How many founding co-partners do you have in this
and what you've been building Tim with creators?
Yeah, I have two other co-founders of our business.
Awesome.
And I saw a pretty fun promotional video a while back.
You guys have seven co-living houses right now.
What is a co-living house?
Yeah, so essentially a co-living house is more or less
kind of like a commune.
And it's where we place like-minded people
to essentially live together in a shared space.
And we're totally redefining what quote unquote
like apartment living is,
because apartment living you can kind of like
go into your space, you can get away, you can be alone.
And kind of the crux of our whole vision
is how do we push people together?
How do we almost force people to have conversations
and to be in community?
That makes sense.
That as a married man would like been married
and was four children, I like, whoa,
this is different for me.
But when I was younger and when I was a bachelor,
I could see how this would have been something
that I would have won.
It would have probably made living expenses cheaper
by renting a house with other people.
But to like you said, it keeps you from falling
into the grasps of isolation.
Is that kind of your target demographic, younger people?
Are you guys also mixing in older people?
What's that look like?
It is, yeah, right now, where we find loneliness
to be the most acute is with Gen Z and also millennials.
And for us, we really want to surround people
with like-minded folks that are gonna help them
become the best version of themselves.
And I think as Gen Z has kind of graduated
and went to college really in the pandemic
and so many of those people were isolated
while they were doing learning, while they were at college.
And I think for me and my experience in college,
I really was able to find myself and to learn what's inside
and be able to articulate myself.
And I feel like so many people in that younger generation
were kind of like robbed of that opportunity.
And I feel like the pendulum has really swung
in the direction of isolation and especially with technology.
I feel like the more technology we have,
the more it exasperates the problem of isolation
and loneliness.
And so really what we're trying to drive to is,
connecting people in these houses.
And you've probably heard these cliches before like,
hey, you're the average of your five best friends.
Show me your friends, I'll show you your future.
Show me your five friends,
I'll show you where it would be in five years.
But I really do subscribe to that.
And at the end of the day, the people you live with
are the ones you spend the most time with.
And we believe that like doing life alone
is the lowest expression of yourself.
Because I think it's through experiences with other people
that stretch you and open up your world and challenge you
and hold you accountable.
And I feel like if you live alone,
there's this gravitational pull to do the thing
that's consistently easy,
which doesn't build the character and the resolve
and push us to become the person we're called to be.
I love that.
There's a lot I wanna touch and I'll see if I can remember
it all.
One of my favorite movies is a movie called Into the Wild.
And in that movie, this young man is trying to figure life
out and like going around,
having all these great experiences
and the tragic ending for him to ruin it for everybody.
But the tragic ending is he dies,
on this wilderness journey.
And when they find his van or they find him,
and he suffered pretty badly in his lonely death,
he had scribbled a note right before he died that said,
happiness isn't real.
Happiness is only real when shared.
And so there's this beautiful epic story of him going
and figuring life out and coming across people
and having partial relationships,
but in the end, he tragically dies alone
and it's not a pretty ending.
But it is a very compelling story.
And it's one that we should definitely consider
the point in the moral of his parents releasing,
proving that film too, is like, don't end up like this.
Don't put yourself in this situation.
And so you're combating that.
And you talked about the cliche of these sayings,
but this show is not about me.
Or this shows about people who may not have heard this
stuff out there.
So you're gonna say a little bit slower what you said.
Great resource, Gary Vaynerchuk often talks about
the same theory and thought.
We were very much made up of the five people
who we spend our most time with or allow us,
we allow them to influence us so much.
So I can absolutely see how being involved in a house
or a community where those people have been curated
and selected based on similarities.
I mean, that is really cool.
And I hope you guys are looking at the opportunity
to influence parents in relation to that,
because I think a lot of those individuals,
they may not be willing to take that step by themselves.
But if you guys can create an environment
where it's trustworthy enough for parents to say like,
wow, I want my child in this, I can't do it myself.
It takes a tribe to raise a child, an adult child,
so to speak, you know, like that's amazing
what you're doing, I think it's really cool.
Further thoughts on it.
Yeah, I think, you know, where our whole business started
was, you know, I went through this loneliness bout
in my own life that really gripped me during the pandemic.
And I moved from New York City to Austin,
and I started to adopt this victim mentality
that I'm never gonna meet people that are creative,
I'm never gonna meet people that have this level of drive,
I'm never gonna meet people that kind of have that,
like earn an Imagineer at heart.
And that started to very quickly become my reality
because I was isolated, and because I wasn't out there
and I didn't have connection.
And because I didn't have friends in Austin yet,
I started to, like it became a self-fulfilling prophecy,
like these thoughts that I would have in my mind,
that then became my reality.
And I had to break free from that because I realized
that if I want to attract those people,
I need to be the one to essentially cultivate that.
Like I need to be the one out there.
And, you know, for me, from that point,
like I broke out of that and I found one or two people
that are now my best friends and business partners.
