s becoming a little bit more handy, and I can see just little things in her confidence. Like, she’s much more open to talking to people, she’s much more, just jovial to be around. And it’s been awesome, I mean, to say… Mind you, we’re still kind of in limbo with… She… My whole thing is, look, I would love for her to come alongside and, like, do this business and get involved, but more importantly, my heart says I want her to find something that she’s passionate about.

Melina: Yeah.

Peter: Like, I’ve found where I belong, I found what I’m gonna do, who I’m gonna be, and I just think now is a time for her to finally decide, “Hey, what do I really wanna do?” And that’s kinda what I’m encouraging her to find that spot, and if it’s with me and doing this, great. If it’s with her having a garden in the backyard and learning about pruning herself, more power to her.

Melina: That’s so amazing. Like, you know, that is like the…to me, that is the ultimate… You’re in the best possible position for you to be able to say to your wife, “Go find what you’re passionate about,” and whatever it is, you are, that’s all you want. I mean… Yeah. What marriage doesn’t need that? Like, exactly every marriage needs that.

Dave: Yeah.

Melina: Right, every relationship. So it’s like that’s really incredible, and it’s important to stop and think about that. Remember that.

Dave: Yeah. In one of the trainings we’re doing, you know, because we do the, you know, monthly club meeting, and one of the trainings that we’re, you know, outlining is like our time management and goal setting. We’ll be, you know, we’re heading… We’re in the last quarter. And, you know, 2017 here, so we’ll be looking at our own forecast in 2018 and those kind of things. And I know Peter said before, you know, “I didn’t write down any of my goals.” Right, “I didn’t have any things written down. These things are just kind of, you know. I spoke them, you know, I might let somebody know, but…” You know, one of the things I think we would encourage everybody to do is, you know, write down these goals, and, like, Melina said, like, “What’s the number?” Right? I mean, we went through this experience ourselves when we retired your parents…

Melina: Yup.

Dave: …you know? And, you know, Melina’s dad and, ultimately, he’s passed from cancer and his battle with cancer, but I remember, like, sitting down with him and he’s, like, going to work every day, you know, and on chemo. And it was all about, like, you know, “Well, I can’t retire because I need healthcare.” You know, and we’re like, “Okay. Well, how much is that healthcare and then, you know, your mom.” You know, she’s in, suffering with Alzheimer’s and, you know, “What’s that gonna take?” And I remember us sitting down and just being like, “Okay. The number’s, I think it was $3,000 a month they needed.” You know, we’re like, “Okay, so we need to make $3,000 extra a month and…

Melina: That’s right.

Dave: …they can retire.”

Melina: Right.

Dave: And retire to ultimately battle, you know, cancer and your mom, you know, being able to not work anymore and help him out during that time, and I, I… We had to sit down and figure out like, “What’s that number?” You know? Like…

Melina: And it turned out it was completely doable.

Dave: Right. Yeah, it wasn’t some…

Melina: That wasn’t the… No, it wasn’t like…

Dave: Ambiguous, kind of maybe someday, kind of, sort of.

Melina: Right, right.

Dave: We had to crunch the numbers and figure out how can we make that money and, “Can we make it happen?” And, ultimately, we did.

Melina: Absolutely. And that, yeah. It was probably one of the most educational experiences and probably one of the most life-changing experiences for me, personally, to have was the idea that, you know, it’s such a lofty goal and how many people say, “I would love to be able to retire my wife. I would love to be able to retire my parents”? But most of us don’t ever actually back into, “What does that mean?”

Peter: Right. And I, myself, am admitting that I didn’t crunch all the numbers and didn’t count for everything.

Melina: Right

Peter: But at the same time, if I would’ve, it would have prevented me from just stepping out and doing it.

Melina: That’s actually great. I think it’s really funny because you did have the number of 50,000…

Peter: Yeah.

Melina: …and I wasn’t gonna say the number, but I knew that you were there. So I remember looking at you, going, “So what are you doing?” Right? It’s because, it’s almost as if you picked a number, like, that just seemed like, “Okay. Maybe when we get 50 grand in the bank.”

Peter: Right. I don’t really believe it.

Melina: You know, like… Yeah, like, you know, quote “50 grand,” you know? Might as well be $10 billion. Like, it seemed… Did it seem kind of, like, really…

Peter: Lofty, absolutely.

Melina: Yeah, lofty. Like, maybe not even really, you know, not even attainable. Like, “Yeah, it’s lofty and not really attainable, so let’s just throw 50.”

Dave: An extra 50.

Melina: Yeah

Dave: Yeah.

Melina: Like, the kind of, like, it’s almost… Yeah, like, “Ah, whatever. Because they say I have to have a number, that’s the number. Okay. Crap. We have the number, now what?”

