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A creative entrepreneur, all around nice guy, Southern Oregon local, and if that wasn’t enough, he loves drinking coffee! ☕
Join us as we sit down for a fun chat with Tim Thompson about life around Grants Pass and his business ventures with RevThink and ZipLineGear.
Checkout RevThink and ZipLineGear at the links below . Also be sure to listen to the Revthink Podcast, RevThinking!
ZipLineGear – https://www.ziplinegear.com/
RevThink – https://revthink.com/
RevThinking Podcast – https://revthink.com/resources/podcast/
Transcription
Brian: Tim Thompson is kind of an enigma. He’s the owner and CEO of ZipLineGear.com and Grants Pass Oregon, but that doesn’t explain all of who he is.
TV producer, Minister, investor, married for 23 years, father of five boys, I can go on and on. But at the core of Tim’s career as an owner, consultant and coach is what Tim calls the four stages of a creative career.
At the consultancy he founded RevThink, which can be found at RevThink.com. And their podcast called RevThinking, they are the leader in the field of the creative entrepreneur.
His story in this interview will help you understand how this comes together.
So Tim Thompson, welcome to Grants Pass VIP.
Tim: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for the introduction.
Whoever brought that did a very good job, I might want to get a copy of that, because it’s often hard to explain all those aspects.
But it’s funny, as you read that off, you know, you’re told as a kid to avoid three topics in conversation, money, religion, and politics. And I feel like as you read my bio, like you’re basically saying, Here’s Tim Thompson, he talks about those three things that no one’s supposed to talk about.
Brian: Very cool.
Tim: I love what you’re doing with this podcast, this idea of building community get to know one another, especially in this odd situation we find ourselves in. So thanks for putting this together and inviting me onto it.
Brian: No sure thing, we’re happy to have you here.
We were talking a little bit before about how I came across your name. And to tell you the truth, I don’t recall how we came across your name, we start building a list together, we start asking other people about names. My producer, Sean E. Douglas had worked on this.
So it’s one of these things where we’re kind of, we’re really getting to know each other from scratch, I know a little bit about you just from research, a little bit of your background that’s found online. But other than that, we’re just going straight into this and find out more about each other.
So why don’t you give everyone kind of a common life story up to this point?
Tim: Sure. I don’t think you’re gonna want to hear my life story. You kind of read off the bio, it goes a lot of different directions. Usually I do this over coffee, though, Brian.
So just at least I have a raincheck for coffee in the future, right?
Brian: Of course, absolutely.
Tim: Yeah, that’s great.
You know, it’s hard to explain the path really because, as you mentioned, when I was in college kind of started my career, what I was really focused on was television, television production.
I’d like to say I fell in love with the television of the 80s. But by the time I got involved in television that time had already passed. So there was a new discovery in that field.
Obviously, the digital has changed all of our lives.
I look like I’m older than you. So I’m just going to tell you Brian, that back in my day kind of a thing. But the digital transition in the entertainment industry was something that was happening, and I was on the front lines.
So that gave me a chance as a young person to really create, invent, I don’t know what it be, but like, just put standards into place. And that gave me like a foundation for a career that I’m still living today.
It’s the foundation of why I became a consultant.
My friends who own businesses, or their friends that own businesses would call me in just asked me to solve problems for them. So that’s the beginning of what’s there. But yeah, once you kind of break into, you know, thinking about new things and new way, the world just opens up to you. And that’s really the journey I’m on now.
Brian: That’s a great way to put it.
So how did you how did you end up here in Grants Pass?
Tim: My in laws actually, they moved up here the year we got married. So we often visited. In the early 2000s, we had a rental property out in Williams. We of course, we were smart people in LA and so we built onto our Williams property. And then on boy number four, we realized we probably shouldn’t give them a different place to grow up.
Because it was a pack boys. And one of the things I like to say it’s like it’s illegal to be a boy in Los Angeles. You know, like you can’t ride your skateboard on the sidewalk. You can’t climb a tree, you can’t throw a rock, you can’t mow your own lawn.
I don’t know what the issues are.
So we just wanted our boys to grow up to be boys. So we moved into Williams and that’s kind of how we ended up here.
Just by chance, a little bit of downshifting change of a career. And that ministry path I went on and started on actually used the Pacifica, there’s a piece of land out in Williams called Pacifica, and we rented that house, Steve Miller’s old house.
We rented that for a few years and we had students come and live there and I would mentor and teach and we do classes and church service and that kind of stuff out there.
So I love Williams, I love love Williams and have great time out there and great time for growth for everybody. It’s really awesome.
Brian: Me and my wife were married in the barn at Pacifica.
Tim: Oh, you were! Oh yeah, that’s great.
Oh, how long ago was that?
Brian: 2013.
Tim: So I actually was on the board of directors at Pacifica, when you got married they’re. That’s how we met each other, that’s why I’m on this podcast.
Yeah that old, Steve Miller’s old recording studio held an incredible place?
Brian: Yes it is, very cool.
Tim: It’s very magical to be out there and to kind of be in that rustic wood environment, you know, now they have the nursery out there, and they do such a great job.
Here’s one of the things that have inspired me of the people around Josephine County, and Grants Pass. The people that started Pacifica, Ray and Peg Prag, you know, and it was Pegs brother, they basically took their money, their private money that they’ve earned over the years, they bought 400 acres in the middle of Williams, and then they gave it away so that we can go enjoy it.