And, you know, my, what I would say guiding principle
in my life is really to help people,
and more specifically men, unlock their God-given potential
and really like live life on purpose.
And I think there are a lot of people now,
especially in technology, they work these amazing jobs
at some of these incredible companies,
they get paid a lot of money, but they feel this void inside
and they feel like they're created to do more.
And there's this golden handcuff, so to speak too,
that makes it so hard to leave.
And I went through that in my own life,
but I really believe that, you know,
if people kind of understood what they were created to do
or that they could do more and that they could,
if they found the right people, you found your tribe,
you could do that thing you've always wanted to.
And I think it takes a lot of courage,
a boldness and faith to take those shots.
So really for us, the foundation is like,
if you live with these people that are like-minded
and gonna push you and your purpose in calling,
that's like ground zero.
And if we can get that into people
and be surrounded by those quote unquote like-minded people,
we think so many great things can happen from that.
And honestly, we've already started to see it
and our business is very new.
And we're in the physical realm, you know,
digital products are a little easier to create,
but we're talking about houses,
we're talking about living spaces,
and there's a lot that goes into that.
Yeah, I love this.
You are proof that people can make that shift and change.
You had to go through this,
you had the golden handcuffs like you talked about.
I'm like the exact opposite of your story.
And so I'm looking at this from, again,
that opposite perspective of like,
all right, how do we influence leaders like myself
to also listen up, especially those of us,
I'm getting there, my kids will be this age at some point
where they have to move in with somebody
and like you're helping incept me to realize like,
okay, like I might have to teach them
the value of doing this.
When I was 17, I told my mom,
mom, I'm graduating early or I'm dropping out,
take your pick.
I was leaving no matter what, there was no stopping me.
I was ready to go, granted.
And again, some of us had certain opportunities
pushing us out too.
Like I had my dad's credit card.
So one, like, you know, I was gonna be fine
if I got into a bind.
Two, I got my little 1990 Isuzu Trooper,
this was in 2006, 2005, right?
So an older car, but I drove that all the way
to my school in Utah by myself.
My dad gave me a gun.
Put it under your seat if you need it, use it.
Isn't that nuts?
You know, I didn't have a license.
If I'd done that, I would have been in prison.
You know, I didn't even know that,
but yeah, that's how open we were back then.
I was like, you know, it's just like, you know,
I'm just going.
And so I get to Utah and I go into this restaurant,
all the tables are massive in Utah
because they're massive families.
And like, I couldn't find a two-top.
And so I'm sitting at this massive table alone.
There's all these families.
And finally it's starting to sink in like crap.
What am I doing?
I'm the only person I know here.
So like I, you know, a little bit of desperation,
I call my sister up, you know,
and I talked to her on the phone while I eat.
And then I go to school though,
and I end up in a dorm, a co-living space, right?
And I mean, it was one night difference and bam,
I got friends like crazy.
And I'm just going and my mom's calling, you know,
every week and I'm like, mom, are you okay?
And she's like, yeah, I just wanted to say,
mom, I'm busy right now.
I love you, I gotta go, bye.
Click done.
Like I was hook line and sinker moved into
this new co-living experience.
But again, if we don't learn as leaders in the world that,
oh, that's not how everybody thinks and sees and does things,
our ability to impact is super limited.
So from your background, Tim,
what are three resources that leaders can pay attention to,
you know, could have on their radar
to help them with their visions?
It could be books, it could be movies, anything.
Yeah, this might sound a little bit cliche,
but I think as a man,
it's hard to give other people the authority
to speak into your life.
And for me, I would say number one is,
we'll call it like mentorship or like leadership.
Like who is that person in your life
that you give the authority to rebuke you,
to correct you, to give you advice?
Because I think in our culture and society,
it's like, hey, you gotta be your own person.
You gotta figure it out on your own.
And I can tell you point blank,
so much of my growth in my own life
has come from those moments from other people
that I've given that authority to speak very sharply
into my life that hurts at times,
but I know they're doing it from a place of love,
but that pruning back and that sort of correction
in my life is the thing that's probably propelled me forward
the most.
That's huge.
I have to double down with you on that.
Everybody in life to me is a mentor.
I have no problem with anybody giving me
that type of feedback.
I also have healthy boundaries.
Like somebody comes at me nasty,
I don't really need that in my life.
And so I will separate,
but can I take it and handle it
and know that I'm sent to it?
Yes, absolutely.
But it is because of my openness and willingness
to be mentored by all.
Go ahead, next.
Yeah, next, I'm gonna say this book called
The Way of the Warrior written by Erwin McManus.
He's probably the most influential thought leader
in my own life.
So many things he says really ring true.
And even in that book, he talks about
like the way of the warrior is to fight.
And I know you and I were talking about that offline
a little bit, but I think it's like that warrior's heart.
It's like, we have to be able to like pick up our sword.
