← Travis Makes Money
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host (Ad Read)
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- [01:29]
Travis
You're listening to the Travis makes money podcast. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Travis makes money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. On this episode of the show, I have a new friend, Mike. Mike Wood. Mike is a consciousness awareness professional and the creator of the Learn to love being you program. A 10 week journey designed to help people break free from anxiety, self doubt and the emotional spirals that keep them stuck. And the more I get into this money making conversation, the more I am leaning into the direction of it really does just start all up inside of your mind, that little area between your two ears. This is where all this stuff begins because the action can be kind of difficult sometimes if you don't have the belief first. So, Mike, what's up man?
- [02:13]
Mike Wood
Welcome to the show, man. Thank you for having me on the show. And I couldn't say it any better. Everything does start in our minds. Anything you want in the outside, it manifests on the inside first.
- [02:25]
Travis
That's right. That's right. Mike, I appreciate you taking the time. Let's go back in time. First off, tell me the first time you ever made a dollar that got you shocked, surprised, excited, Something that, like, really got you thinking. I can't believe somebody paid me money for this,
- [02:39]
Mike Wood
man. I remember my. My uncle when I was just a kid.
- [02:42]
Travis
He.
- [02:42]
Mike Wood
He was paying me $20 to go water his yard, and I saved it up and ended up buying a TV for my room when I was just a kid.
- [02:50]
Podcast Host (Ad Read)
Nice.
- [02:51]
Mike Wood
I was shocked about that. Yeah, that was. That's the first thing that jumped out when you said that. Did your.
- [02:57]
Travis
Did your parents encourage entrepreneurship? Were they sort of more traditional path? Was it flexible for you growing up?
- [03:04]
Mike Wood
No, we grew up on government assistance. I grew up with a single mom trying to raise three young, unruly boys. We were all a little crazy and wild and. Yeah, yeah, we. I didn't get much guidance there from. From the household. I love my mom, but, you know, she didn't have any. Any money or any desire to try to figure it out beyond survival.
- [03:25]
Travis
Yeah, no kidding, man. I mean, I. I have a couple kids now, and I have a wife, and I. Man, I never have had more empathy in my life for single parents because it just. How do you even. How do you even survive, man? How do you even put food on the table? So your. Your mom is a saint. That's for sure.
- [03:42]
Mike Wood
Yeah.
- [03:43]
Travis
Tell me. Tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up for you then. Did you have aspirations to go to college? What were you thinking you wanted to do with the rest of your life when you were younger?
- [03:53]
Mike Wood
So one of the thing that. One of the things that Drew drove me as I was younger is I have a rare form of dyslexia that went undiagnosed. And I couldn't read past the second grade level until I was about 25 years old. And it left a lot of negative scars inside me whenever I did. I had all kinds of aspirations of doing great things. I knew I was intelligent at some level because I could solve problems and do math in my head from a very early age. But I always had those negative thoughts in my head that just said I wasn't as smart as everybody else. So when I did try to do things early on, I ran into that wall. Right. It shut me down before I could ever actually do anything of Any value.
- [04:36]
Travis
Well, talk about mindset, man. How much did that start creeping into your identity?
- [04:41]
Mike Wood
Oh, man, it was, it was everything. I, I started creating identities to cover that up. I wear it. I wore a mask, you know, the tough guy mask that said everything was good. You know, just, you know, let me, let me show you how it's done. And I didn't know what the heck I was doing. It was all just a big show. I was a big goober.
- [04:57]
Travis
I'm kidding. At what point did you feel like you were able to address some of those things and sort of put it in the past and say, you know, I, this might be true of me, but it does not get to define the outcome that I have, you know,
- [05:15]
Mike Wood
So I worked my butt off to overcome all that stuff. Just like physically, hard worker. I made a point of outworking everyone. So it did push me along, but honestly, not until I was, you know, 45 years old and I, I stopped looking to the outside for answers and turned 100% of my focus inward. Right. I didn't really get any real answers and really solve anything mentally until then. And in fact, I had achieved everything I thought I would, that I needed to be happy at that point and that, and the noise was even louder at that point than it had have ever been. And so I just knew that there was, there was nothing on the outside that was going to make me happy. Not money, not a woman, literally nothing.
