Podcast Transcription

Intro: Welcome to “Flippin’ Off,” a purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference. All right. So, welcome to New Wealth Advisors Club. I am Melina Boswell. I’m talking to you live, which is so weird. Normally, I’m just talking to people that are in the room with me. But in the room with me today, I have my cohorts. I’ve got John Slater. So, he can say hello.

John: Hi.

Melina: Tim Wilkinson?

Tim: Hello.

Melina: Mary Ann Bongco?

Mary Ann: Aloha, guys.

Melina: Aloha. David Boswell? Oscar Solares?

Oscar: Hello.

Melina: I’m just going round robin. Nobody knows where I’m going next. Mr. Christian Rios?

Christian: Hey, guys.

Melina: Frank Luna?

Frank: Hello, everybody.

Melina: You finally got a haircut.

Frank: I did.

Melina: Great. And today, we have Mr. Amir Iliam.

Amir: Hey, everybody.

Melina: So, I don’t know. Are we glitching a little bit? I don’t know if it’s my internet or…

Frank: It might be Amir’s. I don’t know.

Melina: All right. Well, so, I am Melina Boswell, founder and CEO of New Wealth Advisors Club. So, today, we are podcasting still in quarantine. So, you know, I have lots of words about quarantine, locked up, whatever – the great reset, the great realization, the great pause, all the wonderful things that COVID has given to us. Ironically, I didn’t really share this with you guys – I might have shared a little bit yesterday with my family about all the wonderful things that COVID has given to us and that I’m not ready to go back to normal. Do you know what I mean? I’m not ready to – I actually believe that the great pause, the great realization has given us the best gift ever. I so feel the need personally to still be quiet and to stay slow and to just, you know… I used the analogy – on Saturday, there was a planned protest at Huntington Beach. The protest was to demand the reopening and demand liberties and rights back and everything, which I think it’s all great. But there was a planned storming of the beach as part of the reopening. So, it was really crazy. I knew that that was going to happen and I think everybody has every right to be able to do that. So, Huntington Beach Police Department came on their horses, mounted police on horses. They came down on the beach and they just stood in a line and all the people – there was I don’t know how many people – several hundred I know, for sure, stormed the beach. They came from, like, Main Street and they just all ran down to the beach. It was, you know, an act of whatever, part of their rights to protest. My best friend got a beautiful picture of the horses. It’s interesting when I sent it to different people what people’s responses were. They were like, “Oh, that’s awful,” or, “That’s horrible.” I was like, “I think it’s a beautiful picture to see,” because to me – well, because here’s what I know – they sat there and allowed people to just do what they needed to do. They didn’t stop them. They didn’t tell them, “You can’t do it.” So, whether you are for reopening, not reopening, whatever, it doesn’t really matter. The reality is that it was a beautiful just America, you know, a picture of America. While I celebrate their right to go out and demand to be reopened and demand everything coming back, for me, personally, I didn’t want to go and storm the beach with everybody and I’m thankful I didn’t have to. I’m thankful that they did. But I’ve had so much shift in my personal experience during the COVID lockup that I’m actually really enjoying the quietness of it and still remaining quiet and still listening and still slowing way down. I’m on technology and on screens more than I’ve ever been on, but mostly to communicate with people and then trying to get my body used to it is something entirely different. I’m sure a lot of us are experiencing that as well. Does anybody else – I think I’ve gone through this wave. You know like the wave, right? It’s like, “I’ve got to get out.” Now, I’m like, “Maybe not so fast.” Anybody else have that kind of experience or are you guys more like, “I don’t give a crap, I’ve got to get out?”

Tim: I mean, I’m more – like, I’m a natural hermit. So, I’m totally comfortable being home. Frankly, if we never go back out, I’m fine. I’m a hermit. I like it.

Melina: Yeah. Anybody else?

John: I think for me, we all enjoy the company of…

Frank: Make it brighter and change the color.

Tim: What?

Frank: Go ahead, John.

John: Sorry, I was just saying – for me, I enjoy the company of others as well because I look around the room and I feel like people have got some quiet space to work in and that’s where I’m still struggling a little bit. So, I know I can go into the office. There’s nobody else there right now. But at the same time, it’s great being in the office where you actually have people to talk to in the sense of, “Hey, I got a lead come across my desk. What does this look like? Hey, Melina, it’s Oscar. Do you have five minutes? Let’s look over these numbers.” So, I’m making do with what I’ve got. But I’m shifting from bedroom to garage to garage to bedroom. So, at some stage, I’m going to get – I’m close to breaking. I’m close to snapping. You know, it is what it is. But I’m okay. I’m all right right this second.

