Ep53 Tim Windsor - Curiosity Awakens the Lion: The Power of Productive Provocation

Tim Windsor  0:00  
If I'm not having the right conversations with others, if we're not having the right conversation as a society, if we're not having a right conversation as a business, it's because we're asking the wrong questions. Curiosity doesn't kill the cat, actually. Curiosity awakens the lion.

Suzanne Taylor-King  0:17  
Hey, hey. Welcome to a podcast where dreams meet determination and success is just around the corner. I'm your host, Suzanne Taylor King, and I'm here to help you unlock the full potential of your business and your life. Welcome to unlock your way with SDK, let's unlock your path to success together. Good morning everyone. Suzanne Taylor king here for another live episode of unlock your way with STK, and today we've got a really interesting story about how I met this guy, and we in the pre show little five minutes we've never met before. So welcome to the show, the uncommodified. Tim Windsor,

Tim Windsor  1:07  
well, it's great to be here, and what an introduction. Now, I got to live up to it. I'm not sure that's a big challenge. Yeah,

Suzanne Taylor-King  1:12  
no, not for you. I already know. So I want to just unpack for my listeners, my tribe, even my clients who tune into this episode, that the way I found you, I stumbled across your profile on LinkedIn, and it stood out because of what You said in your headline. You called yourself a provocateur. And I was like, Who is this guy? Tell me about that?

Tim Windsor  1:50  
Well, I have to admit, I think I inherited this quality by DNA. I've been a provocateur since the time I was born. I was always provoking something I don't know, often not necessarily great things, but I was, I was provoking something, whether it was as a child in school, provoking my teachers by asking too many questions, whether it was provoking my my family about who we were and who we weren't and why I wanted to be Different, I've always been poking the bear as it wasn't were. And so for me, this idea of me being a provocateur, actually, although I never called it that, it came out of an experience I had with a client in Vegas one time, and we were doing this exercise where we were making up superhero names. And the best accolade I ever have is my customer came up with a superhero name for me, and they called me agent provocateur. That was my superhero name. And so I thought, You know what? I'm going to wear it. I've been wearing it from the time I was a child. I'm going to wear it proud. I'm going to wear it loud. I actually believe that provoking people, pushing them forward, being a provocateur. This idea of sort of putting your spurs into things, yeah, is really important, because sometimes people need that little push. They need to get a little bit uncomfortable. They need to have some pressure in a respectful way, but in a but in a purposeful way that provokes or pushes them into the space they need to be. They want to be there, they want to get there, but they need that nudge, and sometimes they just need a kick. And so that's sort of how I've seen my life.

Suzanne Taylor-King  3:32  
Well, I love the fact that you're saying it's who you are, it's who you're being as a person, and that was with you from childhood. I was always called the instigator in my friend group. I was the idea person. Oh, we're gonna do this on Friday. You tell your mom this, you tell your mom that, and we're gonna get to go do this thing. And now that's who I am as a coach, as a community founder, and it's gosh it I wish I had understood that about myself sooner. One of my coaches is actually listening right now, Justin, who helped me with human design and Gene keys and really understand who I am as a person, so I could actually do that. And what it sounds like is you spent some really quality time doing exactly that.

Tim Windsor  4:34  
Yeah, no, I would say the journey to that is never a straight path. Of course, journeys are only straight in our mind, whether whether it's a business journey or personal journey. And, yeah, I think for me, and part of where I've come to in this is that, although this was my nature, you know, I mentioned that sometimes this, you know, even in school, you know, I got kicked out of grade nine science because I asked too many questions of the science teacher. I thought that what science was about exploration. And asking questions, but apparently not so what I learned over the years, and I for many years, I didn't, wasn't living. I didn't live my authentic self because I was coached, I was cajoled into a corner in my life where I was eventually told, or the message I received is that the way forward is to sit down, shut up, follow the rules, fit in and and that's how you you manage the experience. And so it wasn't really till my mid teens when I when I began to really ask myself, you know, was I the person I wanted to be? And at 1617, I realized I wasn't. I was not the person I innately wanted to be, and now I had some choices. I had to ask a series of better questions about how I was going to find my more authentic expression of myself. That challenge for a lot of us is that, whether it's in life and business, is that we're sort of coached or cajoled into a corner by all these voices, even the voices inside your head, that when it's painful, because standing out and standing up is is painful. There's pain with with moving against what I call the homogeneous horde. You know, in our lives, we got these this horde of sheep around us. We got these flocks, and we're ultimately told. The way I look at this is that when I was a kid, I felt like the only way I could stand out from the herd was to be the black sheep. And then I realized that really, that means I needed to self identify, or I need to express in a, in a in a bad or a negative way, I left. So I come to this idea, really, is that I want to be the more colorful sheep in any herd. And that's where I've taken my life. I've taken my journey, and I really want to take my customers when I get a chance to do so.