Peter: Right.

Melina: Right?

Dave: It was actually way above because I remember we were…we did five deals together in one year, and there was… I mean, you had the number down to the penny.

Peter: Yeah.

Dave: I mean, we used to laugh and joke about this, but it was what, 86,000 or something, right?

Peter: Yeah, once it was, like, split.

Dave: Yeah. We split it and your half and Melina’s half were eighty-six thousand something dollars a piece, and it’s like… And, literally, he had it down to the penny.

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: And I remember talking about that because you were, had it down to the penny because he was figuring out his taxes.

Peter: Yeah, when we first, because it was 2015. It was right at the end of 2015 was when I.. Well, 2016 is when I incorporated and had to, like, I did my own taxes because I didn’t know anything, and it was kind of… I do well under pressure. Give me deadlines and I’ll perform.

Melina: Like an awesome entrepreneur that you are. That is an excellent trait that most of us have.

Peter: It was like, “Oh, no, taxes are due. I have not planned at all. I have all my receipts like I was taught, now I have to go through them all.” So it was kinda self-auditing myself and that was when I came to the realization, like, “Oh, wow, like, that number’s there.”

Dave: “Oh, boy. What am I gonna do now?”

Melina: Plus.

Peter: And then the scary part was this was when we were going to Hawaii last year, is when all of this started taking place. It was like, “Wait a minute. Like, I’m about to dump all of my own money and fund my own deal, and then all that’s, like, not gonna be there for a little bit.”

Melina: Yeah.

Peter: Knowing it was, like, gonna go in, like, almost double, but it was like, “That’s not gonna be there.”

Melina: Uh-huh. That’s the best.

Dave: That little security blanket, the…

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah, that little nest egg?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Oh, yeah, we did go to Hawaii, too. Yeah.

Melina: Yeah, we did.

Dave: Imagine that.

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: They had a… When was the last time you took a vacation with Ada prior to that?

Peter: Prior to that, we usually get about one a year that’s, like, a good…

Melina: I feel like you had, like, four this year.

Peter: Yeah, we’ve had a lot. We’re actually going back to Hawaii on November 14th.

Dave: Oh, you are?

Peter: Yeah.

Melina: Oh, whatevs.

Dave: Oh, thanks for the invite.

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: All right.

Peter: But you guys said you’d never go back to Kauai again, so we’re going because we missed part of it.

Melina: Yeah. Yeah, that’s funny.

Peter: And because they sent us, like, a coupon to get a really good deal.

Melina: Exactly.

Dave: Oh, wow.

Melina: And just for the record, I need a rooster wine glass again because mine broke. Just intent.

Peter: Duly noted.

Melina: Duly noted.

Dave: A rooster wine glass.

Melina: Maybe because there’s roosters all over the island. It’s the best thing ever.

Dave: Yeah. Chickens. All kinds of chickens, everywhere.

Melina:I just like roosters. Anyway.

Dave: Yeah. Anyway. All right. Well, that’s… I just appreciate coming out and sharing, Peter. I appreciate your transparency. I appreciate your willingness to grow and, you know, go through the, you know, the knocks that sometimes come through. And then, you know, you’re the, ultimately, the people that we’re looking for.

Melina: Absolutely.

Dave: The people that aren’t gonna quit, who are committed, who aren’t going to be, you know, the fair-weather friends, if you will, you know, when, you know, stuff hits hard, you’ve risen to the occasion. And so, I just wanna say thank you for that. Thank you for your loyalty and commitment to us and to the club and to the students and, you know, despite how you may have felt over the last few months and just being in stuff, you know, you haven’t, you know, packed up and skipped town, if you will, so.

Melina: Yeah. I was just gonna ask… I think that, like, in order to tie this up, Pete, if I would say to you, like, you know, we just identified that you’ve been in a valley, and the valley was being in overwhelm mode, right? Overwhelmed by too many tasks to do, too many places to be, only one of you, only 24 hours. And then, we were able to have a conversation. If you could, like… If you could give us the takeaway, right, the one takeaway, or maybe two takeaways, whatever, however you wanna put it, but if you could give us a takeaway because I know plenty of people get stuck in the overwhelm mode. And if you could give us, just for you, like, what’s the takeaway for you, that you, you know, to get out of it? Because you’re obviously out of it. I could see… It was like, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. Welcome back.” You know, even though I see you every day….

Peter: Right, right.

Melina: …I saw you and I said, I hugged you and I was like, “Oh, my God, it’s so good to have you back,” right?

Peter: Well, that was, like, what, Saturday at the end of class, and I was, like, it felt good to be back. Like, when Tim and I were on stage and taking questions and just kinda having a flow up there, it was like, “Wow, this is… I miss this.”

Melina: Powerful.

