Podcast Transcription

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

Melina: Hello, hello everybody. Melina Boswell here, co-founder of New Wealth Advisors Club. And today in the studio I have two of my faves, Mr. Tim Wilkinson.

Tim: Hello.

Melina: And Mr. John Slater. He looked so weird, you should’ve seen him… Oh, not John. Hi, John.

John: Good morning.

Melina: Good morning. All right, it’s kind of afternoon. So, today and also in the house we have Kevin Castillo or also known as “handsome castle,” aka Ceto. You know what we could do one day? We could actually do an entire podcast on nicknames, how many funny nicknames we have for people and their nicknames become their actual names.

And I believe that I’m probably one of the biggest culprits in nickname creations. I just pick a nickname and then it sticks. We should do that. That would be actually really fun. It’s a good idea. Maybe not everybody cares, but if you’ve heard me call people by their nicknames, it is kind of funny because they’re very intentional, every nickname, except for Andrew’s. It wasn’t intentional.

Okay, so today we are discussing the subject of money. And so there was your money and there was so much conversation around the concept, the conversation, the idea of money and what it means and what it represents to us. So much more than any other podcast, I think, to the point where Tim and I started to be like, “Okay, stop talking about it,” because it was becoming overwhelming, which is kind of hilarious because that is exactly our relationship with money.

Tim: Right, that’s funny.

Melina: So, money is one of those things. It’s a commodity, right? I think money is just energy. I think of it as nothing more than energy. It’s really all it is. It comes and it goes, right? And so, yeah, Tim is like, “Uhmm. I’m not going for that.” Tim is like, “No, it is cold hard cash.” So, when somebody asked me to talk about money, it was because of I think my unique relationship with money and how I view money.

And so wanted to talk a little bit about that today because it is a very real challenge I think for a lot of people. And so much so that I don’t think it’s a conversation we have often enough. And so, Tim and I, privately, have had I’m sure hours and hours and hours of conversations around money.

Tim: Yeah, we have.

Melina: And so maybe, Tim, this would be a good time for you to talk about, just maybe share a little bit about what your relationship to money or how you related to money and the revelation that you had with money, like the idea that you wanted it and then what that really looked like.

Tim: Sure. Well, I think that when I got started in the club I felt like, well, I wanted money. I mean, really, at the end of the day I got involved in real estate because I wanted to make more money. I had a job. I was making pretty good money in that job and I just wanted to make more. And then I get involved in the club and I hear… Like, some of the things that you say, Melina, and you say you think that money, it’s just energy. But on the same note, we’ve had many conversations where I can say, “Yeah, you know what? I can grasp that money is just energy.”

I mean, if I have more money, I can send my money out to do things that I can’t do. I can keep a radio station going, for instance, by funding radio stations that I listen to. I can feed homeless people with my money. And it is just energy. It’s something that I have, that I can create things with my money that I can’t do because I can’t necessarily be there to do it, if that makes sense.

Melina: Perfect.

Tim: So, I get that. I really do, on the surface. But it wasn’t until like really getting into the business and really a lot of personal growth to where I finally realized that my true relationship with money is one of… Like, if I’m really honest with myself, I don’t want money. Money is one of those things that, for me, it just never fulfills.

Melina: So, you don’t want money because it doesn’t fulfill? Is that what you’re saying?

Tim: Right. Like, I mean, I don’t know if you want deep stories.

Melina: Of course, we do.

Tim: Okay. So let’s just talk.

Melina: Let’s just talk.

Tim: So, there came a point in my life early, early on when I was young. It was Christmas time when I was about five or six years old and my uncle gave me a Christmas gift about two weeks before Christmas and we put it under the tree. And every day he would let me play with this box. I’d go shake the box. It was heavy. It made really cool noise when you shook it.

And every day he would tell me, “Don’t get too excited. It’s just a box of rocks.” And so for like two weeks, I played with this box and built up this expectation in my mind of what this gift was going to be. And then on Christmas, I opened the box and it was a box of rocks. It was literally a box of rocks. And, of course, I was disappointed, very disappointed, and about an hour later he comes up and he gives me a Christmas card. And in the card was like 10 bucks, 20 bucks, something like that. For a five-year-old in like 1980, that was a lot of money.