Suzanne Taylor-King  6:44  
Hence the sheep on your website. Hence

Tim Windsor  6:46  
this, hence the sheep, which probably one of the best websites I've ever seen. Oh my gosh. You know what? First of all, I'm extremely flattered you would say that it has nothing to do with me at the end of the day. You know, I really believe that so much of my journey has been defined by luck. It's meeting the right people at the right time. It's lucky circumstance the same time it's it's based on, you know, the true definition of luck, I think it might have been Seneca the philosopher, said luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparedness. And so I think I've been prepared, or preparing myself over my life where certain circumstance, serendipitous circumstances, define me, yeah, and so, but it's been luck. So I've met great people who've been extremely gracious to me. I've met great people who can help me do things that I can't do. They're better than I am in so many ways, and I love partnering with them. And so all the expression that you see, whether it's on LinkedIn or whether it's our web presence, this comes out of the mind and hearts of other individuals who have been so kind and gracious to me over the years in helping me express more of who I have.

Suzanne Taylor-King  8:00  
Well, isn't that the journey? I mean, I think when someone knows you and they can help you be more of that, I find a lot of that happened when I help a really great person get their message out into the world or become who they're supposed to be in this world of entrepreneurship. And the fact that you quoted stoic philosophy is just, you know, I've been a fan of that for 20 years. And how, Hmm, how incredible it is to pick someone to connect with, because that I truly believe intuition was involved. Maybe there was, you know, some little clue like, Oh, that guy will have a great conversation. And how do you know you're going to have something in common with somebody you don't? But when you start trusting that and bring that into the business space and loving your website, and if you had said you built it, amazing, but the fact that you trusted someone else to help you express your brand, your mission, being a colorful sheep, the way you described that, that's an incredible visual brand for who you are as a person.

Tim Windsor  9:44  
Yeah, you know, it's, I tell you, it's really humbling when you think of the journey that you go on, because you you again, unless you fall in love with your own, frankly, bolshe, your own hubris about who you are, and you sort of, and you want, then you want to. Create this persona, which I think the tyranny of that is, is that that just becomes weighty armor that is just to carry. I think this is where, again, it's a it's this delicate balance as we explore and we find ourselves and we we figure it out along the way, as we go and and I think again, when I think of being a provocateur, the other way I describe myself is, I do believe I'm a catalyst. I and I'm a catalyst both my myself and others. And the other thing I would say about this is, and it's important, is that if you want, if you're something, but only to others, that I don't think it's your authentic self. So for me, I'm a provocateur and catalyst of myself first. So I'm going to be, I'm going to provoke myself and catalyze myself towards where I want to go first, so that I can know what that feels like, and I can do the hard work that that it converts thinking to action, because we, we were fed so many lies in our life and in society. You know, for years, you know, most of us been told this idea. You know, it's the thought that counts. I actually believe that's totally erroneous. It's not the thought that counts. The thought is the embryonic seed that creates action, but it's the action that counts, thinking in and of itself. At the end of the day, if we don't stop thinking and start doing, and we don't convert it into action and birth it into the real world, if that thought, that that immaterialness of that thought is not birthed into the reality that we're in. We add no value at the end of the day. Value only happens, I think, when we take that and we catalyze it into true action. And that's where it's challenging, because in the thought in our mind, it's always perfect. It's it's always perfect in our mind, yes, but when you get that action out into the real world, it's never perfect. It becomes imperfect. It becomes improbable for times, and then we have to sort of move it and stick, handle it, into, into where we want it to go. And I think for me, I'm always like, I'm going to do that for myself first, and then I'm going to see if I can have the privilege to do it with other humans or other business people. But I also want to be the person that's provoking myself and pushing myself off the cliff into that scary place where, where, where you're you know, you're finding that moment where you're shaking in your boots, where your teeth are chattering and you're not sure if it's going to happen when you're when you're catapulting yourself into uncertainty. That's where the magic is that. That's where you feel for me anyways, and maybe I'm just a little bit crazy. That's where I feel most alive. Well,

