Tim Winders went from being a multi-millionaire living a lavish lifestyle to a homeless nomad. What caused such a dramatic change and what spiritual and life lessons did he learn along the way?
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(Transcript is a guide only and may not be 100% correct.)
Emily Olsen: Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host Rodney Olsen.
Rodney Olsen: Tim Winders went from being a multi-millionaire living a lavish lifestyle to a homeless nomad. What caused such a dramatic change and what spiritual and life lessons did he learn along the way?
Where have things landed for Tim over a decade on from those losses?
We’ll find out in today’s episode of Bleeding Daylight.
Rodney Olsen: We all know that life's challenges can teach us more than the good times, but sometimes the journey to those lessons can be very hard. Tim Winders is someone who seemingly had it all until everything he'd worked to achieve was ripped away. These days. He's a speaker, facilitator, coach, author, and podcaster creating and hosting the Seek Go Create Podcast.
I'm very pleased to have him as my guest today, Tim, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Tim Winders: Thank you, Rodney. Great to join you and a great to chat with you on opposite sides of the world.
Rodney Olsen: Let's go back to the two thousands and explore what life was like for you back then.
Tim Winders: yeah, a great question and kind of has, has me going into my memories.
We, in the early two thousands started some businesses in the areas of real estate and, and the way that worked for us, I'm an engineer by training, I'm a, I'm kind of a high energy guy. So when I start something like that, I usually throw myself into it. So shortly after beginning those businesses, we were aquiring anywhere from three to four, sometimes five single family homes or pieces of property per month.
We did that for a number of years. So heading into the mid 2000, I guess we call those the oughts now 2000 ish, five, six, we owned over a hundred pieces of real estate. We probably had it valued at one point and around '07, it was $15 million. Plus we had a coaching business national here in the United States that we were coaching and teaching and training people how to do what we were doing and also a lead generation business that was bringing in leads for motivated sellers and those two companies, coaching and lead gen, was probably would have been valued seven figures plus, and all of that was what we had and, you know, we were, I guess, successful in a lot of people's eyes. We lived in a 6,000 square foot home in a neighborhood that was a resort on a lake in central Georgia with 117 holes of golf and one of our neighbors was a Ritz Carlton. So by all indicators, we were living very well and were very successful leading up to 2008.
Rodney Olsen: That fateful year, 2008. It's got a lot to answer for, but of course we know that there was the global financial crisis. And some people will say, yeah, we predicted it and most say we had no idea. What was the case for you? When did you start to see things begin to turn?
Tim Winders: Well, essentially, that's a great question. Rodney. We actually had coaching clients all over the United States. We had them in Florida. We had them in Las Vegas. We had them in Arizona. We had them in Southern California and so we could see the bubble beginning to emerge in like, '04, '05 and then we saw it heating up in '05, '06' '07. We were seeing, businesses increase, not businesses, but real estate properties increased by 20% year over year in Florida. We had a lot of activity in Florida and you know, when it came to a head for me, And I knew something was going on was I believe it was the tail end of '06.
I got a call. I was on a call with a coaching client in Las Vegas, Nevada. Most people know where Las Vegas, Nevada is and all that goes on there and this coaching client that I may not get the exact numbers, but you'll get the gist of the story he called and said a property went on the market for $225,000 yesterday.
Someone put an offer in for 230, someone put an offer in for 235, should I offer 240? And there was just silence on the line. I recall this Rodney vividly, I've told this story a few times and I just said, we are in trouble. And I mentioned to this client, I said, stop. Don't do anything. Don't do a deal just to get a deal.
There's bigger things at play here, and we just need to pause. And so we were preparing for it. You know, we had some money set aside. We were somewhat warning our clients and our investors, and we knew that there was going to be some form of an adjustment. And like you said, a lot of people said, Oh, we predicted it.
And we said, this was going to happen. I, I think we knew something was going to bust. We knew that there were going to be foreclosures. We knew there were going to be issues in the real estate market. Probably the thing we didn't factor was the level of government involvement in attempting to prop it up that.
