Podcast Transcription

Joshua: Hello “Flippin’ Off Podcast” listeners. I am Joshua Mauldin from Mind & Mill, a digital marketing agency that produces the “Flippin’ Off Podcast” with New Wealth Advisors Club. For this 43rd episode, to honor the memory of Dave Boswell, the founder of New Wealth Advisors Club, NWAC decided to re-release the very first episode called, The Origins of New Wealth Advisors Club, which was first released on August 7, 2016. Please enjoy.

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

Dave: I’m Dave Boswell here with my wife Melina Boswell and this is our very first podcast. It’s kind of crazy, right?

Melina: Very exciting.

Dave: Very exciting. This first podcast, we are going to go through and just kind of share with you why are we doing a podcast? Number one. Number two, like…

Melina: Why should we do a podcast? And who are we?

Dave: And who are we? And why are we qualified to do this podcast? And what does it mean flippin out…

Melina: Flippin out, flippin off.

Dave: Flippin off.

Melina: Flipping houses, right.

Dave: Right. Well, we’re flipping houses and we’re making a difference, and we wanna share that difference. We’ve been doing this now for, oh, gosh, I’m starting to age quickly.

Melina: Well, yeah, you’re a grandfather.

Dave: That’s true. How weird is that I’m a grandfather?

Melina: I know.

Dave: That means you’re a grandmother.

Melina: Right.

Dave: Wow, kind of crazy.

Melina: That’s so cool.

Dave: So here we are. Oh, gosh, is it coming up on 10 years I guess I can say you’ve been in this business?

Melina: Oh, yeah.

Dave: Wow. So 10 years doing this and, you know, we are founders of real estate investment club called New Wealth Advisors Club and we’ve been running that club now for, gosh, how long has that been?

Melina: Six years.

Dave: It’s a good thing I have you.

Melina: Yes.

Dave: Because I can’t remember.

Melina: It’s funny, certain details you remember, and certain details I remember.

Dave: Isn’t that weird?

Melina: Yeah, not really. I think it has everything to do with husbands and wives, males and females, priorities, you know, basic stuff.

Dave: Yeah, of course.

Melina: Venus, Mars, whatever.

Dave: Whatever that means. Yeah. So we started this club a number of years ago. And to give you a little background for those who are getting to know us. I was, gosh, I can actually say that now, I was an enrolled agent. I was licensed by the IRS and I grew a thriving tax practice for 15 years. I can’t believe I’m saying that, 15 years. I recently did not renew that license because I was able to walk away from that business with the growth of our club and the growth of our real estate business and flipping houses and, gosh, I just I love my life so much more since then.

Melina: And I love you so much more since you gave that up.

Dave: Yeah, January till…actually really wasn’t January, it’s more like December to May. I pretty much lived in a cubby hole. But nonetheless, that’s gone and so…

Melina: Hallelujah.

Dave: Yeah, hallelujah. And then during that time you were…well, you’ve done a multitude of things. You wanna share a little bit about your kind of some of your background?

Melina: Well, my background is pretty diversified. Ironically, always been involved in real estate one way or another. So my trade, if you, will from schooling was to be paralegal. So I was a paralegal for 18 years and so then in real estate as well. And when I was working in different law firms, I always found myself in some sort of financial world. So bankruptcy, real estate law, always around real estate and finance. So making the transition into the real estate market was a very easy thing for me to do because it I’ve been working in it for so many years.

Dave: Right. So one of the things that…we’ve been together now 20 years?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah, 20 years. Did we start playing with round numbers since?

Melina: You do. It’s like you start talking in decades, actually. Yeah.

Dave: Yeah, kinda like kids. I don’t know at what point they become, you know, like, our granddaughter is no longer 18 months. She’s, you know, a year-and-a-half and now two. So we don’t say…no more like, you know, 26 months. She’s now two. So I guess that’s the same with our marriage. We’re now a couple decades into this. But during that time, you know, it’s hasn’t always been… it’s always had its ups and downs, let’s put it that way like any other life and marriage and so forth. But, you know, Lena and I clearly we wanted more out of life. I mean, who doesn’t? You know, we wanted to be able to do more things and, you know, we got in this real estate game, if you will, and I don’t believe in luck. I don’t believe in chance. So, you know, you were having a real estate background somewhat through all the different industries that you worked in, and I had absolutely zero knowledge about real estate other than from a tax perspective, understanding some of the aspects of real estate and so forth.