Suzanne Taylor-King  12:38  
I I feel like maybe we're a little crazy together. Because I think the number one thing for me as a coach, I can't ask someone to do something, or be something or take action on something that I wouldn't be willing to do myself. And I see a lot of incongruencies in the online space, and I have a BS meter like nobody's business. And I think when I see things in the online space that are do this, do this, do this, and you'll be successful, or you'll make a million dollars, or you'll do $30,000 a month, and that's not how that person is making their millions. I really feel, wow. How does that happen? How do how do you end up in a space? And I was so curious about this when I first came into the online space. How do I be who I am and do what I do, helping other people, but But stay in that space of that's what I sell. Yeah, I had to be willing to do all of those things myself. Otherwise it didn't feel authentic to me. It didn't feel congruent with what I was asking other people to do. And I think if you're willing to do that, but how did you how did you get to that point of understanding you were willing to do that with yourself? First?

Tim Windsor  14:23  
Well, I think for me, I maybe innately for and partly, maybe just the I think our childhood shapes us, our life experience and and often things the most difficult, oftentimes the most difficult things in our life actually become the thing that shapes that most precious part of us. Because I think that in difficulty, in struggle, you know, in pressure, you know, we know in the natural world, the pressure in the in the Earth creates wonderful, rich minerals out of, frankly, sludge, and, and, and so that's true in our own life. So I think part of it is just innately the way that I. I want to live life I love the word you chose in congruency. This is something that is very important to me. I I don't want to live in a way that has hypocrisy at its at its core. I want to be congruent to what I believe to be true, even if, even if it hurts, even if it costs. There have been times, even in my own business, where I I've said no to work, I've said no to contracts. I've said no to engagement, because the customer has an outcome they want. They want to do something, but I know that the process they want to use will not give them the outcome they want. In fact, it'll be disrespectful to their people? It'd be a lot of different things. And frankly, that's where I stick in my hand and say, I hate to say this, but it's just not for me. And I've had people say, are you telling me you're not? Won't take this work. And I'm saying, yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. But I'm not trying to be rude. I'm telling you that because I actually believe that you need to ask yourself some different questions. So for me, I've just it's hard for me to pinpoint how I got here. You know, if I could codify it down to eight easy steps, I probably would. But then the problem is, I try to sell it, and that's not what it's about. There isn't, there isn't easy steps into congruency. I, I think again, part of this is our nature, how we how we want to wire ourselves. We want to live on these authentic ways, and what we're willing to go to battle for. What are we willing to contend for? You know, for me, I have this idea that I was created for, and this might sound, you know, audacious, but I believe I was created for several purposes, and I've got a finite amount of time to execute it, because I'm going to be six, I'm going to be 60 this year. So I got, unless I'm lived 120 I'm not middle aged, so I'm probably past middle age. You know? Yeah, there's not, no, how'd you do it? No, it's time to get it done, and I want to continue to wage war against the status quo, whether it's in myself or others. You know, in Latin, status quo means the state in which we find something, yeah, you know. And we find ourselves in certain states and we don't like it, and then we don't wage war and do the hard work to fix it, whether it's personally, we find our our businesses, in the place where we don't want them, the state in which we find them. Yeah, and we don't wage war against it in in a in a way that will move us forward. We find things in our society. You know, we again we we complain about things in our society, these macro problems that we have, and whether it's in our communities or wherever it is, and we rail against them, but railing against them in vitro is different than waging war against the status quo that exists in others and understanding that we have a superpower. I think we all have a superpower, and part of it is, I think we're born with it and we forget it, and that's our ability to ask great questions that catalyze action, that move us towards the place we want to be, and questions for me, and this is why, I guess this is innately, I would say, what's caused me to move in the direction I want to move in is I've learned to ask bigger, bolder, provocative questions of myself that include me and the answer. Because I actually believe that questions have a superpower and and what I think people don't really understand and don't think about it is when, when you ask me a question and I respond to it, your question has this superpower. Number one, it propels or cause this to happen. A conversation, it it generates action. So a question propels something to happen. But the sneaky part, or the real superpower of questions, is not only do they propel a conversation, they predict it, meaning my answer typically is going to happen bounded with inside the container of the question you ask. So not only do they propel the conversation, they predict it. If, if you were to ask me a question about, you know, how do I feel about the global political challenges between Russia and Ukraine? And I answered and said to you, you know, I really love football artists, you and your all of your audience would say that man has a significant disconnection and problem. See, your question would propel cause to happen, but it also predict where my answer would happen. That the superpower question and what I've learned over my life if I'm not having the right conversations with myself, if I'm not having the right conversations with others, if we're not having the right conversation as a society, if we're not having a right conversation as a business, is because we're asking the wrong questions, because we're