Melina: I totally appreciate that. I totally appreciate that.

Frank: Yeah. Like the logistics of everything, constantly getting interrupted here at the house because I’m at home. I have four kids, basically, living here. So, that’s interesting. But at the same time, I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that they’re around to help with stuff, which I hate. Well, I don’t hate – I never was comfortable asking for people to help me with stuff that they seem to not know anything about. So, are we two months? Is eight weeks, six weeks? How many weeks have we been locked up?

Melina: I think it will be eight weeks this weekend.

Frank: Yeah. So, I’ve gone through a whole thing of trying to get away from them, trying to get privacy in the backyard to where I’m okay sitting here. Now, they’re in a routine of knowing – like, I don’t know how many times somebody’s walked in here and ran out because they realized I was on a Zoom call or recording a podcast or doing something. Now, they’re kind of just on autopilot. They walk in. They know just to be quiet and they’ll check to see what I’m doing to make sure they’re not interrupting something. I’ve really gotten used to it. I think I can do both. There are times when I do want to go to the office, just have to meet with somebody or do something that requires that we go to the office because I don’t want them to come to my house. So, I’ve definitely learned to do things a lot differently, think a lot differently, think way more efficiently because at the end of the day, it isn’t efficient to just run off somewhere, but we’re forced because of this to do Zoom all the time. I’m realizing there are so many things that I could have been doing either on the conference call or over Zoom that I would always just drop in automatically, “I’m gonna go do it.” So, I’ve definitely spent a lot of time in those times between appointments and stuff where I would be driving, way more time reflecting, thinking, and more importantly, connecting with my business partner, my wife, about those things that I’m thinking about. Normally, those things would be happening and I’d be going between appointments and then I’d let her know what the news is of what’s happening. Now, she’s much more involved. I feel a lot more connected here at the house with you guys. What do we do? We have some topic we want to talk about. Next thing you know, we’re on a Zoom call in 30 minutes instead of trying to schedule something out next week and looking at the calendars.

Melina: Exactly.

Frank: So, I really love it. I was so concerned right before the lockdown started. I was like, “What is this going to do to my business? What is it going to do to these real estate transactions that we’re in the middle of?” So, I think it worked out way better than I could have imagined. Like, I was just hoping to stay at par. But I think it’s actually done better than that. As far as my mental situation and being able to stay on top of things, I feel way, way more in control as far as seeing what’s happening. Before, things were happening to me, whether they were good or bad, I just feel a lot more at peace, I guess.

Melina: Yeah. That’s great. All of us – I think it’s great. I’m happy about it, which actually brings me to the topic that we wanted to talk about today, which was bootcamp and how we had agreed at the beginning of the year, right, Oscar? That was our original plan was the beginning of the year, to do bootcamp. Is that when we first planned it?

Oscar: Yeah. We discussed it at the end of ’19 and started sharing the idea with some of the accountability partners and coaches and all that to what they should start preparing themselves for and alluding to things but not giving them out too much just because we didn’t feel they were ready for it to begin with.

Melina: Yeah. So, it’s really crazy. So, we had agreed we were gonna do a bootcamp, a business bootcamp, if you will. We had some ideas. It was really for our coaches, for our coaching staff to get – not staff, let me take that back because they’re not employees.

Oscar: We’ll call it the coaching team.

Melina: Yes. The coaching team – and we wanted to be able to better equip them. We thought what better way to equip them than put them through a bootcamp. So, we started putting together the curriculum for it. We were getting really excited. We started it in February, right, Oscar? It was like the second or third week of February.

Oscar: Yeah.

Melina: So, it’s once a week, three hours an evening, a real, like, hardcore, intense bootcamp. I know the first day of bootcamp when everybody showed up, everybody was completely shocked because we really treated it like it was bootcamp, for real. Amir, I’d love to hear from Amir. All of us were sort of involved in the creation of the bootcamp. Then Amir, who is one of our coaches, has been a student. We’re all doing the bootcamp. But Amir came in without having any of the knowledge about the preparation and the creation of the bootcamp and what that looked like. So, we’re gonna hear from his perspective. But it’s been interesting in terms of the shift that we’ve had to make with COVID because it was supposed to be every Friday night, 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. or 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. every Friday night no matter what at the office. But then COVID hit – was it the second or the third week in? So, we were like, “Holy crap.”