We have to be able to want to do the work.
We have to be able to like want to be on the playing field.
And I think in this day and age,
it's really easy to be a spectator on the sidelines.
And it's really hard to be that man in the arena.
And that book is all about finding people
that can, again, a community of people,
like find your tribe.
The lions run with the lions,
the gazelles run with the gazelles,
and the zebras run with the zebras.
Like find your tribe.
And that's kind of the ethos of the whole book.
And honestly, it kind of underpins
what we were talking about before.
It's like, hey, find those five people.
Find those people in your life that are going to, you know,
keep you on the straight and narrow, so to speak,
and put wind in your sails.
Dude, I determined not to color comment on this one.
And then to talk about fight,
those of you who were not present, right,
before we went live,
I almost killed the premise of this show
by overreacting to the word fight.
And my new mentor, Tim, you know,
was able to pull this concept up.
And I was like, you know what?
We'll run with it and we'll see.
And sure enough, you know,
my perspective is now healthier on the reality that,
okay, there's a semantics battle of, you know,
do we fight or do we just accept and allow things to flow?
But I'm with you on that.
There are elements of fight that are important
and resilience has to do with it.
There's of course toxicity associated with
and overindulgence in anything,
but to be able to stand your ground
and to be able to move your mountains,
it takes some grit, it takes some dedication.
And so thank you for bringing that up
and the Way of the Warrior, great book.
What else you got?
You got one more.
Yeah, last one.
I am a man of faith and this dovetails into the fighting.
I'm gonna keep going on this point,
but the Bible has taught me so much of what it means
to how to live my life.
And even I'll bring up the story of David and Goliath.
Like there's such things,
there are things that are opposed to us.
And sometimes we do need to pick up our stone.
We do need to fight and, you know,
even fighting for what do we fight?
I'm fighting every single day
for the relationship with my wife, you know?
And there are things that I encounter in my day to day
that are opposed to that.
And, you know, for me, it's really taking,
me taking a principled approach to my life.
And one of the principles in the Bible
is the upside down kingdom.
It's like, whoever is first shall be last
and the last shall be first.
And I think, you know,
if we had a little bit more of that humility
is the people that have capability to lead,
to speak, to articulate themselves,
they have the resource, if they can put themselves last.
And if they can, there is like a responsibility
when, you know, you have been given something
and, you know, I'm someone that wants to be a good steward
of everything that's been placed in my hand
and I wanna be able to multiply it.
You know, the Bible has been a guiding light for me
throughout my entire adult life
and hasn't steered me wrong yet.
It's amazing.
You know, sometimes again, we get caught up in the word,
like I almost did.
And then the, you're just making space for me
to think through that we decided to move forward on it.
And when David fought Goliath, right,
there's different ways that he could have gone
about that fight.
You know, he could have tried to arm wrestle him,
you know, right?
Or like literally wrestle him and go ahead.
You know, he uses assets in order to make that victory
more strategic.
And I think sometimes where people get obsessed
with the idea that, no, we should never fight
is what they're trying to say is,
we shouldn't go about this way.
We shouldn't make this harder than it has to be
versus being able to use your resources
to slay the giant, so to speak,
in a way that doesn't put you in a position of harm.
And then I'm with you too.
Then there's the stories like Jericho
where they were instructed to just walk around the building,
you know, until for whatever reason,
God made the walls fall.
So lots of ways we can look at that.
This is also why vision pros,
we talk so much about intuition,
trusting in your heart and your mind
in the process where you call it meditation, prayer,
we're just going on a walk and thinking through things.
You are the visionary of your life.
So this is already a fantastic episode.
Even still, we're gonna take a little break.
We're gonna come back.
We're gonna talk about Tim Stanton's vision at large.
And that we'll be right back.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up and welcome in to another episode
of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And I'm excited to have a new mentor on stage today.
His name is Tim Stanton.
You know, mentor, you know, I've only met him twice.
Oh man, I've, you know, he's younger than me.
So how can that be?
Why?
Well, he's got a paradigm and perspective
on a purpose-driven living opportunity
that relates to really helping the younger generation
understand the power of diving deeper into relationships.
And that's something that if I'm going to have an influence
on my children as they get to that age,
then I need to be willing to have an open heart and mind
and how to influence that.
And so a lot of the things that you'll learn today
about Generation Z, my generation of millennials and younger,
it may be applicable to the older generations too.
But if you're a leader,
then you're likely going to be in situations
where you're leading those types of those age ranges.
And it's very important that we learn how to listen
and understand where they come from.
So before I bring Tim back on stage
and we dive deeper into co-living
and overcoming this loneliness epidemic
that some of us may be kind of aware of or avoiding,
but I think there's a lot of purity.
I think there's a lot of value
and even a lot of happiness that can come
from understanding where people are at with this.
I wanna also highlight some resources
that can help you as visionaries with growth.
