Podcast Transcription
Melina: Hey, guys. This conversation went a lot longer than we had anticipated. So we cut it into two separate podcasts. There’s so much good information. We didn’t wanna cut anything. It gets real and it gets deep.
Melina: Welcome to “Flippin’ Off,” a purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference.
Melina: “Flippin’ Off” is about the people, and it’s about the people who live inside real estate. It’s about people who live in the houses. That’s what it is. It’s not about, you know, wood, and sticks, and sheetrock, and tile, and…it’s not about any of that. It’s about the people that actually inhabit and live inside of the property, and that’s how we approach our business, right?
Oscar: Right.
Melina: And I think, I know, that’s the difference between us. And so I find myself always wanting to spend more time toward people. I find myself during classes, right, we were having this conversation during classes that…what was it that you said, Oscar? You said, you know, if you wanna have the ABCs or the details, like, the step-by-step, you guys can all do that, right? That’s the easy part. The hard part is the people and how do we serve the people? And it’s both. It’s the people that are inside of our club and it’s the people that we have the opportunity to touch. And how do we do that?
Oscar: Yeah. So a lot to take in listening to you guys. And I think that the bigger part is this, and for me, it’s kind of the…I think we’re skirting around things right now. This conversation is really just like there is an epicenter that hasn’t been touched yet. There’s a conversation hasn’t been had and we’re all kind of tippy-toeing around it but the reality is…for me, right, what I sense is that I’m sitting here and there is an empty spot, right, and that’s really what we’re talking about is that Dave is no longer with us. And that has forced us to change, right? Not that it’s a bad change. Absolutely, bad that we lost him. You know, it’s still lingering for all of us, and the irony of sitting at this table right now, and that spot being empty, that’s really for me what we’re skirting around. And it’s the change that needs to take effect. Now, the thing that’s really clear for me is that the power that existed with Dave and Melina working together, and being a couple, and really guiding and steering the club wasn’t real estate. It never was real estate, right? It was a bigger mission, a bigger calling. And we’ve now reached the precipice, right? We’re at that edge right now, and we’re like cliff divers, and it’s the moment of truth. And you need to dive, and you need to do that, and nothing more than faith that you’re diving into that, call it the pool of life, right, that we’re gonna now step forward and change the direction. Are we still gonna do real estate? Absolutely, right. It’s the business that we do.
We’re really good at real estate but…not even but. We’re really good at real estate and we’re really good as an organization at developing people to whom they need to be regardless of the business they’re in. So when Melina says it’s about the people, right, the people that we affect, the people that we change, the people that we impact has zero, absolutely nothing to do with real estate. It has everything to do with who they are, who they are supposed to be in this world to cause a larger impact, right, that ripple effect that needs to continue to move forward. Dave cast that first stone, right? It’s now our turn to take that change and really affect people, right, because I agree with everything he has to say, right? Relationships are absolutely important. Without the relationships, you can’t do anything. Without the love for each other, you can’t do anything. Without me have running a successful business in real estate, it keeps us from being able to do other things. So all that, they’re big pieces of the puzzle, but ultimately, it’s about developing people in a way that not only affects them, right, but they’re gonna take that and they’re gonna cast their own stone, and they’re gonna create their own ripple effect, right, if you can just visualize that. And what Melina does on stage when she teaches is beyond what people can understand, right?
And the thing is, you know, we jokingly talk about it, “Oh, it’s not scripted. It’s not scripted.” Well, the reality is it’s not scripted, right, because…like this podcast, right? A little secret, every podcast we have this conversation about, “Hey, what are we gonna do? And where is this going?” And then it flips around every time, right? It takes a left when it’s supposed to go right, and takes a right when it’s supposed to go left. And sometimes we just plow through a wall, right, because we forget to turn, whatever. But that’s what happens, right? But that’s what happens when she teaches, right? So when Melina was talking about the ABCs and all that, it’s really how she affects and impacts people. Neither one of us sitting at this table right now can do it the way she does it, right? So that’s clear. What we can do is the ins-and-outs and the intricate step-by-steps of how do you rehab a house? How do you flip a house? How do you acquire a house? How do you negotiate? How do you fill out the contract? How do you create all these things, right? Those details, we’ve got that down but what we can’t do yet is what she does. And so I’ve been through these conversations, right? I’ve been on some reading and checking things out, and I ran across some statistics that senior managers in corporate America, 93% of them…and I don’t know the number was, right, that was surveyed or whatever. But 93% of them said that they need to be trained on how to train, coach, and mentor their employees.
Melina: Ninety-three percent.