But, you know, I used to see a lot of tax returns and do a lot of tax returns and doing, you know, 500-plus returns a year and very few of them stood out. You know, maybe that’s part of my…what bored me so much in that industry, maybe was that I was spending so much time doing the same thing over and over and over and over, but one thing that stood out to me was anybody who had any sort of wealth always had real estate. I mean, without exception there, everybody had some wealth. But when I would talk with people and I would ask them about how do they get this house or how did they acquire this? It was usually things like, “Well, inherited it. You know, my mom left me this house.” Or, you know, “I pulled equity out of this house, and I bought another house when the market was up or down.”

But there was never really anybody that could, you know, tell me, give me a specific roadmap on how to do this. So, you know, much like anyone else I was taught “Go to school. Get good grades, and those grades will take care of you,” right? I mean, that was my parents upbringing, right? It was, “Do well in school and then you’ll have a job and then your job will take care of you and then you retire on that job someday.” And, you know, obviously that wasn’t practical anymore in today’s day and age. So I say you and I, but I don’t know if I’m the one to take the blame for taking all the seminars and let’s go to do this and let’s go do that. And at some point you joined along or you just…but we went on this journey to…

Melina: I feel like I started it.

Dave: It’s like you started it?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah, which is cool and…

Melina: It’s usually not that way. It’s usually the husband’s dragging their wives around.

Dave: Yeah. So Melina says let’s start a business, let’s do this, let’s do that. And, you know, we’re going through our different journeys along the way and we went to a lot of seminars.

Melina: Yeah. Was because I saw the market crashing. I knew the market was gonna crash and I knew that foreclosures we’re going to be a thing and I just needed to figure out how to buy foreclosures. I didn’t realize obviously the market was gonna crash the way that it did. But I knew that the market had the housing market was never going to continue, you know, down the road it was. It couldn’t get any bigger. Houses could not possibly become more expensive. I remember when I saw a house in Banning, it was like built in the 1920s, 900 square feet, and it sold for 300 and whatever thousand dollars. And the people who bought it got 100% financing. And I was like no way. There’s no way this is gonna stay. Well you know, I knew at that point the market was gonna bust or at least it was gonna decline. I knew people would not keep a house like that for that payment for any length of time.

Dave: Sure. The house is gonna fall apart at some point…

Melina: Absolutely.

Dave: …before they could ever possibly pay it off. Yeah. So we go on this journey and we end up going to seminar, after seminar, after seminar. And I remember specifically like going to a bunch of seminars and every time went to a seminar, there was another seminar. You know, there’s always some sort of sales to make the next seminar. You know, we’ve got this package and then that package leads to this package. And then you can have the super titanium package and all this stuff. And there came a point where we sort of realized this is all the same stuff.

Melina: Yeah, well, actually, yeah. It was all the same stuff, and we were broke. There was that.

Dave: Yeah. So we couldn’t keep buying stuff.

Melina: I would have kept on buying it. I loved it all.

Dave: So the market turns. We find ourselves…

Melina: Broke.

Dave: Yeah. Your mortgage loans all dried up. And we’re let’s stop for a second, like give credit where credit’s due because you actually stopped doing loans before you had to, and there was a loans were still there. And people were still qualifying for them. And I remember you coming in saying, “I don’t wanna do this anymore. People shouldn’t be signing up for this 900-square foot house that’s way overpriced and/or they’re pulling up equity lines of credit and buying big toys and boats and other houses they can’t afford.” And I remember you…

Melina: Yeah, I can remember a very specific one of my clients that I think I had refi’d his house twice and called me and wanted to refinance again. And it just really bothered me, and I said, “You can’t do this.”

Dave: I remember that.

Melina: And he was like, “No, I can.” And I said, “No, you can’t.”

Dave: “But I have equity.”

Melina: Yeah. Then he called me back and was mad because somebody else told him that they would put him in this loan and his payment would be blah, blah, blah. And he was like yelling at me. And I said, “Oh, no, no, no. I’m not interested in doing this anymore.” I don’t believe that it was the right thing. I felt like it would have it was wrong, you know, for him to cash out of his house anymore, because I knew, inevitably he wouldn’t be able to afford it. And so it just it didn’t sit right in my spirit. And so I said, “No, I can’t. I’m not gonna keep on doing this. I don’t even believe I’m bringing value to people’s lives anymore. And once I don’t believe I’m bringing value, I’m out. I’m done. I will not work for the dollar.” So I just told you, “Yeah, I gotta stop doing this.”

Dave: What a scary time here I am working from December to May, having zero time with family and zero time doing anything else other than taxes. And then at the same time we had made quite a living through the mortgage business. Got accustomed to a very nice lifestyle and had all the toys and all the so forth. And then Melina saying I quit, wow, all of a sudden we couldn’t fill up one of those tanks of gas on any of those toys. It was pretty harsh reality very quickly. And so it got us looking and specifically got Melina saying, “What can we do with real estate there? These houses are gonna be cheap? People are gonna lose them, and we need to buy them. How can we buy them?” And that set us on this quest, this journey, if you will, like going to all these gurus, going to all these people. And then when we got there we bought all the gurus.

