Water Talks. Got my buddy Tim Kirkpatrick on here today. Tim's been helping nonprofits, businesses,
NGOs, churches do what they need to do for a very long time. And I got introduced to Tim from some
video courses that I watched that were very, very helpful to me in developing a process to help
people understand what we do at Ocean Water. And it was very, very helpful. So out of that,
decided to have a little combo with you today, brother. So thanks for coming on, man.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Yeah, yeah. Stoked. Okay. So when you're at home these days, we've all been at home. Where's home?
What do you get to eat? And yeah, how do you do it?
Yeah, usually we talk about our favorite restaurants, but we haven't been going out to eat too much. I
live just west of Washington, DC in Northern Virginia, which is absolutely amazing. We love it.
We love the history. We love the scenery. We're about an hour to three hours from the beaches,
depending on how nice the beach you want to go to, and about 30 minutes from mountains. So it's
just a really, really great, what we would call mountains over on the East Coast at least, but a
really great time. But I haven't been eating out too much, but I have been smoking a lot of meat and
barbecuing and experimenting and just doing all the things that a dad's supposed to know how to do
automatically that they don't teach you in dad's school, like how to grill the perfect steak and
whatnot. So the only problem with that is the rest of my family are completely vegan. And so when I'm
making a 10 pound brisket, my dog and I eat off of that for a while. That's about it.
I love the diversity of thought of the home, man. My father, I've seen my father eat a piece of
chicken, I think twice in my life. Twice. And then I can remember my dad has been a vegetarian my
entire life. I've always told my dad, he like missed a generation. He was a vegetarian my whole
life, rode his bicycle to work and served and was very unconventional. He was like, he was born two
generations early. Oh, absolutely. But yeah, so Tim, thanks for that. That's a beautiful part of
the country. I've been out there. I love it. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. What do you do in these
days? And how did you get into it? Yeah, I have an organization called Second Chair Solutions. And
it's a business I run that was when we started was just me doing consulting work for for different
organizations and people almost like a hired gun coming on and, and helping them transition through
some stuff, but it grew fairly rapidly last couple years. And, and I have several other people that
work with me. Basically, what we do is anything that an organization, a leader is going through,
whether it's a rough transition, or maybe they're just stuck in some organizational cultural things,
systematic stuff, strategy, we come alongside out of the spotlight, helping them from the side or
from the back, and really propping them up for success. And our whole mantra is like, your vision
is our mission. So whatever it is you want to do, we want to help you do it, but we don't want any
of the credit. We want to be completely behind the scenes. And, and that really comes from in, in
Romans, the message version of Romans 12 talks about learn to play second fiddle. So we call it
the second chair, or second chair solutions, which we don't want first chair, that's for other
people. And that's completely fine. We want to we want to come alongside help you for a time, and
then get you off and running. And so we've been doing that for the last four or five years. And
it's been just going gangbusters. And, and the way we start all that is a very interesting story in
and of itself. But yeah, we love it. And things are going great. COVID kind of knocked us off a
little bit because we had a lot of travel plans. But with anything in life, you pivot, and you try
to figure out how that works and how you do that with virtual school or no school and everything
else that goes along with it. So actually, I was talking to one of my one of my clients the other
day, and I said, I've had to really coach myself and take a lot of the advice that I give other
people. I've had to take it a lot myself, the last couple of months. And so taste of your own
medicines, it's kind of interesting, fun. I can see why you're, you're good friends with Rick
Dunn. Yeah. Very, very similar heart. Wonderful, wonderful guy. Yeah, Rick's a great guy. He is
a wonderful man. I've been following his Bronco journey. He's he's restoring an old Bronco. Yeah,
I'm trying not to have the envy. Yeah, he's a car pro. He is a he's a car savant. Yeah, what a what
a great guy. So part of part of being a leader, you know, you help leaders come alongside leaders,
you serve leaders, we're always trying to get at learning learning and has two ways to learn. We
learn from others mistakes for our own. So one of the things that I like to ask people is, you know,
what what are some things that you might, you know, the current Tim might say to like, you know, 20
year old Tim, what are some things you've learned along the way? Let's see, I got to edit some of
this stuff out because I think the 20 year old, sorry, besides, I'm sorry. Yeah, the, the 20 year
old Tim would only would only hear things if you were yelling at him or slapping them around.
Because very, very hard headed, right? I think patience is huge. As the older we get, the more
we realize that there was time to have patience. When the younger we are, we don't understand time.