One of them is Melissa Gray's The Lawspot.
The Lawspot is an entity that simplifies the legal processes.
I literally almost canceled our show
when she came on the show
because I don't like to talk to lawyers.
Most of them are very pretentious
and condescending in nature.
And so I was like, you know what?
I gotta honor this and move forward with it.
And I did.
And I'm so glad because she's a nurturer first
and she knows how to relate to individuals.
And what she's building is kind of that middle ground
between legal Zooms, free documentations
that don't necessarily leave you with the right protections
and the traditional lawyer that's a massive retainer
that cost me $20,000 when we were protecting
our own trademarked name at Restaurant Connect.
She created this thing called
the Spot On Business Blueprint to help you understand
it's not only about protecting your firm,
but it's also about growing and strengthening your network
and having somebody on your side when it comes time
to talk about mergers and acquisitions and beyond.
So feel free to check out that.
And we're gonna move over to the Healing Institute
with Pramiliya Parham.
Pramiliya has a couple of decades on me in life as well.
And I appreciate the tenure
of those who've paved the way before.
She's building an international wellness community
and inviting practitioners in the emotional healing,
energy healing, integrated healing therapies
and coaching spaces to come together to create a network
that not only allows patients or clients to find you
and work with you, but it also is a network that's unique
in that it pulls you together
in a mastermind style of interactions.
And her big goal right now is to get this program
to where she's got over a thousand registered practitioners
in there.
So if you're in the health and wellness space
or in the naturopath space,
this may be something that is worth being involved in.
And she's gonna be looking for strategic partners,
board members, equity stakeholders
as she continues to build out this brand.
And in a world where 8 billion people are in essence,
most of these individuals are lost to some degree.
They're walking through life saying, I'm fine
when they could have more out of life.
And so I'm looking forward to more practitioners
coming together and seeing how do we solve that problem
on a global scale.
Then there's the water project.
When the water project came across my radar,
I couldn't quite relate to it.
I had to force myself to, I've always had water.
I've never been thirsty in my life.
I found out that there's millions of kids and people,
human beings who do not have access to clean drinking water.
And I was like, I just can't ignore this.
I need to find a way to learn more.
And the water project does just that.
They actually show you what they're building
in different communities.
When you select a community that you wanna support
and you can learn as much as you want to about that,
they give a lot of information.
And once you donate, you then become part
of that community yet in essence,
they show you the development of the project
and the project gets completed.
It's one of the most transparent organizations
that I've found.
This picture always gets me
because these kids are celebrating water
like my kids celebrate Christmas day.
And that's a really, really humbling thought.
So if you're not in a position
to give back financially to this,
but one of your friends or family members comes to mind
right now who might be interested in learning about it,
then do us a favor, share the water project with others.
We got 8 billion people to help
and we can make a difference together.
You'll never know the ripple effect of the good that you do,
but I promise you sharing is one of the fastest
and greatest ways to make a bigger impact beyond yourself
and then go meditate on what that impact may look like
in their lives.
And it can hopefully touch your heart
and empower you to continue to do more and more good.
Without further ado, Tim Stanton,
thanks for joining us on Vision Pro's life.
Thanks Jackson.
That water project, wow.
That's, I was feeling emotional there.
Something I never really think about.
That's so really cool.
I'm so happy you said that man.
I really am.
Cause then you're the ripple effect.
You know, I rock the mic a little bit.
I know I need to do more.
That doesn't, it's like, no, we're done for today guys.
We're gonna log off because I've done my good deed.
No, life's about doing as many of those as you can.
You know, let's maximize the good deeds.
So I'm grateful that you got to see that.
Tim, I usually ask the audience, I didn't today,
but if you Tim or somebody else that's listening in
knows of another project that you wanna raise awareness for,
just drop it in the comments.
Because that's how we raise awareness
for all of the opportunities that we have to serve.
So feel free to double down with me.
So, all right.
You're doing a lot of good Jackson.
Well, we're working on it.
We're working on it.
It makes me happy.
What is your vision, Tim, for the people that you serve?
The vision for the people that I serve is to help them
at the highest level achieve their God given potential
and really wanting to see a generation that lives on purpose
and understands that they have a calling on their life
and that they can do something.
It's like, I always say, you can't help everybody,
but you can help somebody.
And essentially what we're doing is creating co-living spaces
which is shared living across a bunch of homes in Austin
and giving the people the opportunity to be surrounded
by folks that are like-minded that can really push them
into their purpose and their calling.
That's fantastic.
You defined that so well,
I'm not even gonna ask a follow-up on it.
We're gonna move to your vision.
So what's your vision for yourself?
And you can go as far as you want to
and as broad as you want to on this.
Yeah, I would say first to be a great husband
and a great father.
I think to do anything great in the world,
it takes so much sacrifice.
And I think if you go down the line of people
that have done great things from Steve Jobs to Tom Brady,
there's so much sacrifice.