So there was always some guru coming into some guru’s stage and then selling us something else. And Melina was definitely one of the first people to line up at everyone with the American Express and buy that information because we thought if we could get enough information, we’re smart. We’re sharp. We’re go getters. We’re motivated. And we’re also broke and have kids we need to feed. So we need to change this. And so we got on that journey and we met a friend of ours that introduced us to another group of people. And that group of people helped us go out in, secure some financing on a foreclosure that we found and we saved them from losing that house. We were able to cash a check. And I always remember the number. You know, it’s, it’s funny, you remember the first one, but if you tell me like what’s the second one? What’s the third one?

Melina: No clue.

Dave: No idea. But that first one we pulled out $83,210 from that house. And I just remember at $83,210 and we kept $50,000 of it. We gave up $33,000 to the other people involved in the deal that helped us get it done. Yeah. And that kind of launched us. And it launched us to this idea of like…

Melina: Well, belief. Belief is a really big part. Yeah.

Dave: Upped our confidence.

Melina: Sure, sure. And that we could really do it.

Dave: Sure. And after we cried and wept and were overjoyed and thankful that, you know, here we were with money in the bank. The lights weren’t being turned off. We weren’t gonna lose the house. And we came to the realization that, “Boy, we need to do this again and…

Melina: Right. And again and again.

Dave: And again. And looking back, I know that neither one of us ever, or at least I’m speaking for myself, you can correct me if you had a different thought, but we never thought we’d be sitting where we are today.

Melina: Oh, no.

Dave: Right. So, you know, we’re sitting here…

Melina: Not back then anyway.

Dave: Yeah, for several years, it kind of took us a little while and as our belief got more and more ingrained, and we can make a system out of what we’re doing and change the model because really…

Melina: Right. That was the biggest thing was I think that at some point, I knew we would be successful as real estate investors, that was actually the easiest piece. The piece that was the more difficult or more challenging, which was also the most enticing, you know, by nature to me was how do we help all the other people that we met at these seminars have the same realization? Let them experience the same success we were experiencing because we’d become friends with a lot of these people for. You know, we were sitting together in these hotel rooms, and, you know, like all over the United States, all over the place, and classrooms all over. And we met people from our local area, and you and I were like, “Oh, we figured it out. We actually closed a deal. And now it’s no longer just theory. It’s the truth. So how do we now bring along these people who have become our friends to the same realization.

Dave: Right. So a couple key things I think that we wanna have everybody aware of. So we talked about this idea that we closed the deal, right, because we deal with us all the time now, like how am I gonna close my first deal? I mean, most of the time when new club members or students come into the organization in the club their biggest thing for them is like, “Even if I found the deal…”

Melina: “I don’t have the money.”

Dave: “I don’t have the money.”

Melina: “How am I gonna pay for it?”

Dave: We hear that all the time, right? And I think we lived there too. I mean, it’s a very real realization, right? You go to this three-day weekend in a hotel, and you’ve got these people that are coming in for a moment. You maybe you’ve seen them on TV at some point. You think they’re like, you know, “Oh, they’re gonna really support me and they’re really gonna help me. And if I find this lead come Monday and I need money to close the deal, how do I get the money to close that deal? I don’t have access to money and…”

Melina: Right. But that’s not real.

Dave: Right.

Melina: That that’s the problem. That’s actually not real. That’s not a real concern. It’s not a real problem at all. It is the problem is you don’t know what the deal is. That’s actually the problem. People believe that if they can buy a house, it’s a deal. Understanding what is the deal and what isn’t a deal is the secret sauce. Because money always looks for deals, always. So nobody ever wants to tell you that though. People wanna tell you, you need money and you need this and you need that. The truth is you need to understand what a deal is. That’s the reality of it. And the first transaction that we closed was a deal. That’s why we found the money.

Dave: Yeah, and I think that’s a really big key for a lot of people. Because, you know, when you say the word real estate investor, at least for me, it’s like, okay, so I’m an investor, that means I have to invest, which means money. And when I look at my bank account and it’s overdrawn, there’s no way for me to invest.