John: Yeah, the third week in.

Melina: Yeah. So, that’s actually what we’ve learned. We were like, “Oh, my gosh. Is it gonna have the same power? Is it gonna have the same impact?” I think it has. It’s been wonderful. It turns out, I think, Frank is right. Things that we think we can’t do via Zoom, we are perfectly capable of doing and not only doing but doing well. I think that there is a good mesh, maybe to John’s point in this conversation, which was there needs to be a mix. Like, I need to be able to get to the office. There is something beautiful about being able to be together and to share energy, right? But you can also get a lot more done when you aren’t having to drive. So, I think going forward, there’s going to be a mix of person and then virtual, right? So, I think starting maybe with – I’d love to hear – Amir, I’ve never asked you this. We’ve never talked about it. I know I’m just gonna put you on the spot. You don’t care. Maybe you do care. It doesn’t matter. None of us care how uncomfortable you are. When he was gonna be on here a couple hours ago – is that right?

Amir: Should I say a couple minutes ago?

Melina: Yeah. So, we just decided let’s have Amir share so we can talk about the creation and what our intention was of the bootcamp and then get some feedback from Amir and what experience has been in participating in the bootcamp. And we can – Oscar, I’ll let you ask some other questions, but I would love to hear like from Amir how it was for you day one. You knew you were coming, you enrolled in it. You chose it, obviously. You weren’t forced into it. You signed up for it. Then we came in. What did you expect and then how was the first night? Like, what happened for you if you wouldn’t mind sharing with us how that landed for you?

Amir: Yeah. Well, the first night seems so long ago.

Melina: Right.

Amir: Like, it’s crazy because I’m trying to think like what came up for me that night. How did I feel? What was my expectations?

Melina: Yeah.

Amir: We are completely, like – who would have – it’s just completely different. But the first night was – personally, me, I was pumped. I was really excited because I felt there will be opportunity there to really get not only like close with each other, which I felt we missed or I missed the coaching team.

Melina: Oh, yeah.

Amir: Personally, me, I missed it. We’re always kind of in our same groups and that shuffling.

Melina: Yeah, like, cliquey, you mean?

Amir: Yeah. You’re coming to the office with your friends, which is fine. It’s all good. It’s natural. But like, I was looking forward to that. I was looking forward to – I know when you put into – like, when you’re forced into like one group – I knew there were going to be activities and stuff like that, I knew new relationships were going to come out of it. And, you know, I was just excited to, like, experience something that was similar to – I hear stories on how Dave used to do that. I never experienced that. I know I kept hearing stories on how the mentorship or not the mentorship, the bootcamp with Dave. There was a thing there that, like, had such a huge impact. So, I didn’t know exactly how it’s going to look like, what it’s going to be. But it was intense, that first night, for sure. It was intense.

Melina: Yeah. Okay. Were you surprised?

Amir: No, not at all, because I know you guys. You know what I mean? I know. I just knew it was gonna be intense because it needs to be intense – because it needs to be intense.

Melina: Yeah.

Amir: You know, maybe at the beginning more than down the road. But at the end of the day, accountability, like, urgency, right? I don’t know what other word to use, but like hunger. You need those things to eventually have or achieve what you want to achieve, like develop your own business. That was, to me, the point, right? We’re business owners. It’s tough.

Melina: Yeah. You know, I think that’s the big thing. When we initially were talking about the bootcamp, it was for the coaches and to help them with accountability. And how do they hold their students accountable? They sign up to be an accountability coach. We all know that if you want to hold somebody else accountable, it starts with you, right? It’s always that way. That was our original thought. Then as we got into this thing, we started realizing that – what were some of the great realizations? Who wants to – Oscar, do you want to talk about that, about some of the realizations we had about just our students in general and what we learned, maybe?

