Episode 47- The Power of Punctuality
Call me neurotic but I find it incredibly disrespectful to be late. In this week's episode, I talk through what being late actually signifies to the person who may be waiting for you and how I avoid being late myself.
I'm also sharing the latest updates on our move to Utah- all while recording from a campsite in the middle of nowhere Georgia.
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And for me, time is money all the time. And if you're wasting it, you're wasting my money. And I don't like to be, have my money wasted. Hello, federal government. I do not like my money wasted.
This is to the nines podcast. I am your host Tiffany Wicks, a mom of seven who doesn't subscribe to the idea that you have to choose between your family and career. I am on a mission to show the stay at home mom who has lost herself in childcare and Coca Mellon. And the overworked corporate holdout who isn't finding joy and purpose in their career that they can work for themselves, making an impact and an income that serves your dream life.
After leaving my nursing career to raise our family, I needed more mental stimulation, but didn't want to give up the privilege of raising our legacy. I've been in network marketing now for five years. I know the strategy and mindset it takes to be successful and to live a life aligned. I've With your values and your purpose.
Join me as I share my business tips, marketing mistakes, attitude shifts, you need to space out some time for you or ditch your nine to five completely and start working for yourself. You have the power to change your life. Let's get started. This is just the beginning. You will never believe where I'm at right now.
I am camping. I'm out in podcast episode. Since I learned about voice memo on my phone, um, I actually heard about it first a few years ago through a mentor. Um, if you remember, uh, the late Jesse Lee ward, she used to say like podcasting is not a big deal. Like I just recorded on my phone and then go about my day.
And I don't know why I forgot about that. And then it was like, I don't know, three weeks ago. The whole like, wait a minute, could I do this on my phone? And since then I'm like, this is way simpler. So, and I don't think the audio is too bad either. Anyway, it has been busy. Our house in Georgia is under contract.
So let me give y'all a little catch up here. Our house is under contract here in Georgia. And although we're still in the contractual phase, the house in Utah has closed. So I couldn't really talk about the, um, the deal and the particulars about that one, because there was a lot of emotion tied up in that deal and you know, the long and the short of it is.
The house had tested positive initially for meth, yes, like meth, the drug. Well, when we were like, okay, let's, you know, that can be remediated, like, just like mold. If you guys remember back in the beginning of my podcast, um, adventure, I had talked briefly about mold in our home that we had remediated and we had renovated and everything was fine.
So I'm like, okay, this is not, not fixable. We can do this. So. You know, the state limit was like 1. 0. I'm not sure what the unit of measure is, but just, you know, for numbers sake, 1. 0, I said, well, we want it to be. under 0. 5 because I mean nobody wants to move kids into a house that had meth in it at any level but at least 0.
5 made me feel a little bit better about that. Well they said no and they also said no to some extra money that you know at the price point that we're buying this house one would think you wouldn't have to do a doggone thing to walk in the front door at that particular price point. It's, it's an expensive home in an expensive area, but it is our landing place.
This is where we will stop. We are not moving anymore to the best of my knowledge. I mean, but you know what they say, you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. So to wrap this all up. They retested their own house and they tested it 17 times, which is a little overkill, but clearly they had something to prove and prove it.
They did every single test. All 17 of them came back negative for meth, which now begs the question, well, what the heck labs don't make mistakes, not these particular labs in this particular test. Apparently that just is unheard of. So the only logical explanation from that is that the home inspector had some cross contamination issues.
So it looks like that's what happened because we got the report back. We, we saw the invoice, we saw everything. Um, and then we had to beckon the deal back up, but they were all, you know, heartache and about, um, about us pulling out of the deal. So we got back in the deal with a lot of money on the line that we were willing to not get back, like non refundable earnest money.
And it was a lot, like 30, 000 and they were still just being butts over the thousand dollars it took to swab the house over and over. They're like, well, we had to do this so we don't want to pay for it. I'm like, whatever. So we gave them a check for a thousand dollars. Like, is this going to be it? Like, can we just please buy your house?
I have never, ever had to beg to buy somebody else's house. Anyway, that's basically what it was. It was, there was just, and they were just You know, all the way to the end where my husband turns out he had a trip that was leaving a day earlier than what we thought and he needed to be there to close. Well, we had a POA power of attorney, but that has to go all the way back through underwriting.
We asked them for a one day delay and signing to get that processed. And they said, No, your poor planning is not an emergency on our part. And I got to thinking, Oh gosh, who are these people? So hopefully, uh, I meet them someday. Cause I would love to tell them a thing or two about who they are. Something tells me they already know.
So now that the deal is done, the house is officially ours. It's a beautiful home. Make sure you're queuing into my stories because I'm going, um, actually by the time this drops, I will be on my way back. from Utah. I'm going to pick out new floors for the house because the main levels all tore up. They had seven kids as well.