And one of the very big keys that got us into this game because we had no money to put into that deal, right? So we find the motivated seller, right, which is our lead and we find that lead, we were able to put together that deal because of our connections with other people that helped us to align all the pieces of that puzzle together and close that deal with none of our own money. Because there we were spending to close it with. But some light bulbs really came on. I don’t know if they came on in that moment. I don’t know if they came on in the weeks to come, a month to come, whatever. But one of the things we realized was that, you know, we had connections with people, right? There was actual people, local people. These weren’t a one 800-number somewhere. They were in our market. They understood our market and they helped to facilitate even our belief, right? I think that was a real big key.

Melina: Huge.

Dave: So that gets us moving forward. And as we get moving forward, we said, “Well, let’s do another one. And let’s do another one.” And naturally the more you do, the more we start telling other people what we’re doing, right? We’re looking for leads and we’re talking to other people and other people started saying, “Well, teach me what you’re doing. I wanna do that too.” And, gosh, here we are like a flash. Like, wow, here we are many years later with this huge club and organization and deals that have literally happened, gosh, all over the place.

So I want people to really get today like, you know, as you’re listening to our you know, our very first podcast and what’s the purpose behind this, I wanna introduce you to us, want you to know about this, but then I also wherever you’re listening to, like one of the big takeaways from you needs to be this, you’re not gonna do this business alone. You’re just not going to do it alone. Stop going to seminars and stages and going to hotel rooms where when you leave the hotel room there’s nobody there on Monday. Because I can tell you from my personal experience, there’s never been a time where I’ve gone to any sort of education, had all the answers come Monday and could do it all by myself. There was always…

Melina: Yeah, you need people. Definitely you need a team of people.

Dave: Yeah. So here we are with New Wealth Advisors Club and we’ve been actively growing this club from…gosh, we’ve got people all the way down as far as south as you can get. I’ve had people now fly from Colorado. We have Phoenix. I’m trying to think of all the different places.

Melina: Hawaii.

Dave: Yeah, you know, a couple from Hawaii and spent a few months over here and I’m taking back the systems and what we’ve done and help to get them into a space where they’ve closed a bunch of deals over there. Idaho.

Melina: Yes.

Dave: We have people from Idaho. So it’s this viral effect that took place when I look back and go, “All I wanted was a little office. We should close a couple of deals and…”

Melina: Help our friends.

Dave: Yeah, help our friends make some money and…

Melina: So along the way, I think we’ve created a culture of paying it forward. So like the name of the podcast, right, “Flippin Off,” it’s a purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference. And that’s really what we’ve created. The culture that we’ve created, you know, over the last several years has definitely grown. It’s morphed into something completely different today than what it was when we very first started. But the foundation I think of who you and I set out to be hasn’t changed. It’s just taken on maybe a different shape. Or maybe have more systems in place, more structure really as a result of your skill set. When you take two people who have skill sets like you and I do, you know, you’re the guy that has the grand vision and then has the skill set of the attention to detail and the ability to carry those out.

And then I’m just the heart, probably, I think behind it that keeps everybody, you know, focused on the right things, really, you know, connected to our purpose, which is paying it forward. You know, if you think back to why we started the club, it was because we wanted our friends that we had created to have the same success that we had. And that’s how it started was the idea of paying it forward. And then that has morphed into our friends paying it forward to new friends, creating new relationships, and everybody just continues to pay it forward. And that’s really the juice or the secret sauce inside of the club is this culture of authentic relationships of people that are truly committed to each other’s success.

People who are committed to seeing others have great success and more importantly, people that are in that are in a vulnerable situation specifically inside of the real estate market right now. Lots of vulnerable people, right, who are facing foreclosure, who are downtrodden, and there’s a lot of people out there taking advantage of them. And we are a group of people who are committed to not letting that happen as much as we possibly can, right? So we say, “Hey, we’re gonna stand up for the little guy, we’re going to take a stand for the vulnerable one who is maybe being taken advantage of. How do we do that? Well, we set out to serve them to help them out. And then the deals just kind of fall into place, right? I always say, “Serve the homeowner, don’t worry about the deal and just watch the money fall in your lap.” And that’s a weird concept for people to grasp.

However, we can stand boldly saying, “No, this is the truth because that’s what we’ve done for the last several years. It’s why we walked away from the mortgage business,” right? Because it was hurting people. It wasn’t helping them. How can I feel confident or feel like I’m living in integrity if the business that, you know, I don’t believe that getting a new loan is really going to benefit a homeowner? You know, I didn’t feel like I was in integrity. Now we get to do that. We get to really serve people and then, you know, the deals that we’re supposed to make money on we do and that’s exciting and it’s fun and then we get to see a new generation, if you will, of people. Not that we’re that old but, you know, a generation of people coming in and paying it forward to somebody new and coaching somebody new and helping homeowners along the way. It’s an amazing thing.

