826: Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith Meet Business Strategy w/ Tim Whitmire

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wontropner to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFromento, and we've got an incredible guest on here today whose story is all about persistence, impact and accomplishing huge things from a place of service to others.

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So let me tell you about today's guest.

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His name is Tim Whitmire.

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After more than a decade in journalism, primarily with the Associated Press, tim began working in middle market finance in 2007 as an officer at a Charlotte-based middle market investment bank, then as a founder at another firm.

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On New Year's Day, 2011, he and a friend led the first gathering of a global movement of free workout groups for men that would come to be known as F3.

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From that first workout for 35 men at a Charlotte middle school, f3, which stands for Fitness, fellowship and Faith, has spread across the United States into dozens of foreign countries, offering participants a way to get in shape, bond closely with peers and take leadership roles in their own lives and the life of their community.

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Now here's where I really love the impact that Tim decided to make, not just with F3, but really helping others grow as well.

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In 2018, Tim began to work with growth stage businesses to apply the lessons he had learned through growing F3 to their unique challenges around alignment and scaling that those organizations face.

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Alignment remember that word because I know we're gonna talk about it with Tim here today.

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Through his firm, cxn Advisory, he works with leadership teams from around the country to put strategic planning into action.

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And speaking of resilience and faith, and health and fitness.

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Tim suffered a serious stroke in the fall of 2022 and credits the Fitness and Fellowship developed through F3, along with support from his wife and three kids, as having played a significant role in his recovery and ability to continue his work.

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This is someone who shows up in so many ways, so I'm not gonna say anything else.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Tim Whitmire.

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All right, tim, I am so excited that you're here with us today.

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Welcome to the show, thanks.

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I appreciate you having me on Brian.

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Heck, yeah, super excited.

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Obviously, you heard me too.

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Listeners a little bit about your background, but take us beyond the bio.

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Who the heck is, tim?

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How did you start doing all these amazing things that you get to do?

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I mean, I've been tremendously blessed in my life.

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I've had a lot of opportunities and I have a wife who's very patient with me and all my projects and hobbies, as she calls them.

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So I've just gotten to a point in my life where, as you said earlier, I had a long career in journalism, transitioned out of that, was working in middle market finance, but then happened to get involved in this, this F3 thing, where there was an opportunity to pivot from that and really go out on my own and really have my own kind of solo consulting firm where I was able to assist others.

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Yeah, I love that, especially Tim, because for me, I always think back to when I started my first business.

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I was 19 years old and I, whenever I tell this story, I always tell people I'm like I started it just for fun.

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I didn't know it was gonna become a business.

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I didn't know that it was gonna reach millions of people around the world.

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Take us back to your mindset with F3, because it's something that grew into a global movement.

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Where was your head at when you started?

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Did you set out with that ambition, or was it just one group at a time?

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I'd frequently tell this story.

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I we will have these mass workouts at F3 where people will come in from multiple cities or states and locations and we call it a convergence and often kind of hundreds of guys working out at the same time and invariably somebody will come up at the end of the workout and we'll survey kind of the massive guys and say, man, did you ever imagine that it would turn into this?

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And my answer I used to say oh, no gosh, I couldn't believe it.

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But to be completely honest, when we started F3 and I have to credit my co-founder, dave Redding, here as well he and I had worked out together previously at another workout that was for men in another location in Charlotte and the guy who had started that workout the workout basically got too big and he closed it to newcomers and Dave and I kind of looked at each other and said this is crazy.

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We need to start another one of these things, because what this format and this way of bringing guys together has been so valuable in our lives, we've got to get it out in front of other men.

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So when we launched that first workout of what became F3 on January 1st 2011 at a middle school in Charlotte it was absolutely with the vision of getting it in front of as many men as possible.

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So the fact that it's gone global is awesome and is a testament to the power of the guys who kind of came behind us and have been willing to kind of carry that vision forward.

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But uh, but it actually, you know, kind of getting it in front of more men and sharing it with more men was was absolutely uh in the plan from day one.

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Yeah, heck, yeah, I own that, tim.

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I absolutely love that, especially because I always think that there's two types of people in this world and we're for sure preaching to the choir here today but those two types of people are the ones who do something in life and they're like oh man, this would be a really cool idea.

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I wish that this was more accessible to others.

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And then there's people who actually go be the change that they wish to see in the world, and obviously all of us entrepreneurs have that go getter attitude inside of us.

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But what was it about you guys?

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Obviously you had experienced it firsthand on the consumer side, of how life changing it was for you.

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But why, having not started something before, did someone from a journalist background, a financial background, say you know what?

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We are the ones to uniquely bring this to the market.

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Yeah, and this was just something.

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You know, I sort of had that edge.

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I, by the time we started up three, I think I'd been a, a founder at sort of a breakaway investment bank that we started, that sort of spun off from the, from the original investment bank I worked for.