Melina: It was cash.

Tim: It was cash money but I didn’t want it. I didn’t want his fricking money. I was so mad at him. And from that moment on, I didn’t realize it, but the way it shows up for me is I’ll find myself not taking the actions that I know are going to make things happen. And I have to fight that five-year-old in order to succeed in this business every day actually.

It’s one of those things that I battle. As I go through my day and I find myself wasting time, I have to remind myself, “Oh yeah, that’s the five-year-old who doesn’t want you to do these things over here that are going to get you paid.” I don’t know. It’s one of those things that I don’t necessarily like to talk about in a public forum because Melina and I have had this conversation over and over again. But even to myself, it sounds kooky.

Melina: No, it doesn’t sound kooky. It sounds incredibly insightful and unbelievably intelligent actually because the truth is, most of us have had experiences like that and maybe not everybody has a dramatic of an experience.

You know, your uncle was just playing with you. He obviously had no ill intention. He obviously didn’t want to hurt you. He was just, you know, playing around with you and not understanding that that moment would have such a deep impact on you for the rest of your life and how you relate to money. So, it is interesting when you start to recognize that. John is shaking his head like, “Wow, that’s really deep.”

John: It is deep.

Melina: It’s really deep. And it took a lot for you to understand that, right?

Tim: Right. I mean, it took a long time to realize that that was what was happening when, because I was the king of procrastination, still the king of procrastination a lot of times. I was very much the always-getting-ready-to-get-ready person. I move the phone from this side of the desk to that side of the desk before you can make a phone call.

And it wasn’t until that moment when I got that piece of clarity for myself that all of that nonsense that I was doing was the five-year-old like going, “If you do that, you’re probably going to get money and you don’t want money. It doesn’t fulfill. Don’t waste your time doing that stuff because money doesn’t fulfill.”

Of course, my five-year-old didn’t have that language of fulfilling. Do you know what I mean? But once I got the language and I understood what was happening for myself now, I have the power every day to realize like, “Oh, yeah. Just freaking make the phone call, talk to the homeowner, make the offer.”

Melina: It’s so fascinating… Totally. Exactly. And it’s so interesting because the truth is, you know, on the surface, rationally, intellectually, you would say that is absurd. I’m not procrastinating because I don’t want money. That makes no sense. You know, I’m just procrastinating because… What? I mean, what would be the things that you would say? Like how would you justify it?

Tim: Well, I don’t have enough information. The phones are on the wrong side of the desk, right? Like, just my desk is a mess. It needs to be cleaned up before I can call the homeowner.

Melina: I can’t work in chaos.

Tim: Right. I can’t work in chaos.

Melina: I don’t know what to say.

Tim: I don’t know what to say.

Melina: I’m not a salesperson.

Tim: There you go. I’m not a salesperson. That was a huge one for me. That was a big one. I had that argument with my bosses for 20 years.

Melina: You had that argument with me. Well, you would have that argument with me all the time no matter what we were doing.

Tim: Right. “Call that homeowner and make your offer.” “I’m not a salesperson. Somebody else needs to go and have that conversation, not me.”

Melina: Which is all a lie because you’re one of the best persons ever to have conversations with homeowners.

Tim: Oh, thank you. Now that I got the little five-year-old out of it.

Melina: Right, exactly. Well, the five-year-old still shows up. You just now put him back in the corner where he belongs. Actually, you just retrain his brain. You’ve retrained his brain to understand that Uncle was just having fun and it had nothing to do with…

Tim: Right. Again, that five-year-old, and we’re talking like he is not even me anymore, which is awesome.

Melina: Yes.

Tim: We’re talking about him like a third person. But every once in a while I find myself going back to those old habits of not taking action and I just have to remind myself, “No, it’s okay. You’re gonna make 100 grand on this deal and that’s okay.”

Melina: That’s great. Perfect. Because it’s energy and you can do lots of stuff with energy.

Tim: And I’ll just share this. When we close big deals, I have at least a small sense of guilt always, every single time.

Melina: I can understand that. I can totally understand that.

Tim: Not necessarily guilt, I guess, but it’s that same pit in my stomach.

Melina: It’s not quite right?