- [05:56]
Travis
Yeah, it's only you that has the ability to control that, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, depending on how you look at it. But what's counterintuitive about that is that you, you think that getting to a certain level of success is going to help solve all your problems. And that's why we sign off this show, by the way, every single episode. We sign off with money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems with money in the bank. So let's solve that one first. It's like our sign off tagline for the show. And that what you're talking about right now is exactly what I mean by that. Meaning that, like, you had achieved this level of success by the time you're 45, but all that really allows you to do it sort of puts a magnifying glass on the problems that are internal because there's no more problems to solve externally. You know what I mean? Like, you got the money in the bank and you, you got the health in order and you got good, good relationships with people. And like, you got, you Just you got everything done and taken care of. There's no, there's no continual way to distract your mind away from the problem that's brewing on the inside. And at some point you either have to face that problem or live with the consequences of not facing that problem. It sounds like you went internal into the work.
- [07:03]
Mike Wood
Yeah. And then everything changes. You know, this, this show's about money. And I'll just be honest, I don't like to talk about it very much, but I was making really good money when I was 45. And in seven years you probably go times six or seven in, in, in that short amount of time. And it, once everything on the inside starts to change and it's, it's just astronomical how everything on the outside starts to move, move with it. You could virtually look at anybody who is, is struggling. You could see it in relationship. Everybody knows that girl who's been abused and then she leaves and finds another guy who abuses her. Or, or, or somebody who's a hoarder. And they, they just, they can have somebody help them clean their house, but that those environments are being created by. What's the environment that is going on in their head. That girl, God help her, she doesn't feel like she's worthy of somebody. Right. It's not that she's not worthy. She is. We all know that she is. We could look at her and go, why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you putting yourself in this spot? But she will continually be pulled back to her because of what's going on in their mind. And it doesn't have to be that way. That girl can change. You just have to physically understand how the, how the operating system works. And when you take control of that and all of a sudden, you know, the world is your oyster.
- [08:29]
Travis
So I want to talk about that, of course, a little bit. And I know that's a lot of the work that you do now these days, but what were you doing to make money in that? You know, I mean we, we, we skipped from high school, college to 45. What was that? 25 year career. What were you doing?
- [08:44]
Mike Wood
I. Manual labor. Until I was 33 years old, I had, I was doing traffic controls like a family business, you know, pulling lane closures on the interstate. So I learned a manual trade that paid me a decent wage, right. Enough to If I worked 60 hours a week, I could support my family. And then it kind of shifted into asphalt. Cause I got a traffic control job working for an asphalt company. And then I shifted into learning another manual trade, but I had a shovel in my hand when I was 33 years old and, and I begged for a position in the office as an estimator and didn't think I'd make it past a couple of months. Once I got in there, I was terrified. All the voices got loud but I you know, math has always been a good thing for me and they were just patient enough with me to see the hard work kind of pay off. And you know, five years later I left there extremely confident in being able to do that job and got a job as a construction manager.
- [09:45]
Podcast Host (Ad Read)
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- [12:12]
Mike Wood
the hard work did pay off. And you know, it does do something to, to push you forward because now all of a sudden you've got some confidence builders going on that we are rewriting new programs with those confidence builders. We're exact same thing putting new programs in there that say we're, we're good enough to do this thing. And so yeah, I had some, some hard, hard labor. My back and knees. Feel it today.
- [12:38]
Travis
Yeah. Feeling the repercussions.
- [12:40]
Mike Wood
Oh man.
- [12:41]
Travis
So, so at what, what age was your first business when you were like okay, I'm done working for other people. I'm going to do this for myself.