Oscar: That’s in corporate America. That means that 93% of the people that come through our club have never been exposed to that, to that realization, right? So if we look at it from that perspective, for me, new wealth isn’t the finances. The finances come. I think new wealth is, “I need to be wealthy in every aspect of my life,” right, whether it’s spiritual, or financial, emotional, physical, all those things because if I can’t do that then I can’t do anything, right? Then if I take it to my faith, well, if I’m saying that I need to do his work, for his kingdom, if I can’t take care of me, how can I do that, right? If I can’t fix me, how can I ever profess to be able to do that? So I have to work on me but more often than not or at least 93% of the time, we don’t realize that we have to do those things. We don’t realize that we have to grow, that we have to improve, that we have to get better in life.
Melina: It’s so true. You know, I was thinking…listening to what you were just now saying, and I was thinking that is so completely true. We work so tirelessly…It feels like there’s two extremes. People are either so, like, you know, attached to, or like their whole world is about personal development, and it’s about themselves. And it becomes, like, narcissistic in my mind. So one of the things that I’m just repulsed by if I’m being honest. Like, I see people that are like, “Oh, I’m, you know…” that are trying to be a coach. You know, they are trying to be…I don’t know, like, a health and fitness coach or, my favorite, a real estate coach, or you know, whatever. Everybody has a coaching program right now. And when I watch people they are just so narcissistic and it just make me sick. So I’m really turned off by that. I’m even turned off by people who are like self-professed personal development gurus. I’m even repulsed by that because I don’t think that any part of it is really real, like, in your real life. Like, is there a possibility that we could create an opportunity for people to get whole all the way around? So this is just my thought process out loud. Like, I think is new wealth, like, really a whole person, you know, like, a whole person? So, in other words, we don’t spend all of our time, you know, on specific things. You know, like, we’re not just business.
We’re not just sharpening our tools, and learning how to be great at door-knocking or great at, you know, understanding the numbers or…It’s all about your health and fitness so that you can’t live like a normal life because, you know, you have this…well, you know, your aikido. I don’t know. So you’re eating pork rinds. I mean, like on no place is that good. Once in a while, I guess, you know. You know, like everything is so…it’s like so one-sided. Does that make sense? Like, it’s all point. Like, if you were to look at it as a whole circle, like, there’s this points out. We’re always, like, doing the whole points. And isn’t it just okay to be like a squishy kind of imperfect circle? Like, what if our whole goal is just to be that whole person and you never arrive? And that’s probably the biggest thing for me to come to the understanding or the realization is that I’m not going to arrive, like this is life. This is it. This is what we do. We get to do things together, we get to experience, we get to create memories. That’s what life is. You just do life together, and doing life is, like, painful. You know, you sit here and cry and you have boogers running down your face and your hair is bad today, and there’s all these things, right? And then you’re trying to figure out, “What I’m I gonna talk about?” And what are we even doing? You know what I’m saying?
Oscar: I agree. And the way I receive that is this, is none of us were created to be alone. None of us were created to be independent. None of us were created to be that ‘soloprenuer’, if you will, right? That doesn’t exist, right, because, you know, they talk about self-made millionaires and all these things. Well, they are not self-made, right? They worked hard, nothing to take away from them, but the reality is that they surrounded themselves with the right resources at the right time with the right opportunity, right? Is it planning? Yes. Does it take effort? Absolutely. But no matter what it’s not because all of a sudden you have this one vision, you ran with it, and, “Ha.” No. Right? No. Those guys that today you know their name but they’ve been around for 15, 20 years working on their craft, right? Now, for you, the audience, it looks like, “Man, he came out of nowhere. So I can do it too.” No. Read the stories and understand that it’s taken time, right? And when I started to really pay attention to that…and I’m gonna use Tim as an example, right, is Tim today is known as a creative guy, really effective in negotiating and doing things with real estate. Absolutely, all true, but what they don’t know is what Tim’s journey has been to get to where he is today. They see Tim today, right, and they hear stories here and there, but the trials that Tim had to go through, right, and the time that it took, right? This is what…?
Tim: It took 10 years to become an overnight success.
Oscar: Right. There you go, right? So a decade, right, but people lose sight of that, right? And I’ve had the good fortune of seeing a lot of Tim’s happen because of the club, right? Some faster, some still in the works, right, but that’s the way it is. And we’ve had people attend just our initial three days of training, and they leave happy, shaking my hand and said, “Hey, this isn’t for me. I don’t need anything back from you guys. I got so much out of this weekend that I know exactly what I need to go do in the business that I’ve already been running to make the changes I need to make to have the success that I need to have.” It had nothing to do with real estate, right? You have people that become…that start making a quarter-million dollars a year because they spent $2400 to be a part of a club that switched their mindset. I mean, that’s ridiculous. You have, like, John, right, he came in. He disappeared for a year and the next thing you know he’s running a multi-million dollar construction business, right? So there’s so many things that happened but it’s not because of real estate. Real estate is kind of a byproduct if you will. That’s why earlier I said, “Maybe we have it backwards,” right? Maybe it is making a difference and by the way, we flip houses, right, in the process.