Dave: I think you hit on something I probably just now put two and two together. So when you said, you know, you’re the heart, well, clearly you’re a big part of the brains behind everything that’s happening, all the systems that are happening. And inside, you know, this club, it really was formed out of friends that that we wanted to help be able to get into better spot, create leverage. You know, a big component to this game is that, you know, you need leverage. There’s only 24 hours in the day and you can only do and touch so many properties at any given time. And, you know, forming this club was in the very beginning not about like, we’re going to form it and then open it up to the world. It was kind of, you know, “Let’s make it exclusive. Let’s make it where it’s just gonna be a few of us.” And so we opened up like a our very first office over on Indian. I don’t even think it was 2000 square feet. And, you know, here we are in this little office and I remember signing that lease and, oh, my gosh, we’re gonna sign a lease and we’re gonna take on rent.

We’re gonna take on rent and someone else’s spot. Are we really confident…we’d closed a few deals by this time and we had more in the pipeline and we thought, “Okay, we can do this.” And, you know, this is around 2008, 2009, beginning of ’08. And I remember all of our friends and family were, “You’re insane. You’re never gonna do this. Yeah. So you made a few bucks in real estate, but how are you ever going to sustain it? I mean, haven’t you watched the news. Like the world is coming to an end.” Yeah, right? And we’re like, “I don’t know about the news, but I know we just closed another deal. And I know we have another short sale in the pipeline. And I know that we have more coming. And…”

Melina: I remember we were saying, “Real estate is on sale. Are you kidding?”

Dave: Yeah, right?

Melina: Now is the time to buy.

Dave: Right, yeah. You show up for…

Melina: Everyone thought we were crazy.

Dave: You show up for…what is that? Black Friday or whatever before Christmas is launched. It will show… because everything’s on sale, but when real estate’s on…day after Thanksgiving and that shows you how much I go to that. And so, but they don’t wanna do it when it comes to housing. And you can tie that together because when the housing market drops and people don’t have money, you know, then I obviously can’t do this business and…

Melina: Scarcity.

Dave: Yeah, the scarcity mentality is there. So we go and we open this little office and I remember you not being like wholeheartedly like, “Yeah, okay. This is something we need to do.”

Melina: No way. Say it like it is.

Dave: Well, say it like it is.

Melina: I was like, “Are you mad?” “No.”

Dave: What is wrong with you?

Melina: Yeah.

Dave: And, you know, we’re here doing it out of our house. And, you know, we needed a spot and most people said, “Well, why not just rent a hotel room?” Like, “Be like everybody else. You could teach out of a hotel room.” And, you know, for us or, for me, specifically, I wanted something that I could call home, you know. And so, we wanted to create it at the club as, you know, we actually called it, you know, a church without walls, or a Sanctuary where people can come and it doesn’t matter what they’re coming for, but we wanted to be able to support and meet their needs and I just don’t think that’s possible by going in a hotel room. Yeah, yeah, so we…

Melina: That is the unique thing about our model though, is that there’s other people now, you know, that are out there training people how to become real estate investors and now they’re even starting to work with them which is, you know, great. But I think the unique thing that sets us apart from everybody else is our desire to have authentic relationships with people.

Dave: Right.

Melina: And not that you and I could necessarily have like a really close relationship with every club member because that would be an impossibility because the club has grown so much. However, the culture that we’ve created is one of authentic relationships inside the club with each other.

Dave: And attracts those same kind of people, you know.

Melina: Right, right. That’s the coolest thing, you know, you’re starting to see, you know, authentic relationships being created amongst club members where they are, you know, in each other’s weddings where they celebrate, you know, all the holidays or birthdays together. They, you know, real relationships they vacation together, we vacation together with…we only really vacation with people that are club members. You know, it’s like picking your family it’s amazing. So, you know, that is the unique thing that’s why its purpose driven when we talk about, you know, the purpose driven flips. It is purpose driven, it is driven purposely and intentionally to have an impact on other people, you know, the ripple effect. Starting, you know, with you and I having a bit of an impact on certain people and then inspiring them or giving them a space to be able to go and serve other people and paying it forward to those other people. And just, you know, remember that Prell commercial? You probably don’t remember you were younger. But anyway, there was this Prell commercial…

Dave: You said it [inaudible 00:28:23]. You just…

Melina: And it was like, and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on. Do you remember that?

Dave: I don’t remember that. No.

Melina: No, you were younger, probably. I wonder if anybody out there remembers that commercial. Anyway, I think it was Prell But so…

Dave: It was Prell.

Melina: Yeah, I know. I can just visualize the commercial in my head and it had these boxes and it would just multiply anyway. So that’s kind of the idea behind, you know, just the ripple effect, the impact.

