I grew up poor and, I promise you, there’s no salvation in it. Zero. Zip. Nada.There’s nothing nostalgic or glorious about it. I was bullied because I was poor. Girls turned their backs on me because I was poor. In the late afternoon, after playing soccer for my high school, I would walk 5 miles (often in the pouring rain) to get home because we didn’t have a car at the time and I didn’t own a bike. I’d pass by a fish & chips shop at the edge of town with its delicious aromas wafting out into the night air… but no pocket money to buy anything. I went hungry until I got home. In the evenings and weekends, I worked on a farm at the expense of my homework. We didn’t have indoor heating, so I slept in 3 layers of clothes, mittens and a hat. I washed in melted snow mixed with frozen sheep droppings when the water pipes froze. I wore odd-sized shoes and trousers.. 2 sizes too small. For dinner, we ate braised lamb hearts and fried cow’s tongue after the butcher threw them out (but to be fair, my mother was a genius at turning offal into delicious meals… and I still eat offal today). I’d sift through Monday’s trash cans for Sunday’s newspapers. Being poor sucks. Period.Give me financial independence as an alternative and I’ll take it any time. I hear people, who were never poor, say things like, “Well, it probably helped build a strong character,” or… “It developed your determination.” If that were the case, then all kids who grow up poor should be like that and they’re not. My two siblings and I are completely different characters, but we all grew up the same.

The Beginning of the End

My father was unemployed for most of my young life. Even later, after I’d left home to start a career, he was mostly a beneficiary of the tolerant British welfare system. He must have started and failed in over a dozen startups, something that is also illegal when accepting welfare checks. Sometimes, out of desperation, he took a regular job as a delivery driver or taxi driver, but it never lasted long before he fell out with the bosses and got fired.When I tell people this, they expect my next statement to be that he was abusive or an alcoholic, but he was neither. We never had alcohol in the house because we couldn’t afford it.Although not academic, he was highly intelligent and could hold long conversations on any subject under the sun. He read voraciously, but even that can’t explain how worldly and authoritative he was on so many topics. He had impeccable manners, which he taught to all his children — even when we were eating braised offal,

we did so as though we were dining at a palace, the table set with mismatched cutlery and tableware, but all rightfully arranged like a royal banquet.His parents had been poor, too, and I often wondered how a man in an over-sized, cigarette-burned, floppy, orange cardigan that my mum had knit for him, with false teeth, combed-over hair and sandals could talk and behave like a titled aristocrat.Although I can’t prove it, I believe it was due to his ancestry: Blake is the name of one of the 12 ‘tribes’ of Galway, the first family said to be directly descended from a Knight of the Roundtable sent to Ireland to establish lucrative trade routes. 

The Blake SurnameOver centuries, 12 families evolved to be wealthy and powerful, peaceful, non-religious merchants trading between a site on the River Corrib where it meets the Atlantic Ocean (what is now part of Western Ireland) and Scandinavia. When they refused to reform to Cromwell’s new religion, they were chased out of Ireland, their wealth stolen, and kin scattered around Liverpool and Hampshire. Cromwell labeled them ‘tribes’ as a formal insult and to strike out their titles.

I’m sure this ancestry was in my father’s DNA… just as it is in mine. Even today, Blake is the most common last name in Galway. And, as far back as I can trace my family tree, the males were all recorded in the census as ‘salesman.’ (In this case, the apple really didn’t fall far from the tree… having spent my corporate life in sales and marketing.)As a teenager, I resented our poverty and blamed my father unfairly. But then I’d go to church and the village rector would spew out misquotes as the word of God. Hearing him say that ‘Money is the root of all evil’ was oddly comforting. I felt better about our life, as though I was actually blessed to be poor.That false sense of relief pretty much ended when I turned 15 and it came time for confirmation classes.For those classes, we had to spend an evening a week for several weeks at the rectory listening to a rotund Rector Thomas pontificate about the sacrament and our duties as Christians. Mind you, this took place while sitting in his fine lounge in a beautiful manor house with expensive antiques, fine art, and gold statues, forced to listen to an obviously very well-fed man wearing a tailor-made suit, while my stomach rumbled and my feet were soaked through rotting shoes.The myth began to break down as Rector Thomas, with his comfortable lifestyle, told me how blessed I was to be poor. I decided then and there that I no longer wanted to be poor.