And you can right now go drive to Pacifica drive on that property, walk around our trails, there’s horse trails, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful land that you wouldn’t have access to if they were greedy. And they just give it away to the community. That’s so inspiring to me there.
It’s a wonderful journey that people can be on in life, if you believe and kind of think through what is actually important. And if you’re always just like the give me, give me taking kind of person, you’ll never understand the blessings of being one of those kind of Pacifica, trustees positions or a giver in that way.
But in the giving economy is way better than the receiving economy. So, yeah, I’m glad you benefited. I benefited from their generosity. It’s wonderful out there.
Brian: That’s fabulous. That’s great.
What were you doing when you first moved to the area?
Tim: I actually started RevThink, and my ministry called The Church Works at the same time. I drove into the B of A, right there on G Street. And I opened both checking accounts the same day. The bank manager there was a guy named Jason Fletcher. And Jason works for me today.
So like, I remember him that moment helped me start my checking accounts. I did both those items. And it’s simple, like, I just wanted to use my experience, my connections, whatever I had available to help other people.
And to do it in two ways that one in the RevThink way where I could leverage my television experience, the connections I have, meet the needs of the people in that industry, who I truly love, serve today through RevThink, you know, our own podcast is just giving away information as fast as we can to make other people healthy.
Then the church works the same way. We had a conviction that college aged folks have difficulty tackling their faith, understanding the skepticism that they’re facing, dealing with reality.
Some very important Christian foundations like the gospel are being lost, the message of the gospel is lost. And we wanted to institutionalize that in people’s hearts.
So we kind of in a way just opened a house, we open someone else’s house, but we open up our house and we fed them and welcome them in and process with them. It was really an open door policy for about probably four years total, when we did it.
Our own kids were coming of age. It was hard to kind of give to that many other people and have a healthy family. So we had to take on the right priorities and focus on our own kids as they were maturing.
But I easily see myself getting back into the ministry.
My youngest is now 13. So just a few years away, we’ll be back into doing some of that heart driven stuff again.
Brian: Wow, that’s awesome.
Tim: I love it.
Brian: Tell me a little bit more about RevThink, what’s that all about?
Tim: You’re on the same journey that I’m on in a way, right?
Brian: Oh yeah.
Tim: Think about the processes of just writing your own book, like the effort you have to put into the research that you do to compile that information into somewhere that someone else didn’t read and gets a benefit of, you know, a million times what they read in your book.
There’s some of us that like, we can remember those decisions along the way. And we could put them somewhere that other people can feed off of it and grow.
You can probably relate to that with what you’re doing with your book. And even this podcast, you’re really just promoting the goodwill of others.
RevThink has kind of that at its core. Creative business owners, it’s very difficult to navigate the creative needs of a project or client a production and meet the business needs. It actually is two totally different parts of your brain that have to process the analytical stuff, and then the compulsive creative stuff. And when you do the creative compulsive stuff, it hijacks the analytical part of your brain.
So it’s physiologically a challenge to take care of it.
Not to mention, most creative people just don’t want to be bored with business things.
Brian: Yeah.
Tim: So I recognize that as a need. And my friends, as I said that we’re creative people that own businesses, and I didn’t really want to do this specifically. But in a way, like I just fell in love with this industry and the people and the creative need, and I had a certain gift, and I started with think to to serve that body of people.
That was, I don’t even know what, 12 years ago, 13 years ago now, and it’s grown.
I have other consultants that work with me we create a lot of content now and produce that. And we really come alongside these creative entrepreneurs who are looking to take on the challenges.
We serve as spas, I kind of specific groups were focuses on the industries and part of industries where we came from, and that’s usually production companies or motion design firms.
Most of our clients are they’re doing high end productions, they’re doing international or national television spots. I have a client right now that’s in China, launching the League of Legends World, huge stadium that they’re doing, they usually do Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga shows and so they’re doing that.
You know, we work with the guys that are doing the Oscars, we work with folks that are making Nike commercials and Apple commercials, they take on a lot of burden. You know, Apple TV plus is a big client of our clients, these huge burdens that they’re taking on, because the importance of the projects that they have and the support that they need.
And some of that can relate to the projects that they’re doing. And I think that’s the sweet spot for RevThink. And we love it, serving the people we love.
Brian: So do you help them connect up with the right people? Or what’s the overall goal, or any issue that they seem to be facing?
Tim: Yeah, we actually kind of broke down the issues a creative business owner has into what we call the seven ingredients. So that seven areas of business you have to master.
And some of them are very obvious, it’s the creative because your creative business owner production, because you have to get the job done. Finance, very obvious, I think every business owner has those kind of three major items, sales and marketing.
We like to point out that sales and marketing are two separate issues. And we know that because they’re spelled differently.
So therefore there’s two different things.
And a lot of people just put the two together thinking they’re doing it both. But if you’re a marketing strategy is very different than a sales strategy.
I think your book deals with that, that kind of thought process of what it’s like to get your product out there as a marketer. And then sales is the conversion of those products.
Then we have operations and leadership. I think that’s all seven, sometimes I get lost, I get sleepy, dopey, doc, I can’t, you know, try to keep all seven of them together. But those seven ingredients are things that they have to master.
And then what we’ve decided to do at RevThink is understand what those issues are and each of those ingredients, and then create tools for people to either hire others, we’ll consult people through it, some people retain us to solve some of those issues.
Or we teach them we have classes accelerate classes, they can learn and grow.