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I had been asked to help start up a, an Episcopal high school here in Charlotte.

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That that was.

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That's a good example of failure, because I've had a few of these projects that have kind of crashed and burned over the years and and you obviously learn a lot of lessons from that as well.

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But I was, I was always kind of that guy who wanted, wanted to take on a new project and was excited by something new and and this just happened to be the thing that that really caught fire and and you mentioned something earlier about you know the person, the person who says no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be that change and and we, we saw that a lot and and it became kind of a rule in F3 of like.

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Once we were successful with F3, once we had, we were growing and we had a lot of energy in the community around it and we were planting new workouts.

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People would often come to me and Dave and say, hey, you know, I've got this other problem that I want to solve.

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You guys seem to be addressing this problem really well among men in the community and I've got this other problem that I want you to solve and it's, you know, xyz, whatever, whatever was kind of on their heart and and we would often say, you know, that's really great and and that's your thing or whatever, and you know you should be the leader of that.

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You should, you should be the one to to go do that.

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And actually often F3 became a platform for other guys um achieving the things that, uh, that they wanted to achieve in terms of service and and so forth.

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Yeah, tim, I want to go a little bit deeper there, because you talk about some of those failure stories, and the older and the wiser that I get, we've all had those.

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No entrepreneur, it's their first rodeo.

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That's the more I get into this, that's the more that I realized, and so for me personally, I've, of course, had those as well along the way, and what I quickly realized, especially once I got into my 30s now is what I've realized is that those failures were actually essential.

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I gained skills, perspective, lessons along the way, that I wouldn't be the podcast host, I am the entrepreneur, the business owner, the boss.

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I wouldn't be all of these things that I am today without those experiences.

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So, as much as I didn't like them in the moment, they were a tough pill to swallow.

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They were essential.

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Talk to us about some of those things that, in hindsight, you can look backwards and say gosh F3 wouldn't be what it is without that.

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Cxn wouldn't be what it is today without those failures.

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Shed some light on those for us.

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Yeah, I mean I, you know the, the, I mentioned the high school.

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I mean that was just very simply, we had a great vision but we didn't have anybody with any money to get behind it and kind of stroke that first check.

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So you know you need that, you need that kind of seven figure check that, that that signals to the rest of the, the philanthropic community, that this is something real and we just we never got behind that.

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So that has absolutely informed my thinking when I, when I advise would be entrepreneurs and other people who who want to get something started of.

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Like you know, capital is really kind of the most important thing in a lot of cases.

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An idea is great, but but do you have the capital to do this?

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Or you know, or are you relying on outside capital?

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And then with, with F3, though I mean the magic of it was that we decided very consciously not to monetize it.

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I often joke to people that I'm I'm America's most successful, least successful fitness entrepreneur and and in the sense that you know I never made a huge amount of money off of it, like you know, maybe the orange theory, people or other fitness entrepreneurs, but the the benefits that have been returned to me and you mentioned my stroke earlier, but it just in so many ways in my life have been just just uncountable and and and you know you can't, you can't really run a tally on it.

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So so that that was really a case where we were able to.

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You know, you've given some, somebody, something that's come into their lives and has made a difference.

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They're in in better shape because of it, they have more friends because of it.

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They're they're, you know, mentality has changed and it's very easy to then turn around and say, hey, I want you to go give this away to somebody else, or I want you to use your skills to help us scale, you know, by building a website or by contributing in some other way.

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So it it really the fact that we were kind of willing to give it away, I think, made a huge difference in in how we were able to scale.

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Yeah, and speaking of natural transitions, I always use the word natural, but I always put it in air quotes because nothing feels natural in those moments.

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Because, tim, when you started F3, little did you know what it would lead to.

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Actually, I would argue you probably didn't know at all, but you were a massing these skills and these experiences that, as you said, people were turning to you to solve their own problems, which is why I love that you started CXN advisory and I love the way that you summarize it.

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The messaging behind your company is so fascinating to me providing executive coaching and leadership team alignment services.

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Tim, it's a word that shows up so much in the way that you do your work.

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Why alignment?

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What the heck does that mean to you?

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Why is it so important to you?

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Yeah, so I go back to and I'll give you the story of how I named the business.

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I rode crew when I was an undergraduate in college.

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I'd grown up in California and my parents were divorced and I'd never, never, played any youth sports.

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That was something that wasn't particularly important to my mom and she had pretty much sole custody and me and my brother and worked full time and didn't have the opportunity to kind of volunteer at the Little League concession stand and that sort of thing.

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And so I went to Harvard as a freshman at the age of 18 and there was a sign up to come to the freshman union and come out for the crew team.

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This was back in the days when you could still come out as a novice and they were willing to teach you at your freshman year and see what they made of you, and so that was a really kind of formative experience for me as a freshman in college to be on a team for the first time.