Tim: It’s not quite right to receive this much money.

Melina: And that has to do with value and identity, how you identify yourself in money or how money identifies you.

Tim: Yeah.

Melina: Right? I think that’s what it is. John, and if you would share a little bit about your… We were having this conversation about you and, actually, Tim posed a question. What was the question? How did you ask it, Tim? You ask John.

Tim: I think I just asked him, what was his relationship to money?

John: I mean, we were talking a little bit earlier, but thinking about Tim’s story going back to his childhood, I’ve worked from the age of 15. I graduated high school. I went straight into work. And, actually, I think still at high school I was working a Saturday job and I was getting paid £10 for this seven-hour Saturday job, filing paperwork kind of stuff.

Tim: Ten pounds an hour?

John: No, £10 for the entire Saturday. I mean, that’s 1989 and it’s about a pound and a half an hour. But I used to receive my £10. I didn’t grow up in a rich family, but at the same time I didn’t grow up in a poor family either. We had what we had. But at the age of 15, I had the mentality of, “Okay, I got my £10. I’m going to put £8 into a box in my dad’s closet and £2 was now my spending money for the week.”

Melina: Who taught you that?

John: I can’t think of anything. My parents, we never had that kind of conversation. Sorry, mum, but I was the kind of kid that I wanted a candy bar and I would sneak into my mom’s bag and I would steal a pound from my mom’s purse. I would go buy my candy bar.

When I bought it I would then chop it up into like a Milky Way and chop it up into 10 pieces, and then come and offer my mom pieces of the candy bar that she’d just bought. But, when I received my pocket money at the end of the week, which was around £2, £3 back then…

Melina: Pocket money, was that like an allowance? What we would say an allowance.

John: Yeah, allowance. Pocket money. And I would then take a pound from my allowance and go put it back in my mom’s purse. So, I didn’t do it just once. I’d do it probably every other week but I can honestly say I didn’t steal the money. I just temporarily borrowed it.

But from there, the idea of earning £10 for seven hours’ work and then put a £8 away, because at 15 my mentality was if I want something, I need to go buy it myself. I didn’t rely on my parents to go buy something for me. It was, “Hey, I want a new pair of soccer shoes. I need to save up for those soccer shoes.”

And if I went to my dad and said, “Hey, I need a new pair of soccer shoes,” he would have bought me some. But he would have made sure that I needed them. So, it was that need versus want kind of attitude. So, that’s way back then, and now, I’ve always been working since the age of 15, always having a paycheck. I saved a little bit, but I never really saved a huge amount.

At 30 whatever years old when I joined the club, it wasn’t like I had a bunch of savings and had really anything to show because at the same time I don’t mind spending money, but I hate wasting money. So, my wife will joke about it because she’ll go out and she’ll do the little shops and she loves to yard sale, things like that. And I say, “Honey, you’re always spending.” But when I go spend, I’ll spend 500 times more than what she spent because it’s a necessity. The new coffee machine, it was a necessity. My last coffee machine was 12 bucks, the new one was 160 bucks.

Tim: Totally necessary.

Melina: Totally necessary.

John: Because it was like I want a nice… It’s not frivolous spending. But when I joined the club, Celine and I joined for two very different reasons. Celine was she wanted to get out of her jobs which, ultimately, we needed money for to be able to quit her job. My attitude was I see a lot of people making a lot of money in real estate, I would like to make a lot of money.

Melina: You said truckloads actually.

John: Truckloads of money was what I wanted to do. But at the same time, whilst wanting to make truckloads of money, it is not to then just go waste it on a bunch of useless things. It was more to always have the security of I don’t need a Ferrari. I don’t need a 10-bedroom mansion. I want a nice house. I want a pool.

Melina: I want a Beemer.

John: I want a nice BMW.

Melina: There’s nothing wrong with that.

John: Check.

Melina: Check. I know.

John: But at the same time, very different to what how Tim sees it is I don’t have any problem closing a deal and making 100 grand on that deal. I’m feeling happy I made 100 grand because I probably worked for it.

Melina: Of course.

John: And I’m in a position now in my life where having worked for 28 years I feel like I’ve got to a position where, “You know what? As long as I worked for it, I deserve it.” And I’ve been having a conversation with one of my kind of mentees, one of the club members that I mentor a lot at the club and his outtake on money is very different.