You know, what’s funny is listening to your podcasts and getting to know you. I almost feel like you and I are on the same journey. Right?
Brian: Yeah, I can see that.
Tim: Cuz you know it like you’re thinking through those same issues and writing them and put them out there.
Brian: Mmhmm.
Tim: Is your focus primarily, just in the online area there, the Amazon issues? Are you thinking through just marketing issues, and you identified the Amazon sellers?
Brian: It was definitely, I started out doing a lot of work online, early 2000s, I was working with search engine optimization and doing all this stuff online. And that got me into online marketing, and just doing and handling all that.
Then ended up doing full on marketing, because it’s all the same regardless of where you’re doing it. It’s still the same…people are people, it’s the same processes.
Tim: Yeah.
Brian: What we ended up finding out is when I was talking with a special ecommerce companies was, there was a few major fears that they all had, and one of them was this huge, looming fear of the big boogeyman, being Amazon.com. And I played off of that with the title of the book.
Tim: Well, Amazon is evil.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we’re learning it with ZipLineGear. I mean, they’re flat out, if you’re listening to my voice, they’re evil.
You know, they basically built a product, they built their own product to compete with us once they saw that we were successful in their platform.
Brian: Yeah.
Tim: That’s downright just evil.
Brian: You’re the only one.
Tim: And so it’s a blessing and a curse.
What a great opportunity you’ve had. You’ve taken opportunity or stolen the opportunity of this evolution in business and marketing as well and being able to be at the forefront of it.
It only takes a few years to be a master of it, because it’s such a young enterprise as it is. But to put that out there when you talk about marketing. What do you think the biggest challenge is when it comes to marketing, because you went from the online marketing to now we’ll say like global marketing, big marketing. What do you think the biggest challenge is for business owners, when you think through the market issues?
Brian: I think most of the time, the biggest issues with most business owners that I run into comes down to just understanding the most basic concepts of marketing, in terms of having any type of consistent system that’s bringing in new people, and communicating with previous customers or current customers.
Just having systems that do that constantly and not getting thrown off and distracted and wonder, it’s like you said that the mind only works in one direction at a time.
And if you’ve got the business owner running the business, then wherever their minds at is where the business is going, if it’s going in the wrong direction, they’re missing out on all these pieces that need to keep going when they’re not focused on it.
So I moved more away from even marketing and more into business strategy, because it was more of a big picture issue that business owners have their relationship that they have with their business.
Tim: Yeah.
Brian: Is what is what causes the disconnect.
Tim: I feel like the next book you and I gonna write together, because I think you’ve really nailed it with the issues we see with marketing as well. And I love this because I think people can hear what you and I are discovering, when it comes to doing some of some of these challenges of being a business owner.
You know, one of them is you use the word system. And very few people think systematically about things that feel creative. Most people think marketing is a shot in the dark, like, I don’t know, put money on Google and hope I make it.
And there’s no thought that there’s actual strategy, you can apply measurable results and decisions that you can make.
You can do it on a spreadsheet, if you just do math, and you can figure out the decisions you’re making. You wouldn’t get in your car without a gas gauge, why would you spend money in marketing without some kind of sense of like, when you’re running out of gas, you should probably pull over.
So I love that idea of making it a system.
Brian: Yeah.
Tim: At ZipLineGear, clearly, we do a lot of the online marketing. And that’s really where, when Nathan founded the company, his genius was some of it’s just, you know, a love of something and good timing.
But he became what I call a category creator.
You know, what he did is he took an issue that was invisible to people, they didn’t realize that they had this problem, but nobody could easily put up a zipline in their backyard, because you had to drive to like seven or eight stores.
And then you have to kind of understand the instructions behind it. Then you figure out, is the pulley right and is it safe.
What he did originally was he placed an ad. And if someone bought it, then he would go to the eight stores and buy the stuff put into a box, his mom would drive them to the post office because he wasn’t yet 16 when he when he started doing this, and he would mail out that with some instructions of how to do it.
But when you’re a category creator, you win that category.
It’s like the Ford Explorer, like it was the was the vehicle of the SUV for so many years.
To take care of that part of marketing, so whenever when someone looking for a backyard zipline, we’re the first ones to show up. Because we’ve always been the backyard zipline place.
That part of market realized that’s a marketing strategy of like, be a category creator, do something different stand out, don’t go to your competitor and copy their website and think that’s what you want, you actually don’t want to be your competitor, you want to be something unique and different.
That’s like a marketing edge that few people, I guess we just are never taught that challenge is pretty, pretty awesome.
Brian: Exactly right, that I’ve got an entire chapter of my book dedicated to that.
Simple, it’s a simple concept.
But most people, they let it go for some reason or don’t really capture it because it’s so simple or they think it’s impossible to be able to do that time after time. Again, you see the people that are making it out there are people that were able to do that.
Tim: Here’s another way to think of it. This is helped me when we kind of discovered this, but we recognize is that the job of marketing is to move the market like the people you’re aiming from unaware to aware.
Brian: Mmhmm
Tim: That’s it.
Marketing is unaware to aware.
Sales is interest to intent.
When you try to go from unaware to intent, you’re trying to take on way too much. You’re biting with way too much. And you move too slow, because you think the only way to measure good marketing is if I sold anything.
And that’s where like Facebook ads and Google ads and all this stuff have dumbed us all down because they keep trying to convince us that their marketing works because they give us one KPI of how much sales we have.