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They were willing to still leave when I did the rankings, and so there were a million lessons that I learned from that and I kind of use as teaching points all the time.

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But a really key one and the reason why I named the business CXN was I realized when I had my first client and I was doing my first implementation for them over a goal setting system, that all the executives that I was advising they were the ones doing the work and I was just kind of sitting in the seat in the front of the boat and advising them on how to pull on the oars that they were pulling on of their own individual lines of business.

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So it really made me sort of a coxswain and that's what the term for the little guy who sits in the front of a crew boat and kind of steers and coaches inside the boat tries to get the rowers in alignment.

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And that alignment that you mentioned is everybody's got to be putting their oar in the water at the same time.

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Everybody's got to be pulling with the same amount of force.

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And what I see in a lot of businesses is you get a leadership team together and particularly as a company scales, people kind of go off in their own direction and they don't have clarity about what the central strategic objectives of the business are and you start to have this drift and it's even I use this analogy of if I'm driving down the highway and I deviate from the straight line that I'm supposed to be following by just one degree in my steering and I'm traveling at 70 or 80 miles an hour.

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It's going to be 10 seconds before my passenger side wheel is off the road and it's going to be 20 seconds before I'm completely in the ditch.

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And when you're moving quickly and you're trying to scale the business, that's the cost of just one degree out of 360 in misalignment, and so that was really kind of the animating philosophy there was to try to work with leadership teams, get people clear on what the central objectives are and then how we're going to measure success.

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Yeah, tim, as a visual person, I love the analogy that you're giving us.

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I also love that rowing is such a core part of your messaging because, I mean, you and I share a little bit of Boston in common, and so I just picture all those crew teams that we see riding down the Charles River in that unison and it's something that's always stood out to me.

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You actually wrote about it on your website, cxnadvisorycom, which we'll talk about at the end of today's session.

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But you talk about that term swing, which is the unique catapulting forward momentum of a boat in which all the rowers are moving in sync and with power.

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Tim, as someone who just has only ever watched from the shore, I always find it fascinating that it really is that moment in time where they push forward and then they reset to only push again.

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And what is it about that movement style?

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Obviously they have to because there's oars in the water and you don't want to be hitting each other.

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But what is it that, I guess, proverbially, with rowing and with business and with life, what is so hard about all of us being in that alignment?

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Because it does seem you gave that one degree analogy.

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It seems the margins are so slim when it comes to perfecting that, which is a hard thing to do.

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But what makes it hard?

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And then what unlocks that?

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Yeah, so a crew boat is not a flat bottomed boat.

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It actually comes to a point in the water and so the shells that you see, particularly when they're racing, are incredibly tippy.

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And if you think about rowers trying to roll forward on the sliding seat, put their oars in the water and then pull with force that motion of sliding, if you are not in complete unison in that moment and you are not all getting your oar into the water what they call the catch the boat is going to tip back and forth.

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And I've been in a lot of boats that have done a lot of tipping back and forth and everybody in the boat always sort of looks at the other people around them of like, why can't you get in sync with me?

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Because you can only see the back of the rower in front of you when you're sitting in a crew boat and so everybody feels like everybody else is the problem.

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Why can't you get in sync with me?

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But that motion, obviously there's a lot of wasted energy.

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When the boat tips back and forth like that, you have people banging their oars on the water, or what they call skying their oars to one side or another.

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That's energy that's not translating into forward momentum for the boat.

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And so when you have true swing, which is unison among all the rowers, everybody's getting their oar in the water, they're sliding forward at the same rate.

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They're getting their oars in the water, they're pulling with the same force.

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When you have that swing, you basically, if there are eight rowers in a boat, you have the power of nine or 10 rowers.

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It's almost a synergy thing.

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You move with more than the sum of the parts forward and it's an amazing feeling.

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And I can tell you, in my two years of college rowing and a couple of years of masters rowing, I've been in boats that where maybe you truly had swing for maybe 20 or 30 strokes in.

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You know of the tens of thousands that I've taken in my in my rowing career.

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So it really is sort of a magical thing when you feel it and and it's.

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But it's really really incredibly hard to achieve to get everybody on the same page like that.

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Yeah, which leads me to ask you this question, Tim.

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I've never asked anyone this question.

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You are the perfect one to ask it because, as entrepreneurs, I think it's important for us to confront this visual, because every time I've walked by the Charles and see that one person sitting in the boat who's not rowing and they're just yelling orders, Tim, I can't help but think wait, why is that one person?

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They're not doing any of the work when it's all the other people doing the work.

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Talk to us about that importance of the so-called coach in the boat.

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What is that person doing to keep all of this in alignment?

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Because it looks like they're not doing anything.

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It's just not as visual as seeing people you know busting their butts to actually row as hard as they can.

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Talk to us about that role.