Um, but apparently their kids were inside a lot because there's a lot of parts of that house that were just not treated well. So we're going to rehab her. We're going to bring her back to its original state of beauty and glory. But I mean the location, just wait for it. Make sure you watch my stories. As soon as you listen to this episode, cause it will still be there.
Uh, the Tempanoga's mountain range is right there. I mean, it's just, just impeccable views. We're on a cul de sac, there's a park. I mean, Oh, I just cannot wait. So anyway, there is the catch up on the house debacle. Um, but we'll get all that it's, it's all like water under the bridge now. Like we're done. We closed on it.
It's ours. Like, let's just get there. And that is a whole other thing, right? Getting there. All right. So there have been some, uh, this has happened more than once now. And it is one of my greatest, probably biggest pet peeves ever. And the one thing, if I am like, I'm not a psycho mom, but this makes me psychotic in my home.
And that's what we're going to talk about today is the power of punctuality. I don't know how you feel about being on time. I don't know how you feel about others when they're late. I've heard a lot of, um, like archetypal, you know, well, culturally this, these people are just late because that's just what they do.
And I just, you know, I can't, I can't subscribe to this. I just think you're rude. You're rude if you're late and you're rude. You're also rude if you don't tell somebody you're running behind. And for me, I mean, if you are, and maybe I learned this, I don't know, maybe I got this from the military. My dad was in the army.
I was in the air force. My husband's in the air force, you know, and being a nurse, like timeliness matters, you deliver somebody a medication. So. 30 minutes late. I mean, depending on the medication, that could be catastrophic to their health. You take their vital signs a little too late. That could be catastrophic.
It could end in death. So timeliness matters and being punctual matters. It also tells the person, um, or the people, the organization that you're part of, like, Hey, your time matters. So I'm going to respect that. So basically I've taught my kids, if you are not. 10 minutes early, you may as well be five minutes late.
When you plan your departure, and here it is. You got to reverse engineer. Okay. First off, how much time does it take to get there? It takes 10 minutes. All right. And you want to be 10 minutes early, right? 10 minutes early. So now we're at 20 minutes. How long does it take you to get out the door? It takes us 15 minutes to get out the door.
If it's my family, it's more like 25 to 30. Um, once everybody's decided they have to go pee yet again, uh, finding shoes, all the things. So now, even if it only takes, 10 minutes to get to where you're going. When you reverse engineer all of that, you have to leave 45 minutes. In order to get there 10 minutes early and account for lost shoes.
Somebody needs to go pee. Somebody dropped something screaming, whatever it may be. I mean, traffic stuff, like unless you're driving through a city where, you know, at 4 PM traffic gets crazy over there. You always, you can't really. plan for traffic infractions because it's impossible to know them, um, especially like accidents or speeding tickets.
Um, but if it's a commonly traveled area, you know, definitely plan for the traffic and make sure you back your time up. Also, Calling people. Apparently this is like an old school practice, and I didn't even realize that people don't do this anymore. Until multiple, like, I've ran behind, even with all of my planning.
Okay, and that's gonna happen. I'm not, listen. I'm not telling you, you're rude if you're late every single time. I'm saying, do your very best to plan for it. And if it still happens, and it does for me, it does. If it still happens, be sure you call. Call and say hey. I am running 5 to 10 minutes late. Is that going to be a problem for you?
Don't just say, I'm late, wait for me. Like, is this going to be a problem? And if it's going to be a problem, then they're likely going to say. If it's not, then say, oh, it's not a problem at all, just get here when you get here, drive safely, okay, excellent. Well, you know what you've done? You've shown them a level of respect that says, look, I recognize now that I'm on your clock.
I am now wasting your time. And for me, time is money all the time. And if you're wasting it, you're wasting my money and I don't like to be, have my money wasted. Hello, federal government. I do not like my money wasted because money is what gives you choices in this world and to some degree power, right?
If you have enough money, any problem becomes an inconvenience without that money. A problem is going to be a major problem. So. Make sure you call people. If you look at your clock and you're like, yep, not getting there five to 10 minutes early. Make sure you call them, tell them I'm running behind. So while I took my daughter to, um, this courthouse in this county that's next to us, um, the arrival time was 1230.
That's when the event was supposed to take place. Okay. It was 1230. We showed up at 1210. You guys, you getting that? I was like 20 minutes early here, yay me. Okay, I will be totally transparent on this. I thought the event started at 12. Um, but it started at 12. 30. So I was grateful that the time was in, that I had the time incorrect.
Um, because I would have been 10 minutes late. But, here's the kicker, check this out. I would have just acknowledged that we lost that time. You missed out. On whatever was covered during that 10 minutes that we were behind. And that's my fault. It's on me, right? Even if all the things with the kids, it's on me, it's still, it's always on me because I'm the adult.