You know, if I can point back at what may have messed, messed up, my strategy would be that the government kind of kept things going for longer instead of just ripping the bandaid off, letting things collapse. So, anyway, so that was kind of what we saw leading up to it. We knew it was going to happen.
Rodney Olsen: The prevailing wisdom has always been in the past that real estate is always a sound investment that over time. Property is always going to bring in a return, but that's no longer the case.
Tim Winders: You know? And thank you for reminding me that I used to get up on stages and teach and train and speak and, and tout that in the 60 years, previous real estate has never gone down year, over year. And I did that all the way up until '07, '08 and we were still saying, Oh, real estate will rebound. It will be fine, but you are correct. We're in a different world. We saw real estate. Real estate is still local. I think we need to admit that, but we did see real estate decrease year over year, over year for a few years. And I think, I don't know what it's like in your part of the world or other parts of the world, but in the United States, as we headed into early parts of 2020, we were just now seeing them recover to what they were pre 2008 in many markets in the United States.
Rodney Olsen: I can imagine at the time your whole world is taken up by coaching other people, along with your investments to have the investments come crashing down. It's not only something that hurts you financially, but also knowing that you had been advising so many people, people would have taken your advice and that must have been a weight to bear as well.
Tim Winders: Well, I mean, listen, there was, there were a number of burdens here. Let me also say that you don't build whatever number we want to use, we'll say 15 million in real estate with your own money, you have investors, you have some banks that are involved. You have private people that have taken their hard earned money and said, can you earn returns for me?
And. Probably as, as much as anything that burden kind of ate away at me, Rodney, because these were people that trusted us invested with us. And then as the markets were, you know, it's interesting, it wasn't as much a crash then as almost like a quicksand situation is the analogy that I use because. At any moment and this may even have been to a fault, I literally did think things were going to turn around and that might've been my positive attitude. It might've been my spiritual background. It might've been ignorance. I don't know. But I mean, at any moment, like in ' 08. '09 I said, you know, things are just going to get better and it'll be awesome and we'll recover and we'll be able to get back on track and that led to five years later, 2013, we lost our home. We had gone through bankruptcy. We became homeless and, and began traveling pretty much living in a Honda van. You brought up an interesting point in that I really couldn't continue the coaching and training business. For the simple reason, Rodney, I did not know what to tell people.
If I couldn't do it myself, I don't know if it's integrity. I don't know what kind of words you want to use, but I just couldn't go to Rodney and say, Hey, listen, here's how you buy a property. You buy it here, you buy it low, you fix it up, you sell it, you rent it out. You lease option. I could not do it. If I was not in a position to do it myself, there are a lot of people that have no problem with that.
I couldn't. So after a short period of time, we basically had to shut down the coaching business, even though a lot of people still did it because just like you brought up, I didn't know what to tell people.
Rodney Olsen: It's an interesting dilemma that you've found yourself in at this time, losing this wealth that you had built up and you said that your idea that things were going to turn around came from your enthusiasm, but also from a spiritual background now, That's an interesting one. Tell us about the kind of spiritual background that would drive you to jump on the great American dream of gathering wealth. What, what was it that, that was there in that spiritual background that drove you in that direction?
Tim Winders: Well, as a, I mean, I, I, I am a follower of Christ and that's my that's kind of where I would put myself. Some people might put that in the term, Christian. I actually have. Over the last few years, even kind of separated that out. I, I am a believer in Christ and all that happened on the cross and all that he did for us.
And so I attempt to follow him in all ways. And in the, I guess I'll call it first world. I sometimes call it Americanized Christian mindset. There is this tendency for those that are of the Christian faith to believe that their bank account is a direct correlation to how they're being blessed in, in that world.
And, and I. Kind of fell into that. And so I was sitting here thinking, you know, I'm doing all the things we're supposed to do as, as a Christian. And so all of a sudden we're going through a downturn and you know what, I believe that God is gonna open up the heavens and shine a light on me and everything's going to be okay at any minute now, any minute, now, it things are going turn. And, and, and so that was kinda my mindset from a spiritual standpoint, I'm always. I've always been kind of more of a positive mental attitude guy also. So you mix those two together and what I was doing instead of, you know, cutting costs, getting rid of, you know, overhead that we needed to in business, looking at low performing assets and unloading those even at a discount and, and evaluating what we could do to bring in revenue.