That is ludicrous.
That is such a waste of good effort. If you just gave yourself permission that did they know me before and do they know me now your creative energy for marketing just expands because think about all the ways you can get people to be aware of your brand.
Watch a Nike commercial, they’re not giving you the address to the local Nike store when they sell that they are simply making you aware of the group of people that consume their product.
So if you feel compelled to be cool like them, you’ll figure out where the Nike store is.
That’s what the sales processes is and why they had the big scoop over the building in downtown Portland or whatever.
Brain: Mmhmm.
Tim: But we get that wrong. It’s one of the big challenges. T
hat to me is some of what, what I like to take on with the challenge, I have in business. And think through that for the local business groups, I was actually a co-owner of a company called Reveil. It was a local marketing group at a Medford, my partner, Alex Poythress and I ran that for a few years, same kind of dynamic your in, the local market.
Think things through, everything from being you know, owning a marketing agency and doing it to doing it for my own product, and then coaching other people to do it for their brands.
It’s one of the great challenges, you know, and then I can talk about cash flow for the next five hours to close another one that people struggle with. I really, I just as I learned this stuff, I just want to capture it, I want to put it somewhere. I want people to find it.
I want people to use it. And then I want them to write a thank you note to me to say, hey, thanks. I never realized this is a problem. How can I support RevThink?
And then I’ll teach them how to support read think and things we can do together.
So very cool. It’s kind of a journey. Yeah.
Brian: Yeah, that’s cool.
Tim: Sounds like you and I are going to be in business together.
Brian: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Well, it’s funny because, a lot of the reasons why I started this podcast was to go out and meet people. I know, we’re all out there. But how do you get in contact with them?
And so I kind of had to create somewhat of a magnet for myself to kind of bring people to me, bring all the interesting people in town to me.
I hate to say that. Now, just because you’re not on the show doesn’t mean you’re not interesting. It’s just I was looking for a way to meet more interesting people.
You really can’t know enough interesting people the way I see it, really fabulous that we we’ve gotten to talk here.
So because I think it says something about your perspective on business and everything.
How did you get into television production? What drew you in that direction?
Tim: I mean, thank you for that. That’s like the easiest question I can answer.
I fell in love with television. As a kid, I saw what was happening and I thought to myself, I want to do that for a living. When I was just, you know, my mom would know better, but I’m going to say I was like five years old. I told my mom, I’m going to be a comedian for a living because I just wanted to be on television and do it. And I never let it go.
Everywhere I go, here’s like one of those moments, if you could change your mind, you would go back on it. But I went to school in the San Francisco Bay Area. The school is called the College of Notre Dame, we’re on a street, and this is the bay area, right?
So one end of the street was my school. On the other down the street is this company, small company called Oracle, never heard of that before.
So one day a nun came up to me because we were a Catholic school. And she said to me, Tim, you know, you’re so brilliant. And these people down the street, they’re always hiring people, you should go down there and get a job.
And so this is early 90s.
Honestly, I’ve never heard of Oracle my entire life. I was like sister RJ, there’s no way, I don’t even know what that is. I’m gonna work in Hollywood. And then 10 years later, the receptionist at Oracle are millionaires because of the stock market boom, and I’m struggling to get television to work because the darn digital is commoditized industry so bad.
I got very lucky when I first went to LA. And like a crazy man, like it seems so silly how easy it was. But I didn’t know any way to do it. I literally parked my car in Burbank, and I literally went door to door.
I mean, I went up to doors, if it said productions, I’d ring the doorbell and knock on the door lock myself in. And I went up and down Burbank Boulevard, I probably went to 15 or 16 places that day.
Many of the places thought, What the heck are you doing in my office? Please leave. This isn’t how the world works sir, get out of here.
But one of the places I walked into was Dick Clark productions there across the street from NBC studios. And as I walked in there, I had no resume on me.
So this guy just looked at me like what is wrong with you?
Nobody gets a job this way.
Dude, what do you want from me?
And I was like, my name is Tim, I work very hard. I can do this. I always wanted to be in television production. Whatever job you give me, I’ll make sure I get done.
He’s like, okay, you work in the mailroom.
And so I worked the mailroom for about a week. Then I was put on the American Music Awards. Then the director that I met on the American Music Awards, he left that show to do another small show called the Oscars, and he took me with him.
Then I met a guy there who then did the Emmys and the Oscars the next season.
Then that next season because I knew how to use Microsoft Excel because I was a kid of the 90s instead of the 80s. I was given the job to make the budgets for these shows.
So I kind of made a career for a little while just doing these large events and doing their budgets.
I was pulled into a production company in Hollywood, who did visual effects for films. So I worked on the visual effects for Braveheart, and a couple other films.
But we also did the opening credits for films this small group of us did the opening credits. One of the films we did in my first couple years was this movie Seven, and the opening credits to that movie changed the industry, just changed it.
And I happen to be one of the 20 people at that center point. The day that movie was released, it was Spielberg was calling us that Ridley Scott, Tony Scott was calling us David Fincher obviously called us back. I mean, our phones lit up.
And before I was 20 years old, I had 70 people working for me, I was the head of operations of this company. I was building these systems and making things happen.
I was right place, right time doing the right stuff. But it kind of solidified what I knew how to do and can do it.
Like I said, like the television I fell in love with in the 80s, I had nothing to do with that what I fell into was a thing of the 90s and early 2000s. And it’s been kind of a basis of the evolution of the industry and my career as we go through it.