So we were, we did end up being 20 minutes early. Well, it was like, there was nothing. Okay. We're out here and like, BFE Georgia, and there's nothing around. No playground, no park, no school, no field to play in. There is nothing. So I'm like, well, I have no idea what to do with your siblings here. There's not even a restaurant to go sit there and get some French fries and a milkshake and just play games.
There's nothing. We got that. And, uh, it's already been like 15, 20 minutes. I'm like, well, this courthouse is super tiny. How long could it take to do the tour? And, uh, so I text the instructor and I said, Hey, uh, how much longer do you think this is going to be trying to decide if I should drive to this Lake?
That's like 15 minutes away for my younger kids to play at. And she's like, Oh, um, we haven't even started yet. And they were supposed to start at 1230. And I think I'm texting at like 1245. And I said, You haven't started yet. And she's like, no, we're still waiting for yada, yada, yada. And I said, with all due respect, I was like, can we please not wait any longer?
Like I have got a million and one things to do. Um, I'm sure everybody's got things to do and I'm really, I'm really not happy when we wait for people. Sometimes if all parties involved are present and accounted for, and everybody agrees, like, yeah, we've got nothing going on lazy Sunday over here. You know, take your time.
No biggie. Then. Wonderful. But that is not what was happening. I am over here like you guys. I, oh my gosh, we've got the appraiser coming to appraise the house because my house is under contract here in Georgia, which means, you know, the home inspector had to come. The appraiser has to come. The people who test the well water, they had to come.
Like, we're waiting for all these you know, results to come back to make sure our deal is still going to go through. And like, we're getting down to crunch time. It's the end of April. Okay. And we are going to have to start packing up and actually putting things on a trailer truck and moving and leaving here right at the end of May.
So it's getting to be crunch time. If you want to watch that craziness, um, we are, we are going to. Nose deep here into YouTube. Um, I have no idea how we're going to do this on the road. I don't even know if I'm going to be on the road. This is another thing about punctuality and time is Adam and I are sitting there the other night and we're like, okay, and you guys reverse engineer.
That's what we did is where do we want to be? Okay. We want to be obviously at our home in Utah and then back that up to where we're at. How many miles do we want to drive a day? Only around 400. Okay. Now every 400 miles, we have to find a place that we're going to stop in it. Economically, it doesn't not make sense to stop at Airbnbs along the way because they charge a cleaning fee every single time you step foot in that place.
And it's like 130, you know, to 160 in a lot of these places. I'm like, well, that's ridiculous. And we're just basically sleeping there, packing right back up and heading home. Like we're not really sightseeing anywhere along the way. We thought we might, but. You know, when it came down to it, I was like, I would rather use Adam's vacation time to get our home set up and kind of feel like, all right, we got to feed under us just a little bit before he goes back to work because he has to come back to Georgia for work.
So here we are. And we're reverse engineering this and I'm like, okay, if it all works out, you know, we should be in Utah within five days. Punctuality, right? Time's going to matter because we have a trailer, more trucks and trailers that we're renting, um, that have to be, from point A and have to be at point B at a particular time.
So there you go. My punctuality obsession, um, and very near psychosis. Like nothing makes me more angry than when we're late and I'm, you know, I can't explain it. I think it really just has to come down to respect. I think that's it is when I really try to, you know, dig in and figure out like, what is it in me that is, Damn near neurotic about being on time.
Um, and I know Maggie's listening to this, like, seriously, girlfriend, you are late with your content constantly. Um, yes, but I'm talking about like, show it. I mean, whatever. I don't want to dismiss that. Yes. I should be more on time. I really should and I try every single day to be better, but when we're trying to load up and be somewhere at a certain time, I'm like, come on guys, I told you to go pee because that happens every single time we get in the car.
All right, there you go. The power of punctuality. What that says to the person that you're meeting is that you care and respect their time. What it says to yourself is that I am ready and I am capable for whatever the next thing we're doing is. is. It gives you time to use the restroom, fill up your water, take a deep breath, say a prayer, whatever it is that you're doing.
There's power in both of that for the receiver and the giver of that mutual meetup, right? If you are a person that is not typically on time, like, check yourself. Try and figure out, are you just terrible at reverse engineering your time? Do you just perpetually make excuses because, um, we're Latina, so we're late?
Haha. I have heard that, Oh, well, they're Latina. That's why they're late. I'm like, Nope, I just don't think we're planning well. I don't think your ethnicity has anything to do with your timeliness or lack thereof. I just think that we're not planning well. Um, and perhaps using that as an excuse. And you know that I am not an excuse person.
I do not love it at all. When people make excuses for different things, there are reasons. But refer back to a previous episode. We'll find it and link it in the show notes, um, where there are lots of reasons not to do things, but there shouldn't be excuses. So shelf that. All right, my friends, that is all I've got out here at the campsite.
Mosquitoes are not bad. They must do some sort of, um, insect abatement. Um, but I'm going to get back with my family and try to unplug this weekend. So cheers. I hope you're having a great week and, uh, can't wait to talk to you again. Bye friends.