Suzanne Taylor-King  19:48  
not asking

Tim Windsor  19:50  
any questions or any questions.

Suzanne Taylor-King  19:52  
I mean, how many times and and I've had this conversation with so many people, I. Do you notice that you go somewhere, a networking event, a family event, a wedding, a party, and not a single person asks you a question? Yeah, I'm shocked and astonished every single time where I'm the one fueling the conversation, I'm the one engaging, I'm the one asking about other people, and most do not have this skill of just being in conversation with others.

Tim Windsor  20:40  
No, yeah, it's so true. It's interesting. Sometimes I had a I had a conversation recently with a senior executive that I work with, and we were chatting about one of their team members, and I was making an observation about something I learned from them, about them, because I asked questions, and I was shocked, and the leader was shocked that I knew more about this person's personal situation than they know. Now again. Why is that? Well, I think part of it is familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds complacency, in my opinion, not just contempt, complacency. And so we stop asking questions about that we ought to. That's the hard part of familiarity, is we think we know it all. I mean, so our hubris around our knowledge restricts our questions. When we think we know it all, then we have, you know, we're going to be for that fundamentally in the problem. And you know, I remember years ago when my son entered the workforce, and he got a job that was really above his experience in the beginning, and he asked for me, I don't really tell my kids what to do. It's never been the way I've parented. But he asked me Dad, what would be your best advice, and I said to him, Well, Chris, the one thing you need to remember, that we all need to remember, regardless of age, is that any given moment we always know everything we know, but don't, don't mistake that for the fact that we know everything, and the only way we're going to continue to increase our knowledge is, again, that Scientific, that inquisitive, that that that curiosity, that that that, again, does, you know, doesn't kill the cat, it makes the cat wiser. You know, again, we have all these colloquial phrases that work against us in our mind. We have this idea, again, that, you know, that thought, it's the thought that count, it's not. Curiosity doesn't kill the cat, actually. Curiosity awakens the lion. That's what curiosity does in our lives.

Suzanne Taylor-King  22:25  
That's a great quote.

Tim Windsor  22:28  
Well, you know what I, I, you know what I it's great is, is that I never said that before. So you know what? There's this is the power of it, of organic conversation. Because, yeah, yeah, as we have a conversation, I think we find those pregnant moments within the ethos, the ecosystem, the air of our conversation. Most of my life is that's the way I that's the way I create. I don't I create by having conversations with myself. I speak to myself a lot.

Suzanne Taylor-King  22:57  
I self coach myself very often, but I will say something you said about being willing to go to battle, go to war, go to came up for me on Monday in conversation with somebody I talk to every Monday for the past three years, and He asked me a question, which he always does, and we coach each other in those moments on Mondays. And he said, Oh, where did that come from? Like, where did that thought come from? I said, No, no, I'm not responsible for that thought. It was just the first thing that came to my mind. He said, What do you mean? I said, I'm not responsible for the first one. I'm responsible for the second one. And then he added in, the second one is the one that inspires the action. First one can be just your subconscious or your programming or something from childhood, like be seen and not heard. That's how I grew up, right? And, well, look who I am. Now. I'm talking all over the place, so the exact opposite of be seen and not heard. And I just thought being willing to go to battle on those limiting beliefs, those first thoughts that come into your mind, I think that's the journey, that's the self discovery that is required in order to move forward in business, in life, in relationships, and it sounds like you do that on a daily basis.