Oscar: Yeah. So, a few things stand out for me. So, one, definitely accountability was a huge thing. We had all these – like you said, we had this agenda, if you will, of what we were gonna cover. We presented that to them. We let them know. But every week, I think they were confused a little bit because we were adapting as we went along. We still held to the agenda, but we adjusted in the sense of we started to get – they have homework, right? We started to get feedback in reading their homework and understanding where they’re at and positioning and questions came from their homework that started to kind of spark some lights for us that, “Oh, you know what? We need to shift here and maybe we now need to talk more about really doing a self-analysis versus just looking at an organization.” Look yourself in the mirror, I guess, is a good way to put it. And then it shifted to, “Oh, wait…” John and I talked about this. They really need to understand what it looks like to really coach somebody, right? They have to now position themselves from a different perspective. It’s no longer – you build your accountability in them, them being our coaches and APs, but they then now have to be able to transfer that over to someone else. So, we shifted things a little bit. We broke them up into teams, to Amir’s point. How we did that, it was interesting. I came into Melina’s office with a list and I met with everybody and said, “All right, guys, so, we’re gonna break them up into teams. Here are the people that are not gonna be together. Now, we need to put other people in their teams.” Then we ended up with some very interesting teams. We were able to do that. A lot of that came about because Amir said, “I know you guys. So, I wasn’t surprised.” Well, we know you guys too. We need to be able to separate you because we need everybody to be stretched. So, we have some teams where the dynamics are like, “Oh, my gosh,” right? There’s a team that I probably wouldn’t be thrilled to be in just because of the characters that are in there, but it’s the best thing for them as well. So, we made adjustments like that of massaging things around. Then it was really, really crystal clear that as much as it was about coaching and accountability – and Amir touched on this – this is about entrepreneurship. This is about really understanding that even though they’re accountability partners and coaches, they’re running their own individual businesses. They have to take that perspective of, “What is it really like to be an entrepreneur? What does it really mean to be an entrepreneur? How do I become successful in that?” So, that shifted our dynamics quite a bit.

Christian: I’ll add to this conversation too. I think initially when we started, the APs, our coaches were thinking it was us like going to punish them or tell them what to do. The truth was it’s really all about them. It’s about perfecting their craft. I know Amir and Oscar were hitting on it. During the section that I was teaching, it really was entrepreneurship. Thinking about like – you know, like, some of the athletes too, like the Kobe Bryant, the Tiger Woods, what people don’t see is all the sacrifice, everything that they had to put in and how they were accountable to themselves and how they also kept their peers, their fellow, let’s call it business partners or, you know, athletes’ peers, they held them accountable too. They had such high standards that they wanted them to perform at that level too. I know something we say – I wrote it down – accountability, everyone needs it, but do people actually want it? Everyone always says like, “Oh, yeah, I want it,” until, like, you actually have to do what you say you’re going to do. I think people getting into this business, if you hire a real estate coach, if you hire like a gym coach or you get a gym partner, all you’re asking for is accountability and you’re asking for that because you’re actually looking to get better. I agree with what you guys were saying.

Melina: So good. So true, right? Do you really need a fitness coach?

Christian: We all know what to do. Yeah.

Melina: You know what to do. Why do we do that? Oh, because we need accountability. That is exactly right. We don’t want accountability. This is how you find out the truth about yourself. Here’s the thing. This accountability bootcamp for me has gotten very clear. Like, I see the value in it. We decided, you know, we’re gonna turn the heat up. It’s not for everybody. The idea is hey, if people aren’t serious, we want them to quit. That’s the goal. Like, if you’re not up to this, you should quit, not because we don’t want people to succeed, but because we want them to get what it really takes to run a business. You do have to be accountable. Most people don’t have the, you know…

Christian: And for us – sorry, Tim –

Melina: Fortitude.

Christian: And for us, we want to be around, like, the cream of the crop, right? It’s like the saying goes, “We’re only as strong as our weakest link.” So, I want to be around doers. I want to be around high performers. That’s the only way we can all get better. If people quit. We still love them, you know?

Melina: Totally.

Christian: I’m still gonna give them a hug. This isn’t for you.

Melina: Maybe it’s just not their time, right? We agreed with that. It’s so funny. I came out really strong in the beginning of the bootcamp and knocked everybody around. So, then last week, I came in really strong and I just was like, “Hey, if you can’t hang, be okay with that. If you can’t hang, that’s all right right now.” Just get honest. Stop spending your time, stop spinning your wheels, stop trying to be something you’re actually not ready for. You can’t white-knuckle it. You can’t fake it. You’re being seen. Either people – this is when accountability gets really, really real is when you say you want accountability, then it’s given to you, and then what do you do with it? What do you do with it? Do you receive it and step back and go, “Wow, I really need to look at myself?” Or do you fight against it? Do you decide to become a victim? Do you decide to be like, “Woe is me?” Do you get angry? Do you get – what are your triggers? This is all stuff that triggers people. It’s a great opportunity for you to be able to see yourself and recognize who you are and what your strengths and what your weaknesses are and what the opportunities are for you to be able to grow and to become a better business owner. It is a funny thing that people always say, “I want to be an entrepreneur.” No, you don’t. You really don’t. What you want is – what people want, I think, in entrepreneurship is they want freedom, “I want to be able to…”

Christian: They want to wake up in their PJs.