He feels guilty for not necessarily doing as much work as maybe somebody else but still getting paid that same amount of money. But as partners, it’s, “Hey.” We have a partnership. This is what it is, so take it. And so for me, my mentality definitely changed through my journey in the club from one of just wanting to go make loads of money to I just need to make enough to live comfortably.

Melina: We were talking about that earlier and I said I believe that it has everything to do with you recognize, you have now learned that making money, it’s really very attainable.

John: Absolutely.

Melina: And it’s not something… When you’ve been stuck in a job and somebody tells you, “This is your value. You trade this much time for this much dollars. That’s what you live into.” And then the moment you realize, “Whoa, I can actually get paid for the amount of work that I do,” it changes everything. So, then your conversation starts to become this. “Well, how much do I actually want to work? Like, how much do I want to give up to make a certain amount of money?”

John: Definitely.

Melina: And I feel like that’s what’s happened for you.

John: It is and it’s more of the lifestyle. The lifestyle that I’m trying to achieve is not one of, “Okay, great. I get to sit back and do nothing for the next six months because I made a ton of money.” It’s I enjoy working. I enjoy doing what I do and I enjoy earning the money because it allows me to then go do what I want to do.

Melina: Absolutely.

John: And this will relate to a lot of new students that are kind of coming in and join us at the club. For me, when I first joined and I remember talking to yourself and Dave and we were talking about how much money do you want to make in a year, how much money would change your life.

And I’m sat in VIP lunch and one of the guys said, “I need to make 40 grand a month to change my life and get out of my job.” And was like, “Holy smoke. I’m happy with 30 grand a year,” because that would actually allow Celine to quit her job and maybe we could then afford a family vacation.

So, my goal was 30 grand and Dave kind of chuckled and he was like, “That’s one deal. That’s one flip.” But I had nothing to compare that to. I’ve never experienced holding a check for that kind of money. So, whilst a lot of people in the club were closing deals and making 30, 40, 50 grand on deals, until I actually held a check that was 35,000 bucks, $35,559.90.

Melina: Are you sure?

John: Remember it because it was the biggest check I’ve ever held. And then having the realization to say, “Okay, so this is real. But also now, compare that to one of my yearly salaries. And, holy smoke, that one deal is more than one of my jobs’ worth for the entire year.”

So, it’s not that I didn’t deserve it. It’s not that I didn’t earn it. But now it became really real that there was an opportunity to make that kind of money and then it just allowed me to say, “Hey, I quit one of my jobs and now I can focus on my real estate business full time.”

Melina: Money creates opportunities, doesn’t it? It totally creates opportunities.

John: Definitely. It allows you to do the things that you could be passionate about. And I think that’s really what changed for Celine and I within the club. I mean, Celine will be happy with a minimal amount of money and not care.

And in fact now, she still doesn’t stress. I worry about, “Okay, I gotta pay rent. I gotta pay bills. Got to do this.” Gotta make sure we continue to make money, and I have that worry about it, whereas she doesn’t worry about it because she knows I worry about it.

Melina: Well, that’s not actually true. She doesn’t worry about it because she knows you do. That’s not the truth. Whether you worry about it or not is not going to impact. She is not going to worry about it.

John: No. She doesn’t worry about it.

Melina: She doesn’t worry about it.

John: Whereas I do worry about it, but I worry about it from a perspective of I want to make sure we’ve always got the money we need to allow us to not live a lavish lifestyle, but live a comfortable lifestyle of, I know I can pay my bills, I know I can go on a vacation once a year.

Melina: Well, that’s how you were actually created. So, whoever is the, you know…and, generally, its men are the provider for the family. So what you’re talking about right now is who you are at your very core. So, that’s how you were created. That’s what you’re supposed to do, so that’s not unusual. That’s a good thing.

It’s an interesting perspective for somebody like me who as a woman I have always made money, and I was saying this to you guys earlier. I’ve never not made money. I’ve always been able to create opportunities and whatever I’ve put my mind to I’ve made a lot of money. And I believe it’s for a few different reasons. I believe it’s because I have a really strong work ethic and a really strong drive.