Tim Windsor  24:54  
You know what I like to think I do? I would say that some days I don't do it as well as others. Days I allow my negative self talk and that first thing to actually cripple me. I allow it to, it to win. I think that I've learned over the years that I need to ask myself when I'm, when I'm, when things are coming into my my my frame of reference. I need a challenge what I'm hearing. I need to, I need to put it through a different test. And no, I would credit a lot of that, frankly, to my mom. My mom raised my parents were divorce quite young. My mom raised four difficult boys in a very difficult situation. We grew up in in government housing in the community that I live in, we didn't have much. I can remember times where my mom would go to buy groceries, and we'd have all our groceries, and she'd write a check at that time, and they would refuse to check because of the dress on it. We would go home without groceries. And my mom instilled from all of us and maybe me, and more particular, because I was much younger than my other brothers. She, she, she always encouraged us to think beyond the labels that people would put on us, because we were very much labeled in our you know, we, we were the family from the other side of the tracks in our community. You know, when I went to high school, my three other brothers had gone to high school, and they were much older than I was, and two of them had get, got kicked out of that high school for various circumstances. And when I went to high school, about three weeks into, my guidance counselor, who I think is supposed to be giving me good guidance, I remember him saying to me, said, when I went and he said, he said, Windsor, I just want you to know I know your brothers and you know what, you're all the same and you won't amount to anything, just like they didn't. That was my first conversation with my high school guidance counselor. Now, wow, here's the turn of that story. I became a publisher. I've worked for myself for the better part of 30 years, but I became a publisher of a business magazine in that community, and my first editorial that I wrote was letter to my guidance counselor.

Suzanne Taylor-King  27:04  
Oh, God bless you. That's amazing. So So

Tim Windsor  27:08  
for me, though, it's moving beyond the stigmatization, the labels that that that others put on us, but also that we put on ourselves. And that's where, again, we're not always our, you know, our best friend, our I have this idea that I'm responsible to be my most unshakably loyal friend. You know, I think that when, when my friends come to me and they're struggling, I believe I am and I know I am a an empathetic, compassionate person who wants to respond in a way that's kind and compassionate while being provocative, and that that's important. And sometimes I speak to myself in ways that I would never speak to my friends. My self talk is not as honoring as respectful to myself, and that's where every once in a while, I hear that voice, that that cry that actually comes to me, and it sounds a lot like my mom, and it says that label is not going to move you forward, yeah, because the label, just like a question, becomes a container. The label becomes a container for which I see myself behaving, and it becomes, ultimately, then it becomes a prison. And I really think that we got to shake the cage. We got to we got we got to break out of those prisons. We got to steal the keys back, and we got to unlock the door and figure out how to move forward. And that is my responsibility. I don't blame anybody else for my life or circumstance. You know, up until my mid teens, and I blamed my dad most of my life for the reason why I couldn't do X, Y and Z. And I came to a critical moment of understanding and belief in my life at that point that that is wasn't going to take me forward, and I needed to ask the different subset of questions, and I need to break free from, you know, what it meant to be when I when my parents were divorced. It was a long time ago. I was the only child in all of my class that had didn't have an intact family. It's different today now, but yeah, then the stigmatization around this was so different, so different, and so again, I think this is where I just encourage anybody who's listening is you got to ask yourself, you know what is? What's imprisoning you emotionally, mentally, what is keeping you contained? What? What's imprisoning your business? What's keeping it from going to the next level? What? What false beliefs about who you are, what you are, what you can become, is actually limiting you, because this is where we get a chance to ask ourselves and call us forward into something different, yeah, and that's, I think, where it starts. I