I was probably, you know, there's a term I use a lot, Rodney in, it may be in the scriptures. I'm not sure, but it's thou shalt, not fool thyself. And in many ways I was fooling myself because self-awareness is really such a foundational principle to success in so many ways. And so, and so I was. going against one of my foundational principles, which was thou shalt, not fool thyself.
I was fooling myself thinking that any day now, things were just gonna magically rebound. So I was pulling money from credit lines and, and, you know, paying, paying one credit line to pay off the other one, just to keep some mortgages and things going to try to keep things afloat where. In looking back, I should have just begun a cutting and, and, process of eliminating overhead as, as soon as I possibly could during that time.
Rodney Olsen: So when this all came crashing down and you have this spiritual belief that God needs to shine on me, did it shake your foundation of faith?
Tim Winders: You know, that's, it's interesting. I don't think it shook my foundation of faith, which that foundation is a, is a belief that there is a God that he created us, that there was a creation event that, you know, this is kind of like Tim's version of the Bible, that there was a fall.
And then we needed to be reconnected with the father through what happened on the cross with what Jesus did, the sacrifice that he made. So it didn't shake that foundation. But Rodney, it did shake my foundation in, in what the, I guess the outcome of that belief should be, I guess I thought that because I believed that that, like I said earlier, that there should be some kind of protection or, you know, I'll tell you exactly what it was.
Cause I had long conversations. I, I, you know, some people might. Not understand this. Some people might, but, but I, I communicate with my heavenly father and I have conversations within that go, something like this Lord, what is going on here? We've done all the things that we thought we were supposed to do, but yet.
Our financial world is collapsing. What is up here? And so those were the conversations that I would have and, and they would be long, drawn out conversations. Rodney has this thing played out back in Oh eight Oh nine, 10 11. I would go on long walks on the golf courses in our community. they weren't playing on the golf courses at the time.
Thankfully it was when they were rotating certain golf courses, but I would just walk and I literally, I mean, you kind of heard people talk about crying out to Lord. I would just cry out, Lord. I love you and I want to follow you, but dang, I'm in pain here. This is ripping my insides out. You know, we're losing our house.
You know, I've got kids that are teenagers trying to go to college. What is going on? And kind of the long story shortened there, Rodney is, is I just came to really a deeper understanding of what that relationship was. And his response to me at one point was I'm not an ATM machine. Don't. Don't try to be connected with me when things are going great and then things go bad. You think you're going to come, you know, stick the ATM card in and get finances and cash. That's not what the kingdom of God his kingdom is all about. And so I don't know if that answered your question, but that was really. Where, what was shaken was my understanding of what blessings were all about.
My understanding of what the byproduct of a relationship with the creator with the father was not really that he existed. And I believed in him, it was. What were the results of that and what, and how I should be operating and thinking in terms of that
Rodney Olsen: You touched on something that I have been wanting to explore, and that is that you didn't go through this just on your own. So it wasn't just a financial crash for you, but you're married, you've got teenage kids. How are you all coping with this as a family?
Tim Winders: well, first thing I would say is, you know, in many ways you would have to ask them, but I can, we've had long discussions about this so I could share what we've gone through.
I, I am married, have been married for over 30 years. Beautiful. Her name is glory. So we joked that if you're around her, you have been glorified. And I definitely have for, for many, many years, and. And I'll just, I'll mention what we went through. And then in a separate kind of dialogue, I'll probably mention what the children went through, because that was obviously a separate item, but we have always drawn closer to each other. When we have had issues, that we've had to work through and early on in our marriage, there was some situations with, with her mother that there were some suicide attempts that really could have. Torn into our marriage. We drew closer together during those times and bonded over it and during these times we would, I've always been a guy that thought that I could just roll out of bed and, and figure out a way to make money. And, and Rodney, for, for whatever reason, during those times, it started getting to be where I could not generate the ideas. I, I didn't know what to do everything that I seem to put my hands to didn't lead to any fruit.