Eureka! Money As EnergyBut when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face.1 Corinthians 13:10-12When I was 16, I was as voracious a reader as my father and the local town library was my savior. Once the town jail, it was a clunky, dark building and the reference section — where I spent most of my time — was located behind an intimidating iron door. Hardly anyone ventured through that door, and I was left undisturbed for hours.I was fascinated by biographies, but I often just roamed the shelves of this Aladdin’s cave of a room and pulled books at random. I became equally fascinated with books on psychology and physics, especially quantum physics.This was during the 1970’s, and the library was in a market town dominated by sheep and cattle farming. Not many farmers had an interest in quantum physics, so the books were like new. The librarians knew my mother, who worked part-time at the town’s only delicatessen, so although it was technically against the rules, they let me take the reference books home so long as I returned to swap them every few days.These science books taught me that everything is energy. It totally rocked my world.I still meet people today who have no concept of this, and if you are one of them, then this information will change the way you view money and financial independence.Everything in our universe is made of the same basic building pieces. As of 2019, we can say there are 12 particles of matter and 4 forces of nature that mix and interact to create every experience in our lives. (For our purposes here, it doesn’t matter what they are or what the Boffins call them. Everything is made of combinations and groupings of these same energetic, jiggling things. What determines the difference between a table and a tree, or a human and a dog is the speed and way they jiggle.)It’s not just things that are energy, however. Everything is energy…Every activity and every concept is also just another form of energy. Sex, conversations, relationships, exercise, politics, dining, travel, and yes, indeed, money are simply energy in  different forms. Money Is the Energy of TradingI had always viewed the world as a complex assortment of things. Money was, therefore, a thing to have and hold. If you had it, you were wealthy… and if you didn’t, you were poor. Sound familiar?Thinking of it as energy released me from that limiting thought. I learned that energy flows like rivers and winds and I began to think about money in the same way. Through my work on the farm, I got a hold of a small amount of money. My relatives told me to start a savings account. That, however, contradicted the concept of money as energy. Locking it away would be akin to damming a river. Needless to say, I was highly criticized when I chose to spend it instead.Money is simply one of many forms of flowing energy. Most people I meet today consider money as a ‘thing’… something to be attained, collected, saved, or held. To them, financial independence is like a summit on a mountain, a place to be reached, or conquered.Money isn’t something to get and hold  — it’s something to allow to flow in your life. Money flows in. You allow it to flow through and out. Then more flows in. You let it flow through and out and so on. The more you do this, the greater the flow. Then one day a great amount flows in and through and out. This is financial independence. You can’t own or hold financial independence, because the moment you do you stop its flow and it will stagnate… just as a river would if you decided to dam it.It was a ‘lightbulb’ moment for me as I considered my father’s failed startups. My dad didn’t think this way. He saw money as a thing — have or have not. His mind-set was about how much money he could make out of a transaction, not what difference he could make by using that money wisely… keeping it in flow. In his life, the experience of money was always one of stagnation.Think of any successful person you come across in the media… Warren Buffet… Bill Gates… Richard Branson. They’re all billionaires, but they’re not Kings in castles sitting on a mountain of gold. Money flows through their lives. They create companies, often many of them. They invest and create more flow. They’re philanthropic. In essence, they convert money energy into other forms of energy. It’s all energy conversion and, in their own way, they are wizards.Despite how media, banks, and politicians might describe money, you cannot own money any more than you can own the air that you breathe. The universe is abundant and expanding — yet some people still fear a lack. And, of course, we always get what we attract. If we fear money or fear not having enough because we don’t realize it is simply flow, we end up experiencing lack. Yet money can be attracted as easily as the air that you breathe.You don’t fear that you won’t have enough air to breathe…You breathe in and out all day long, knowing that your next breath will be there when you need it. You don’t concern yourself with worrying about how your next breath will come or feel compelled to stockpile it so that you’ll have enough when you need it. No, you expect it to be there in abundance when you need it and so it is. You don’t need to save air…It’ll always be there when you need it, just as abundance can always be there when you need it — if your mindset supports this.Interesting things happened when I started to think about money this way. Keep in mind I had no money at the time, not even an allowance, and what I had made working on farms didn’t go very far. Still, I spent the money I earned working on the farm on spectacles. I’d been short sighted for years, but could never afford to do anything about it. At first, money started to show up in my life in small amounts. I was left 800 pounds in a Will (a lot back then for a 16-year-old). I got a summer job that was supposed to be for a grown man, but he didn’t show up and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I earned a real wage for a few months, which I reformatted into a 2nd hand moped. This allowed me to travel farther so I could work nights in a restaurant kitchen 15 miles away. There weren’t many restaurants where I grew up, so the only way to get work was to travel far and wide.At 17, I was able to play for my local pub darts team. The legal age of drinking was 18, but no one cared or checked in such a rural place where everyone knew everyone else. I couldn’t get into any trouble without someone watching out for me or reporting back to my parents, so good behavior was a given. On my first night playing for the team, I won the fantasy raffle and was handed a plastic bag full of coins as a prize. I spent most of it on my first vacation, a visit across country to a place I had never seen before.Travel was the thing I wanted most and the flow of money in my life made it happen. I have since visited more than 56 countries…Before I changed my attention from travel to building businesses, I had $330,333 in annual salary flowing through my life (which gets a lot of luxury travel experiences). It all started with the first realization that money flows like air. Breathe  it in, breathe it out… never try to cage or hold it. Of course, for many of you this is completely contrary to everything you’ve ever been taught.I’m not talking about buying things like more pairs of shoes that sit in a closet unused for years. That’s the same as holding money. It stagnates. I’m talking about putting money to work. 

