1412 WHO’S REALLY CONTROLLING YOUR MONEY? The Hidden Programming Behind Wealth, Self-Sabotage & Hollywood

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

In 1986, a man named Scott Macklem was killed in broad daylight.

Police quickly found their suspect. Prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm reexamining this case.

Bob Wheeler (0:15)

I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job.

SPEAKER_1 (0:22)

Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to Examined, the backfire effect wherever you get your podcasts.

Bob Wheeler (0:33)

If we're not happy with ourselves, more money is not going to make us any happier. You know, people can joke and say, well, I'd like to at least try and see if it does. Right. But until, until we're ready to do the work and actually forgive ourselves and allow us to thrive, it's going to be a struggle. We have to be willing to say, yeah, I'm worth it.

SPEAKER_3 (0:55)

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet, following the truth wherever it leads, exposing evil and corruption and the secret machinations of powerful elites, revealing the highest strangeness beneath the surface of our supposed reality. Coming to you from the great white north and his studio beneath the stairs.

Here's Richard.

Richard Syrett (1:25)

Hey there, welcome to Strange Planet. Bob Wheeler has one of the strangest resumes in America. He's a CPA and financial expert. He's also a comedian, author, somatic therapist and the longtime CFO of Hollywood's legendary Comedy Store. Which means Bob has spent decades studying money from two very different vantage points, the balance sheet and the human psyche. And what he's discovered is that our relationship with money is rarely rational. Buried beneath the numbers are childhood fears, shame, scarcity, status, trauma and beliefs we may have absorbed long before we understood what money even was.

Bob is the author of The Money Nerve, Navigating the Emotions of Money and the host of the podcast, Money You Should Ask. And his work explores the subconscious programming that can drive us to earn, spend, hoard, squander, succeed and self-destruct. And then there's Hollywood. From his perch inside the Comedy Store, Bob has had a front row seat to fame, fortune, staggering success, spectacular failure and some of the biggest personalities in show business. And tonight we're going inside the secret psychology of money, subconscious programming, self-sabotage, the seductive mythology of abundance and the strange machinery of Hollywood. And somewhere along the way we may spill a little tea.

Bob Wheeler, welcome to Strange Planet. How are you?

Bob Wheeler (2:51)

I'm great, Richard. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Richard Syrett (2:54)

You are a CPA, a comedian, somatic therapist, as I say, longtime CFO of The Comedy Store. Which one of those concerns your mother the most?

Bob Wheeler (3:05)

Probably the comedy. Doesn't pay the bills, maybe.

Richard Syrett (3:12)

So you went to the comedy store wanting to be a comedian and somehow you ended up helping Mitzi Shore with the finances. How in the world did that happen?

Bob Wheeler (3:21)

Well, a fellow comedian outed me and told Mitzi that I was a CPA. They were behind on their payroll taxes and in a bit of a struggle.

And so I was like, no, no, no, I'm just a comment. But ultimately I went in and helped resolve that and Mitzi and I clicked. And so I stayed on board and she trusted me and here we are.

Richard Syrett (3:47)

Was there ever a moment when you looked at the books and thought, wow, this place might not survive?

Bob Wheeler (3:52)

Oh, yeah, a couple of times. Yeah, I actually had a spreadsheet called Death March, which everybody hated. I'm like, but I can't let the place go under with my name attached. That would not be good.

I don't want to be in the history books that way.

Richard Syrett (4:08)

So you've spent decades dealing with both money and comedians, which is harder to manage.

Bob Wheeler (4:17)

Well, you know, I think comedians are just always an unknown, right? They're you never know what you're going to get. And when you're dealing with money and comics, it's a crazy combination. So I would say comics.

Richard Syrett (4:32)

And somewhere along the way, you realize that knowing everything you're supposed to do with money doesn't necessarily mean you'll do it. Was there a moment when you realized the CPA himself had a money problem?

Bob Wheeler (4:45)

Yeah, absolutely. I had to look at my own money story, right? I could talk the walk, but I wasn't walking the talk, right? I was short cutting, you know, the cobbler goes without shoes, right? And so I had to actually take a deep dive and look at my own personal biases and my own shortcomings and my own self sabotage and really do the work.