Suzanne Taylor-King  29:46  
totally agree. And now I'm curious about what self coaching looks like for you. I journal and I I find that when I'm having a limiting. I thought, if I write it and I look at it and I'm like, Oh no, no, no, that's not true, and I'm able to put a line through that and start again. What does that look like for you? Yeah,

Tim Windsor  30:13  
and I love, I love that. For me, it's not so much writing it, it's it's actually physically talking it through it, because I process verbally. And so again, this is why I say I talk to myself a lot. And so this is where I will get that thought out, and I'll get it outside of myself, and I'll speak it. And I think there's something for me about speaking it, which, by the way, breaks the power of the spoken labels for me. So for the speaking out of it is part of my process. Now, I do love to write, and I've learned to write. I used to write a lot of poetry when I was younger. I now, you know, I've now started writing from, you know, I wrote a book that was released in 2023, I'm working on a couple of other books now. So writing is becoming something I do more of. But when it comes to processing those things, self coaching, I'm really having a conversation with myself, and it isn't enough for me for it to be in my head. There's something for me, speaking it out, getting it out, and hearing it for me, that's, that's the moment of critical sort of impact when I can hear it and I I don't know why, but that's just the way I process that

Suzanne Taylor-King  31:24  
and and when you do that, do you typically have somebody to reflect back to you, those those verbalizations, or is it more just listening yourself? So for

Tim Windsor  31:39  
me again, because I grew up in a fairly isolated environment as a child. Again, my brothers were a lot older than myself, and everything I learned to I learned, I learned to be by myself and have and talk to myself so it can just be for me. But I think over the years, I also have an amazing life partner who who is able to enter into these kind of discussions with me? I know this summer, I'll have been married 39 years, so we've been at this a little bit. Congratulations. Yeah. And my wife, Pam, is the most amazing person that I've ever met, and partly because she puts up with all of my, you know, provocative, provocateur nature. But you know, the one thing I would say about about Pam is I've always been able to take things to her and process them. And the problem with me as a processor is when I talk about something because I'm very passionate and rather articulate at times, not always, but usually people think that means I've already drawn a conclusion. And so what happened? Yeah, they'll enter into Yes, the dialog. And but my wife has understood that I'm in process, even though it sounds like I got it all done and dusted, as my British friends say, I don't have it all done and dusted. I'm trying to figure it out. And and so sometimes what happens is people can't enter in, or they can't challenge or they can't give you something because they think you've already made it all happen.

Suzanne Taylor-King  33:07  
Oh, I think this is absolutely brilliant explanation of having those people who give you that space, because so many times when we're processing something negative or a struggle or something we can't figure out, people think when you start talking about it that you want either them to solve it for you, or that you've already figured it out and you're just bitching about it, yeah, and I think the way you've articulated it, you are very good at articulating thoughts feeling like I'm connecting the emotion of processing something verbally only with yourself or with other people. And I think it's so important to have that listener who's able to guide that out of you without judgment, of course,