Dave: Well, that’s really what did happen because I mean, I can remember that that warm summer day we’re sending that little office and we’ve got, you know, 2000 square feet. I think we had two or three offices in there, a little conference room and we’re having an introduction to our club or organization and all of a sudden, I think we’re expecting like…I think we were allowed to fit like 30 something people or 40 something people and over 100 showed up.

Melina: Yeah, oh my gosh, it was crazy.

Dave: We turned the air conditioner down as low as it could go…

Melina: And it froze.

Dave: And it froze up and we were standing there…

Melina: It was so hot.

Dave: And always when you look around and everybody is like, touching each other with sweat dripping. And I wish we had that on video that day.

Melina: Oh, it was so funny.

Dave: That would have been so funny. But that led to the next challenges, right? Because here we go, we didn’t expect this viral effect, people coming from all over the place. And we had started making some money. There was money in the bank and I get this crazy idea that ends up on a napkin and I’m sitting there going, “I think it’s time to build a bigger office. I mean, why not? It makes total sense, we’ve outgrown this one.” And it’s been a whopping, I think, 10 months about that time. We weren’t done with this…

Melina: We weren’t even done with that first lease.

Dave: We weren’t done with the first lease, and I’m going to our property manager saying…or the owner, and, “Hey, we need to get out of this thing, because we’re not gonna re-up our lease because it’s too small for us.” And we had made all of our neighbors mad because we took a parking for blocks, code enforcement wasn’t happy with us because we’re over occupancy. You know they’re serious, they really are serious about that stuff, I know.

Melina: For sure. It’s a fire hazard.

Dave: It is a fire hazard. And so I remember going out and saying, “We need to find space.” And now this is ’09 and nobody wants to rent to us.

Melina: This was when everybody was miserable, like everybody. People who may be survived like ’07 and ’08, by ’09 everybody had been, like, bombed in one way or another. Their life had been ruined.

Dave: Yeah. I remember calling that doom and gloom.

Melina: Yeah, oh my gosh. Everybody’s living in it.

Dave: That was when, clients would come in to me and say, “Please tell me when I’m doing the tax practice, you know, please tell me there’s going to be an extension, an extension, an extension for my unemployment. And there’s money in the bank and Melina and I are going, “Okay, we’ll need [inaudible 00:31:24] We need a bigger space. We need a much bigger space. I don’t wanna have to move again in 10 months because I think we’re onto something.” And one of the things we learned was that we could create leverage. We were able to teach people to find leads, right? Crux of this business, number one thing. You can’t find a lead, you can’t make any money. So we were able to teach them to find leads. If they could find a lead, do some analysis on it, they wouldn’t have to understand at all, they don’t have to be an expert at it. But if they could do that, and then bring that lead back and say, “Help, right?” Then, could we duplicate enough of us basically, enough of you and I to be able to talk with people, help people, and then try to put these deals together. As that started taking place, we got more and more and more. So I go, “Why couldn’t we?” you know, if we made, you know, $200,000, why can’t you make 2 million? It’s just adding a zero, you know.

Melina: A couple but, who’s counting.

Dave: Well, yeah, you’re talking about the couple of million, 20 million? Why couldn’t we? Yeah? We add a zero. So given that, we need to find more people. We need to expand because it came this crossroads for us where it’s like, “Okay, so we have a lead out of San Diego, we have a lead in Orange County, and we have a lead over in the low desert, you know, in Palm Springs. We can’t get to all of them, so we gotta let them go, like it’s impossible for us to be in three places at once.” And so we need to build some teams. We need to build some people in different areas. And so, I get this bright idea to say, “Let’s build out this office.” And I got somebody to look at our business plan and said, “Sure you can build it as long as it’s all your cash and if you fail, you still owe us, we don’t care, we will chase you down, you have to personally signed for it and you’re gonna owe us to demolish it. They had a lot of confidence in us obviously. So…

Melina: We just [inaudible 00:33:22]

Dave: And said, “Okay, who cares? Let’s do it.” I mean, my whole model in life, “Go big or go home,” you know. I mean, let’s make it bigger, better, faster. So giving credit where credit’s due. We really duplicated what people that we’d seen, what other people have done, took what we saw good in it and said, “Let’s make it. So we can take what’s good about it and then get rid of what’s bad about it.”

Melina: Or it just doesn’t work.

Dave: Or it doesn’t work, yeah. So we decided that we’re gonna open this club. And so our club for those you that haven’t been there, we started off as 5000 square feet and 10 offices and we build that place and we have a real brick and mortar establishing an office like where we work, you know, day in and day out and people can come together and collaborate and really mastermind in deals and put resources under the same roof with title and escrow and people with money. And all those things together, contractors, and then we go about…two years now?