Melina: What’s that?

Christian: They want to wake up in their PJs at 9:00 a.m., walk to the mailbox, pick up a check, and live the good life.

Melina: Right. What entrepreneur does that?

Frank: A successful entrepreneur.

Melina: Okay. Good. It’s like maybe you do all that, but you’re still living on your mama’s couch.

Frank: What was it that you talked about before was wantrepreneur?

Melina: Wantrepreneur.

Christian: Hi, this is Christian Rios. As many of you know, I’ve been a member of New Wealth Advisors Club for over seven years and got started when I was 17 years old with absolutely no real estate experience. One of the biggest lessons I have learned from being in the industry is the need for authentic relationships. If you’re looking for an actual team locally in Southern California with all the resources needed to close deals, register for one of our free workshops by visiting www.joinnwac.com. Thanks for listening to the Flippin’ Off podcast.

Frank: You know the – oh, go ahead, John.

John: I was going to say – something you said in that thing, Melina, was strengths and weaknesses. I think people don’t always want to look at what their strengths and weaknesses are. It’s more of a white knuckle, ride it through, you know, “Fake it until I make it” kind of thing. But it’s so completely okay to find your weaknesses. We’re not all strong in every point.

Melina: No.

John: You know, the idea of like coaching, for instance, coaching is a skillset.

Melina: Yes.

John: There are parts of coaching that you can master very easily. You know the information. You know real estate. You know everything about real estate. You can answer every question about real estate. But it doesn’t mean, say, you can answer it in the right coaching style for that particular person that you’re going to work with. So, identifying strengths and weaknesses is huge. You know, as we’ve seen, we’ve seen a lot great people step up and say, “This is not my strength.” That’s okay because now, we can work with them, coach them through it, to get them to where they want to be. So, it’s a level of accountability, you know, which is huge, but being comfortable in that mindset to say, “Hey, I’m okay being broken down right now. I’m okay being told this is my area that I need to work on.” Because otherwise, how do you get better? When I think back to different training where you don’t want to be in front of everybody, you don’t want to be the one on stage that’s presenting, you don’t want to be the one that’s doing a coaching session because now, all eyes are on you. It’s way more awkward now even though you know it. So, it can even just be down to – I want to say stage presence, but like stage presence.

Melina: Yeah. That’s a real thing.

John: Hold a conversation and not be flustered and fazed by a click of a button or a move of a mouse or something that, you know, is part of the presentation.

Melina: Yeah.

Frank: John, you touched on something there that – coaching is different than teaching. Teaching, you walk them through a task, you give them information, and that’s pretty much it. And I think some folks get that really confused, that because they’re able to show them how to work through PropertyRadar or whatever other system, “Oh, I’m coaching them.” No. Coaching is the ability to actually understand the individual you’re having that conversation with and identify their strengths and weaknesses through conversation and then give them the tools to equip them to work with their strengths and weaknesses, right? So, I love that you brought that up because that’s one of the things that – Amir, I’ll go to you for this. What we did is we had the teams choose leads. So, Amir is one of the team leads. We spent some time together with the team leads and all that. So, from your perspective, what have you learned on the coaching side of things?

Amir: So, it’s interesting because the way – when John was saying it, I really – it landed for me as well. When you kind of like went there, the way I took it is to how I am interacting with students. It really just, like, it really hit me right now. I’ve done a whole lot of teaching, but…

Melina: I was like, “Wait, did you just learn you’re a teacher and not a coach, not a coacher?”

