WORDS BYLINE: Sarah Ingram Cash was scarce growing up and Rik Schnabel inherited an unhealthy relationship with money from his mother. ‘My mother would say with regularity that we were poor and she couldn’t afford anything more than clothes, the mortgage and food. So I learned never to ask for anything,’ he says. ‘Poverty is a mindset. I don’t know if times were really that tough, but according to my mum they were, and I believed her,’ The 62-year-old author and life coach says. When he was growing up in the suburbs of Victoria, Australia, R!k’s friend asked him to a football match where the ticket cost less than $4. ‘When I plucked up the courage and asked mum, there was such a row. She yelled at me, “Do you think I’m made of money to waste money on a game of football?! After I promised to never ask again, she begrudgingly reached into her purse, grabbed a few dollars and threw the money at me. Thankfully paper doesn’t hurt. Now that’s one way to teach your children poverty and to associate trauma with money’, Rik from New South Wales remembers. His parents rowed regularly, and when the bills rolled in, R!k’s mother would scream at his father and R!k would take refuge in his room. ‘Any time money was mentioned, there would be an argument or at least a raised voice. Money was scarce and my parents had no issue telling me all about it. I truly believed that I would always be poor,’ he explains. When he won a scholarship to university, he knew his parents - who have both since passed away - couldn’t afford the rest of the fees, so he never told them, and got a job in advertising instead. Born ‘Ricky’, Rik abandoned his old name in 1986 in an attempt to change his future, and through a form of training known as neuro-linguistic programming, after learning about ‘poverty beliefs’, R!k came to realise that he didn’t like ‘the thinking that came from my poor friends and family’. In 2004, he started a role selling radio road reports sponsorships, where he failed to thrive, making just $350 in eight months because the pay was commission-based. ‘Our money was disappearing fast until one night after work, my wife Rebecca told me that we only had $27 left in our bank account. I felt like a failure. ‘I was a new dad and all I could think about was losing our new apartment that we only bought a year earlier. When you are in such a desperate financial position you spend hours just staring blankly at the floor. You feel foolish. You feel stupid. 'I did think of ending it all. I just couldn’t see a way out. It sounds so silly now, but I thought that my wife and my daughter would be better off without me,’ he remembers. However, the training he had gone through helped him change his mindset and his sales pitches improved. ‘We were close to homelessness, but the week after, I got my first major order which meant in one phone call, I earned half a year’s salary. Then the next phone call I got, I earned another half a year’s salary – and the next was a whole year’s salary. Talk about going from drought to flood. ‘I went from being the worst salesperson in the history of the company to becoming the best. Within months, I was earning annual incomes each month. I had never seen so much money,’ he remembers. ‘It was the combination of life coaching and neurolinguistic training that helped me pick myself up. I had been impoverished in my thinking and lived a desperate life of misery. There was no way I was going back there. ‘I am now a much better version of me. Today, people admire who I have become and the mindset that I own. I’m on a mission to awaken those who are unconscious and house an impoverished mind. Today I am one of the busiest coaches in Australia and I teach neuro-linguistic programming and life coaching via Zoom to people from all over the world and have written six international best-selling books. ‘I have a charity supplying food to those who are disadvantaged through UR Community and I have a burning ambition to help thousands more people to break the poverty trap.’ Featuring: Rik's Mum and Dads Engagement When: 17 Sep 2024 Credit: Rik Schnabel/Cover Images **EDITORIAL USE ONLY. MATERIALS ONLY TO BE USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH EDITORIAL STORY. THE USE OF THESE MATERIALS FOR ADVERTISING, MARKETING OR ANY OTHER COMMERCIAL PURPOSE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. MATERIAL COPYRIGHT REMAINS WITH STATED PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR SUPPLIER.**