I don’t know, for me, that new wealth thing, it becomes…And you were just touching on it, Melina, is you don’t have to become complete, but you also need to understand where you’re weak so that you can come together as a community because we’re not designed to be by ourselves. We come together as a community and be able to leverage each other’s experiences and strengths to offset my weaknesses, and become better that way, right? And I hate that it’s personal development and self-improvement and self, self, self, right, self-centered-ish, right? But the reality is that we do have to work on us. We have to also understand the value that other people bring to us so that we can actually grow.
Christian: Hi. This is Christian Rios. As many of you know, I’ve been a member of New Wealth Advisors Club for over 7 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.
Oscar: That we can actually grow.
Melina: Yeah. What did you say?
Tim: Just a thought that I had was, you know, Oscar talked about, like, my path and every one of us at this table have our own path that we’ve gone down, our own process that we’ve gone through, and none of us are an overnight success. And, you know, when I look back, a huge part of who I am today is the club, and it was…you know, I came to the club, I’ve always considered myself to be like a smart person. I’ve always considered myself to be somebody who, you know, “Hand me a manual and I’ll figure it out.” And I showed up here that way, and I showed up wanting real estate because I wanted to do a lot of money. And then at some point, I realized that my business and my life started shifting when I stopped looking at real estate like the house on a corner. But I started looking at real estate between my ears and the real estate in my heart. And I feel like that was the shift for me. And I don’t know if guys have ever done this but if you’ve ever been…Like, I realize this just in this conversation is that, you know, Oscar says, you know, we’re an investment club who happens to work on people. And that’s the way that I approach the club. And then at some point, it shifted for me when I realized that it was about working on me, and about working on people, and we happen to do real estate. But we’ve been doing that all along. We’ve been stuck, if you will in this space of a real estate investment club, and I feel like we’ve been stuck there.
And the truth is we are not that. We never have been that. We’ve always been a group of people for the people, and we do real estate. We just happen to do real estate, and we could do anything, you know. There are so many different thoughts that I have through my head when it comes to that, it’s just, like, I’m clear that I could just go make more money. We can go do anything we wanted to do. We don’t have to do real estate in order to make money in this business, but who we are in our heart and who we are for other people is absolutely who we are, and that is where all of our successes come from. And I think that if we can get out of that being stuck, being a real estate investment club, and we can…I don’t know. I mean, you said it yourself, Melina, you don’t know how it looks like, and I don’t think anyone of us do. But just getting unstuck opens up possibilities that we can’t even be open to until we are unstuck. So I don’t know if that…
Melina: That’s perfect. That’s exactly it. I don’t know if this is gonna translate, like, you know, in his podcast. I don’t know if it’s gonna translate but, like, in my mind I’m like this is the exact conversation that needed to take place because we’ve been having this conversation at our table, like, behind closed doors. And the truth is the question always, you know, arises, “You’re doing a podcast, so you need to have an intention. You need to have, you know, an opening, a middle, and an end, and there needs to be a lesson. There needs to be a takeaway from it.” There needs to be, you know, all these things. So you wanna have some sort of preparation, some sort of idea or goal of what we’re trying to achieve. And I think the truth is that there’s been this conversation continuously about the shift that needs to take place. And I think that both of you…all three of you just kind of nailed it right on the head because you said, you know, talking about the fact that Dave is…like, there’s an empty chair or table, and it isn’t that we don’t acknowledge that. We know that and maybe it’s more that is the thing that is spearheading the change, and maybe it’s all by design. Maybe it’s all, you know, perfect. I’m sure it is perfect. It’s just that I can’t see it, you know, because I’m just in the middle of it.
And, you know, Tim, you said, “Well, how do you get out of it?” Well, the first thing is you verbalize it. You say it out loud, which is what I did coming onto this as we started this conversation, which was supposed to be something completely different. And then acknowledging where we really are, and then just being totally transparent with it like, “Hey, guys. This is where we are. This is what we’re considering. And what we want to do is continue to move forward and to grow this community and the culture that we’ve created,” right? And so I’m having this consistent conversation with the club, like, that, “Hey, I have a shortage of leadership. We don’t have too many leaders. There’s always a shortage of leadership.” And I think that you’re right, Oscar, when you’re talking about the need to develop people. That’s a pretty staggering number, 93% of senior management doesn’t know how to coach? Like, that’s incredible. You know what that really says to me? That says to me that 93% of senior management haven’t developed themselves. If you haven’t developed yourself, you’re never gonna be able to develop anybody else. You know, all the hard work has to start with you, and the hard work is the internal work that is done on your own heart, you know, in your own mind. When that work is done or you’re in the process of doing that work then you’re able to translate that and pass it down to somebody else because I can give you a million like step-by-step, like three steps to leadership development, right?