And one thing that I'm very cognizant of is like,
am I sacrificing time with my family?
Am I sacrificing the relationship with my life
or even my parents?
So for me, I really try to make sure
I have that as number one priority.
And when family's good, in my opinion,
everything else flows from that
can be good and great as well.
And I would say that would be first
to be a great husband and father and then two
is to really build up my neighborhood,
my community and my city.
And at the end of the day,
I think in this age of isolation and loneliness,
do we even know who lives next door?
And I think there's so many beautiful things
that this digital realm has brought us,
but similarly, it's knowing the name
of the neighbor next door.
And you and I being millennials,
there was a day and age where we brought,
we borrowed sugar from the person next door.
And I can't remember the last time that happened.
I still do it.
I got rejected by six neighbors in a row the other day.
I was like, man, this is not what life used to be like.
I finally found who was able to, who was like,
hey, I'm sorry I don't have, it was milk.
And I was like, I don't have milk right now.
And then so my recipe is like waiting on me.
So I go home and finally for substitutes,
but I was like, wow, life, the world has changed.
Yeah.
And maybe to continue to piggyback on that point,
even in the digital world,
there has been so much change.
And I believe change is inevitable, but growth is optional.
And we really want to impact a generation
to be growth minded.
Like what does it mean to have a growth mindset?
And that's something that we really want to instill.
And I think with all the resource
and the information we have,
there's almost this paralysis by analysis that occurs.
And there's so much of getting outside of your home,
getting outside of your environment.
And I believe the best experiences we have in life
are offline and in the real world.
And our whole premise of what we do
is people living together to have more of those experiences.
You know, your vision is super important too.
You'll notice guys, I did this just the other day
and I got rejected.
So I'm still gonna do it again.
It wasn't the last, I know my neighbors next door,
they didn't happen to be home when I needed it.
So I went knocking on other doors.
And, you know, but again, I'm that guy who at 17 years old
went to school with an unregistered gun underneath my seat.
You know, like I'm not really scared of doing things
and being outside the box.
But one of the things we have to do
if we want to cultivate those style of relationships
is we have to try and try again.
You know, now if we're in a,
if we live in a community that is unsafe,
then perhaps it's better not to, you know,
it's probably better to keep a low profile
in certain circumstances.
But if your community is not unsafe,
one of the best things you can do to create safety
is to create connection with those of your neighbors.
And if we're the leaders who do that,
the byproduct is there are certain neighborhoods
that still kind of feel like the 90s out there.
But it's on our court to do that.
I gotta ask you though about family.
You talked about how, you know,
do we sacrifice our time with our family?
And I said, yes, right?
So my question for you, Tim,
this is not to challenge the vision,
but to just expand upon it for all of us.
If you could be at Disneyland with your child
all day long, every day,
without having to worry about any responsibilities
and beyond that, do you believe that's best for your child
or is there a balance between like, you know what,
do I have to, because my daughter, she went to a dance.
In fact, last week she went to girl camp for a week
during my two week on period
when I get to have her in my house.
So it's like, well, you know,
I'd rather her be with me during that week,
but I also value the leadership experience
and chance she has to go build this network of good friends
and a positive environment.
So how do you balance that, Tim?
Well, first of all, don't have kids just yet,
but will one day in the near future.
But I, yes, I agree with you.
I think you, Disneyland is an experience that is great
and it's something that I think can stir up a lot of wonder.
And I think that's important with the younger generation,
but I think also it's not about insulating our kids.
And I think maybe what, from my perspective,
some parents get wrong in this day and age is life.
And maybe we feel life is about happiness.
Like life is about getting to this point
where I feel that every single day.
And I believe life is about surrender
and it's about sacrifice, you know?
Name, like greatness requires so much sacrifice.
And I think similarly,
those are things that our kids need to know
and there'll be days when they need to study.
There's days when they need to go outside and play
instead of being on video games
and doing things that are hard and difficult.
And so I don't think insulating
and maybe I'll equate going to Disneyland
as feeding your kids sugar every day.
It's like, are you going to build a healthy body,
a healthy perspective?
And life's about doing hard things.
It's about working.
It's about wonder.
It's about creating.
So I think putting family first
can really mean putting your kids
in maybe more difficult situations
for them to learn social skills,
learn how to engage with adults, so on and so forth.
I love that.
I hope parents take that to heart.
Especially you parents who are hard on yourselves
for not being there enough for your children.
It's so easy to look at Instagram
and feel like you're not there.
I feel like, oh, you don't have all the wonderful things
that all these other families have,
but you're looking at the highlight reel and the moments,
not the day-to-day aspects.
And I see a lot of parents beat themselves up,
shortchange themselves
because they have a responsibility as a provider too.
And maybe Tim's wife could be jealous
of him spending time with Jackson on a podcast
versus always spending all of his time with her.
I don't think that's the case,
but we go through elements like that in life.