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Yeah, absolutely Well, you're, you're steering right, because the if, if people are not pulling with equal force, you need somebody to kind of steer on the rudder.

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And you've seen the Charles River, it takes some fairly extreme bends, so you need somebody to kind of do that and to adjust for the, the whatever out of alignment motion the boat may be taking.

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But you're also you were really that coach in the boat and you are trying to get people in cadence.

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You're trying to, you're calling out.

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You know, hey, you're doing various drills and you're calling a race.

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In the course of an actual crew race, it's the coxswain who basically sets the pace, tells the rowers what cadence they're going to row at.

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You know 36, 38, 40 strokes a minute.

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And then the coxswain is also responsible for calling what we refer to as power tens, which is you're going to, you're going to give full effort for the whole race, but obviously you got to pace yourself.

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But these are are the 10 or 20 strokes that we're going to ask you to like up your effort just a little bit as well and try to give actually 100%.

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So you're really Just really can't keep up with that one.

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You're both a coach in the boat, you're calling the actual race.

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This was not me, by the way.

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I'm about 2x the size of a coxswain, but it's really kind of a key role and my view of it and you know, when you're a coxswain in a crewboat, you are literally dead weight.

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So you have to, in every moment, justify your existence, be adding more to the boat than your weight is, dragging on the boat and slowing it down and I view this the same way in my engagements with clients is, you know, I'm a non participating member of the leadership team and if I'm not adding enough value to justify my dead weight, which is usually an economic cost, then you know there's no sense in working together.

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Yeah, gosh, I love these analogies.

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It makes it so easy because these things directly translate from rowing to business.

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So let's cross that bridge there, because one thing that I think I would assume, having never rode that is easier in a boat is to get everyone moving in the same direction, because at least there's only one goal.

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There's not many goals you can have while you're sitting in a boat, but when we're talking about teams, when we're talking about businesses, we're talking about a bunch of individuals who obviously have their own self motivations, which is a natural part of being human.

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Let's talk about that buy in, tim, because it's, it's one of the hardest things as business leaders that we can do is to get buy in from our team, from our clients, from all of our stakeholders that are involved with our businesses.

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Where do we even start to generate or create or foster that buy in?

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Yeah, so I mean I do an exercise with my clients and I.

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It actually springs from a.

00:21:25.124 --> 00:21:52.700
There's a whole story about kind of F3 that goes with this that I won't get into because I know we're limited on time, but I use the analogy of a tent pole and in a giant circus tent and your, you know your mission, your business's mission and your vision and your core values are really that tent pole and everybody's got to be in agreement and in alignment on those things.

00:21:52.700 --> 00:21:53.884
And so what?

00:21:53.884 --> 00:22:00.383
I, when I come in to work with an executive team, it's that's the first thing we start with.

00:22:00.383 --> 00:22:25.617
As we start with a tent pole exercise to generate and come into agreement on and look honestly, most businesses have some sort of mission statement, but it's usually we're going to be puppy dogs and kittens and unicorns to all our clients and all our customers and do all this wonderful good in the world and we really I really bang on people to let's have a real mission statement here.

00:22:25.617 --> 00:22:39.280
Let's talk about what our unique value proposition as a, as an entity, is and be very clear about about what, who and what we are, and that may not be something that goes on the website.

00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:43.396
We may need to have something you know, more rainbows and unicorns on the website.

00:22:43.798 --> 00:23:24.171
But let's be really clear about who we are and what we do inside the business and let's be in agreement on that because, as you alluded to, everybody's facing the same direction on the boat, everybody's theoretically moving in the same direction, but in a business, people can have all kinds of motivations and and I'll say one other thing in addition there's a term in crew that refers to setting the boat, and setting the boat is both getting the boat in balance, like I referred to earlier, where everybody's rowing at the same pace and cadence and putting their oars in the water at the same time, and the boat is balanced and can move effectively through the water.

00:23:24.171 --> 00:23:42.528
But coaches, you know, crew teams also refer to setting the boat in terms of getting the proper lineup in the boat, getting the right people in the right seats in the in the boat, and that is something that absolutely comes into play and a lot of my engagements as well.

00:23:42.528 --> 00:23:48.630
As you're looking at who's filling what role, are they doing it well, do we need to make a change here?

00:23:48.630 --> 00:23:53.326
Do we need to move another person into this seat, and so forth, and that's.

00:23:53.326 --> 00:23:56.455
That's somewhere where you really you end up.

00:23:56.817 --> 00:24:02.472
It's another place where the the analogy works really well, because do we have the right people in the right seats?

00:24:02.472 --> 00:24:19.065
Some people may be wonderful operating officers at when you're scaling the business from zero to 150 million in revenue, and but they may be the wrong people to go from 150 to 500 million in revenue, and that's.

00:24:19.065 --> 00:24:22.325
That's a recognition of do we have the right person in the right seat?