- [12:49]
Mike Wood
You know, that's, that's recent for me. So I'm the COO of Jarrett companies. And so the next job after that, construction job, the construction manager job where I was managing engineers and inspectors out on the road, I, I found a small company. Jason Jarrett owned it. And there was 12 employees there. And he was just crazy enough to listen to me. And he wanted to grow himself so he needed to expand himself. But together we basically took the company that he has and took it from two and a half million dollars a year to a hundred million in 13 years.
- [13:26]
Travis
Wow. And what, what is the product?
- [13:29]
Mike Wood
So we have seven different construction companies. And it started out with a grading and underground utility company. And we just keep expanding the services to a paving company. Cause that was my niche. And then, and then a concrete company and then a fire protection company and then H vac, plumbing and electrical service companies. So yeah, we, we have seven companies now and yeah, a little over, you know, 350 employees.
- [13:54]
Travis
Wow. This is what I love about, this is what I love about people's stories is that it's never you. We've been sold a lie that you have to take one path and one path is the only way to figure it out. And you better have a, you better have a clear understanding what that is when you're 22 years old, fresh out of school, so you can get started on that path. And it's just like your. Your career has been one of just following what the next step is in front of you. And then it allows for this sor. Intrapreneurship, where you can go, you have this expertise, and you go essentially partner with a business that's already existing, and then you bring your expertise to that business, and then you get a piece of that upside. When you take a company from 12 employees to 350 employees and one company to seven companies and a couple million in revenue to 100 million in revenue, turns out there's some cheddar left on the table for sure. You know what I mean?
- [14:44]
Mike Wood
Yeah. If you're working with the right people. Absolutely there is. Yeah. And. But it's a great model. We've repeated it, you know, seven more times because that's the model with the. Each one of those individual companies, they're all running as independent companies and, you know, kind of paying it forward. But, you know, Jason's reaping the benefits of it because he's, you know, give a small piece away to somebody who, Who's. Who's yearning or something for an opportunity, it'll.
- [15:05]
Travis
Yeah.
- [15:06]
Mike Wood
You know, create a heck of an opportunity. When you got 12, 20 owners running around a. A company like this, like now all of a sudden the company is booming because you got that many people who, who care the exact same way the owner does.
- [15:19]
Podcast Host (Ad Read)
Yeah.
- [15:19]
Travis
They have a vested interest in seeing the company be successful versus just collecting a paycheck and moving somewhere else when shit hits the fan, you know? Absolutely. So where did the learn to love being you program come into this? Just. Just needed to fill your time with something. Mike, what's the deal?
- [15:37]
Mike Wood
You know, when I. So me growing up the way I did, I had extreme anxiety and depression. I would have never spoke that out loud about the second half of that with the depression out loud, but I turned my. My focus inward when I was 45, and I kept finding little things that gave me affirmation I was on the right path. And so the rate at which I was turning my focus inward and facing fear was. I'll say it's extraordinary. Like, I be proud of myself. I am extremely proud of myself for turning my, My, My, My focus inward and. And looking fear in the face every single time. And if that's where anything I was afraid of, I ran towards it and I, I was consuming books on audible. Cause I still reading comprehension is not the best thing for me. But I was conceding consuming five to 10 books a month for a long period of time. And so I'd take that information, I'd turn it inward, I would go to reiki classes, I would go to energy healing, I would, I would go to Bolsound Bolt, anything that I could do to find healing. And my 10 week course isn't a compilation of all the stuff that brought me to a place where I'm living a life anxiety and depression free. And it's not just that I'm living it anxiety and depression free. Something else lit up inside behind all of that stuff. And I'm living in a place that's like, holy shit, I can't believe that I feel this way. Just sitting on the chair, not doing anything right. I don't need anybody to talk to. I'm not yearning to do anything. And I just feel amazing. And why, why did I not know about this sooner? And, and so as I, as I crossed over and I started to heal, I started seeing the pain everywhere else. And it was, it was sad. And it's, it's no different than seeing a little old lady on the side of the road trying to change a flat tire. You immediately pull over, there's no thinking, you just, that's your natural reaction is to help somebody who in need that needs your help. That's how I feel about this program. I have a passion to just help folks. And when I first got to this place where I was feeling better, I drove my family and everybody crazy because I just wanted to talk about it and help them. But I realized really quickly you can't help people that don't want to be helped. And so now I just want to make myself available to anybody who does. And you know, so that's, that's the mission.