When you're 20, you only live 20 years, you believe lived at all. And you're like, well, that went by
way too fast. I have no concept of what 60 is like, I have no concept of what 40 is like, all I know
is, I feel like I'm a third of way through my life, or half of the way through my life, or, you know,
up until that point, you're all the way through your life. So you have no concept. That starts to
change around 3035. I'll be 40 in a couple of months. And it's not rocking my world as much as
it did my dad, I think when when I saw my dad turn 40, when I saw his friends turn 40. And about five
years ago is how I got into what I'm doing now. I kind of had this whole existential crisis of, of
what am I doing? Like, why am I here? What's you know, I'd achieved a lot in my life up until that
point. Some of it planned a lot of it not planned. And just kind of had a whole why am I here type of
type of moment and walk through Donald Miller had a great course on Miller from Blue like jazz, what
on earth are you here for? He's gonna get a company called story brand, but he had a whole life plan
course that I did is like 16 modules that that I walked through. And it just completely wrecked my
life in a good way, and helped me rebuild a lot of things. That's where I came up with the the life
calling the life purpose of I'm here to help others do what God's called them to do. And the
moment I shifted my perspective in that a job didn't change, my marriage situation didn't change,
my kids didn't change, my perspective change, and everything else changed with it. And I would go
back and I would tell that younger Tim, the sooner you figure out your purpose, and the sooner you
only do your purpose, the better your life is going to be. Wise words, man. That'll that'll work.
That'll work every day of the week. Yeah, try to try to find out, you know, try to find out what
we're supposed to be doing, and then and then go and do it in this in as nice a way as possible.
Wonderful, wonderful advice. Yeah. So, you know, part of part of growing too, is, you know, just
staying curious. So what do you what are you interested in these days? There's no right answer
to it. Just Yeah, what? What are you interested in? Well, right now I'm interested in Rick Dunn's
Bronco. But that's that's more old envy than anything else. I try not to get too meta philosophical
on it. I do I do like old things. I like old houses. I like old cars. I like old people. I like old
things, but I like to see them restored in a way and not sitting, you know, rusting and broken down
and all that stuff. And there's probably some like, again, philosophical inner thing that like, I
don't want to see things wasted. I want to see people wasting that but I just love tinkering with
that stuff. Like even with smoking the meats and the briskets and the in the Boston butts and what
not what not that I'm doing right now. I'm not using like a fancy $1,000 Traeger grills or pellets
or anything like that I got get for free and old Weber kettle grill that was just banged up got it
for free. And that's what I'm going to work on because that's what my grandfather would have
used. And that's what my father would have used. And and so I'm having fun with old stuff, you know,
I'm not an antique collector, I just I just seek the value of things that were well made. So I'm
curious about that. I'm also really, really into psychology right now. Psychology and physiology
with the way the mind and the body work together. There's a book on trauma that's absolutely
phenomenal called the body keeps score that I went through last year. And it is if you if it's helpful
if you if you want to be trauma informed, if you've been through a lot of trauma in your life,
it's probably going to bring up a lot of things. But just seeing the how psychology and physiology
really work hand in hand, and they're more connected than separated, has just been absolutely
fascinating to me. But it's also helped on on the client and on the business side of helping people
as well. So yeah, those are those are from from meat to psychology and physiology. Those are all
those are all things I'm curious about. I tend to be naturally curious as well. So I can get
very curious about a lot of things very quickly. Well, that's one of the best qualities I think
you can have as a person is that absolutely. And that's why it's fun to have these conversations.
I like what you said about old people. I like old people too. Yeah, there's some I think they're
great. I think I think they're scrappy. That's the word they're scrappy. And there's Yeah,
there's a different set of I don't know, I just I like I like all types of people. But I really,
I really like old people. I think you get the perspective to even with that and talk about
patience. Old people will tell you when you need to act quicker and when you need to act slower,
because they seen it. The younger you are, the harder it is to discern those two.
And so we act quickly on things we need to be patient about. And we're hesitant on things we
act quickly on. And really, I don't know any other way other than failing that you learn
the difference between the two, you know. And so that's why I try to get I do I ask,
I will naturally be curious with older people and ask them, what's what's your best win in life?
Best win in life? What's your biggest like what you're doing? What's your biggest failure? What's
your biggest regret? What's one thing that that you're glad you did early on, you know,
all that stuff, just to try not to reinvent the wheel every single time, just try to learn from
other people's successes and failures. And it's been it's been very, very rewarding doing that.
Yeah, it sure has. And we need the older Yeah, the older I get to the more I find myself
apologizing about every decade I've lived. That's okay. Yeah. So what's on that line? I think one of
the what another fun question to ask is something that you fail that you want to talk about.
Yeah, um, keep it recent. Keep it recent. Yeah, I well, yeah, honestly, it's fairly recent
that I that I changed. I don't think I realized how bad I was failing at it until I stopped doing it.