I think I have gifts and talents that have provided that for me. And I find myself now in the position of…but I’ve never worried about where the money is going to come from and I’ve never cared whether, you know… It just doesn’t matter how much money I made. The truth is I didn’t have any idea how much money Dave and I made. I have no idea. I would get a $1,099 at the end of the year and I would go, “Wow, did I make that much money?” I had no idea. That’s the honest truth.

And so I find myself now in a situation where I do need to be more aware of it and I find lots of my old like crap is bubbling up for me because I recognize that I don’t have the luxury of Dave just handling everything for me. You know, I just go make the money and then Dave make sure that it’s managed well and he budgets well and takes care of everything and I didn’t have to. And I could just go do what I do.

I make money because I believe that I make a good living and I have because I really don’t care about money. It doesn’t represent anything to me in terms of what it will buy me. For me, money is I get paid for bringing value to other people and if I don’t believe that I’m bringing value into somebody else’s life, I will walk away from it all day long.

So, now I find myself having a lot of kaka [SP] coming up for me because, like Tim was saying, you know, you reject money. It’s the same thing for me. I reject money. I don’t want to have money because it had a meaning to me as a child, actually, that I was spoiled because I had a dad who took good care of us.

Like my dad’s love language was always gifts. So, I had a dad who I never had to ask or want for anything. Whatever I wanted, it was always given to me. And I can remember going up to my dad and saying, “I want to go to the mall,” and my dad would never think twice and just hand me as much money as I wanted.

And so that made other people, like kids and other people in my life relate to me differently, and it didn’t feel good. So, what I found was if I, you know, don’t tell anybody what’s really going on or whenever I would get money, I would just give it away, right? Because then it didn’t become my identity. Does that make sense?

Tim: It did become your identity though.

Melina: Right, it did.

Tim: Just not the identity that you were just getting ready to identify.

Melina: Yeah, that’s true. So, my identity became who I wanted to not be. Just horrible. It’s just like the worst thing. I wonder how many of us do that all the time, you know. Here’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that the more I don’t care about money, the more it shows up.

The more I put people, relationships, experiences ahead of money, the more money shows up, the more opportunities I get to experience amazing things, you know, and memories and opportunities to serve other people and to make a huge impact and a huge difference in somebody else’s life. And I always say, the more you chase the dollar, it’s like the more elusive it becomes.

Tim: True. Totally true.

Melina: So, I guess our whole point for today is this. Don’t chase the dollar, right?

Tim: Don’t chase the dollar. I think one of the things that I got from what John was sharing specifically before we started the podcast, he was sharing when he first came to the club, he just wanted to make a truckload of money. And then at some point there was a shift, for John at least, where there was a shift from, “I want to make a truckload of money,” to, “I just want to make enough money to have a good life.”

What I get from that is I think for me…because I identify with that as well and what I identify with is that I now love… Like when I first got started in this business, I thought I just wanted to make a bunch of money. But I think in truth I just did not want to be doing what I was doing. And I thought the way to get out of doing my job was to just make a truckload of money.

But now I actually… Like, I just love what I’m doing. So I can’t see myself making so much money to where I just go sit on a beach and drink Mai Tai’s all day long. I can’t see that for myself. So, I think that’s what I hear from John or at least the way I hear him sharing that is that I can never see myself just making so much money that I don’t have to work because I just really love what I’m doing. And I just want to make enough money to where I could keep doing this and just keep doing it because I just love what I’m doing.

Melina: That’s great. That’s really good. You know what I know for a fact? I know for a fact that if anybody who decided that they had enough money and they were going to sit on the beach and sip Mai Tai’s will end up self-destructing. That is the truth. There is nothing good about that. Nothing good about that will ever… You have to be out there doing something and if you create money along the way, yay. Right?

John: Absolutely.

Melina: All right, so I feel like we should have the money song playing right now, you know what I mean?

Tim: Which one?

Melina: You know the one. you know the one. Somebody sing it, come on. Do the track. Come on, somebody. All right, well, maybe…

John: Money money money money.

Melina: Money. Yep, that one. All right. Well, you have Melina, Tim and John and we are outta here. We’re gonna go make some money.