So it got to be where my efforts weren't weren't working, which there's a really a deeper spiritual message to that also because many of us think we could do a lot of things on our own. And really for those people that are believers and followers, there's a, there's a whole thing about submitting ourselves.
To the father and to our belief in Christ. And so really I think the byproduct to this bigger picture was from a scripture that I, I quote often for those that, that meant read the Bible. Romans eight 28 is, is that, God will use all things for good, for those that love him. And I believe that the Lord was looking.
To find a way that he could get through to me and so during this process, my wife and I, after it, got to the place where we didn't really know what to do with our time, we couldn't put our hands to anything and earn money. I even tried to even get a job at a local McDonald's in our resort area. And I couldn't even get a job at McDonald's, which is interesting.
Most people would think they could, Rodney, we, my wife and I, we would get up in the morning. And we would get a cup of coffee and we would sit in our home, our big 6,000 square foot home that we had started getting rid of furniture. And because we thought we may have to move at any time as we were getting behind on the mortgages and payments and we would sit and we would get our Bible.
And we would read and we would pray and we would just bounce ideas off of each other. And we would sometimes listen to ministers and we would just press in and attempt to develop a closer relationship with the Lord, which then also meant there was a closer relationship with the two of us. And it strengthened our relationship with him and it also strengthened our relationship with each other. Now that doesn't mean that there weren't struggles in, and we were in a stressful situation. And as, as credit collectors and debt collectors started calling and then the sheriff started knocking on our door when we weren't making payments on our house, that was not.
A positive situation. And she dealt with a lot of stress that caused some health issues. And, and I was probably having my insides ripped out, but that was my wife and I, we actually, during that time learned how to rest and relax. And submit and just to allow ourselves to, I use the word marinade a lot. I don't know if that resonates with people, but we just marinated in the love of our heavenly father.
And some people would say, what do you mean love of heavenly father, you're saying you're going through this horrible financial situation. You know, peace and being relaxed really has very little to do with financial ebbs and flows that we go through. We really need to learn how to function, whether we have a lot or we don't have a lot.
And that's kind of what we learned during that time. My wife and I, so that was my wife. And I can talk more about the children unless I want to pause there and let you interject.
Rodney Olsen: When we have a partner in life, a husband or wife, there's that opportunity that it's going to something like this will either break us apart or it will draw us closer together, but the kids they're watching on and thinking, what have you done with our lives? I'm interested to hear some of their responses.
Tim Winders: Well, a few things they were as this started. Our daughter was finishing up her high school, high school, like 17, 18 years old.
Our son would have been a few years younger than that. So our children are now let me fast forward. Just so people in our children are now 29 and 26. They are well functioning adults. We have great relationships with them. Our daughter is now married and has had our first grandchild, which is cool. And we are now working in business and interacting with our children on almost a daily basis.
So I only say that too, when I back up and go through what they went through, many people would say, Oh boy, this story can't. End. Well, I guess I wanted to give the ending and kind of do time travel to go back before I, before I told what all they went through, you know, when. When you move to a resort community and your children have access to country clubs and the ability to go to a club and charge a meal, or play golf or tennis, or go to a, you know, the indoor pools you do kind of wonder at times if that's a good thing for them, or if you're messing them up and.
And it was probably good that they were able to see that tight lifestyle leading up to when things collapsed. But Rodney, obviously it became difficult when we started to have to tell them, listen, you don't need to go to the club because we knew in the back of our heads, that our account had been suspended.
you know, we're just going to eat in the house. More and, you know, you don't need to, you know, I know maybe you thought you were going to get a certain type car when you turned 16, but you're going to need to drive this Camry that's got 200,000 miles on it and then when you go to college, you know, try to make that car work for you.
So. I think the biggest thing was maybe two or three things. I'll just kind of, I'll just kind of rattle off here. One probably the biggest thing they would say that was a challenge for them was that they saw their parents be successful. I mean, they saw me speak on stage. They saw their mother speak on stages and teach and train and do webinars and videos and, and probably in their eyes, they would tell you, we were, I don't know if invincible, but we could do no wrong in their eyes, which is, that's a lot of that.