00:24:22.325 --> 00:24:23.148
Yeah, tim, I'll tell you what.

00:24:23.169 --> 00:24:29.779
I hear you loud and clear in the way that you're throwing a little bit of shade on traditional mission statements.

00:24:29.779 --> 00:24:33.518
I know that they can be a bit fluffy, especially at the enterprise level.

00:24:33.518 --> 00:24:34.280
We see it from so many businesses.

00:24:34.280 --> 00:24:47.534
I just I was actually on Instagram the other day, scrolling past an Instagram ad, and the sales rep or the marketing person for that company just said a whole bunch of nothing and all the comments were like wow, you said so many words without saying a thing.

00:24:47.534 --> 00:24:52.772
How do we convey or how do we articulate those key things that really make us who we are?

00:24:52.772 --> 00:24:59.059
Because I'm hearing you talk about things like obviously, a mission is important to you personally as well as business wise.

00:24:59.059 --> 00:25:02.251
It also sounds to me like you are a man of vision as well.

00:25:02.251 --> 00:25:11.500
So how do we even begin in articulating those things so that we don't end up with some sort of fluffy mission statement that sounds like chat GPT could just generate for us?

00:25:13.951 --> 00:25:15.056
Yeah, that's the danger these days.

00:25:15.056 --> 00:25:33.231
I tell people if I read one more mission statement that has the word integrity in it, I'm just gonna throw something against the wall because like, yes, we've all got integrity, we all want to have integrity, but yet, shockingly, a few people in the world seem to behave that way.

00:25:33.231 --> 00:25:37.138
There's got to be an element of self-awareness to this.

00:25:37.138 --> 00:25:42.174
I mentioned earlier the need to define a unique value proposition.

00:25:42.174 --> 00:25:49.500
It's got to be what is unique about your business, what is unique about the way you serve your customers?

00:25:49.500 --> 00:25:51.950
What is unique about the way you go to market?

00:25:52.833 --> 00:25:58.630
Not everybody can sort of invent categories from whole cloth, right like an Uber or.

00:25:58.630 --> 00:26:01.434
But then they have Lyft come along.

00:26:01.434 --> 00:26:08.317
So what differentiates Lyft from Uber other than the fact that for a long time they had those pink mustaches on the front of the cars?

00:26:08.317 --> 00:26:12.094
How do you differentiate yourself?

00:26:12.094 --> 00:26:14.305
How are you going to come to market differently?

00:26:14.305 --> 00:26:20.999
What is your unique value proposition in the world that justifies your existence?

00:26:20.999 --> 00:26:32.498
A lot of getting really honest about that and having a high degree of self-awareness and market awareness and situational awareness really is often the key to that, in my opinion.

00:26:33.244 --> 00:26:39.509
Yeah, tim, I guess we can't talk about business or about rowing or about life without talking, of course, about the destination.

00:26:39.509 --> 00:26:51.712
I'm curious how much that factors into the messaging that we want to articulate internally and externally about who we are, where we want to go individually but, of course, collectively.

00:26:51.712 --> 00:26:56.067
I know that objectives and key results that framework is so important to the work that you do.

00:26:56.067 --> 00:26:59.938
Talk to us about how that destination plays into all of this work.

00:27:01.164 --> 00:27:01.727
Yeah, so it's.

00:27:01.727 --> 00:27:07.299
I mean, you want that whole key.

00:27:07.299 --> 00:27:37.285
The key piece of objectives and key results is defining what success looks like and it's getting a team to define okay, if we it's March 19th 2024, while we're taping this and what do we need to do in the next nine months so that, by the end of the year, we can drink a champagne toast on New Year's Eve and be like this was the most successful?

00:27:37.444 --> 00:27:37.965
year ever.

00:27:38.006 --> 00:27:54.529
So that's one of the things I do with a lot of the teams is try to Future state envisioning of what would we really be willing to drink champagne to if we could achieve it this year, what would define success?

00:27:54.609 --> 00:28:02.549
And then you dial it backwards from there of like, okay, what are the and the In OKR is the?

00:28:02.549 --> 00:28:18.676
Kr stands for key results and that's what are the things we can quantify that if we achieve these numbers or these metrics, we can have a strong degree of certainty that we will achieve our strategic objectives over the course of the year.

00:28:18.676 --> 00:28:37.037
And that One thing I will say there, brian and I know it will resonate with you from having listened to so much of the podcast is a lot of times people get very wigged out about OKRs because they're like oh, it's metrics, it's numbers, it's just pure calculations and so forth.

00:28:37.037 --> 00:28:49.028
And in my experience and in the course of my practice, it's really all about people and the numbers come very naturally once the people are in alignment.

00:28:49.028 --> 00:29:04.182
But if you can't get the people in alignment and in agreement about both their commitment to what you're setting out to achieve and their methodology for it, then you can have all the numbers in the world, but you're never going to hit them.

