Tell me about your vision.
Yeah, it's nice to talk to you.
So we started Creators about two years ago.
And Creators is a community of trailblazers.
And essentially what we're trying to do
is help people unlock their God-given potential.
And that's through a wide array of services that we offer.
The biggest one is co-living.
So we invite people in to live in shared homes.
And everyone has their own room.
And we're basically bringing community together.
And usually the conversations where
people have the most breakthrough in their lives
are around the dining table, in the backyard, at the fire pit.
And we always say this.
And it's maybe a little bit of a cliche.
But it's like, show me your five friends,
and I'll show you your future.
And I think in this world, we're becoming more isolated and more
lonely than we ever have.
And as a result, I think people's futures are generally
looking less and less bleak.
And I also believe that your best future lies
in your deepest relationships.
And we really want people to be able to find community.
And combating loneliness is just the starting block for us.
And as I mentioned, we really want
to propel people from the launch pad of community
to help them achieve their God-given potential.
And that could be through different networking events
that we have.
It could be through different small groups that we host,
and even small master classes that we
have to help give people the skill sets to go and start
their own businesses.
And a lot of people right now feel stuck maybe at a W-2.
They feel like they're a cog in a wheel.
And hey, this is someone else's vision, not my own.
And I really want to have purpose.
And I want to have belonging.
And I think a lot of people are at this crossroads
at the moment.
And coming out of COVID, there's been a lot of introspection.
And we want to give people the tool set
and fan the flames of their own vision
to help them achieve and do big things to impact our city.
I love that.
And I will say there's nothing cliche about truth,
in my opinion.
And that's what you just shared.
That's fantastic.
Getting these individuals in a position
to where they have a supportive group of not necessarily
even like-minded people, but supportive people.
What an amazing life-changing experience that could be.
So it reminds me of Bill Gates, actually,
and Bill Gates' first living setup.
He lived in his office with several other friends.
They would shower at the YMCA.
They'd just eat pizza and all collab together.
There's lots of great visionaries
who pulled a really tight knit and close together
with a few additional collaborators.
And they didn't necessarily know what they were going
to build either.
But the ability to build when having that type of support
and camaraderie, again, the rest is history.
We know his story.
So where did your vision come from to start creators
and bring people together to not only combat loneliness,
but create an amazing future for each other
and with each other?
I would say it's a vision and a dream
that I've had for the better half of a decade.
But I would say that seed really started
to sprout during the pandemic.
And I had my own doubt with loneliness
as I moved from New York City to Austin
right when the pandemic hit and felt like the people
that I was finding in Austin maybe
weren't the caliber of people that I found in New York City.
And I started to adopt this victim mentality.
And I had a friend in my community
that checked me very quickly and said,
hey, if you continue down this road,
you're going to end up in a very bleak place.
And so for me, I had a wake-up call
and I had a revelation to be like,
hey Tim, you need to be the one to go and cultivate.
No one wants to be around that person that's crotchety
and complaining and negative all the time.
And I'm like, you know what?
I'm going to go out into the world.
I'm going to sow my seed.
I'm going to encourage people.
And it was crazy because I attracted the type of person
that I was really looking for because I was the one going out
there and building and cultivating and speaking life
and encouraging and sharing business ideas.
And it's crazy how the people now that are my founders
rallied around me.
And that was kind of the start and the birthing
of what we're doing at Creators.
And me finding my own community, and I
know what that's like to feel lonely and to feel isolated
and to feel disconnected.
Now I just have so much zeal and zest in my own life
and passion to help people go and find that themselves.
And over the last two years, it's
been a long journey for us.
But I would say our superpower is bringing people
off the sideline into the game.
And we always say, you don't have
to be qualified to be a creator.
You just have to show up.
And that's why we bring people to events
is we get them in the door.
And then from there, they're going to find connection
and then go deeper, deeper, deeper, and deeper.
There's one more that I want to hit because you
have adepts to you that I'm enjoying.
All right.
So Tim, when it comes to the story behind your why,
I've obviously skipped the question.
What is your why?
But I got to know, what's the story behind your why?
Why do you care about everybody else's results
when you've already started building your own?
And is there a story that got you there?
That's a really great question.
I always tell our guys, it's like,
we got to have the why that'll make you cry.
And I'm going to tear up even as talking to you.
But yeah, I think there was a season in my life
where I was just really searching to figure out,
what am I supposed to do?
What am I supposed to create?
How am I supposed to have impact?
And I think for me, being isolated and being lonely
really drove me.
I think maybe it's the polarity of the loneliness
and the community.
And once you have something that's so rich and life-giving,
it's something that you'll never let go of.
And I oftentimes think about, when people show up
to your funeral, what do they say?
And there was a time in my life where I chased the success,
I chased the likes, I chased the money,
I chased all of these things.
And I had this revelation that when people show up
to my funeral, that's not what people say.
They don't say Tim had the best cars.
They don't say, well, Tim had the biggest houses.
What I wanted people to say about me was, hey,
Tim was generous.
Like, the things that he was entrusted with,
he gave back to others.
And we have this ethos at our company that's, when we get,
we give.
And when we learn, we teach.
And when we get vision, we sow that vision.
And for me, my faith has so much to do with our business.
And I feel like I have just received so much, so much grace,
so much, I think, just mercy on my own life.