You know, a lot of children look at their parents that way and then as this progressed, They, they probably had that challenge and they wondered probably they they've told us later, you know, is being in business for yourself. The way one wants to go is, is, you know, how people earn money and how people work is that even something that's valid in the world.
And there's a whole generation that saw that downturn occur in Oh eight, nine, 10. That the reason they are the way they are today. Where they, they pursue experiences and they're, aren't building and buying the big houses like we did is because of that experience they went through and that's the way our children were.
But the biggest thing Rodney, I want to say is that they also saw. Their mother and I sitting down with the word of God, studying and studying and praying. And we were asking a lot of questions that weren't, it wasn't as if we were just sitting there passively, you know, we were spending time in prayer and we were spending time discussing it and they would, they would come and go from those conversations.
But probably the thing that they saw that impacted them the most was that as things got really bad, we actually pressed in harder to, to have a relationship with our heavenly father. And, and I I'm hopeful that if you were to ask them the question now, and we've had the discussions, they would say, that's what they learn, because they're all they're walking in their faith.
Then they're doing business and, and, I'll just check this morning, our sons and is in Montana, he's got his own RV and he lives in travels in that, and he's on his way to glacier national park and our daughter's out in Colorado and living in the mountains and they're doing great. And I'm sure that sometime later today we'll communicate with both of them.
So, you know, was it tough? Yes. Are they okay now? I think so.
Rodney Olsen: The narrative that we all like to believe for the great American dream in your case, or the great Australian dream here, and we see it in the movies is that we see people who go through a terrible downturn. but then something happens. They ride it out and everything goes back to normal.
So according to that big narrative, you should now have your $15 million back, you're back in a huge home. Is that the case?
Tim Winders: My wife and I have been nomads, homeless nomad since 2013, Rodney. We spent some time in Australia, New Zealand briefly for a while too. And we currently live work, travel in an RV, and I will say this, we have more cash in the bank than we ever have in our lives.
We. We are at peace. We are at rest. We are walking in, I don't even know if the term's victory or what, you know, it's kind of a churchy word, but we, we actually are functioning at such a higher level. As far as peace goes. Than we ever have. So the 15 million in the bank, no remember that was 15 million in real estate at the time that wasn't liquid, we have more cash liquid than we ever have and I'll, and I'll tell you why I'll give you the, the lesson learned. We were doing extremely well, you know, four or five and six, but every time we had an increase in our revenue or wealth, We also increased our lifestyle to match it and coming out of what we did in 2013, where we became homeless, we use the word nomads.
It just sounds better, but we were homeless. We made, we purposed that as a dollar came in. That we would live off of a minuscule percentage of that dollar. And the rest of the dollar would go towards some giving that we like to do. We would go towards some accounts that we would set aside for our children.
It would go into investments. It would go into just having a boatload of cash sitting there. So as our finances increased and they have. We kept doing that. And so. So the answer to your question is exterior someone looking in might go, well, they don't live in the big house. They don't drive the cars, but we probably are living a lifestyle that many would envy because we go where we want to go.
We do what we want to do and money doesn't rule any of our decisions.
Rodney Olsen: It's extremely counter-cultural. We are told that we're going to be judged by what people can see and yet you're talking about something that's very different and yet there's a peacefulness that, that most of those people who are grasping for those things don't have, do you realize how counter-cultural that is?
Tim Winders: I not only realize it, I embrace it and pursue it and I don't want to say I take pride in it, but in many ways I get energy knowing that I'm observing the masses and doing the opposite, you know, on, on our, on our first season of our podcast, Rodney, I was, I felt led to share a lot of the details of this story and as, as that unfolded, and as you know, in the industry, you're in, you know, sometimes talking through things is almost one of the best ways of processing and, and even me communicating with you right here is just a great way of kind of, having some wisdom come forth because you like go, huh? I never thought about that.
Great question, Rodney. Thank you for asking that, but in light of what you just said, We are in a culture and let's call it first world. I've been to Australia. So I know it exists. I've been to New Zealand, I've traveled quite a good bit. And of course I was born and raised and lived most of my life in the United States.