And while it's important to be there
for our family and our loved ones,
it's also important to appreciate
that you're probably doing your best.
And if you're doing your best,
you can't let others' opinions or feelings get you down
because you can only do your best.
Speaking of, let's talk about
the worst leadership experiences ever.
What is your worst leadership experience
that you've ever had, Tim?
Man, I'm pulling some skeletons out of the closet, Jackson.
My worst leadership experience actually came from
being in a church, oddly enough,
and had a moment where the things
that were maybe preached on stage
and the things that were being done behind the scenes,
there was this cognitive dissonance
between those two things.
And I think that was incredibly damaging for me.
And in that moment, I also realized that leadership,
there's a different level of responsibility required
when you lead others.
And I also realized through that experience,
the things I say and the things I do,
I know there's a gap,
but I'm working so hard to really decrease that gap
because I don't want other people
to have a similar experience.
And I think it's really hard to,
and in my mind, that's what integrity is.
What I say I am and what I do,
like when those things are aligned,
I believe that's integrity.
So I went through an experience
where I was under the leadership of a pastor
and there were some things that,
there was like this mismatch.
And that was really damaging and just like hurt a lot.
And I also realized too though, that people are imperfect.
And we can't put this expectation on,
whether it's athletes or business people,
and you can kind of like go down the line.
Like we, and even politicians,
we can't put this idea of perfection
and project that onto other people
and hope for them to be our savior.
Because at the end of the day,
they're imperfect people and they're gonna let us down.
And I think for me, there's just been a shift like,
people can do great things and be inspiring
and be amazing leaders.
But at the end of the day, like my faith
and how I conduct my life shouldn't be tethered
to what Elon Musk does or what Joe Biden does.
And I think for me, it's having a deeper understanding
of how I'm called to navigate my life.
And that's through my relationship with God.
I appreciate the perspectives a lot.
In fact, you reminded me of one of my other favorite movies
that I haven't seen in a very long time.
I'll be sharing it with my kids in the near future
called Seven Pounds with Will Smith.
And in that movie, the movie portrays him ultimately
as a villain for the majority of the movie,
like just attacking these people's lives
and hurting these lives.
And it's not until the end where you realize
exactly what he's done and exactly why he's done
what he's done, it's majestic.
I'm not gonna ruin the movie at this time.
I ruined the other one already, but Seven Pounds,
phenomenal way of seeing that, okay, things happen
for a reason and sometimes our perspective
doesn't see the full reason.
Now, that's not to say that everybody does everything
for virtuous reasons, but yeah, I've been in churches
where I found out as a missionary that decades before
one of the church leaders had changed tithing
from 10% to 30% to pat his own pockets.
And that had a damaging lasting effect
on that local community.
And it was this one leader's choice,
not the actual entity itself, which is also imperfect,
but it's important to develop the maturity
to look through the perspectives.
Fast forward years later, I was in a third world country
where almost everybody was struggling to survive
and the pressures from that individual
for his own particular family
were probably almost insurmountable.
And it's kind of like Aladdin stealing a loaf of bread,
to be able to feed himself in a boot.
There's layers of stories.
And so while it's not okay to do things like that,
I also feel a much more different sense of compassion
these days when I come across those realities,
but it's awful leadership and we gotta learn
from those experiences, whether they're ours or others.
What's the best leadership experience you've ever had?
I would say it's on the flip side of that exact same coin
as I have been poured into and led and discipled
by my mentor, his name's Phil Navoa.
And he has opened up my world in so many different ways.
And I think more importantly, he's challenged my thinking
and actions at every single turn.
And it's a really hard thing.
It's a really hard thing, like I was saying earlier,
to give someone the authority to speak into your life.
And I wouldn't tell anyone who's listening
that you need to go and do that with just anyone,
but my friend Phil, I've looked at his life
and he has the virtues that I want to grow into
and step into, and he has the type of family
and the type of children
and the way in which he navigates his community.
I want to be able to do that.
And he's a North star for me.
And I think as a result, I see the way that he's living.
I see the fruit of the way that he's living.
And I'm like, I want that.
And so the best leadership experience I've had
is giving him the keys to my car, so to speak,
and the ability to speak into my life.
And he was actually the one,
when I was going through a season of loneliness,
I started to adopt this victim mentality to be like,
hey, I'm always gonna be like this.
I'm never gonna find people that are creative,
that are high octane fill in the blank.
And he's like, he cut off that mentality from me.
And he said, it's okay, people are victims,
but to carry your victim mentality throughout your life
is going to lead you to lead a very small life.
And so in that moment, he spoke very sharp words
that had to prune back that way of thinking
that I had adopted.
And I'm incredibly grateful for that.
And there are many other examples with him
where he's really helped me chart my journey
and I'm a better man for it.
I love it.
Jake Larson of Video Power Marketing is my Phil Navoa.