Melina: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Yeah, two years. And what do you know?

Melina: Here we grow again.

Dave: Here we grow again. So we need more space. And, you know, 2012, we’re sitting there and I’ll never forget going to management who didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in us the first time and building this place and saying, “Hi,” Sandra is her name. “Hi, Sandra. Remember me? We need more space.” And she said, “Sure. We’d love to rent to you. We’d love to give you more space.” And I said, “But this time I need you to pay for it.” And here we expand. As we sit today we’re about 10,000 square feet, we got 17 offices there. And we have a warehouse there, we can talk about it in just a minute. We’ve got now, outlying groups down in San Diego, over in Orange county, out in LA, here in Riverside. We’ve got outline mastermind meetings happening…

Melina: In all those areas.

Dave: All those areas. And little pockets and groups of teams. And it’s kind of the idea of like when you go to a really big church and it’s made into really smaller churches all over the place, these little teams that are growing. And that’s brought us to now, right? And we look at like, really making a difference. Well we’re making a difference in a lot of people’s, you know, specifically club members lives, pouring in and trying to do everything we can to help them really find their purpose. And we say it all the time. We don’t care whether that’s real estate or not, if, you know, because neither one of us are in love with real estate. It’s not like we wake up and…

Melina: Oh no, we love-hate it.

Dave: I definitely do not get excited about dealing with, you know, contractors and permits and all these city governments and all that stuff that kinda drives us crazy.

Melina: That’s where we got the name Flippin off, right?

Dave: That’s a different flipping off. There’s definitely those challenges but what certainly is real is that, the money that’s very powerful that’s made behind those deals, to give us the opportunity to do the things that we love. And one of the things I do wanna kind of share with those that are listening and, you know, if you ever come down to our club, one of the prerequisites really to join our club is that, you know, the culture that we’re creating is one to serve others and give back, and we believe that starts right away. It doesn’t believe when, you know, you don’t give when you’ve got too much. You know, you don’t give because it’s like, “Oh, I have an abundance.” You give where you’re at right now, and sacrificially and I mean that in this way we’re…many years ago, when we’re doing all this, we’re going to a really small church. And the church had a small food bank. And that food bank was really just a trailer out buying it where people would dump off canned goods and so forth.

And people from church could, you know, what our pastor would say, would, “Come shopping,” you know, once a week, he’d open the doors and people could walk in with, you know, grab a grocery bag and grab whatever they needed. And so we really saw a need and said, you know, what could it look like if we took, you know, if our club started to provide food for, you know, there’s local families here who don’t have food, what can that look like? And that grew and next thing you know, we were providing for not only for our church, but then for like it was too much for our church, like we needed to find other people that needed that food. And that kind of grew and one thing led to another and then you end up getting an invite. And I don’t even remember exactly how that invite came down, or a friend of a friend, somebody who knew what we were doing and said, “Hey, you know, Melina she really has a heart to serve others. And maybe she’d like to be on this board of directors for this nonprofit that is providing for the underprivileged, the homeless, the needy, whatever you want to call it,” and…

Melina: The vulnerable.

Dave: The vulnerable. Yeah, great. And so she comes to me and she says, “Honey, I got an invite to serve on this board of directors and has to do with the homeless,” very specifically I remembered the homeless and I wasn’t thrilled. I was like, “Wait a minute, you’re gonna volunteer to work with the homeless?” Now in my previous life, I was in law enforcement for a few years and so I got to be, you know, on the streets and I saw what “the homeless” looked like for me was, you know, the drunk schizophrenic that was finding a place to sleep and wasn’t necessarily welcomed by the business or the people that the next morning when they got there, and we get a call to move them along. And so they weren’t always happy with us. And sometimes it was even a little scary. And I thought, “Gosh, I don’t want my wife to be involved in some homeless guy who might be a drunk schizophrenia, who wants to stab her one day, you know.” And so I wasn’t really all that on board and I remember her coming to me and she sold me.

Melina: I closed him.

Dave: She closed me. She baited me really good and she said, “Well, I want you to come down and check out the shelter.” And I thought, “Shelter? I’ve been to a shelter before. That’s a place where they have a bunch of bunk beds and you get people out of the elements. And this is California we don’t really have elements, so they’ll be fine.” And I was pretty closed off to it. And I go in and I remember sitting there and there was nothing like I thought, nothing at all. I was looking at people to live just like me and you, you know, wearing normal clothes. In fact, I remember sitting there and there’s a guy sitting there with a laptop computer. And I’m like, “Who is this guy?” And I talked to him and then series of circumstances that led him to the shelter and that was where he was having housing but he was going to work every day. And so I talked to the one of the CEOs at the time, or one of the managers of this place and he was sharing with me that, you know, over half the people in the shelter are under the age of 10.