• I reinvested my small amount in a mode of travel that got me access to better paid work.
• I converted some of that into travel which ignited my passion for travel and exploration.

These were deliberate choices.In business, the same rules apply. We cannot bring in money and then lock it away in a bank account or buy more inventory than we need. We have to find ways for it to flow. We expand, we add product lines or services, we acquire other licenses or businesses. Money must flow.When I sold my first company, I decided to share my sudden abundance with some family groups. I gave them each a lump sum. My intention was that they would let it flow, spend it on travel or a remodeled kitchen. Without exception, they deposited the sum in a low interest-bearing savings account where it all sits today. Its value in real terms has diminished as the interest rate never keeps up with inflation or the ever-increasing costs of goods. The lump sums are stagnating in real terms. In other words, the energy is diminishing. A decade later, not one of them has taken that money energy and converted it into another form of energy that could benefit them. As a result, not only has their net worth not changed, it’s diminished. Flowing into retirement (our lives flow, too) they are cutting costs and downsizing, all while fearing losing what little they have.Fear of LosingBy far, the hardest part of thinking about money this way is after a windfall. I felt this acutely after selling my first company. I could have called it a day and gone back to a life of travel… and that was very tempting. But I felt compelled to build another company, one I knew no one else would dare try. It was not a new idea for me. I’d had the idea years before and everyone I respected in my industry told me it was a bad idea.In the back of my mind, however, was the fear of losing all that I had just gained. 

We would like to share with you our recommendation on how to welcome abundance in every aspect into your life if it is your wish to do so. Rather than determining exactly how abundance can flow into your life by focusing so intently on only your income, paychecks, clients, and customers you block the infinite flow of abundance from coming to you any other way. The universe is infinitely abundant and it seeks to serve. Allow your heart to open to all possibilities that abundance can come to you. It may be a gift, it may be an idea, it may be a stranger, it may even come in the form of a trade. There are an infinite number of ways which all that you desire can manifest.We realize that it is very hard for the human mind to simply shut off the need to plan, and know “how” something is going to happen. In the old energy nothing could get done if you did not have a step by step process of how it was going to come about. But that is no longer the energy. It doesn’t take so much work on your behalf. Now you must learn to allow. The problem lies with needing to know how and when rather than simply allowing it to come. Knowing without a doubt that it will manifest is what brings it into being. When you put restrictions and limitations on how and when this manifestation can come to you it only hinders the process. Decide what it is you want to manifest, allow and expect to receive it in the path of least resistance, and as each step is made known to you, take the action required to manifest your desires into physical reality.

Dr. Taryn Crimi

Only one thing can happen with that mentality… and sure enough I made one bad investment after another. I had to work very hard to turn my mind around, and it was at least 2 years before I got myself back into a way of flow both in business and life. I share this because I want you to know that I’m no different than you or anyone else. I fear loss and success as much as the next person, and because of that, I use all the tools and techniques taught in my books and courses. They work. 

My advice is to change your perspective of money to one of flow. Let it flow. Let it blossom. You will be delighted by the results. Then you’ll also see that financial independence is not a terminus at the end of a journey but just a state of more powerful flow. Instead of hundreds of dollars coming in and going out, it’s millions. Whereas you can dip into the hundreds and buy a nice dinner (just another conversion of energy from one format into another)… with financial independence you can dip your hands into the millions and take a private jet trip to

The function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and the reality that we experience. We generally perceive that we are running our lives with our wishes and our desires. But neuroscience reveals a startling fact. We only run our lives with our creative, conscious mind about 5 percent of the time. Ninety-five percent of the time, our life is controlled by the beliefs and habits that are programmed in the subconscious mind. Bruce Lipton, Biology of Belief

Necker Island, or anything that floats your particular boat. There, the money converts into salaries for the staff, supplies from the locals and profits for the owner (which, of course, is Branson who knows how to keep the flow going). Who knows what other magical things it will do on its journey of flowing…This takes a new mentality: You have to be prepared to let go of it…  just as you have to prepare to receive it. This takes courage and faith and a lot of self discipline.Cheers, Trevor