Amir: Oh, man. Coaching is – yeah, it’s a whole different level of emotional intelligence. I mean… Just for the bootcamp, what I’ve learned from, you know, from the coaching perspective is, again, it’s just my kind of like – it’s narrowing my view. I just saw that there are a lot of people that absolutely can step into that role and in the same breath, some people just – probably it’s just maybe not the right time. But I saw just, you know, in our groups, in other small groups, when we interact as a big group, I think there are a lot of people that can actually step into that role. It also provoked another thought for me where Oscar, you kind of – when you started going into like the bootcamp stages, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.” We’ve been through two stages. I’m sitting here now and we are talking about entrepreneurship and that’s really what – because that’s where I’m at right now. But it wasn’t like that throughout the whole thing. Our club is unique, very.

Melina: Yes.

Amir: At the beginning of the bootcamp, there was a whole lot of, “How do we balance between our responsibility as a coach?” When we are coaching students, we are with NWC hat. That is a huge responsibility. That is just a big responsibility. How do we balance that responsibility with building our own businesses. Now, clearly, it goes together, but sometimes it’s hard to see it. That’s kind of what…

Melina: Maybe not for everybody.

Amir: Right.

Melina: I guess that’s really, I think – it’s so fun. We’re being really, really open and transparent here because we’re sharing our process with our listeners about what does it look like to create something? In the beginning, our goal was to coach the coaches, equip the coaches. That was the original goal. What we realized, you know, quickly in is – so, we started on the assumption that we’re working with entrepreneurs and that people that are strong entrepreneurs and want to take their business to the next level to create leverage through coaching. That is the opportunity and the possibility that is available through the club. So, what we realized early in is people aren’t even equipped as entrepreneurs yet, actually. So, it’s like, “Oh…” We had to step back a little bit and go, “We must first actually equip them.” It was the wrong assumption. Our initial, I guess, hypothesis that we were working with entrepreneurs in the beginning was off. So, we had to stop with that and we had to start with the new hypothesis, which was, “Oh, we have to teach them how to be entrepreneurs,” and then realized that is very valuable. There isn’t really anything out there. I know that they have an entrepreneurship program at a university, which is like a joke to me. How are you gonna learn about entrepreneurship in university, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s even very realistic. So, then we were able to – thank you, COVID – stop, pause, and back up a little bit and go, “Okay, so, we’ve really got to teach them the rules of entrepreneurship. What is the foundation of entrepreneurship?” Now, we’ve come to a place where we’ve recognized this is very valuable. And not only entrepreneur, but a leader – so, entrepreneurial leadership is really what it is that we’ve created. Now, there’s gonna be an add-on to entrepreneurial leadership, which is you get to train to be an accountability partner and a coach with NWAC. It’s like another avenue that’s gonna be available for people. But maybe not. Maybe people need to – maybe the reason people have failed in other businesses that they’ve been passionate about is because they don’t understand the rules and the laws surrounding the real rules, laws, accountability surrounding entrepreneurship and leadership. That’s really what we’ve been able to create. Isn’t that miraculous? That’s amazing.

Frank: Yeah. That’s the biggest shift, absolutely. I’m clear now that based on where we are right now with the curriculum that’s been developed through the process and the added curriculum, that anyone that goes through it is going to be better equipped to take their own life on, right?

Melina: Oh, entirely.

Frank: It’s easy to think, “Oh, entrepreneurship is business.” Entrepreneurship is life.

Melina: Yeah.

Frank: It’s a lifestyle. It’s not a job. If you want a job, go get a job. That’s easy. Go do that. They give you your list of tasks and you punch your clock in and you do your thing and that’s great. But if you want to really have success in life, in all areas of life, then you really need to develop the skillsets of an entrepreneur. It takes time. It takes people being willing to pour into you through that process, right? I don’t know. For me, the time that I’ve spent with the club – I bought into the club. I bought curriculum. I did all those things. I did everything that you could possibly do inside the club. To me, it’s like I didn’t spend any money. I mean, I spent money, but the return that I got on that investment, it’s damn near infinite. The only difference between that and infinite return is that I would spend no money and I would have infinite return. But yeah, the growth, the ability to develop the skills that are necessary to get through things, that’s the cool part about all this. What do you got, Tim?

Melina: Yeah.