- [18:11]
Travis
Now can you talk about the role that having a strong network or building good relationships has played inside of your career?
- [18:19]
Mike Wood
Oh my gosh, I'm experiencing that right now. But yes, like it carries with you everywhere. The relationship I had at the asphalt company as an estimator carried forward into my construction management. All those relationships helped build me up when I got to the next job and then those relationships carried forward. But even more than that, I think right now it's happening again on another rope because I'm going into another phase of my life that it's all changing again and nobody could do any of this by ourselves. Right? There's always somebody that's smarter than you, that's capable of doing what you're doing better or at least a facet of what you're doing better. And if you don't surround yourself by those type of people, then you're, you're not gonna, those opportunities aren't gonna open up to you. Like, you know, there's a lot of people that make this statement that you could, you know what somebody's bank account is. By looking at all of your friends, your five closest people, all your bank accounts are going to look the same. So if you're wanting something, you got to surround yourself with people who could take you to the next level. That's not saying you got to get rid of every one of your friends because they ain't got no money in your bank account. But what I am saying is start expanding your friendships and the relationships that you have and getting yourself around people who are, who do have a business or they do have money in their bank account because they are successful and they are doing the right things and, and everybody wants to share their knowledge with somebody. And so just being around them, they're gonna be like, oh man, you need help. Oh yeah, I would do this. This is what I've done to get to where I gotta go. Everybody loves sharing it with somebody who was yearning for that information. It's a, it's just human nature.
- [20:01]
Travis
This episode of the show is brought
- [20:03]
Podcast Host (Ad Read)
to you by Chime.
- [20:03]
Travis
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- [20:26]
Podcast Host (Ad Read)
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- [20:28]
Travis
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- [21:13]
Ad Voice
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- [21:57]
Travis
Sponsored Jobs yeah, you look back at your career and you see all the breadcrumbs that are there, right? Like it's starting with hard work and just putting in the work even though you didn't know how exactly I was going to work out and then, and then putting yourself up for an opportunity that you weren't quite confident in, weren't quite sure how you were going to be able to make it work. But then they give you the opportunity. Why do they give you the opportunity? Because they see the hard work that you put in in this other area they didn't just trust you with blindly. They saw, you know, given this opportunity, Mike really crushed over here. So if we give him this one, he'll probably do the same thing over here. So then you take this one, you learn this new skill set and you go to this other place and then you apply that skill set to this thing. You help grow it. It's just like every and then and then the relationships along the way, you know what I mean? Like, you built up the competence, you built up the connections, and then you're able to focus inward to build up that connection to yourself, which ultimately, in my opinion, really, that's like the real definition of success anyway, is like inner peace, fulfillment, purpose, happiness. You know, the bank account tends to, you know, trend upward in the same direction as your, you know, your own personal piece does. And then if it, and if it doesn't to the same degree that you're hoping for, it's still not a Bad scenario to end up actually liking who you're looking at in the mirror every day.
- [23:12]
Mike Wood
Exactly, exactly. And maybe money wasn't what you really wanted anyway. You know, money, you know, the things that you were looking for, a lot of that stuff doesn't matter as much when you. When you're finding peace and then all of a sudden everything starts to almost become easy, you know? Yeah. One of the. One of the things that keeps coming up as we're sitting here talking, because our minds create everything. And your. Your topic here is money. Like, how do we get money? And ultimately our brains can control this. One of the. One of the biggest impacts on my PayCheck is really two things. One is manifesting. I do it all the time. Like, I create my reality. I've created all these companies in my head long before they were ever created. But two is. And it really. When it started to affect me personally in my bank account is. I don't even remember where I heard this, but it was a story about the richest man in Asia or somewhere in China or something. And this guy was writing a book about him, and he was telling this story about how when he was just writing the book and interviewing this guy, his bank account started rising. He gets to the very end of this thing, and he's like, give me the one piece of advice that you could give to everyone that would. That would help. Right?
- [24:26]
Ad Voice
He's.
- [24:26]
Mike Wood
This guy, the author is wanting to put this in the book, and he. What he said to me was, it just stuck with me, and I've done it every day, and I advise everyone to do this, but he said that money is energy. It has current. That's why they call it currency. Money is energy. Even a dollar bill is not worthy of anything. It has to be traded in before, you know, it's like, money is energy, and it is currency. And most people have an energetic flow of money that is broken. Everybody gets excited when they receive money, but everybody gets upset when they spend money. So that energy current gets stuck, all right? It doesn't continue to flow and make a bigger circle and allow more money to come to you and more money to flow through you. Because everybody, when they get it, they want to spend it, right? Well, you should be as excited about receiving money as you do when you spend it. Like, when you spend it, you should be just as excited. Like, holy moly, I can't believe I got the money to pay this bill. Holy moly, I can't believe that I. I got enough money to pay for this overpriced meal. Like, this is amazing. I'm so grateful. I'm happy. This is awesome. And if you just turn everything into that. I, I literally when I started doing that, within a week I started seeing more money show up in my. Yeah, it sounds crazy, but I love to share that information.
- [25:47]
Travis
Yeah, no, it's the truth.
- [25:48]
Podcast Host (Ad Read)
It's the truth.
- [25:49]
Travis
I was liking it to have like when you're first getting started and trying to make money, you don't have any money to give, right? So you have an open hand waiting for dollars to come into your open hand and you start getting some money and what people start doing is they start slowly closing that fist and start holding that money really tightly. It's like, well, you might be able to hold on to that money, but the problem is your hands no longer open. It's going to be more difficult to receive more money if you're not willing to let some of that money go and use that flow to bring in knowledge, to bring in competence, to bring in connections and opportunities and things like that. Like you, you've got to, it's difficult at first, especially if you come from a background where you don't have a lot of money because you have this scarcity mentality around. Well, I got to keep this. It took me a long time to earn this money, so I better hold it really close. And I'm not saying to be dumb with your money, right? We're not talking about going and spending money on TVs and sound systems and your, you know, yearly iPhone upgrade. But yeah, in terms of being willing to invest that money into yourself and being willing to invest that money into infrastructure and your business, whatever it is, you gotta, you gotta keep that open, open handed mentality and it's gonna serve you better, better in the long run doing it that way. So Mike, I appreciate you taking the time to come to the show, man. Where can people go to get more from you and your program? Everything else you're working on, man, I,
- [27:04]
Mike Wood
I would love it if anybody, you all, anybody can reach out to me on my personal email. Mikerndolovebeingyou.com we'll get you a response, we'll get you have a conversation. But I would also love to give everybody a gift and this is another way everybody could reach out to me. I want to give everybody, you know, we're talking about all this mental stuff that we could do. I want to give you guys all free gifts. First week of my program, the. And then two guided breathwork meditations and basically what these things are. All three of these things are designed to do is help you change what's going on, take control right now. Proof that you can do it. All three of these things, if you do any one of them, they are, they will, they will give you an exercise to create an experience. And that experience will create a knowing within you that you could physically alter what's going on within your mind right now. And the way you could get access to that is mwood mindset. Mwoodmindset.com backslash Travis and we'll get you a link to this thing and let you try some of this stuff out. It's pretty awesome.
- [28:10]
Travis
Mwoodmindset.com Travis, go pick up some of those materials and resources that Mike was talking about. Mike, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. Everybody else tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easy to solve the rest of your problems. Money in the bank. So let's start there. Here in the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you next time. Peace.