So that’s a really long answer for a journey. But I honestly believe there’s still some of those principles that are likely today of like, if you work hard, and you show up on time, and you follow your heart, and you really take on challenges that no one else is doing.
Like you’ll be successful in business, you’ll be successful in your career.
That’s the heart of it.
How do you work every day to make something that lives on longer than you?
Brian: That’s very inspiring. That’s awesome.
Well, that’s just great. So golly.
Tim: And I didn’t even tell you the right turn I made when I put all that into Seminary in the middle of it so I can do ministry.
So right in the middle of it. Yeah, 32 years old, quit all of it, burned out, went to seminary. Got my master’s degree and started my ministry.
So I’m kind of an underachiever.
You know, if you’re listening to this podcast, and you grew up in Grants Pass, and you don’t have your exposure to some of these bigger markets, you can kind of get just lost here.
And there’s a blessing to it, right?
Because the goal of life is satisfaction. And if you can be satisfied with it, it’s a very beautiful life, truly, you know, gorgeous city. It’s why we live here.
But some of the challenges that are available to us outside this marketplace that we can learn and bring in and share with others and develop others, to have some eagerness and some desire to think bigger, and not be afraid of it. That’s a great thing.
And I appreciate that about some of your journey, like you’re recognizing that and seeing like, Wait a second, there’s this big scary monster people keep talking about. I could take on that challenge, I can take on the idea of what Amazon is and build that up. It gives that kind of like good feeling with the work they’re doing.
Brian: Absolutely. Absolutely.
So we’re here in, just for those of you listening, we’re recording this in early September 2020. We’ve gone through a huge, huge piece of this COVID-19 crisis, we’ve been dealing with protests and riots and this and that.
Has the events of 2020 had an impact on your life on your business?
Tim: Yeah, sure. (laughs)
One way to think of it, like, you know, what’s behind that question?
In a way, I think when we ask yourself the question, the thought is that we foolishly had or naively had an expectation that isn’t going to be met. Right? That’s the reality.
I, you know, some people thought 2020 was gonna be their best year ever. Haha.
Some people never even knew that there was part of industries that even existed and then COVID hits, and now they’re thriving in this unusual industry. Because of the time that’s there.
I have kind of a universal principle called the entrepreneurial formula.
And it’s pretty simple. It’s Needs, plus Resources, equals Solution.
When you navigate the decision point of life or business, whatever with that, that kind of a thought of the need and the resource equals the solution.
What you end up doing is, is you you’re constantly scanning for the need, the new need the old needs, things that people have seen, things that they haven’t seen.
And then the resources, you’re developing those resources.
It’s either the skills that you have, or people that you know, or books that you’ve read, or assets you’ve bought, who knows. So like resources are resources. And in a way, you know, when Nathan started ZipLineGear, he just simply put that in place.
He wanted a zip line for his backyard. There was things available, if I just put that into a box, now have a backyard zipline, right?
It works that simple.
So the COVID crisis is just feeding right into the need for the entrepreneurial formula.
It’s just new needs with existing or the need to develop new resources, and then you have a solution.
So every business owner should be encouraged because there’s really like a land grab. There’s tons of opportunity with the changes that are taking place. Many of them are positive changes to, you know, foundational things that are falling away. For better or worse.
I don’t know how many banks are going to close by the time this crisis is done, but the banks are closing. There’s a new need.
What resources do you have?
How can you solve that issue?
Where are you coming from?
How do we build you up to find the resources you have to fit the need?
And if we plug those together, is there a value proposition that’s worth selling?
If not, ditch it, stop trying to know like, if there’s no value, get out of it.
But that entrepreneurial formula is, is where we live.
You know, I coach a lot of business owners. So too, we did a daily podcast show or video cash show for 50 days straight once the crisis hit, walking people through it really just being their best friend, because as a business owner, it’s very lonely, you need to know somebody has your back.
So we did a lot of that.
And again, I’ll say like, you know, four months ago, and some of the clients I had had, you know, there was no rock concert for Justin Bieber coming up. Lady Gaga canceled her Coachella. I mean, Coachella got canceled. Yeah, their credit national convention, which these guys were working on. That wasn’t happening in the same way huge crisis for their entire workload.
And then to realize, Oh, wait, this evolution now is turning into a huge project. In China, the DNC did happen in a different way.
They had resources to meet the need, they stepped up and did it. And even the rock concerts are changing. They’re still entrepreneurs, that’s what the entrepreneur does is meet those needs.
So for me, I think it’s living out principles and seeing things that many people deal with.
It’s also very satisfying to have some people to coach, they’re coming out the woodwork, and it’s great to have some resources available to them.
But I’ll say like, I’m a business owner, too. I mean, you’re a business owner, too. It’s are you sleeping every night?
Like, we have this thing called the 2am issues? How are your issues? (laughs)
Funny right.
Now, the number one 2 am issue that we all deal with, by the way, this is the first thing, the first curse you have to get rid of is when you wake up at 2 am, and you go check your checking account. Right?
That’s the one of like, wait a second, do I have enough money to and then you think about all this stuff?
Well, if you waited till 8 am, you know, that dream would have been over and you wouldn’t have panicked but that you wake up in the sweats. And that’s really like, how I got involved in doing cash flow.
And we’ve written a piece of software to help people through the cash flow systems in their life, just to let go of that one 2 am issue because my gosh, that is such a curse to business owner, I was hating it myself. And many of my clients hate that issue.