Tim: You know, I was thinking about this. Amir said some things. Everybody’s said a bunch of stuff. One of the things Amir said is he talked about, you know, stories about the previous bootcamps with Dave and things like that. It makes me think back. To me, that bootcamp was – when I went through the bootcamp with Dave – and this is quickly becoming that, I think, in the club – it was the missing link. It was the thing that – when I got involved here, my first thing was, “Okay, I’m gonna learn all this stuff about real estate.” So, come to class, learn all this stuff, learn foreclosure, learn creative acquisitions, learn all this stuff, learn bankruptcy, and then I realized quickly that I needed – the next step for me, personally, was I need to learn how to actually talk to a homeowner. So, that was the step two was the personal skills of talking to a homeowner. Once I got that down, I realized, “Okay, I closed a couple deals, but I don’t know – I’m not running a business.” Going through the bootcamp is that business – for me, it was the last step, which was understanding the entrepreneurial mindset. I got the real estate. I got the homeowners. Now, I need to know how to run a business. For me, it was absolutely the missing piece in taking – closing a deal here or there into creating leverage and learning how to work with people that – I’m not necessarily working with homeowners so much, but more working with students that I was, you know, helping and creating leverage and just building a business. For me, it was the missing thing. It was absolutely the missing thing. I’m glad that we’re in that realm now of creating that missing thing for other people because it became clear during this process that it was missing. You know, we skipped that in our hypotheses, if you will, and we were talking to people about how to do it, how to coach, and we realized, “Oh, no, we even skipped that piece. Now, we need to teach people how to be entrepreneurs.” And then also, I look at it – from a club perspective, I think it’s important that we note that when we turn the pressure up and we’re like – not that we want people to not succeed, but if this isn’t for you, then quit. Personally, I want the coaches inside the organization – when a student comes to them and whines about, “Oh, I didn’t do it because of X,” or, “I didn’t do this because of that,” I want the coach to be able to remember this process and be able to say, “You’ve got no excuses. Get your ass to work.” Like, I want the coach to be able to stand in their own integrity and be able to say, “Look, you don’t know what I did to get here. You have to stand up to do it.” We want our coaches to be those people. We want students to know that if they’re working with a coach at New Wealth, that they’re working with somebody who pulled out all the stops and did everything it took and didn’t let little things get in their way. So, that way, they can get some coaching from like real leaders.

Melina: Yeah. That’s great.

Frank: I love that. Yeah, Mary Ann, go for it.

Mary Ann: We’re kind of newbies even though we’ve been with the club since 2013. I came into this bootcamp with two… as a student of a bootcamp, never done it, and as a newbie with the leadership team. Whenever I meet with a lead, with Amir… which is really fantastic, and I’m like, “Okay, I’m going in there as a team lead or as a…” You know, so I was like teeter-tottering between the two. But it was such an amazing discovery for myself because I’ve been in management for so many years. So, you go in there like, “Yeah, I know what this thing is.” Bullshit, right? Now, you’re going from a W-2 to an entrepreneurship mindset and it’s like a whole different world that you would think it is. It’s bullshit. It’s like oh, my God, you go back to kindergarten in entrepreneurship, right? Even though you’re up here with, you know, senior operations, direct operations for 20+ years and now, going in there and you think you’re – in Hawaii, we call it high maka maka, which is like you’ve got like up your nose thinking, “I know everything, blah, blah, blah.” Oh, boy. The first two weeks, it’s like knock you down, right, Amir? It’s like, “What the frick?” Right? “What the frick?” And so, it was a very humbling experience, let me tell you, a very humbling experience. Joe and I would constantly be like, “No, it’s like. No, it’s like that.” He’s in science. There’s a whole dance between arts and science. I’m all about arts and I always coin myself as rebel without a cause. You’re like, “Get over your shit,” right? Then I realized too accountability partner, shit – you cannot – how can you be accountable to someone when you’re not even accountable for yourself? …right?

Melina: Yeah.

Mary Ann: What the frick, right? So, oh, boy, it was like, “Oh, here’s another…” you know? But it’s very – the whole thing was – we’re not even done and I’m so excited about it. It is, for me, if I have to take one thing out of it, it’s a humbling experience of what it means to truly be an entrepreneur. It’s an ongoing journey, right? Joe, like we say, the whole landmark, right? You climb a mountain with no top. But yeah, I appreciate it. For those of you out there listening when you think you’ve got it all, do this bootcamp, it will freaking put you in your place, let me tell you. You’ll be like so humbled the first day. Right, Amir? It’s crazy, but it’s great. Awesome.

Melina: Thank you, Mary Ann. I appreciate that. I really, really appreciate that.

Mary Ann: Yeah.

Frank: Good stuff.

Melina: Yeah.