So by nature, second chair leader, I have no problem being the Robin to somebody's Batman
type of situation, right? Yeah. This profile high I hi D, I'm a D if there's not another D around,
if there's a D around, I'll go into the I space all that stuff. I have not done a good job of
I have not done a good job of leading up very good at leading down. But leading up with whether it's
with clients or people that I've worked for, realizing that everybody wants to be led,
everybody wants the cookies out on the table, bag open, all that stuff. And so realizing the
responsibility is on me, not to be forceful with it, but to say, hey, this is step one to step five,
let me walk you through that. And, and whether it's your fundraising, which you probably are
doing a lot of fundraising, whether it's fundraising, whether it's disseminated information
to a staffer, or, or even if it's working with your spouse or with your kids, clearly communicating
and leading them step by step is absolutely huge. Otherwise, we're all walking around with like
IKEA instructions with an Allen wrench and a picture. And then like three pictures later,
everything's supposed to be done. And just like IKEA furniture, at least a lot of frustration and
confusion. So I think just leading people micro steps, not micromanaging, but just leading people,
and the responsibility is always on the person to do that. Always on the part like if I want
something done, I need to lead you to that. And I think I've not done a good job of that in the
past. And it really, really put me far behind on a lot of things I wanted done personally,
professionally, relationally. So
that's great. That's great. So let's, let's, let's hang a bit of a right. Yep. What do you,
what do you know about, like, water situation in the world? What would be your, your, your,
your reference point? Yep. So I'm on a freshwater team that it's a desalination team, which you
obviously know a lot about that can in 24 hours, moments notice go anywhere in the world. There's a
tsunami, earthquake, whatever, be deployed with some private airplanes and get to a location to
provide emergency water. Obviously, everybody needs water to survive. And that's an emergency
situation. What, what I've seen though, more often than not is the long term, that's long term
effects of not having clean water versus having clean water. Yeah. Forget a week or two weeks,
that that would lead to sudden death, obviously. But when you're getting into, you know,
impoverished countries, countries without clean flowing fresh water, that's where you're going to
get the cholera. That's when you're going to get a lot of the viruses, bacteria and disease,
or just the malnutrition that comes from not having fresh water with your crops or with your
animals that, that can lead to just some serious, serious long term educational and impoverished
just state of the community. So as far as statistics or anything like that, not quite sure. I just know,
I just know it's a huge, huge need. That seems like it's a drop in the bucket every time something,
something positive does happen, but the need is seemingly always there for clean, sustainable
fresh water. Yeah. I've actually had some really great long discussions on the phone with John
Lyon. Yep. Yeah. Great guy. John's the CEO of World Hope and, and, and I've actually spoken with his
mom. Yeah. Joanne, Joanne's the real deal with that. John's great. Speaking of, speaking of somebody
who's older that I had a really nice conversation with, I must have spent an hour with her on the
phone asking her all sorts of questions about all sorts of stuff. Some of it was, was related to
water and she, she actually was very supportive. She, she connected me with her son and I had some,
I do, I reach out to him from time to time and I ask him technical questions and, and because
what I love about what John's working on is, is that it provides a quick solution in a crisis.
Yeah. Well, and, and what I like, Joanne and, and John both, Joanne founded the organization
20 some years ago. John took it over recently, but they probably won't, John might, but they
probably won't hook the water systems up, but they're going to connect everybody to do it.
They're going to get Amazon and Google and, and Tesla to, to power everything and, and get stuff
there via Prime Air or whatever it is. And they're going to connect people with boots on the
ground to actually get the work done. And so, and so that's, that's John and I are friends and Joanne
and I go, go way back, but that's how I got connected with the freshwater stuff. And so,
I got connected with the freshwater stuff as well. Cause I got curious a couple of years back and
became a certified EMT for no reason. Like I did the wilderness survival EMT course, three weeks
EMT course. And so they said, Hey, you probably would be good to, to be ready to be deployed.
So it's just, it's kind of one of those things I was curious about and then got, got
stuck with it. I love what they're doing, especially because they're, they're, they're able to respond
quickly and that's very important. So kind of in the, people are like, well, what do you need when
it, when it comes to water and do you need relief or development? Well, the answer's both. You need
both. You need relief is a quick response in a crisis, which if a tsunami hits or if there's an
earthquake or there's natural disaster, what I love about what John does is they're able to,
like you said, to, to deploy quickly and provide that relief. That's wonderful. And I've actually
spoken with him about leading open the opportunity of us passing the torch after they've done some
relief into doing some development. And then of course we do the development through a local
church and there's a lot of practical reasons for that. Perfect. Yep. People after you've done relief,
things only survive in the long-term if they're run by locals. And I understand locals and localism
because I've served my whole life and there are many cultural similarities between kind of the
localism and the territorialism that exists in surfing and how it helps you when you're doing
development work in third world countries. Yeah. When you're doing long-term, just some of that,
some of those nuances there of, of, of, of respect and work in, uh, working through locals, locals
only, that's like a surf joke, but that's actually, yeah, might be some of the best advice you could
ever get when you're doing work outside of the U S it's locals only. Yeah. Hey, side surfing question.