00:29:04.269 --> 00:29:05.413
Yes, amen to that.

00:29:05.413 --> 00:29:09.098
I love the fact that you called that out for our listeners here today, Tim.

00:29:09.098 --> 00:29:11.430
I also think that when it comes to this stuff, you're right.

00:29:11.430 --> 00:29:12.855
So much of it scares people.

00:29:12.855 --> 00:29:23.094
But the other thing I'm going to confess this to you on the air, because I hear from so many listeners that this is one thing that scares a lot of entrepreneurs, Tim, and business owners is that timeline.

00:29:23.094 --> 00:29:25.887
Hearing you talk about you know I love that question.

00:29:25.887 --> 00:29:26.892
That's a question we're going to steal.

00:29:26.892 --> 00:29:36.594
We're going to use that internally at the Wontropner to Entrepreneur podcast is what needs to happen between now and New Year's Eve of this year for us to view this year as a success.

00:29:37.195 --> 00:29:40.025
Tim, a lot of people don't have that future foresight.

00:29:40.025 --> 00:29:47.067
A lot of people are intimidated by making a 30, 60, 90 day plan, let alone a nine month plan or a 12 month plan.

00:29:47.067 --> 00:29:49.352
Talk to us about that timeline.

00:29:49.352 --> 00:29:50.914
How far out are you looking?

00:29:50.914 --> 00:29:55.638
As someone who has been strategic over the course of your career, Now you help others do that.

00:29:55.638 --> 00:29:57.868
What does that timeline even look like?

00:29:57.868 --> 00:30:03.109
I remember when I was in business school, professors would always say, oh, you need a 10 year timeline for your business.

00:30:03.109 --> 00:30:08.932
And the more I got into business, Tim, the more I realized, yeah, I have no idea what's going to happen 10 years from now.

00:30:08.932 --> 00:30:13.396
We couldn't envision chat GPT 18 months ago and look at how it's changed the world.

00:30:13.396 --> 00:30:16.508
So talk to us about that timeline and how far out you're looking.

00:30:17.308 --> 00:30:19.453
Well, I'll turn it on you, brian.

00:30:19.453 --> 00:30:20.676
I mean, what's your?

00:30:20.676 --> 00:30:25.277
What's the furthest you're willing to look out for this business right now?

00:30:25.858 --> 00:30:26.602
Yeah, so I.

00:30:26.602 --> 00:30:28.789
My short term is always 30, 60, 90.

00:30:28.789 --> 00:30:34.153
I think that we overestimate what we can do in a short amount of time and we underestimate what we can do in a long amount of time.

00:30:34.153 --> 00:30:36.605
So I love 30, 60, 90 day sprints, tim.

00:30:36.605 --> 00:30:40.016
If you tell me, brian, focus on this for 36 year, 90 days.

00:30:40.016 --> 00:30:41.823
I can focus for that duration.

00:30:41.823 --> 00:30:45.616
And then for the broader things, I'm more than happy to look a year out.

00:30:45.616 --> 00:30:52.815
I'm more than happy to set the tone for a calendar year or any 12 month span and say this is our longer term vision and kind of what you said.

00:30:52.815 --> 00:30:54.958
What are the inputs that get us there?

00:30:54.958 --> 00:30:59.511
I know the outputs that I want to measure, but what inputs will control those outputs?

00:31:00.354 --> 00:31:02.240
Yeah, absolutely, and so it's.

00:31:02.240 --> 00:31:03.604
It's completely.

00:31:03.604 --> 00:31:12.318
This is a completely different question for, uh, you know, I'm I'm in Charlotte, north Carolina, so, uh, I'm gonna shout out a bank of America which is headquartered here.

00:31:12.318 --> 00:31:28.734
Completely different, you know, they, they, they've maybe got a five year or 10 year plan of where they think the banking industry is going and they're a, an established competitor in that space, at the scale which I work, which is emphatically non enterprise.

00:31:28.734 --> 00:31:36.575
I mean, I often tell people, uh, if you have to run me through vendor management to be able to hire me, I'm probably not, not the guy for you.

00:31:36.575 --> 00:31:39.548
Um, you're you're really talking about.

00:31:39.548 --> 00:31:53.986
You know, at the, at the starting stage, 30, 60, I mean, a week out is is, uh, is often enough to change a business plan completely, um, and so it and it just goes from there.

00:31:54.047 --> 00:32:08.159
So, you know, in one of the one of the flaws that I think, if you're going to do kind of traditional, okay, ours and I'll, I'll shout out to John Doar, who kind of wrote the book on this at the same time, that I'm going to throw them under the bus here in a second.

00:32:08.159 --> 00:32:27.917
And the book is called measure what matters, um, but it and it was published in 2018, but, um, it is very much about setting OKRs at the enterprise level, and at the enterprise level you can have that kind of three to five year vision of where you think the business or the industry is going to go.