Brian: I think it all comes back to that entrepreneurial spirit, even though you’ve encapsulated it into a mathematical formula. It’s something that is what’s magical about a person that goes out there and puts it out on the line, and is looking for solutions in the face of problems you’re talking about.
And that’s, like I said before, it’s inspirational. It’s something that I think whether you own a business or not, you should be able to gain something from that, gain something from that attitude and that idea, and being able to move forward, regardless of what the situations are.
Tim: Yeah, it defines entrepreneurism in a different way. I think franchise owners are probably struggling with these issues very differently, because the entrepreneur solution that they look for, is very boxy. Right?
If the franchise you bought says you can’t open because the franchise won’t open, you can’t open, you don’t have that choice.
But the entrepreneurial spirit behind that probably had some truth that you could break away and still be true to yourself.
Brian: Mmhmm.
Tim: I think we hurt ourselves when what we think we are what we do.
So I own this lumber store. Therefore I’m the lumber man is like, that’s probably not the right way of thinking of it. If you see yourself like, I’m a person that looks to help people and the needs that they have, I can discover needs.
Now, not all of them are good. Not all of them are profitable.
And not all of them would work for you. Someone else could probably meet that need, and that’s theirs to do not yours.
But if you’re looking at the situation differently, it’s opportunity that’s in front of us. And it’s actually very freeing way to kind of be awake to the situation at hand. Because it is kind of goofy. Especially I don’t know, this weird thing in Portland is we’re in the headline news all the time.
I can’t I talk to people in New York and LA and they’re worried about us.
Yeah, I’m Southern Oregon because they think we’re, I don’t know, everyone thinks we’re near Portland.
Brian: That’s right. (laughs)
If we were talking like a year from now, and looking back, you talked about expectations. And that’s gonna change someone a lot.
One way or the other on how they’re handling things is the expectations they put forth.
Do you have any expectations on where you’re going to be at like a year from now?
Do you have specific things that you’re looking to achieve?
Tim: Let me see if I can flip this question on his head a little bit, because I think one of the things that we like to conquer when it comes to life is time. So we see these milestones and years or ages or efforts. And I think it has a good base, because we have 18 years, and then we graduate.
And then we have, you know, so many years that we’re married, and we have milestones of putting the right kind of ring on the right finger at the right time, or whatever, you know, gold watches, and whatever. So I get the base of it.
I’m not confused on why we address things in time.
But one of the things I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not very good at keeping score, for better or worse, um, people owe me money, and I don’t hound them for it, because life is life. And we have to do that.
By the way, this doesn’t mean anyone in the audience can just ask me for cash, and then I’ll give it to them.
Like the scorekeeping part of life, you have to learn how to keep score in such a way that you know you’re achieving the results you want to when I was looking at things retrospectively, because I’m an older man now, and I’ve gone through a few seasons of my own journey, I recognize that there are needs for evolution in life.
And again, like you see it in like a big picture, you’ll recognize it, at one point in your life, in order to survive, you had to be selfish as a baby, if you’re not selfish, then you’re not crying when you’re hungry, and then you’re not fed.
That selfish nature, the taking nature of who we are originally is part of survival, and our brain is geared towards it. We can learn so fast, so our brain is ready to receive it.
Then we devour as much as we can in those early years and it creates the person that we are, the more we take, the easier it is to learn at those ages, and we can be ready for it.
Other than the spectrum is this person who’s really not learning much more, I mean, the brain doesn’t even have the ability to learn as fast or understand or comprehend as much, but they have so much life experience, all they can do is give.
So you have the two ends of it right?
You have this the giver side of the far one side and the taker side, the other side.
And then we have this thing in the middle called our career. It’s really our evolution from that selfish person to the giving person.
I think most of us have this, like dream of legacy, like, I’ll have enough success that I can retire, I can give back, I could, you know, sponsor a bear and downtown Grants Pass whatever it is.
Whatever your dream is that you’re going to give away, we have to be successful in the middle.
That’s where that four stages of the creative career model came to me is recognizing what it’s going to take to get from point A to point B, and navigate through a system of evolution from a selfish person to a giving person.
The first stage that I’ve kind of identified as this stage called the artist stage.
The artist stage, as you think about it, like it’s just the person that does the job. If you think about a person that paints paintings, down by the river, and then sells them for 50 bucks, like the price of the canvas, and paints plus an hour of their time, whatever, your total commodity.
You’re basically just turning and burning, that’s a necessary stage, you can develop a craft and a skill, but you it doesn’t scale very well, like you get kindness or make a living being that commodity.
So eventually, you have to develop some systems and routines, so it can grow beyond your own personal ability.
And I call that next stage, the auteur stage.
An auteur is a stage where other people do the work and you get the credit for it. So an easy example would be like a Steven Spielberg film, there are hundreds of people that made that film, his name is on there.
Brian: Yup.
Tim: Because he developed certain, an aesthetic or an appeal. He’s an auteur, he’s developed a certain method that we know what that means.
By having that genre, Steven Spielberg, I’ll say I think most of us and you probably recognize this in yourself, too. Most of us think that is the career, artist to auteur.
And my job then is to make the biggest scale of auteur I can, and the more people I work with, the more money I make, the more things I can own whatever in that stage, I will be happy because I have enough nuts saved away to be ready for a rainy day or kind of live out the rest of our life.