Have you ever been surfing in Puerto Rico and recall? I have not, but I've, I'm in dialogue with
a, with a few, probably five people about, about doing something there and the right timing. Yeah.
Um, I was down there, uh, around Christmas time, we were touring around the whole island and, uh,
everything's very touristy, obviously in, in parts of Puerto Rico, but you get out to Rico and,
which is on the Western coast, which is, I mean, it's like server's paradise out there.
And that, that's the whole thing. It's locals only. And I mean, it was great, but, uh,
just as you said that thought, man, that's, I mean, you were, you were so right when the,
you go to the surfing subculture, uh, it's, it's a whole nother world. That, just that little
understanding, you know, I, what, what, what was a long time joke as a, as a kid growing up has
actually helped me as I've developed ocean water, because as you, as you, that little,
that little understanding of, of surfing, I've served for, uh, 34 years now and haven't just
having that understanding is very helpful. You know, in fact, I remember I served, uh, I went
to Hawaii one time and I was in Maui and there's a spot there called Honolulu Bay waves are very
good, really good. And there were six, there were six Hawaiians out surfing and I paddled out and I
said, I'm Ryan, I'm from California. I'm going to be here for eight days. Is it okay if I surf here
today? And, uh, they said, absolutely. And then they, they ended up giving me a lot of, a lot of
great waves. Yeah. I was prepared to paddle back in. Yeah. Cause what you're doing is you're
respecting the locals, respecting the culture, not stepping on, on toes that you don't know about,
even if they were going to be polite about it, you don't want to assume. I want to turn around
and go somewhere else. But, uh, it turns out that, uh, the same type of respect that you decide you're
going to show people it's, it's amazing what can happen when you put respect ahead of results.
And a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people want their results and they leave respect as a
secondary. You can't do that. If you show people respect, eventually you'll have results, but if
you aim for results, you'll eventually won't have those cause you don't have anyone's, you don't
have anyone's respect. So there's a little, it's a little nuance. In fact, a lot of, uh, you may
wonder why I, why I showed this, this photo, this isn't just a cute screensaver. I mean, it is a
nice photo. A fr, first of all, a friend of mine took this photo and then the guy who's, uh, who's
a very good surfer. This is some pop-up. He leads ocean water in El Salvador. So the very good surfer.
This is also a personal photo because this, this, uh, way that he's riding is about 75 yards in
front of where the water system is. So that's a, it's a very personal, very, it's also a nice
photo, but it's always nice to get a little, get a little context there. And, and, um, this has been a
wonderful conversation, man. I had no idea that we were gonna, we were going to talk about, uh, John
and Joanne and that's beautiful. They're wonderful people that I love how we're just all working out
on a lot of the same stuff and trying to help each other. Yeah, that's it. That's what it's all about.
Exactly. I mean, when you're, there are, there are 108, there are 108 countries in the world that have
direct access to, to ocean water. And when you, and when you're talking about, um,
that, that type of problem, you just need, you need everyone who understands as possible and,
and everyone, you know, helping. And so thank you for that, man. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, uh,
what, what are, what are, what are the last words you want to give us today? Do what, what do we
need to hear from Tim before we, uh, before we call it a day? Um, I would say,
find your purpose and, um, and change everything that you can to, to, uh, prop that up. And if you
don't know what your purpose is, hang around guys like Ryan and, uh, and you'll either, either serve,
serve his and figure yours out, or you'll very quickly figure, figure out that you're supposed
to be a part of it as well. But I tell people, if you don't know what it is, just start playing
and messing around with people that do know what theirs is. And, you know, some of that's going to
rub off on you. And, uh, and so I would just encourage people that are watching this, uh, to
connect deeper, uh, and Ryan didn't ask me to say this, but I'm just saying I would, I would
encourage you to connect deeper, uh, with ocean water, with, with Ryan and, um, and figure a lot
of those things out and you're going to do a lot of good along the way.
Oh, thanks Tim. Well, I've enjoyed getting to know you and thanks for how you've helped me
so far in developing processes and systems that are really helpful. I spend a lot of my time when
I'm at home working on that stuff to make life easier for people when they get interested in
what we're doing. I mean, thank you, you and Ed Love actually, that was very, very helpful. And
I look forward to doing this again sometime, man. Thank you so much. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. I
appreciate it. Yeah. Have a great day, Tim. Thanks so much. All right.