Frank: I was just thinking about when we first started the club because you guys, I’ve known you guys, you’ve always been in business. You’ve always been business owners. So, the conversation for me trying to start my own business and work with you guys, like I saw you guys as entrepreneurs. You were opening up this office. You were doing something that I’ve never seen anybody do before anywhere. All I was trying to do was flip a house, trying to learn how to flip a house. I wasn’t thinking about being a leader, about being a coach. I was thinking about paying the bills. In that process of trying to learn how to be a business person, I was definitely getting a lot of input from Dave on the tax side, on all these other things that had to do with just being a business owner, right? And then seeing what you guys are doing – how many years have you been in business? Was it over 15 years at that point? It seemed like a long time.

Melina: At least, yeah. I mean, yeah. I think I’m 30 years.

Frank: So, when you guys were already business owners and now, you were branching out to do something that I had never seen before, for me, that was like the definition of an entrepreneur, when you look at all the different people out there that start off in some business that is established and your creativity and make something that’s never been done before or is innovative and apply it to the principle of real estate and coaching. So, that’s what I saw you guys doing. I was just trying to follow in your footsteps as far as being a responsible business owner. Now, we’re in 2020 now. I’ve been watching you and observing you and all the things that you’ve been implementing at the club. For me, it’s groundbreaking things that people don’t do. It seems like the industry however has been following suit. But they haven’t been able to duplicate what we’ve done because of the ten years of us working together and all the struggle and pain. I know that I couldn’t have been keeping the business conversation going without that future thing of looking like, “I’m becoming a leader. I’m starting to copy what they’re doing.” So, they kind of happened for me simultaneously. I still don’t consider myself an entrepreneur. I want to be an entrepreneur. I am a business owner now. We’ve got that going, finally. I know being a business owner, having a family, and keeping that all balanced with kids in elementary and junior high – I got the last two in high school now – I feel like after they graduate, I feel like I’ll be able to do so much more. But I’m excited seeing what’s happening here. I know I’m usually kind of quiet about everything. I’m usually observing and absorbing and thinking about, “What does this mean? Where do I fit in?” And I’m definitely praying. I definitely pray about things, like what’s gonna happen. So, with that, I’m just excited to watch what’s taking place. I know nobody else does what we do. I know we’ve broken ground. I know we’ve set the precedent and set the bar high. I’m just proud of everybody that I’ve gotten to be blessed to work with.

Melina: Awesome, Frank. That’s so insightful and so, like, authentic and so, like, wonderful. Thank you. I feel very honored. So, thank you for saying that. I really do. You really – it’s like, “Wow, really, are you talking about me?” I’m still shocked. So, thank you for that. Well, I guess we’re probably up to our time now, huh? I don’t know how much time we have. But we’re good. So, I think we’ll continue this conversation about entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial leadership bootcamp and what that looks like. Amir, we’d love to have you come back and have you share what your experience was and maybe some takeaways that you’ve received, you know, from the bootcamp. We’d love to hear that. We’re just gonna continue to have the conversation and continue to evolve it. So, if you’re just tuning in and listening, there will be an opportunity for you to sign up for the bootcamp. So, if some of this, you’re like, “Man, I want to totally get in that and see what you’re made of,” the opportunity will absolutely be made available to you at some point once we get the – we’ve got the curriculum. So, now, it’s just a matter of rolling it out and getting all of the details lined up. So, hopefully you feel inspired and excited to join the bootcamp. So, for now, I hope everybody out there enjoys the great pause. I’m not gonna say, “Stay safe.” I’m gonna say – obviously, you need to stay safe. But enjoy the great pause and live in the great pause because I believe that’s where we are and I believe on the other side is the great realization. That’s gonna be my mantra from now on. So, until then, we are NWAC and we are flipping out of here. I’m Melina Boswell, your host of the Flippin’ Off podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, we’d love for you to subscribe, give us a five-star rating, and tell your friends all about us. You can find more episodes of the Flippin’ Off podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever else you like to listen to awesome podcasts like this. If you like what you’ve heard, we’d really appreciate it if you’d follow us on Facebook and Instagram and tell us the stories that you’d like to hear.

Tim Jackson is our senior producer. Luke Jackson is our editor. Brothers. Josh Mauldin is our producer. Sound design by Frequency Factory. Our executive producer is Mind & Mill. This was all created by Dave Boswell for New Wealth Advisors Club.