Peter: The takeaway. I think one of the biggest things that resonated with me that day is when after I kinda threw up on everybody, just in letting all the concerns and things that I’d felt I’d been going through and sharing and feeling that I couldn’t share, one of the things that really hit me is when Dave said, like, “You know, you really sound like a big victim right now.” And I was like, “Oh.” And in my own mind, like, I had a validity of all of the problems and all of the issues and things and… But at the same time, I also… They got solved. And it was like, you know what? You have a really big point. Like, everything inside of me wanted to, like, rebutt all that and say, but I couldn’t because it was like, if I heard myself from a non-detached perspective right now, I would say the same thing. And the takeaway is that you are the result of what you choose to do. Like, the thing that I will attribute to every successful investor at the club… Mind you, we come from every possible background you could ever imagine. Like, we call ourselves the “Home of the Misfits.”

Melina: Yes.

Peter: But the one thing that the successful ones have in common 100% is that we haven’t quit. Like, that’s the only thing stopping you from succeeding is you not persevering and pushing forward. And as deceived as I was feeling that I had to do that entirely on my own and it felt that way, I’d be a jerk to say that I was 100% right in being alone and feeling that I couldn’t have, reach out for help. And it wasn’t until I told those little voices in the back of my head to, like, sit down and shut up, that I could come to a space of saying, “Hey, I’m over my head. I’m literally walking in quicksand, not because I’ve fallen, but because there’s so many responsibilities that I’m not used to juggling that are weighing me down. And just to set one of those down for a minute and reach my hand up and ask for help, it was really easy to actually get pulled out of the mire. But it was that humility of going, “Hey, this is where I am and this is where I’m going to stay if I don’t do something different.”

Melina: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, that absolutely is the perfect summation of, in my mind, the power of the club. It’s the power of relationships, right? That’s what we start talking to people about the moment they walk into the club. The most important thing in your life is your relationships, and it’s not only your personal relationships at home, it is your relationships that you choose to have inside of your business. And that, for me, is why I absolutely love this club. I love this club full of a bunch of misfits because we literally are all committed to each other, and you’re right. Every single one of us gets stuck. It’s… Dave and I are not above getting stuck, and we are not so full of humility that we automatically put our hands up and be like, “Hey, we’re stuck.”

Peter: Right.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Melina: Right? It’s a challenge for every single person to do that. So, but I believe that is what courage does. Courage is admitting when you’re in the quicksand when you’re walking in quicksand. And the beautiful thing is that you have people to literally… There’s so many people that, you know, you can lift your hand up to. It’s amazing.

Dave: Yeah.

Peter: Yeah.

Dave: I do wanna just say thank you for, you know… We were just talking about, you know, podcasts and schedule and all that stuff and yesterday, when I was on Facebook, there was a comment from somebody who said, you know, “I was… Somebody told me about the club and I was super-skeptical about it and one of the things that,” their comment was specifically, you know, “I went back and I listened to every podcast twice.” So that’s some serious dedication, right?

Melina: Seriously.

Dave: We’re thirty-something podcasts deep now, and I listen to every podcast twice and it just helped me realize that there are really good people out there who are doing a really good business, who really do want to help people and, you know, my own skepticism comes from, you know, my background of, you know, there are some not really good people and I’ve come across some of them and they’ve hurt me, and so… But, I won’t mention his name, but, you know, the guy who put that on there, I thought, “Huh. So there’s value in doing all this and there is value and there’s people listening.” And so this makes it all worthwhile. So I just wanna say thank you, Peter.

Melina: Yeah. Me too. Thank you.

Peter: Thank you.

Dave: All right. Well, we’ll call that a wrap and…

Melina: Wait. I was gonna say this.

Dave: Uh-oh.

Melina: Last thing I wanna say, and that is this. That is when people, and I think it’s, that’s a Mother Teresa poem, right? She says, you know, “People hurt you, love them anyway,” right? You know, “People want to not celebrate your success,” right, “do it anyway.” I just feel like that’s what I wanna say. Like, just do it anyway. That’s, I feel like that’s what this is all about.

Dave: All right. Cool. Well, we’ll call it a wrap and we’re gonna be… What are we flipping?

Melina: We’re flipping everything, man.

Peter: And we’ll flip in five years.

Melina: Flipping five years. Flipping five years in love.

Dave: All right, well, we will catch you guys next week, and next week, we have a really cool podcast.

Melina: I know, I’m excited.

Dave: It will be a first.

Melina: It will.

Dave: It will be an…

Melina: Something you’ve never heard.

Dave: Something you’ve never heard, yeah. Catch you guys…I said next week. Actually, in two weeks.

Melina: Okay.

Dave: So with that…

Melina: Boswells out.

Dave: Peace.