And I think when you receive something specifically
from God that is so incredibly abundant,
it's like from that overflow, there's nothing else for that.
There's nowhere else for that to go.
It's like you have this cup that's just overflowing.
And I've been super fortunate and blessed
from my cup to overflow.
And I think as a result, this business
is me wanting to go out and pour into other people.
And I think it's really easy to go outside and look at the world
and to be overwhelmed with the things that are happening.
I always say, we can't help everybody,
but we can help somebody.
And that will always be our mentality.
And that will always be the thing that we lead with is, hey,
how can we help the person next to us?
We can't solve world hunger.
We can't solve potable water in every country.
But it's like, what can we do tomorrow or today
for our neighbor?
And I think when a community catches that vision,
not what can I give, but what can I give,
you can change the trajectory and the course
of a community and potentially maybe even a city.
And I know those are grand goals and dreams to have,
but I really just am starting with today.
And that's what happened two years ago.
It was like, hey, I'm planting the seed.
And there's going to be a season to plant in seed,
and we're still there.
But there will be also a time for that harvest.
And that's kind of, I'll get off my soapbox,
but that's how I got to where we are today.
I'll put you back on a little bit.
So what is for you the source, the greatest source of your faith
and your connection to God?
How did you unlock that?
Again, I would say community.
When I was a small town kid raised in Colorado,
and when I was 27, I told my mom I was moving to New York City.
And she says, you can't move to New York City.
You cannot move to New York City.
It's a godless place.
And she moved off of that position pretty quick.
But she says, there's one caveat.
I'm a grown man at this point.
When my mom says, promise me that you'll find a church.
And so I was like, all right, all right, mom.
I brushed her off.
And when I moved there, to her credit, she kept,
she's like, find a church, find a church, find a church.
And back to the community piece, it
was like I found that person that was like me, that
had a similar story that I had.
And I had someone that had the vision and had creativity
and had intellect and the ability to raise money
and to come up with ideas and bring them to life.
And my experience in the church was not that.
And I think going to New York, I met this certain type of person
that was cut from the same cloth.
And honestly, I looked around and I said,
I want to be like that.
But I saw these people doing all those things
for a greater purpose.
And I think for me, that was really modeled for me.
And that's when I caught wind of my own purpose and like, OK,
I have been given all this stuff and all this skill set
and this wisdom to move forward and to make a way.
And I think first it was the community.
The community was what gave me an opportunity
to grow my relationship with God.
The church community?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a church out in New York, the first church
that I found in New York City.
And it was that community that propelled me
to have my own relationship too.
And I think a lot of people that are of the faith,
we confuse religion with relationship.
And I found relationship where my whole life I just
knew religion.
And I was like, it's on me to have a relationship with God.
And there's a saying, God has no grandchildren,
meaning that just because your mom has a relationship
or she's a believer, that doesn't make you a believer
through osmosis.
And I felt really challenged.
And it was then at that moment finding that community
that I was insulated and they pushed me towards my purpose.
And I will never forget that.
And that's kind of honestly the modeling that we're taking now
is how do I do what those people did for me 10 years ago?
That's what I'm doing now.
And my hope is that the people that we encounter now,
they catch our vision.
They go, oh, OK, I'm on solid ground.
Who am I pouring into?
Who can I help?
And that's the beauty of the model
that we're trying to roll out.
I appreciate that a lot.
That's one of those things where I'm
looking for the depths of that resource
and trying to respect the reality that it's not
necessarily a 1 plus 1 equals 2 answer.
It's going to be somewhat different for everybody.
So when you say community, I'm thinking like a gang.
I'm thinking, well, it depends on the type of community
it is.
And so I'm like, all right, I wish
Tim could just give us the exact answer to the recipe of life.
And at the same time, there's an accumulation
of characteristics, virtues, life choices.
You mentioned the relationship with God directly
in addition to the religion that exists there.
And it's not always a linear answer for all of us
to get to our truth, our success.
And so those of you listening in,
I think the greatest thing you can do with an opportunity
like this is to evaluate yourself
and see where you are at in that process of discovery.
And then trust that you will, through your heart and mind,
find your answer.
It's not necessarily something Tim or myself or anybody else
can spoon feed you as much as something
that you want to appreciate and value the good choices
in front of you and make those with intentionality.
So anything you want to add to that, fire up up?
That was very well said and really beautiful.
I think maybe the one thing that I would add
is that I realized that the rooms that I'm occupying,
are there people in that room that
have these virtues and these things that they embody
characteristics that I want to step into?
And that room for me has changed a lot over the last decade.
And I recently got married.
And the room that I'm trying to get in is not,
thank you so much.
Thank you, yeah.
It's been three months.
But the room that I'm trying to get in now
is not people hustling, trying to start a business.
Like the rooms that I'm trying to get in are,
who are the people that I'm looking
at that are great husbands?
And I need to be closer to them because I
want to learn how they're operating now.
And similarly, the people that are raising families
that I look up to, I'm like, wow, I
love the way that they speak to their children
and how their children honor their word.
And parenting, I can imagine, is incredibly difficult.
But I think for me, it's how do I get next to those people?
And as I said before, show me your five friends,
I'll show you your future.
Or show me your friends, I'll show you your future.
It's like, who are you hanging with?
And I want to hang around great husbands and great dads
because that's ultimately what I want to step into
in this next season of my life.
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 going to 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
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.