And it's, I love the analogy he used of giving the keys
and made me think of like,
okay, if I were to use something similar,
I would say it's like a car caravan.
And I'm part of his caravan.
I guess I give him the keys if he asks me to.
I might, but wherever he goes,
I tend to say like, yeah, I like that milestone.
I mean, I wanna go that direction too.
So having those mentors, having those people in your life,
whether they're somebody,
I don't talk to Jake very often anymore.
We maybe talk every six months at the maximum at this point.
And the more kids you have, the more that tends to say,
you know what, I got a lot of stuff going on in life,
more family members,
but it is nice to know that when you have people like that
in your life, you can kind of, you know,
you can, when you plug in, they're there.
When they plug in, you're there.
And it's wonderful to have that.
Any further thoughts on that
before we move on to the powerful lesson?
I didn't wanna interrupt you.
I had something.
No, I think it really,
like as I say those things out loud,
maybe I'm having this realization now, Jackson,
but like that is exactly what we want to have happen
in these shared homes.
And, you know, we say, you know,
real roommates will check your ego.
Real roommates will challenge your comfort zone.
Real roommates will champion your success.
And for you, it's like, don't push them away
because they push you to grow.
And at the end of the day, like you were saying,
that caravan, it's like, you're right.
Great teams make good players great,
and average players good.
And I think it's like, what team are you on?
I'm like, I don't need to be the best player,
but I wanna be on a team.
And I think that's exactly what we're doing with Phil.
I'm like, how do we take that and rinse and repeat
and replicate that across every single one of our houses
and continue to grow and scale our portfolio?
Dude, that quote is fire.
Don't push them away because they push you to grow.
That is so profound.
I'm in love with that quote now.
And now you gotta double down.
If this was your last opportunity
to share a powerful lesson with other visionary leaders,
what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience, Tim?
I would say I've really had to humble myself
through this entire process.
And I think I've experienced every single emotion
under the sun in trying to build this.
And I think to be a visionary and to be a great leader,
you have to, there's such a large dose of humility.
And I think for me, I got caught up in maybe
like that influencer economy where you, you know,
show your best, hide your rest,
and you feel like you always have to have an insight
and you always have to have something to give.
And I think for me, it's like to humble myself
because there's so many teaching moments
that I'm able to absorb just in like my day to day,
learning from the people that maybe even I lead.
And I think it's been a big perspective shift for me
in the last like six months,
operating from maybe like, hey, here's what I do have,
but also now I'm on the flip side of this coin
to be like, I have so much to learn.
And you know, there's small lessons every single day.
And I think it's just to lead with that humility.
And you don't have to have everything figured out
and you don't have to have the best insight.
And you don't even have to have the best idea.
And I can tell you, it's not the idea
or the intellect or the ability,
it's can you just continue to keep going?
And can you continue to take, can you learn every day
and be a sponge and absorb things
from the people around you?
And I think even saying that,
it connects back into the five people
you surround yourself with the most.
And I'm super grateful because those five people,
I got a lot to learn from those people
every single day and I'm incredibly grateful for that.
Wow.
That it's one of my favorite topics,
the aspect of humility.
And you're so right.
Every time it feels like life is leveling up,
you're getting into this new zone of like,
oh, I don't know what to do with this.
And when you can let go and, you know,
allow other people to help you figure that out,
it's a wonderful thing.
But one of the big shifts that we've made
over the last couple of months
that has been the most refreshing
and uplifting experience is we caught memo of this
short by Jeff Bezos,
where he was talking about their executive planning sessions
and how they have their agenda
and they take 15 minutes at the beginning
so that everybody reads that agenda
and make sure that they're up to speed.
Nobody's getting left out because they were late
or because they didn't see it in advance.
And then they lead by having the newest person
in the room speak first and give their ideas first.
And they go for an order of seniority in the opposite order.
And it has been a game changer for us as a company.
Wow.
Everybody now speaks.
Yeah, it is so cool.
And I learned the best things in it.
I'm like, I would have never come up with that.
Yeah, because if you're more green or younger,
it can be really, if Jackson goes first,
it's like, hey, this is really intimidating.
And then I don't feel qualified to share my perspective.
And I feel like that's back
to that upside down leadership thing.
It's like, hey, y'all go first.
I'm gonna sit back and hear what you got to say.
It is so valuable.
And all of a sudden, like,
if you're the one leading the show all the time,
your blinders get narrower and narrower and narrower.
But when you step back
and you allow everybody else to go first,
you get to see all these perspectives.
And you're like, oh my gosh, this is so enlightening.
So I'm glad you shared that again.
Let's dive in.
Let's talk about purpose-driven living.
Take a few extra minutes on that.
And taking the fight to the loneliness epidemic,
we can either focus on like,
what's really going on with this only epidemic,
or you can guide us to the questions I should be asking
right now, all of us should be asking Tim,
what do we need to know Tim?
What are we overlooking?