00:32:27.917 --> 00:32:37.221
What I've found with my clients is we can look out maybe a year and we can set goals for 12 months from now, maybe 18 months from now.

00:32:37.221 --> 00:32:42.894
We can have maybe a five year vision of where we want things to go in that long term.

00:32:42.894 --> 00:32:51.096
But, boy, we got to be ready to pivot that plan at the drop of a hat, and so that we're doing kind of.

00:32:51.637 --> 00:32:59.861
You know, a lot of traditional OKRs would have you reset your objectives and key results on a quarterly basis.

00:32:59.861 --> 00:33:07.797
I don't like doing that because I think it takes a lot of bandwidth from a leadership team at a small and mid-sized business.

00:33:07.797 --> 00:33:16.617
So what I'm trying to do is set some one year goals and then let's check back in quarterly and not do a whole refresh of everything.

00:33:16.617 --> 00:33:19.799
But what do we need to change in terms of these objectives?

00:33:19.799 --> 00:33:46.278
Because the market conditions have changed or our internal conditions have changed or whatever else, and the great example of this is, of course, march 2020, when all those great plans everybody had for what they were going to do by December 31, 2020 went out the window and we all had to reset, which was actually around the same time I was getting my business up and running, so it was a good opportunity to teach that lesson.

00:33:47.009 --> 00:33:49.218
Yeah, tim gosh, I'm going to say it here on the air.

00:33:49.218 --> 00:33:53.116
One, I feel very validated, so thank you for that here, live on the air.

00:33:53.116 --> 00:33:59.894
But two, I do think that that's so important as someone who is, in my opinion, you are a strategic mastermind, like that's what you do.

00:33:59.894 --> 00:34:02.638
I think that's what differentiates you from so many.

00:34:02.638 --> 00:34:11.619
Especially, I'm going to call out of course, I'm calling out all you entrepreneurs out there, but I'm going to call out so many solopreneurs as well is that Tim's ability to step in and create.

00:34:11.710 --> 00:34:16.153
I think it's such a keyword I don't think we say it enough in the world of entrepreneurship that roadmap.

00:34:16.153 --> 00:34:18.976
How the heck are you going to get where you want to go without that map?

00:34:18.976 --> 00:34:39.998
And, tim, knowing that that's what you specialize in and that's the way that you think, because you've had those life experiences to do that, I think it's such an important call out that even hearing you say, hey, maybe we can focus on the macro and the microeconomic conditions affecting our industries and our businesses, but let's focus on the things that are actionable, that set us up for those long-term objectives.

00:34:39.998 --> 00:34:42.431
So I think it's such an important framework, tim.

00:34:42.431 --> 00:34:50.954
On that note, I always know that we're going to run out of time, but I always love asking this question because I have no idea which direction you're going to take it in For all of our listeners.

00:34:51.173 --> 00:34:52.458
There's been so much homework.

00:34:52.458 --> 00:35:08.375
So many of those big topics that you introduce us to that are really about digging deep and doing that inner work of self-reflection, figuring out our unique value proposition, our actual mission statement not our fluffy mission statement and then, obviously, those objectives and key results and so much other good stuff.

00:35:08.375 --> 00:35:09.835
What's the takeaway?

00:35:09.835 --> 00:35:16.976
What's that one piece of advice you have for everyone who's listening, knowing that their businesses are all across the map as far as where they are in their journeys?

00:35:16.976 --> 00:35:20.353
What's that one takeaway you want them to walk away from today's session with.

00:35:21.630 --> 00:35:25.855
Yeah, I mean I look, I'll go back to you mentioned with the top.

00:35:25.855 --> 00:35:29.626
I had a stroke in November of 2022.

00:35:29.626 --> 00:35:34.889
I went in for basically a voluntary heart surgery.

00:35:34.889 --> 00:35:53.737
I wasn't a critical case or whatever, but we were going to repair my mitral valve and ended up having severe blood pressure drop while I was on the table and restricted blood flow to my brain and kind of woke up four days later, couldn't move my upper body at all.

00:35:55.670 --> 00:36:16.597
It was really in rough shape and spent a month in the hospital and at a rehab facility and it was one of those situations where I had I knew in my head what I had done with F3 and what it had done for other people in the world.

00:36:17.851 --> 00:36:40.518
But it was really a case of I had no idea, when we started out in 2011 to do what we did, that I was building the arc that was gonna carry me to safety when the rains came, and the way my friends and the relationships that I built in F3, the way those guys rallied around me.

00:36:41.030 --> 00:36:58.197
I spent a month in the rehab hospital and I did four or five hours a day of physical and occupational therapy and every single one of my PT workouts I had another F3 guy there to do it with me and they set up a schedule and they made sure it was all covered.

00:36:58.197 --> 00:37:03.099
And I had nurses that I worked with and they were like, how many friends do you have?