We have a capitalistic society that is fueled by increase. If you and I are not increasing our consumption, the wheels of the economy can grind to a halt. And that's what we saw in Oh eight, the debt structure and all ground to a halt. That's what we may be seeing right now. If people don't get out after the pandemic and start spending money somehow some way, because the, the world can't function, that world can't function.
If you just have one big screen TV, It can't function. If you just have two big screen TVs, Rodney, it has to function. If you are putting a big screen TV in every room of the house, and if every year comes Superbowl or the, the championships of rugby or, or whatever it is that people watch, they need to go out and get a new one, and then they need to take the old one in stored in their garage or their storage facility.
That's what makes that world go around and so to get off of that cycle, that forced consumption, it takes a lot of work to not be constantly accumulating. It's the anti accumulation mindset. Some people will call it a centralism or mental minimalism or something like that. So, Rodney you're exactly right.
And, and once you get over that hump or that bubble, it is so enjoyable. not to be in that mode of, of being at the whims of the consumption accumulation society that most of us live in.
Rodney Olsen: There seems to be a difference that you're talking about of a lifestyle that will control someone and demand so much of someone and the sort of lifestyle you're living, where you dictate what happens and you dictate the lifestyle.
Tim Winders: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you're talking about a control thing and a lot of the reasons that people get under stress is because they're out of control and, and you know, there there's a certain degree of, we don't control a lot of what goes on around us. You know, in many ways, Rodney, what we do is we kind of live our lives allowing other people to make decisions for us and when I say other people, if, if we're in a home and Joe and Sally that lived next door, pull in their driveway with a nice new, you know, smells great vehicle, we look out our windows. And even though we don't need a new vehicle, All of a sudden, we begin having this discussion of, well, you know, if Joe and Sally got a new vehicle, maybe we should get a new vehicle.
You know, not that we need one, we got one, two or three or four already in the driveway, but Joe and Sally got it. So, so what we end up doing is we attempt to impress people that really, we shouldn't be impressing. We need to just be thinking about what, what are we doing? I'll I'll, I'll tell you exactly the way my wife and I think if I could kind of go down a mini spiritual path here, we desire to be in a position to where if during our quiet time where we're just having conversations with the Lord.
He says, you know, I think that you guys need to travel to Perth, Australia to hang out with this new friend of yours, Rodney, that you talked to on this podcast, he's doing some things in ministry. He's doing cross country bike rides. He's, he's attempting to minister people there. I think y'all just need to go and see what you can do to help him.
We just want to be in a position to where, if that's what we feel in our heart, soul, spirit, whatever, then we can say, you know what? Let's go. And we can do that, that we don't have burdens that are weighing us down that keep us from doing those things. If that makes sense to you. I don't know if that makes any sense at all.
Rodney Olsen: That makes a whole lot of sense and I think a lot of people would resonate with that thinking. "I wish I had the opportunity to do that. I wish I had the freedom but I'm tied down by so many things." So it's, it's very refreshing. Now I want to reflect back. We talked earlier about how, when you were before the financial crash, you were guiding people and coaching people to amass, whatever wealth they could and then you found you didn't have anything to teach. Well, these days you're coaching again, I imagine the sort of coaching that you're providing for, for businesses, it looks very different to what it looked like way back then.
Tim Winders: Yes, it does and it's interesting story, you know, when, when you go through that type of we'll see, we'll call it a collapse. I don't, you know, I guess that's a good word for it. It can really rattle your, confidence and I've, I've probably especially pre Oh eight would be one that someone would say, Oh, look how confident in some ways, possibly arrogant, you know, that guy is. And, and that probably is one of the big things that has been adjusted.
But when you go through all of that, there is quite a bit of guilt and shame and sight, man. I don't think anybody, I don't want to put myself out there and share any more, but, but Rodney and about. You know, we, we kind of launched and started our nomad lifestyle in 2013, 2014, just traveling around about 2015.