It’s like, who gives a crap? You know, it’s like the person who’s like already really fit trying to be a personal trainer. Like, I’m not impressed. Do you what I’m saying? Like, give me the fat guy who, like, really worked his butt off and, you know, actually applied everything. And then he’s the guy, that’s the guy I wanna follow, right? I wanna follow the broken, like, person who actually did the work that they’re trying to get me to do, right, because the skinny person doesn’t have a clue. It’s like, “Yeah. You tell me to do all that but, you know, go ahead and eat your Chips Ahoy. Bye.” Right, because if do, I can’t eat the Chips Ahoy because the Chips Ahoy goes straight to my gut, right? You know, that person gets to eat it and so…you know, it’s hard to follow somebody like that because it’s not real.
Tim: That’s the problem with the senior management, right? Having been there in corporate America, the thing that, from my experience, is we operate at the club, we operate as wanting to be transparent and being okay with having to be vulnerable so that others learn. But I can probably line up 100 senior managers and I wouldn’t find one that’s willing to do that, right? They’re not willing to have those types of conversations. So if they’re not willing to do that, why would their employees be willing to do that? Because it starts from the top, right, the trickle-down effect. So you could always walk into a company and talk to the custodians, right, people in the cafeterias, and you can gauge that the character of a company, right?
Melina: Totally.
Tim: You don’t have to go to the top.
Melina: No, it trickles down, absolutely.
Tim: You could see it at the bottom, right, because of they’re a direct representation of who their leaders are. So for us, though, it’s different. We wanna be transparent. It’s not because that’s the way I showed up. I had to go through three years of reprogramming, if you will, right, from what I grew up in, but now I’m okay with it. I’m okay with, like, let’s talk about that because why would I want you to experience what I experienced? It doesn’t make any sense, right, but it does take the desire to want to impart that wisdom with people and to remain true to who you are at the same time. But you can’t do that if you put up that front.
Melina: Yeah. You know, true servant leadership is broken leaders. That’s the truth. Servant leadership can only be born out of broken people, people who are broken, people who are…and then are honest about their brokenness. That’s what real servant leadership is. It just hit me. Period. And the truth is that most people are not willing to show…I mean, everybody is broken, by the way, which is that not everybody is willing to share their brokenness or be transparent with their brokenness.
Tim: Most are not even willing to accept that they are broken, right? They’re gonna white knuckle it no matter what. I was listening to a podcast this morning, we had a conversation and we drew up some things on the board, and all that, and I left “ego,” right, as the thing that kind of causes it. Then today, a similar conversation on that podcast but it was pride. I was like, yeah, I get it, right, it’s similar. There’s slight differences but, ultimately, you put those two together and you have that recipe for disaster, right?
Melina: For disaster and fall-in.
Tim: You now become isolated. You become all about me. You become about what I can do. Look at what I did. Look at what I dreamt of. Look at what I thought of, right? The reality is you didn’t.
Melina: Right, right. Yeah, narcissism will absolutely take every leader out 100%. Narcissism is just an effect of pride and ego, right? You just start looking, you know, more toward yourself, and really all that is somebody who’s just very, very broken, very hurt, injured, wounded, and isn’t willing to do the things that are necessary, the work that is necessary to heal, right? That’s really all it is the being willing to heal. And I guess when I started this conversation I talked about my feeling, like, I’m gonna stay in, making the decision that I’m gonna stay in. And I just now realized that what I meant by that is that I’m staying in and sharing it, sharing my journey. And so I just became really clear that I’m gonna have to continue to share my journey, and so I feel like I wanna puke, honestly. I don’t wanna share all that, you know, but I will.
Okay, I think that it’s probably a good time to cut us loose and, you know, we just love to have feedback from you that are listening, listeners to this podcast. I have never done this before but I’m going to invite feedback from you about something that you either heard or that you learned or that you got. And if you got any inspiration at all by listening to us in terms of where you fit in…I think one of the most important things that I want to transmit to all of our listeners is that there is room for you at our table. There is room for you inside of our club, and all I want you to do is paint yourself in the picture. Like, where do you show up in this picture? Like, there is a seat for you. There is a place for you, and I’d like to know where you see yourself fitting in, what you believe your role is. Just understanding the foundation and maybe you have some ideas or, like I said, some inspiration that’s been given to you, I really am encouraging you to share it with us. We’d love to hear from you. We are New Wealth and we are out.
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 “Fllippin’ Off” podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you’d like to listen to us and 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. Josh Mauldin is our producer. Sound design by Frequency Factory. Our executive producer is Mind and Mill. This was all created by Dave Boswell for New Wealth Advisors Club.