00:37:03.099 --> 00:37:11.954
And I was like this is the magic of it and that, if I didn't know it before, recognize its importance.

00:37:11.954 --> 00:37:28.541
That whole experience really brought to me what, how important it is to be relational in everything you do, and I want that to be kind of the number one takeaway.

00:37:28.541 --> 00:37:49.157
Look, we're all in business, we're all trying to make a living here, we're all trying to build something great, but it ultimately comes down to people, and the ability to be relational and not transactional in what you're doing is, to me, what makes all the difference in the world and, frankly, what makes life worth living as well.

00:37:49.969 --> 00:37:56.275
Yeah, tim, really powerful story, really powerful advice for all of our listeners and for us here today.

00:37:56.275 --> 00:38:10.619
I so appreciate those insights and how generously you share and, tim, I'm gonna call it out publicly here that I think that your relationships, your friendships, your connections, your network says just as much about you as it does about them, so you've shown up so generously with us here today.

00:38:10.619 --> 00:38:15.257
On that note, I know that people are gonna be eager to go deeper into the amazing work that you do.

00:38:15.257 --> 00:38:19.838
I feel like I've been piggybacking off of so much of the amazing messaging that you have on your website.

00:38:19.838 --> 00:38:23.815
So, for people who wanna learn more about CXN advisory, drop those links on us.

00:38:23.815 --> 00:38:25.375
Where should listeners go from here?

00:38:26.710 --> 00:38:33.336
Yeah, so look, the number one thing I would ask people if they're interested in engaging further is book a call with me.

00:38:33.336 --> 00:38:36.032
You can go to the websites.

00:38:36.032 --> 00:38:39.581
It's cxnadvisorycom slash call.

00:38:39.581 --> 00:38:42.679
I'm basically a little bit like you, Brian.

00:38:42.679 --> 00:38:49.077
You're volunteering an hour of your time to interview people like me.

00:38:49.077 --> 00:38:56.489
I'll give an hour of my time to anyone, basically because I wanna hear what you're struggling with.

00:38:56.489 --> 00:38:58.434
I want to hear where you need help.

00:38:58.434 --> 00:39:04.889
Maybe that ends up in a relationship or an engagement that is revenue generating for me.

00:39:04.889 --> 00:39:22.514
But what I always tell people is, if you give me an hour and kind of tell me your story, that's something that I can then take and apply to my other clients and the other work I do and that's going to spark thoughts on my part that are going to ultimately benefit me and the rest of my clients as well.

00:39:22.514 --> 00:39:31.434
So I'm always happy to volunteer an hour of my time and just engage and listen to other folks and maybe draw some knowledge on them as well.

00:39:31.434 --> 00:39:34.635
So cxnadvisorycom slash call.

00:39:35.184 --> 00:39:37.653
Yes, we so appreciate that from you, tim.

00:39:37.653 --> 00:39:44.293
It's why we always say here at the show a rising tide lifts all boats, and it's especially appropriate with a rower.

00:39:44.293 --> 00:39:48.536
So I love that you are so generous with your time there and really connecting with other people.

00:39:48.536 --> 00:39:50.532
So, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:39:50.532 --> 00:39:53.393
We are dropping a link to Tim's business website down below.

00:39:53.393 --> 00:39:56.233
It's cxnadvisorycom.

00:39:56.233 --> 00:39:58.733
We're also linking to Tim's personal LinkedIn.

00:39:58.733 --> 00:40:03.693
If you want to reach out to him and even just say thank you for coming on and sharing so generously today, don't be shy.

00:40:03.693 --> 00:40:10.494
As you heard Tim just say, it's always beneficial to have great people in your network and knowing that they're out there in this universe.

00:40:10.494 --> 00:40:15.710
So, tim, on behalf of myself and all the listeners around the world, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

00:40:16.893 --> 00:40:17.173
Awesome.

00:40:17.173 --> 00:40:18.730
Thank you, brian, really appreciate your time.

00:40:20.128 --> 00:40:25.632
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wontropner to entrepreneur podcast.

00:40:25.632 --> 00:40:29.655
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:40:29.655 --> 00:40:38.893
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewontrapnershowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:40:38.893 --> 00:40:47.672
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:40:47.744 --> 00:40:49.733
These are not sponsored episodes.

00:40:49.733 --> 00:40:51.311
These are not infomercials.

00:40:51.311 --> 00:40:54.815
Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions.

00:40:54.815 --> 00:41:05.753
They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.

00:41:05.753 --> 00:41:14.277
So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

00:41:14.277 --> 00:41:15.590
We also have live chat.

00:41:15.590 --> 00:41:19.454
If you want to interact directly with me, go to thewontrapnershowcom.

00:41:19.454 --> 00:41:21.630
Initiate a live chat.

00:41:21.630 --> 00:41:31.061
It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.