I started getting phone calls and I wasn't marketing. I had no funnels. It wasn't like I even, I may have had a website up that still, you know, kind of told a little bit about who I was. I started getting phone calls from people and they were saying, Hey, listen, can you help us? Can you help us with our business?
We need some, somebody to coach us either from a leadership standpoint or marketing or help us grow the business. And I said, sure. And, and, and so I actually started getting people that were reaching out to me. That just wanted me to help, grow, expand, fix portions of their business. And he was a, these were in all industries, some were in real estate, Rodney, but others were just industries that I would not have a background in, but we know success, principles and principles that we use to grow businesses are, are somewhat common across a lot of industries.
And so I just started doing that. And, you know, I consider those blessings. I consider, as I was attempting to humble myself, I was just having some people reach out. So it started bringing financial reward into us. And, and that was a real blessing. And, and that continued to grow. And. There are still clients that came to me in 2015 that I'm still working with on a monthly basis.
So the ideal thing that I love to do Rodney is work with the leader of an organization. And when I say organization, I mean a company, a business or a ministry, because we also have a five Oh one C, three or nonprofit that we call it here in the United States. And, and I actually work with the leadership or the leadership teams, and I coach them one-on-one I just, this last week had a facilitated session for two days while I worked with them on their mission, vision values.
And now we're working strategic planning to implement all of those things and put them in place so that they can grow from wherever they are, to where we believe that they need to be. And that's really kind of my sweet spot of what I enjoy doing. I get a lot of energy from that. And I also think this is kind of interesting.
I think it relates to what you were asking. I think it was Mike Tyson that says the fight. Doesn't start until somebody gets punched in the nose. And any net, as far as business, as far as finances, as far as my perspective on life, I think I could safely say, I felt like I was punched in the nose pretty hard.
I was actually probably pummeled a little bit more than being punched in the nose, but you know, you pick yourself off the mat. And you kind of assess where you're at, make sure things aren't broken or there's not open wounds that the wounds are becoming scars that you could learn from. And then when you get beyond that and move beyond that, there's just a tremendous amount of wisdom from going through that punch in the nose, because what you're going to do is you're going to start allowing for.
Preventing that punch from occurring again. And then when you work with people, you can help them prevent that punch in the nose, also.
Rodney Olsen: You've touched a number of times on the spiritual side of this journey. We all know in relationships that sometimes there's an event that happens or someone who says something and we think, you're not the person I thought you were, and I have a sneaking suspicion that you suddenly thought, you are not the God. I thought you were. Tell us some of the lessons that have come out of the kind of God that you discovered through this.
Tim Winders: I think the biggest lesson for me is that I would attempt to be guide in certain areas of my life and then some areas I would allow God to be God and so the biggest change you asked, what did I learn about God? I think what I'm doing is I'm twisting it and saying is that God was the same all during this process. It was really what was I allowing God to do in my life in certain areas is the change that occurred.
And, and I've done a deep study in the kingdom of God and Matthew six 33 is a great scripture for anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time around scripture. It's, Seek ye first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. And those things are things of the world, like the possessions and finances and all that we talked about earlier.
And boy, I was really heavily involved with the things and I needed to start seeking that kingdom in all areas of my life. So that, so the shift that occurred, Rodney was really more in me and that I started allowing God to be God. I submitted to God in all areas and I'm hopeful now it's all areas. I mean, I may discover in the near future that there's still some areas that I've got to sacrifice and submit, but as best I can tell now, just with the piece that I see and the fruit and the way we're living, I'm doing much better.
I'll say it this way. I'm doing much better than I was doing back in Oh six, seven, eight leading into that downfall because we're just at a nice peaceful place. And the fruit that we're seeing from all of that is just really enjoyable to us. So, so I guess I kind of twisted on you. God, didn't change. I changed through all of that,
Rodney Olsen: Tim, it has been an absolute delight to speak to you and I know that there's so much more that we could explore over time, but we're gonna leave it there for the moment. But Tim, thank you so much for spending some time with us on Bleeding Daylight.
Tim Winders: Thank you, Rodney. I've enjoyed the conversation.
Emily Olsen: Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight. Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others. For further details and more episodes, please visit BleedingDaylight.net
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