Tim Windsor  34:14  
and that's why I do think again. I think that those people who choose to get a coach or, to be honest, I have this belief. I believe everybody needs a therapist and the coach, not just again. That's my personal opinion, and then, and that's not just, and I would say that's not my opinion, that's my bias. And I think that's another piece in this, is that so for me, sometimes what happens is, is that when I articulate or speak out something that is become a belief. For me, you know, when I when it's a belief. The hard part for me is that belief usually conjures up either true, truth or or or error. And so the problem I started reframing this a number of years ago, where I would I would say to myself, I would say, I believe this, and then I would say, No, that. My opinion, and then I would walk it back again, and this was transformative for me. I would say that's my bias. Because when I say it's my bias, what I'm saying is I'm being honest with myself that actually it is my bias. I have a bias towards a bent towards something, and that bias when I say it that way, I'm more open to challenge myself, or to allow other people to challenge or invite them to do it. Yeah, if I say this is what I believe, we usually lock down on that, and that's what we'll put the flag on the hill, and we'll defend forever, because this is my belief, and now my belief, I have to continue to convince and evangelize myself about that belief and you. But if I start saying it's not just a belief and it's such an opinion, it's a bias, I start saying, Hey, I could be open to I should, and could be open to other perspectives, whether that's a new self perspective that I want to give myself, because I have a bias bent towards a belief about Tim Windsor, or whether I have a bias bent belief, and it's a it is a biased belief about a way that success is created, or about who a people group is, or whatever. I now open myself up and say, how do you see this? Yeah, help me understand. And I have this idea that, you know, I, and I, the term I use is renting the eyes of another. I want to, you know, in a creepy way. It's not Hannibal Lecter like but I want to get inside of the skin of another human, and I want to rent their eyes. I want to see and feel this thing from their vantage point, so that I can be wiser and awakened. I have this idea that truth is like my hand. It looks different to me than you. You know, I see a palm, and I imagine you don't know. I think truth or perspective is Omni dimensional, and I, and I think that although that and this is the challenge of leadership, I think, you know, I've done coaching and work with leadership over the years, executive figure, as they get higher and higher, up the up the up the castle, they if they fool themselves, where they believe that they now have a complete perspective, when, in fact, I say you have a unique but not complete perspective. Yes, so you get a unique perspective on things, problems, opportunities, as you get up and you start to see things from a different perspective, but if you deceive yourself to think that a unique perspective is a complete perspective, then you will fail miserably, because you will lack the wisdom through the perspective of another person. When you start seeing something through somebody else's worldview, then you recognize, actually you have you have not just beliefs and opinions, you have biases. And for me, this became really sort of a pregnant learning moment. I spent a lot of time over the years. We made a decision over a number of years to make some investment in Africa, a partner, and I and we, we began to invest in in healthcare delivery and some other work in Africa, and in partnership with some amazing people. And what we got stuck in the middle of this thing because we were, we were running up against challenges with some of the leaders, and we were finding ourselves, frankly, complaining and bitching about these people, and I decided I would ask a better question and say, Well, how could I become an ally to these people, not an enemy? So I actually met with the president of the local municipality, and over a number of years, we developed a program that I delivered and paid for, and we trained 150 government leaders in Mozambique and Zimbabwe about leadership skills. Because the reality is, most of them had gotten their jobs because they they were, they were celebrated veterans of the Civil War. So they were really good at killing people, but not so good at leading people. Wow. And so I had this experience, and one time, Carlos, the man I partnered with, I had an experience with him that was so Earth shatteringly perspective altering that I've taken this forward and said, Look, I always have to live in light of this, that man, can I be painfully and brutally wrong? And we got a discussion about the challenges in the community, and I had said to him, Look, Carlos, if we could just get people having less children, you know, we could probably help this community a lot more, you know. I mean, people are, you know, I look around and there's, you know, people are having eight and 10 and 12 kids, and how is this sustainable? And I suggest, you know, hey, maybe we should try to put it in, you know, some kind of a program where we can help people, not as have many kids. And he looked at me with with tremendous compassion, and he asked me this question that just stopped me in my tracks. He said to me, Tim, let me ask you a question. Do you have children? I said, Yes, Carlos. He said, How many to have? I said, Two. He said, How many adult children did you want to have? And I said, Well, Carlos, I already told you, too. He said, No, you're missing the point of my question. And I said, What's that? He said, Well, I have four adult children. I said, Well, that's wonderful. He. Yeah. But my wife and I had a painful decision a number of years ago. We had to ask ourselves this, if we wanted four adult children, how many did we need to have? Because many of them would die along the way. And when he said that to me, Wow, I was rocked to the core about my absolute evil judgment, yeah, on a situation that I thought, as you know, a fat, white, 1% of the world, yeah, person, frankly, yeah. Looked at that situation, and when he said that to me, it, it, it was like a punch to the solar plexus my soul. It took, it took the wind felt,

Suzanne Taylor-King  40:43  
I felt that perspective as a parent, emotionally like, oh,

Tim Windsor  40:52  
it's like a punch to the solar plexus of your soul. And what it what it did, that experience I've carried forward from in that I have, I'm much more on any given day saying there is a high likelihood that I am absolutely wrong about how I'm seeing this Yes, and, and they're so freeing, you know, because, and it's freeing for Me, partly because I grew up with this terrible psychological hiccup about being wrong, and so if I made a mistake as a child, I made a mistake in my life, it was soul crushing. I went into this tailspin, and it just took me down this terrible place. And now I I've come to this wonderful the wonderful freedom of being able to send any given day Tim, you are most likely more wrong today than you're going to be right. Let's open ourselves up to the possibility of learning something new that That, to me, is that's the best part of it, and my grandfather, who was my mom's step dad, who became like a father to me. You know, he once said to me, and I'll never forget this, and it's really guided my life. He said, Tim, if you're learning you're living, if you're learning you're alive. And then he went on to say, the day you stop learning is the day you're dead, or should be

Unknown Speaker  42:19  
beautiful.