But I don’t think that’s very satisfying. And I also don’t think you can bank on it.
So that’s where I was challenged.
And my clients were successful auteurs, because we were making them successful, but they still weren’t satisfied. So they were challenging me to kind of think and evolve and do something different.
I wonder if you could relate to just those first two stages?
Brian: Of course.
Tim: Yeah. It’s like planted in our mind a little bit. I think media does that.
You know, Elon Musk just came to the third wealthiest person on the planet or whatever that thing is, so we think, oh, he’s winning, he has more in the auteur stage, right.
Because Tesla, auteur, is doing something bigger. And by no means is Elan Musk hurting because he started Tesla. But what I know now is that it’s not Tesla that’s helping him win, it’s what he’s done in his systems and methods outside of just growing that one entity that melted out.
The next stage is the what I call the curator stage.
And a curator, think of it like a gallery owner, where what you’re doing is you’re choosing the artists. The artists are doing the work, and your job is to promote other people. So it’s similar to artists, right, because it’s artists and their work and their time and their painting. But your job is to make other people successful, in the same way that you were successful and someone helped you along.
And that’s the beginning of giving it away, instead of keeping it. Or using yourself putting someone else at the center of it. And I think that’s where we start developing community, I think this platform that you have here, your book, and this podcast is the beginning of your curator stage.
I mean, you curated me, the other guys you’re talking to, and ladies that you’re talking to are out there, you’re starting to develop that, who Brian is and what Brian knows.
And this need for networking is the beginning of that that method in your stage. And a platform is a really good place to be a curator. If you can develop a platform, a way of speaking engagements, something to talk about systems, routines, methods that other people can follow your lead, then you are passing on knowledge at a bigger scale, other people are successful, you make a little piece of it.
But other people are growing that way.
And I think that’s one of the greatest challenges. Probably you’re seeing it too and you had to write a book, I haven’t written a book yet. Holy cow was that hard?
Brian: The hard thing was just getting all the details. I have to do that all myself.
Because I have to know how it functions. So I’m in there doing every little piece just to figure out how it functions the first time, I could write 10 more books and not have an issue with it. But the first one.
Tim: The first one, right.
And isn’t it, like the moment of where someone has listened to your recordings, I saw you basically transcribed recordings, and then you went through that process, which is great way of doing it.
But someone else’s kind of working it out, your editors working out and you’re in your mind when thinking you don’t understand. Oh, yeah, that’s not it at all. That’s not what I’m doing. And you have to like, get your thoughts out of hard, hard, hard, hard work.
Brian: Yep.
Tim: Once that egg is broken, it kind of starts like the mechanism machine. So it works, right.
Yeah, that’s, to me, one of the greatest encouragement I can give business owners is begin that process, like start doing it and don’t do it too soon, that’s foolish, you have nothing to contribute, you lean into those first two stages and do those, well, he does well with little muscle bigger than on to them.
So do that well, and then you have something to promote others.
But it’s not about you, that you have to get rid of your selfish nature and go about other people. And that’s when it really wins.
That’s when the genuine nature of like your book comes out, because you’re thinking about other people as you’re writing it. And if you become very detailed that way.
The fourth stage for me is the one that I think almost no one’s ever gonna make it. It’s kind of elusive.
Most of us are looking at it from the outside, we don’t recognize it, we think it we miss identify it as like Elon Musk owner of Tesla is worth a lot of money.
But he is the one that’s kind of at the at the center of the four stage I call it the collector stage.
Think of it like a person that buys a piece of goes to an auction, buys a piece of art for a million dollars, and then hangs it on the wall of a museum for free.
Like the economics don’t work, right, it seems that there’s a reason why they’re doing it. It’s different than the business that you’ve been doing your whole life, which is buy low, sell high, this is buy high and give away for free.
Brian: Mmhmm.
Tim: Oh, it’s there’s something else happening in the economy, in your life and your ability when you do that work. You know, the trick behind the person that’s doing that is that they’ve already collected a lot of work with that artist.
So that one action, even though they lost money, that action, the value of their entire collection went up because of one what looks like crazy idea. But they’ve spent years and years and years and yours collecting so that that one moment makes sense.
And throughout our career, if we spend our career collecting and collecting and collecting, collecting, then the time comes that we can leverage our collection and build up something else.
It’s something we can lean back on it.
It’s things like our legacy, it’s the people that we’ve met along the way.
It’s the relationships that we’ve built up. It’s the trust, right, being faithful, being good, being honest, being truthful, and all the things that you’re doing so that you can lean on that as a careful and smart business person later on and creating enough value that that influence that you’ve developed over those years is worth it to other people.
I think if you use that influence for yourself, you can be successful.
I don’t know, I don’t want someone to write a biography about me if I’m that guy. But I want to be the one that has enough to give away.
And I just want to give it all away, when I’m all said and done, like happy to kind of make sure my bases are covered and the rest I can give to others.
So that’s that fourth stage.
And you can almost see the story arc now of that first person, that’s the taker, the beginning of the career, and the last person at the end how there’s some evolution that has to take place in the middle.
I love that. Honestly, I think what I really do for a living is help people walk through those four stages.
And I’ve developed tools and routines and systems and way of thinking about divest an investor mentality of business owner mentality entrepreneurial issues, you know, more and more detail.
The more years I live, the more detail I get into each of those issues. But to have someone walked through that, that seems like a good life calling to me. I’d do it.