And I remember it striking a chord for me because, you know, growing up, I’ve definitely not had a childhood or one that led me down a path of, you know, I always say, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. It was more like a broken splintered one and, you know, I was once homeless as well, and so it hit me. And I was like, “Man, wow, you know, we have to help. How can we help? What can we do?” And going back to that heart and you really mean the heart of the organization at our club, it was a no-brainer for you to get involved with him and here we are several years later. And when I said there’s a warehouse at the back of our club, our warehouse has grown from a food bank, to…Oh, my goodness, I mean, could you have written this script, several years ago? I mean, maybe you can share and elaborate on, like what that’s been like for the charity and the paying it forward and really paying it forward in such a strange way.

Melina: Yeah, so well, the organization that we’re talking about is the Path of Life Ministries in Riverside and we provide all of the homeless services in all of Riverside County actually, or most of…the city of Riverside sorry, not just the whole county. But we have several programs where we rescue people from the elements. But our motto is to rescue, restore, and rebuild. So it is really about putting people in housing, rescuing them, and then helping them rebuild and restore to actually break the cycle of homelessness. That is what our goal is. So it’s a very, very cool organization. So over the last few years, I’ve been able to create a space where we collect not only food, but toiletry items and things for people. We place them from homelessness into homes. And so they go into homes and have nothing. So we were able to bring in take in people’s furniture, beds, lamps, whatever, store everything and then when we get to get a family into a home, we’re able to house it, to stock it. So it’s very, very cool. It’s an awesome opportunity for sure.

Dave: It’s kind of crazy when you think about here we are. Several years ago we’re like, “Okay, we just gotta keep our own home,” right? And now going out finding homes, putting people in these homes.

Melina: Intentionally for the guests.

Dave: And, I mean, what a synergy we’ve we have with that organization, with our club and it’s so overwhelming. I mean, I’m sitting here doing my best not to blubber about it then and get emotional about it. But it really is just that like, you know, this purpose-driven life that we now have, you know, flipping houses but making a difference. And I can say this wholeheartedly, I don’t even get excited about flipping houses anymore. Like it is just another deal. And the exciting part for me now is watching when new club members come here, they get their first deals. Right now I have two people in particular, I won’t mention their names, but you know who I’m talking about. And we’re gonna watch him cry like a little baby…

Melina: I know. I can’t wait.

Dave: …when he get his check and we have his very first fix and flip thing in escrow right now. And I’m so much more excited about like that deal closing and him getting this check and what that means. And I know that the charities that he’s involved with and what that’s going to mean to his charity. That’s the juice for this, you know.

Melina: And I was just thinking about that. I was actually thinking one of the things that I think that’s important, you know, we have the “Flippin Off, a Purpose-Driven Podcast” about flipping houses and making a difference. I think it’s important for us to share what our mission statement is. It’s probably the right way to maybe bring in into this little section, which is New Wealth Advisors Club as a group of people committed to empower and encourage all people to realize their core purpose in life. And with that realization, we believe everyone can live an inspired life full of enthusiasm as they in turn inspire others. That is the mission statement.

And we don’t really care what everybody’s purpose is. We don’t care what each person’s charity is or what the things that they’re passionate about is. It doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to pick, you know, the homeless. But the thing I love is that people can pick our charity for right now. They can pick, you know, saving and serving the vulnerable like we do. They can just latch on to our purpose at this point in time. And that is what creates true inspiration, I believe, in people. When you realize what your core purpose in life is and you have the ability to live it out and you have a vehicle which is real estate in our case to get you there, it’s really the way of living a significant life.

Dave: Yeah. That’s awesome. I’m very thankful that we’re sitting here doing this for the very first time. And stay tuned. We’ll be bringing you next week or the next time we do this, we’re gonna be bringing out one of our students and…

Melina: And we’re gonna be interviewing different students and their different success stories and…

Dave: Yeah. Well, I just got an amazing story is, you know, we’re bringing up, his name is Myke, Myke with a “Y,” and bringing out and have a conversation with him. And then Peter, we’re gonna spend time with Peter and really break down and talk about some of the transformations in the lives of that have dramatically changed and shifted this club. So I just wanna say thank you to you and thank you for all that you do and making all this possible and really making a difference in people’s lives as we look to go flip some more houses.

Melina: Yeah. All right. David and Melina flippin’ out and flippin’ off.