Tim Windsor  42:22  
So I'm going to learn. I'm going to challenge myself, I'm going to challenge others, and I'm going to realize that I'm wrong often, and it's okay.

Suzanne Taylor-King  42:33  
Tim, I'm speechless. I have no more questions except, well, no questions, just thanks for your articulation of your process. I love it, and I loved that you brought in that story of being completely wrong. Gave me a gift, and our listeners a gift with that story and the willingness to be wrong and admit that there are different perspectives. I mean, I just think it was incredible. Thank you. Thanks

Tim Windsor  43:13  
so much for the opportunity to chat today. I hope we get a chance to chat more in the future. I love what you're doing. I love the presence that you have. And again, I I get, I get asked to do certain things, and I don't say yes to everything. That's not the way I live my life. I actually believe that intuitively, I do think that there was a reason for this conversation. I don't really understand all that, but I really appreciate the care and consideration of the conversation, the thoughtfulness of your questions, also the risk you take in having a total stranger who you know you see this thing, which could, by the way, just be a persona online. How do you know

Suzanne Taylor-King  43:55  
I know the difference. I don't know how to explain it to you, but I know the difference. And my Podcast Producer, Jason Croft, he he said, Just lean into that. When you when you know the difference, and you can see the difference, feel the difference before you've met the person. Just lean into that. He really helped me be able to trust that he saw that in me, that ability. And so thank you. I don't know what made you say yes to me, but I'm so glad you did. I'll look forward to more conversation. Yeah, no, for

Tim Windsor  44:33  
sure. Yeah. And to your point, you know what? Keeping your online present congruent to who you are is really important? Because you're gonna, you're gonna, if you feign authenticity, it'll eventually, it'll eventually eat you from the inside, because you'll have to become such an actor that actually you you won't be able to keep up to to to that, that that pressure of being something that you can't be.

Suzanne Taylor-King  44:56  
Yeah, yeah. I think I even. Showed your website to one of my group coaching cohorts, and I said, this is authenticity. They said, How do you know I'm like, I don't know. I'm just telling you. So thank you. How can my listeners get in touch with you? Well,

Tim Windsor  45:18  
probably. I mean, I'm all over social media so they could DM me or send me a message my email, my email in this space would be tim@uncommodified.com and again, that whole thing is just a journey for me about uncommodification. But uncommodified.com is the world where sort of all this strangeness lives for me, and if people want to connect, that's great love to connect with people and hear what's happening in people's lives. Love

Suzanne Taylor-King  45:48  
it well. Thanks again. Thanks again for being open and everyone check out Tim's website. You'll be as impressed as I was. Thanks,

Tim Windsor  45:57  
Tim. Wow. Thank you very much. Cheers.

Suzanne Taylor-King  46:01  
Thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of unlock your way. I hope you found today's discussion inspiring and you're ready to take your business and personal growth to that next level. If you're feeling as fired up as I am and eager to unlock that full potential, I'm here to help you on your journey and provide that personalized guidance tailored to your unique goals and challenges. Simply book a one on one coaching call with me, and we'll dive deep into your business aspirations and see how we could co create a roadmap for your success, and whether you're striving to scale an enterprise or just getting started, I'm here to support you every step of the way. To schedule your coaching call, simply visit the website at unlock your way with stk.com click on the book a call button, and we'll turn your dreams into that reality. Subscribe and review on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube, plus, you can join over 800 entrepreneurs in the IDEA Lab Facebook group. Let's make success as an entrepreneur happen together until next time I'm SDK, keep dreaming big, stay focused, and most of all, have fun while you're doing it.

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