Brian: That’s beautiful. That’s fabulous for somebody. That is the first time I’ve ever heard of those. And it speaks straight to it, I can totally see that I can think of the different biographies of people through time that I think of.
Even, it’s cliche to bring up but it’s because people use it so often, but a Walt Disney, you know, and the fact that by the end of his life, that’s really what he was all about was being the collector, that’s it.
I just want to give it away, I just want to, here’s my playground, go and play on it. Here’s a city I want to build, I just want to pass this off.
And that’s very cool.
It’s a really cool way of thinking about it. I’d love to talk with you some more about in the future. That’s awesome.
Tim: I love your Walt Disney idea.
Because, you know, so in the middle of his career, when he was doing the shift, he was bankrupt. He was leveraging his family’s home, he couldn’t get the films made. The studio’s angry at them, they almost shut down the studio, the studio went on strike the artists. I mean, it wasn’t, it was not easy. It was so not easy.
And Disneyland was like the stupidest idea of business owner, because it wasn’t economically making sense. It just didn’t.
But later on was able to leverage those creations that he had, like turn those characters to life. And then people had desire to meet those characters.
That’s what Disney is today, is living in the happiest place on earth, like living in a fantasy land.
Brian: Yup.
Tim: But when he was all said and done, you know, like the Epcot Center. You know, that was a utopia, he was going to build for houses and stuff like that.
A Cal Arts, the school to develop art, I mean, and more and more and more he if you look at a biography, him he just wanted to change the world into Disney esque ways, for better or worse, he had some issues.
But that is like you can hear it in other people’s story.
I’m always curious, what decisions do I have to make, if that’s going to be true about my story, too?
And I want to be aware of those decisions. I want to think through them.
And I want a model. That’s why I created that model so that people can understand. And they can hear and imagine Oh, like a gallery owner?
Oh, that makes sense. Oh, I could do that today.
I could start a podcast and bring people on it.
And or have a small event that they can grow.
I mean, so ready is one of those those curator, things are happening in our area, those people that originated it, and the influence that they’re kind of gathering and the work that they’re doing a networking. Beautiful example that’s local that happens.
Brian: Absolutely.
Tim: Even First Fridays.
Brian: Yeah.
Tim: Who thought of first Friday night art night, right?
Like that’s, whoever did that is thinking in that curator moment, or maybe even the collector, I mean, maybe literally a collector moment because it’s Friday night art night.
But that’s a beautiful thing that we can see our own neighborhoods.
Brian: Yeah, no, absolutely and we can go on and on. But I’ll probably see if we can end this conversation right here for now.
Why don’t you let all the listeners know how they can find out more about you about RevThink and about your podcast, and so forth.
Tim: Yeah, I’m interested in talking to anybody that wants to buy me a cup of coffee, and maybe has something to talk about.
RevThink.com. That’s our website.
If you’re curious about anything we’re doing. We have just a contact page on the footer of our website, send us an email goes to the info. But myself and Joel, my partner will get that information and we’d be happy to pass it down talk.
I love the entrepreneur. I love the challenges that they’re up against.
Many of us think about things in a difficult way to start off. And if I can break down those barriers for anybody. I’ll talk all day.
Obviously, you can hear it, and you’re like my conversation. So that’s RevThink.com, that’s easy.
ZipLineGear is right in downtown Grants Pass. Go buy a zipline at ZipLineGear.com.
It’s truly one of my favorite businesses that I’m currently involved in. And I have a lot of fun things bone broth and marketing companies and whatever timber up here, just south of town here.
But the zipline gear is so fun because it’s all about the smile on the kids faces, like you’re building a family playground and in people’s backyards.
So, ZipLineGear.com for that.
But also RevThinking podcasts we do or anything else that we’re doing. We’d happy to take people on for the journey and I can look forward to the day that Brian and I have our new book out.
The name of the book is Marketing and Madness. You can figure out which one of us is marketing, which one is madness, but that will be fabulous.
Brian: Hey, thank you so much for being on the show. Tim Thompson, CEO of ZipLineGear.com. Thanks so much for being on Grants Pass VIP.
Tim: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Brian.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Well, this has been a really unique conversation that I had with Tim. Being that we we kind of came on at a completely different direction than I have with most of the conversations I’ve had.
I didn’t know much about Tim, he didn’t know much about me. And we just kind of start getting to know each other, and you’re there listening in as a fly on the wall.
So I am curious how this played off to you. And if you found as enjoyable as I found it being in the middle of the conversation.
When it comes to Grants Pass VIP, we’re trying some very new things. But it all comes down to starting off having a conversation getting to know people, like I mentioned during the show, it’s kind of a networking opportunity, it’s a way for us all to get to know each other a little better, without having to be right in front of each other.
Which it’s funny because it’s an idea that came into play before COVID-19. Yet it’s being implemented during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.
What was so interesting is Tim and I not knowing each other, not knowing a whole lot about each other’s background, and yet having so much in common, and having even a common vocabulary that we can speak back and forth.
So once again, it’s business talk. So I’m not sure how interesting it’s going to be to the average listener, but I was able to meet someone in a very short period of time that I know I’m going to continue knowing getting to know better.
And I mean, you heard Tim mentioned that we’re probably going to write our next book together. I mean, how about that.
So it’s great thing, being able to meet great people like this. Looking forward to talking to more amazing people like Tim.
If you happen to know anybody that you think would be a great guest on the show, please reach out to us at GrantsPassVip.com