Yeah, and I would say for any great business out there,
you have what we'll call like product market fit.
It's like, hey, what is the problem
that's going in in this industry?
And can you solve it?
Like, what is the solution that you're bringing the table
to solve that problem?
And I think for me, back,
I think it was last May, the US Surgeon General
wrote this report and basically stated
that there's this loneliness epidemic out there in our world.
And that the damaging effects from being isolated
and being lonely is more,
it has a more adverse effects on your,
on your psychological, on your psyche,
but also your physical body is smoking 15 cigarettes a day
or drinking six, consuming six drinks of alcohol a day,
physical inactivity, and it just goes on and on and on.
And it's not something, after I read this report, Jackson,
like my biggest takeaway was there's not a silver bullet.
There's not something the government can do
to fix this issue.
And essentially they punted on this issue
and they punted it back to us.
And they have some ideas to solve,
quote unquote, solve loneliness, like create more parks.
But at the end of the day,
I think the problem we're facing
is getting people out of their home
and getting people out of environment
that they are isolated in for hours or even days at a time.
And I think this new economy that we live in,
this work from home economy,
it's really kind of like multiplied
the loneliness epidemic.
And even with some of the technology
that's coming out with VR and AR, these different heads,
you can have any experience you want from your bed.
And so for what we're doing,
what we're doing is we want to bring people together
in shared living.
And so people live together in a home
and these are like-minded people.
And as I've alluded to, they push each other
in their purpose, their calling.
And really it's a layer of accountability in your life.
And from where I sit, this is way more difficult to do
with men than it is with women.
And I don't quite know why that is,
but I have such a passion for getting guys
off the sidelines and into the game, so to speak,
because I have friends that work at these tech companies
and they make a lot of money
and they live in the high rise downtown,
but they might work from home three days a week
and they don't see anyone for a really long time
and they don't have connection.
And they tell me point blank,
like I feel this emptiness inside.
So essentially what we're doing is bringing people together
in the shared living, but our funnel,
so if we're going back to like our business,
we want to bring people to events
and we host these different events.
We host a pizza party called Sost
and it's basically like, hey, get off the sideline
and into the game.
And it's just a networking event.
It's like, hey, come meet these people
and just meet someone.
And we feel like if you can build enough momentum socially,
it's like you met one person who then connects you
into this community and then invites you
to this lifting session that then invites you
to this karaoke night.
It's this snowball effect.
So we have a unique go-to-market strategy
where for us, our go-to-market strategy
is just to bring people together.
Like I host a men's group at my house
and we have 90 guys in that group.
And it's like, come, we'll find room for you.
We'll find a seat at the table.
But from that, it's like they meet someone
and then they realize too, and Jackson, I'll tell you this,
the biggest revelation that people receive is like,
hey, what I know, I find so much fulfillment in my life
when I know life is about not what I can get,
but it's about what I can give.
And I can tell you about 30 of those 90 guys have caught that.
And honestly, when people kind of catch that revelation,
it can change an entire neighborhood.
It can change an entire community.
It can change an entire city.
And we really want to raise up a generation
of generous people.
And by living with other people that have the vision
to quote unquote, pay it forward,
we believe that we can have an impact in our city.
And I'll say it again, we want to take the fight
to the loneliness epidemic.
Like we want to crush the neck of the loneliness epidemic
and we're doing it one person at a time in shared living.
I love it.
I absolutely love what you guys are up to
in building the way you're going about it.
The quotes that you've given today are phenomenal.
I got to connect you to the founder of Hang Tight Social.
He was on our show.
We'll talk about that afterwards.
I'd love to get that report from you,
the surgeon general's report,
so we can add that to the show notes as well.
Those of you listening in,
we're going to have the action steps below
as well as the resources on the pages.
That way you can learn more for yourself.
That way you can also connect with Tim,
connect with the creators project
and see how they're doing things.
I'm sure that if you're also interested in modeling this
in your own city or hometown,
that Tim would be a resource
and would be happy to kind of mentor you through the process
because, I mean, guys,
we got 8 billion people out there to help
and this generation needs it.
Yes, the next one does,
but our responsibility as well is this generation,
bringing these types of projects to life.
So thank you, Tim, for coming on and sharing your vision.
This was an absolute awesome experience and honor for us.
Visionary is my last invitation to you.
If you haven't been on our show,
there's a button in the top right corner
that says, be our guest.
Click that button.
Tell us your vision.
Come on and you don't have to have
the coolest vision in the world.
You don't have to be at the Elon Musk level
or the Tim Stanton level.
We want you to be, if you're authentic,
if you're striving to help others,
if your vision is designed to be able to bridge a gap
for people in need,
then come on and tell us those stories
because we wanna learn about the principles you're following.
The principles are gonna be what help us
to get to our next levels as well.
And we will see you guys on the next episode.
Take care, everybody.
Bye bye.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision.