How To Create The Life Of Your Dreams - Timothy Meeks

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Tim Meeks is in the building. What's good, my brother? What's up, buddy? All good, man. All good. I'm just trying to be like you.

Sebastian Rusk

Hey, well, if you need no free time and too many headaches and you're there, you might you might even hear some wild stuff in the background while this is going on.

Timothy Meeks

It comes with the territory. Well, I'm in this, you know, chaos of a city they like to call Miami. It's it feels more like New York City these days. So we got sirens and horns and people screaming and yelling. I think there was a hit and run accident downstairs yesterday out of nowhere.

Sebastian Rusk

Yeah, I'm like, I'm still doing that. Yeah, I don't get it being there. That's wild that you still live there.

Timothy Meeks

Yeah, no, I, I, I agree. I agree, but I grew up here, so I'm a city boy, but I long for the country. Um, but no, I spent a little time in Dallas, but that's still in the city. So there's not, you know, maybe I need to come visit you guys.

Yeah, we, we ain't got, we got no city. That's what, uh, you know, Brian made a post yesterday about living at the golf course. And I was like, dude, I have no neighbors. I see no houses. I see no cars. We can hear some cars, but that's it. So it's, It's out there.

I never thought about that, living on a golf course, not having to see anybody. All I think of is like, I better make sure I got hurricane-proof windows, because I know how I hit golf balls when there's houses to the right or to the left, you know?

Yeah. See, so lots of people watch from the back door, but we got no people to watch where I'm at.

I got some birds, maybe. Some wildlife.

Deer. We got lots of deer. They just hang out.

I love it. I love it. I love those videos on TikTok and on Instagram where People make friends with the deer and they're feeding them watermelon and corn nuts.

We got this one deer, it's crooked ear deer. So it's, yeah, it's one ears like this all the time. And Hannah said, she's going to pet it one day. She'll stop and get out when it's in the yard and she'll ease over there real slow, but she ain't got there yet. It always leaves.

Oh, it takes off. Okay. I was going, will it, will it let her pet it?

Her goal is to pet it. She just ain't there yet, but she's trying.

I've seen them warm up to humans before. I mean, not in person we've got, um, down in there, they're kind of scarce these days from what I understand. But, um, down in the keys, there's key deer, which is just, you know, random, you know what I mean? You're like, you know, you're in paradise and all of a sudden you got Bambi running out, you know, out of the bushes onto the beach.

Yeah, that'd be wild. I wouldn't think they would like that weather down there, but they got nowhere to go. They're on an island. Correct.

Yeah, they're all through the, all through the keys to, from what I said, there's deer crossing signs and I was just so random. You see, I've never, I don't think I've ever seen any before, but I have some friends that, that spend a significant amount of time down there and they sure I've seen them. So interesting.

You know, I ain't been to the keys yet. We're going to go there. We're going to, it's about a two hour plane flight in our plane. So it's not too bad. Oh yeah. You guys love it.

I always say it's the closest place to paradise without having to have a passport. Yeah, it's just a whole it's being a South Floridian, specifically Miami. We we really love having the keys that close to us about four hours, three, three hours, 45 minutes away. But the first key is about 45 minutes. So. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's close. Absolutely beautiful down there. It really, really is. So you and I connected earlier this year. I'm so glad that we did. And we've been chatting a few things about podcasts and as of recent talking about doing some things, uh, as well too, but I wanted to get you on the podcast and talk a little bit about your story. I know that you guys have been able to, to achieve a pretty significant amount of success. You guys are in fact, when I say you guys, you and your lovely wife, Anna are, uh, really, uh, enjoying the fruits of your labor and doing life the way that you want to do. I'll never forget one of our first conversations. You said, we finally built a house big enough for all of our relatives to come visit. It's like that was one of our main goals, and we finally got that done. And now we got more room, and we know what to do with. In fact, we almost got too much room, especially when there's no family in town. And I just thought to myself, man, you talk about living life uh, on your terms, but I'm sure it wasn't always like that. So for context, for our listeners, let's back up a little bit to the beginning of the story and where this all started and where you and the wife first connected and then started to really design and architect, uh, this dream life that you guys have.

Yeah. Well, first thing, you know, like you say, we, we're probably doing some stuff together now. Um, A lot of people don't offer, you know, if you got something going on with the offer of help and you, you knew we didn't need your help at the time or wasn't looking for help, but you still offered advice and. And, you know, and I hear it probably paying off just, you know, being available and, you know, just putting yourself out there, which you are great at doing. You're always letting people know podcasts suck. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Well, I knew you had somebody helping supporting you that was, you know, that was an employee and working for you. And not more times than not, those individuals, there's not a lot of longevity with those individuals, especially when there's somewhat of a creative aspect. So I always make sure that I show up and you got everything that you need. And that person that's in that role is equipped to do a bit in the event that's not in place anymore. Obviously, you know, where to call, you know, who to call. So, but yeah, when you lead, as you know, when you lead with wanting to just genuinely help, and care, not having a dollar amount attached or what's in it for me attached to it. It's about the long-term relationship and what you can continue to bring with that. And more times than not, an opportunity presents itself where everybody's happy and everybody's getting exactly what they want. But I've just learned that if you lead with, I just want to help you get to where you want to be and maybe we'll do business together, maybe we won't. Um, it seems to be a good strategy, but man, I'm, I'm, I'm grateful that we're connected and still connected and, and looking forward to see what we can get working on here. Yeah.

So, so how far back you want to start?

Everybody says that. So I gotta, I gotta reframe that question. Cause I say, well, we can start wherever you want to start. Let's start, you know, the beginning of story when you and Hannah first met.

Well, I would, I would say, um, growing up, we both had not shit, you know? Uh, I mean, Uh, I lived in a trailer for my whole life. Um, pretty much set for a couple of years that we built my data house that we built it ourself to the same thing so we can afford it. Um, but. Uh, really the whole, like we're, so we're in the metal business and I was a woodworker. So since I didn't really have a lot of money when I was, uh, we, I didn't go on no trips. I was that kid that stayed in school. on trip days, me and the teacher, because I didn't go because I didn't want to pay for the trip. I didn't have the money to pay for the trip. So I would go to the ag department and I learned to do woodworking. So I would build a cabinet or, you know, whatever somebody wanted. And then the ag department would sell that to fund their ag department. And then I would get they would pay for all my trips that we went on and cover everything for me. So I got to do a lot of stuff because of that. So woodworking was what I was good at. I learned to build houses and all that. And then one day I really wanted, like we had some, I had a truck and I like tried to off-road it and it just broke a lot because it wasn't really built for that. And I wanted a Jeep, like an off-road Jeep and couldn't afford one. So I decided to learn to weld. So I took the Chevy truck, took the body off, cut it in half, shrunk it, put a Jeep body on it, figured out how to make all that work together. just so I could have a Jeep, and that's where the whole issue of starting to do metal work came from. Okay.

You're like, hold on a second. I think I like this.

Yeah. Well, so I built that by hand, and it had no really nice tools, just a lot of old stuff. And I thought, this takes way too long. This is ridiculous. So I bought... You know what a CNC table is? Where it's... you take a flat sheet of steel and you put a program in, it'll like cut the design out. So, I bought one of those and I was the first person in anywhere around here that even had something like that. And once I bought that, I didn't build anything else for myself for quite a while. So, I was just, you know, somebody's like, hey, can you make this? Can you make that? So, that kind of turned into a little side business for me. They kept my weekends pretty dang busy. Yeah. Sounds like it. Yeah, but it didn't really make any money because I didn't know what I was doing.

I had a buddy that has a brother that makes art that way.

Yeah. And the arts, you know, it's hard to convince somebody that your art's worth more than what somebody else would do it for. Yeah. Because arts, arts is a sketchy place to be in as far as price point. Yeah. Because people like, like I was out there doing something way too cheap because we don't know any better and it's a side job. So we're like, well, if I make an extra a hundred bucks a weekend, that's a good deal. Sure. When it was, it should have been making a lot more for the time I put in it.

You know, come to think about it, he doesn't do it anymore. I remember that because he moved from the Keys to Georgia. And I asked him, I said, is your brother still doing that metal art? And he goes, no, it just became too competitive. And there was another person that had their name and one person wants to do it for one price and another price. Now that I think about that.

Yep. Yep. That's what happens. Everybody. I watched the little Facebook groups go through and I'm like, uh, it's funny because I, and I'm not making fun of them, but you've got this, the king of the Facebook group, right? You've got like, all right, we've got our plasma table, Facebook group, and here's how you do designs and here's how you get rich doing it. And that dude ain't got no money. Like you're listening to somebody that has cheap their way through everything and fixes it theirself, which is good to know all the stuff, but he's leading this whole group of people and none of them are really making any money. And it's wild to watch that. Right. Because I got out of that a long time ago. I bet. What is everyone doing here? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why are y'all? And so I got into the off-road industry from that, and I was like, well, at least I can make some money over here. Yeah. But it's pretty competitive, too. You got all these people, same thing. Um, so what, what, what I learned to do to diverse myself. So we would take like razors and stuff and everybody's building like a roll cage or a bumper or something to go on it. You know what a razor is like off road. Yeah. Side by side. Um, well, there's a lot of competition in that for the same reason. You can buy a couple of cheap, uh, tools. I had expensive tools, but you can buy some cheap ones. It just takes you longer, but they didn't really, they wouldn't count their time because there's a side job. So they wasn't making any money, but they were killing me on price. So I started building like the whole car. Completely custom whole car for racing because like, well, they're not going to do that because that would kill them trying to do it by hand. So I found a way to get away from the cheaper stuff and do something that's really complex that the equipment that I spent money on can really outshine the people doing it by hand. Yeah. And that got me out of the race to the bottom price kind of thing.

Sure. Sure. So is that where you started to see some real traction and success? And you're still doing that today with the metal business?

Yeah. The building, you know, putting on lift kits, building off-road parts, uh, bumpers and like truck bumpers, uh, and then building the race units. That's, that's what got us established enough to quit my job. Do stuff like that. Cause I was making, you know, I ended up getting a job with Alabama power. So I was making 120 grand a year, you know, 12 years ago. So that was pretty good money to quit. to have no income coming in, you know, just doing random little stuff. But I, but I saved my money. So we lived in a single wide trailer. It's before I met Hannah, but I lived in a single wide trailer, uh, with a, you know, 3,600 brand new square foot shop next to it. Cause the shop was more important than the trailer. Um, so I, I got that built before I quit. So I had a couple of tools ball that was paid for the shop was paid for. I just, we have really broke while I worked for them and took all that money and just put it towards. these buildings and all this tools to have it paid for. So when I quit, I just had one payment and then your normal bills. So it wasn't bad.

So, and how many years ago was that?

I quit, uh, 10 years ago. My daughter was first born. So actually they was, I was going to quit another year and it would have, I quit with no money in the bank because if I'd have stayed one more year, I probably would have quit with about 40 grand in the bank. And my daughter was three months old and they said, Hey, you got to work the next seven months, seven days a week, 15 hour days. And I said, well, I'm not like, I'll do that for two weeks, but then you can have the rest of that. You know, so I quit, um, cause you know, it's not worth missing. She's going to be one years old and not know who I am. That's. That's not, to me, that just wasn't a choice.

Sure. Well, they don't know who anybody is until they're one anyway, but you're exactly right.

Yeah. Yeah. You just, yeah. They don't know who you are for sure, but it'd be kind of weird coming back home. Be like, all right. You know, which I know people have to do at all time, but I was able to make the choice. I'd set myself up to make the choice and I took it. It was just rough the first year. Um, the, the water people, They knew me really well. They knew my phone number. So they'd text me on Wednesday and be like, we're turning your water off today unless you can pay it by 11. So we had a good relationship of please don't turn my water off. Uh, they only power come and turn my power off two times. So that was pretty good. But the water was quite a few times.

It happens. Yeah. So bringing it to present day, what's, what are you, what are you currently focused on?

Um, so we, um, I, I had an opportunity just from making connections. Uh, this guy calls me one day and he said, Hey, come down to my shop, which I'd met him a few times and used. I made some little parts for him. I cut out for him, you know, just a little small business relationship. And he's like, Hey, I want to sell this shop. I was wondering if he was interested. And I was like, dude, I got no credit. Like I got no income. I can't, I can't buy nothing. And we just worked out a handshake deal where the next week. I moved down to downtown from my house to the shop with three more employees that about killed me. Um, but doing that. So, so we, you know, we make, we own brush monster, which builds skid-steer cutters. Um, so you put on a skid-steer and cuts down trees and all that stuff. I'm sure you've seen Ryan post that. Um, well he built them, but they were just a real cheap Chinese version. You know, so when I got the building, he said that you can have this website if you want it. And the phone number, uh, you know, I ain't really done much with it, but there was a few sales, you know, there's some part sales come through. I ordered the parts, so I could just resell them to make some money. Uh, but after a few years, I told Hannah, I said, if I put the effort into this and really redesign this and make them bad ass, then. It'd be a whole lot better building something, a quality product repeatedly for our guys than me trying to build all this custom stuff all the time. And that's when it really got a lot better. They don't need me at all. I mean, they do everything without me.

So now the business runs, runs without you. Yeah.

And it's, you know, there's always something, but as far as, uh, operating, they, it, it flows pretty dang good.

How often do you take that plane for a spin?

Well, that's, that's a long story. Um, I can't legally fly mine by myself right now. And it's been a year since I started trying, but the problem is everything's really slow in aviation anyhow. But the first guy, I was flying the plane with them and I was fixing to go take my test. Like I had a half a day and I was taking my test and they called me and said that they crashed the plane and died. So that gave me quite a few months of wasted time. And also I was real back and forth, hectically trying to finish. You know, it was like, it was a terrible time. We were real busy and I was always stressed out trying to make time to get up there. And I was like, okay, well maybe we should take this a little more serious. And I said, I'm going to wait till after Christmas because there was so much stuff going on. And then I went to another place and they took like a month and a half to get there. And they put me three months out to test. And then there was some technical error with the guy that quit that I wasn't allowed to test because he had quit and, you know, some paperwork issues. So I wasted all that and 10 more thousand dollars and. Then I had a well in this new plane. And the FAA is really slow about getting paperwork. Anyway, it's a long way. So I'm at the third place now. And none of it's been my fault yet. And we spent quite a lot of money. This just went away. You may be selling that son of a bitch before you know it. No, hell no. No, we love it. We love it. Now I can fly a regular plane. I just can't fly one with two engines. Oh, OK. I can. My license doesn't say that I can. Sure. So I've just got to go take that test now.

Do they check your license like when you land at an airport?

Hell no. No, it's 99% honor system. Wow. But if they catch you doing something, you know, if something happens and they investigate and you don't have it, then they'll just pull your license and you're just done. Right. You'll never fly forever. Yeah. So it's, it's not worth it, but it's nobody's checking nothing at all ever. I mean, it's rare occasion. You get a ramp check. That's something wild. Right.

It's for that to happen. So it's a two engine plane. How many people does it see?

Uh, six. So if it's a six person plane, that really means they can haul four. Like we could get six and fly for an hour, but if I want to fly for five hours, it's really just four.

And how far does the plane go?

Uh, well, it'll fly. It goes right about 200 miles an hour and fly four and a half to five hours, depending on weight. So, I mean, it's, I mean, I can go over there to like Ryan's in three hours.

Have you, so have you taken it with a pilot anywhere?

Yeah. Yeah. I fly. I get guys to fly with me. They can fly and we'll take it, but I just can't get up by myself. So all the stuff I need to go do, it's like, you want to come with me instead of me just jumping in it with hand and just taking off. Right. Which is what you want to do.

Yeah. Right. So where do you store it at the local airport? Like a hanger?

Yep. Yeah. And with all that land, you got that son of a bitch in the backyard, man, it's a big plane. So it takes a lot of runway to land that joke here. A helicopter is next though. And I can land it there. So we'll be fine.

Yeah. Amazing. I love that. So what do you think contributed to being able to design? That's what I think about when I think about this episode is, you know, how to design your ideal dream life. What do you think the biggest contributing factor is to that?

Um, you know, I've been thinking a lot lately about, Uh, I had one of my guys quit and start his own business. And we discussed, I mean, I knew he'd quit. I mean, it wasn't like a surprise, but we discussed some things, you know, about money and financials and all this kind of stuff. And I think the biggest thing is like us living in that trailer for 10 years, me driving the same truck for 11 years, the trailer was paid for, I paid $10,000 for it. Um, but doing stuff like that and procreate, you know, um, putting off spending money on yourself and just keep dumping it back in. I mean, that accelerates your business so fast. And I think people are so worried about what they're driving or where they live, and they just can't hold off and wait. And once you start spending that money on it, like once you say, I'm gonna buy this house, now I got a house payment, that's 1,500, 2,000 a month that you can't, multiply out anymore. It's always a drag down on your, on your growth. So I think people don't hold out long enough. Like we just moved in our house last December. It's paid for. It's a million and a half dollar house. And you know, it's, we don't even affect us because it's paid for. And people would ask me like, you know, where do you live off? We got a trailer up here. And they're like, no, you don't. I'm like, I do. I live in a single wide trailer that's 30 years old. And they're like, you don't. I'm like, OK. Because they just wouldn't believe me because they couldn't believe somebody could make enough money and still choose to live there. But, you know, we had that plan where we're prolonging the success part that everybody thinks is success. But I mean, we lived in a trailer, we could go anywhere we want in the world, any vacation we wanted, we could buy Any sports car we wanted, but we didn't care because that don't matter. You know, that wasn't our goal is to show off for other people.

Yeah, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, delayed gratification, but I think it's grossly underrated. On. Patience combined with delayed gratification, I believe, really sets you up nicely. I mean, you guys are living proof of that. So for those of you listening to this episode and you're thinking, when will I ever get there or how do I get there? I think it's a matter of continuing to reinvest in yourself. and your business, which I've been living for the past three and a half years, thanks to Apex, an incredible mastermind group, my friend Ryan Steumann started, that really shows you how to become the best version of yourself while making the right moves for your business that you need to. But Don't underestimate the power of delayed gratification and also patience. Gary Vee has preached this for 15 years and I think it's fallen on deaf ears and they just don't understand. Yeah, I think he's been coined by saying several times before, like, you got to be willing to like eat shit for five to 10 years. Yeah, 10 years. Yeah, in order to be able to live the life that you want on there. So, well, I just, you know... Go ahead.

Oh, I think also the life people think they want, they don't really want that. Like, they think what'll make them happy is not really gonna do it. And most people have never been able to walk up and be like, I want this brand new F-350 truck that's $100,000. I can pay cash for it. But when you can pay cash for that truck, it's a whole lot harder to buy it. Cause you, you're not trying to prove, you don't need to prove to nobody you can afford that truck. Cause you know, you can, and you understand that it's a way bigger waste of money to buy that instead of, you know, placing other places, it'll make you more wealth when you can actually do it. The most people, most people that will buy something expensive are the people that can barely afford the payment. Cause it makes them feel better about having something nice.

I've already, I did that in my twenties. That's miserable. Especially when they come to everyone to come take the fucking car. Yeah. Oh God. When you're, there's nothing more humbling and humiliating all at the same time than waving bye-bye to the tow truck at three in the morning as you're holding a trash bag full of your stuff. I'll never forget that happened to me in Southern California. And it happened to like, they always come in the middle of the night, you know, security called me like, sir, your seven series is on the back of a flatbread. And then the guy was like, so apologetic. And that just doesn't happen. with tow truck drivers, they're usually soulless human beings. And the guy's like, man, I'm so sorry, but man, you're not alone. This happens to professional athletes. And I'm like, I don't care who else it happens to.

It's happening to me right now. Can you leave my car here?

Yeah, yeah. Humbling experience to say the least. Well, you know, I got to say, Tim, you know, what you guys have built in the life that you have created, it's nothing short of inspiring. and motivating because you guys did it. You know, not that there's a right way, but when you say that you prioritized patience and delayed gratification, and now you guys literally have whatever you want, whenever you want, based on the decision that you make on the past. I think that that is something to be modeled and, you know, proud of you guys and proud to be running, running with you guys and doing life with you. It's quite, quite inspiring. And, uh, I'll tell you, it's.

It's it's hard to do that because the whole time we're feeling like we're doing something wrong, like we're not good enough, why is it taking so long? Why is you know, because you'll see you always see the get rich quick guys. like, Oh, I did this and made a lot of money real quick. And, and there's always make you feel bad. Like why couldn't, why didn't I do that? Why wasn't I good enough to do that? But that's like a 0.1% of people to get rich. But you always see everybody blows those stories up because they're nice to watch, but that is not reality. 99% of the time.

Yeah, no, not at all. Not at all. I mean, believe 20% of what you see online, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And most of them are lying. So we got, this is true.

This is true. Well, man, it's been great to, to, to sit down and chat with you for a few minutes and learn a little bit more about your story. I know we've been trying to get an episode recorded here. We got that done. I know we're, we're working on some stuff with your podcast and your YouTube channel here in the very near future. I'm looking forward to that, but I do appreciate your time today. Any, uh, any final thoughts for our listeners?

Uh, we're really, I mean, as far as what you want, I feel like we carried, I mean, really just, When you're down in the bottom trying to get going, you know, really, I think the biggest thing is impulse purchases that people do. They'll buy something impulsively. If you can put that off for two or three months and see if you really feel like you want it after those two or three months. you're gonna realize that it's not near as important as you thought it was. And buyer's remorse is a horrible thing to experience when you can't take it back.

That's some fantastic final thoughts and advice. At the same time, I'm gonna leave it at that. Thanks again for your time, Tim. Give my love to the wife, and I look forward to what you and I are gonna get working on here sooner rather than later. Yes, sir. All righty. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, Launchlab.com Studios. We'll talk to you next time.