Intro Music: "Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away. Waiting for the rainbows end to cast its
gold your way. Countless ways you pass the days. Waiting for someone to come and turn your world around.
Waiting for the answers to the questions you have found. Waiting for an open door.
You can't get something for nothing. You can't have freedom from free. You won't get wise with the sleep still
in your eyes no matter what your dreams might be." - Neil Peart
Kevin: Good morning everybody, this is Kevin Mastaw, your host for another segment of Kevin and the Giant
Peach. The first show of the year 2010 so it's appropriate that my guest is a gentlemen who helps people with
their goals, Tim Cummings. Some more about his background, he is a P.E.(he's an engineer, actually). But
he's an also an accredited associate of the Institute for Independent Business. He describes himself as an
evangelist to business owners. So, if you, as a business owner, have a desire to minister to those in your
sphere of influence, Tim can assist you. And he is also an accredited business mentor. In that, he guides
business owners, step-by-step, through the process of growing their businesses and assembling an
appropriate board of advisors.
And I'll let Tim come on here and tell us a little bit more about what he does. But just to let you know, we're in
the Bible belt. We can now describe ourselves as being in the snow belt because in the last couple of days
we've had a good bit of snow, down here in Nashville.
So, Tim, are you there?
Tim Cummings: Good morning, Kevin. Thank you for having me on and hosting this.
Kevin: Your welcome. And it's a great day to be alive in the United States and a nice day to be, here, in
Nashville. I do have to tell you that I had a bit of a technical glitch. Just before I started the show my headset
went out! So, now I'm on a regular old phone. But we'll slog through this. And I'm sure you have a lot of good
advice for us today. We sat down the other day and talked about what I wanted to achieve in my business and
you were very helpful and thought you'd be a great first guest for this new year, 2010.
Tim: Well, I look forward to the opportunity of helping anybody for which this can be of service. You know
having your own business can be a real blessing. But sometimes it can be a l curse. One of the things that I
have found is that you have to start with your vision. And a vision is not kept in your head. It's not an idea or a
dream. It's something you speak forth. From my perspective, as I've read the Bible I found that God created
everything by speaking into existence. He then created man in His image and, I believe, he gave us that gift of
creating as well when we speak out things. And so, with a business, when you have an idea if you'll sit down
and write out the ideas in such a way that you can share with others and they can come along side and help
you to achieve that vision, you actually create that business with that speaking forth and that writing down.
Once we have a vision - you know, that's kind of the long term where we want to be - the goals that we set
become the stepping stones to arrive, eventually, at that vision. That's why the goal setting is important.
Kevin: But the foundation of your ideas is, essentially, the Bible?
Tim: I believe the Bible is an outstanding business guide. If you've never read through the Book of Proverbs,
specifically from the aspect of reading it as a business manual, you'll be amazed at the wisdom that's there.
Kevin: Can you give an example of a specific Proverb?
Tim: Well, there's a number of them. One that's very commonly quoted is "the borrower is slave to the lender."
If you are building a business, I really discourage people from taking out loans. Once you have to make a
payment to a lender, then your business decisions become weighted in terms of making that payment. And
oftentimes, you have to make poor or bad business decisions because you're being driven by the need to
make that scheduled payment. It's much better if you can bootstrap - pay as you go. It generally slows down
the execution of your business but it actually increases the probability of success tremendously over people
who go out and borrow money and put everything in their life at risk over the success of this business
opportunity.
Another way to do it is to work at developing your vision to the point that other people see a value of investing
in it and lining up Angel Investors and people who are willing to allow you to pursue your vision. They do it
risking their own capital knowing that 7 out of 10 times they do that, they're going to lose their money. But in
the 2 to 3 times that it's successful generally the return is far greater than other places they might have
invested the whole money that they put it. So, there again, vision and goals and things can play a role in you
securing the capitalization that you need to be successful, as well.
Kevin: Now, how long have you been mentoring people?
Tim: I was accredited by the Institute of Independent Businesses which is a British educational non-profit who's
charter is to..
Kevin: What does that mean to be accredited?
Tim: Let me pursue this just a little bit. The IIB, as it's referred, has a charter, as a non-profit, to provide
assistance to small and medium sized business owners. They started doing that by amassing data and figures
and things that they thought would be helpful but they found that most small and medium size business owners
don't have time to research and study - they're so wrapped up in running their business. So, they changed
their approach and they started a process whereby they investigate and vet business people who have
experience and 15-20 years in corporations that understand how business works. Once they've been vetted,
they then do an assessment to see if they can work one-on-one with small business owners and if they decide
that a person meets those qualifications they invite them to attend a residential course that prepares them to
mentor to small and medium sized business owners. And completing that course you are then accredited as an
associate. I'm one of what, right now, is roughly 4,500 accredited advisors all across the world. And this gives
me the ability to assist people in areas that I maybe don't have expertise but I can tap into my network and bring
any necessary expertise to the table for the benefit of the people that I'm working with. By the same token, I
serve as a resource to my associates where expertise that I have fills out their scope of capabilities as they deal
with their clients and customers across the world.
Kevin: But you work, primarily or solely, with small and medium size business owners. You don't, typically, get
involved with big corporations.
Tim: My love is seeing peoples' dreams come true. And that's the gifting that God's giving me. And it plays out
better in the small to medium size business opportunities where I can work as a peer to the person who is
control and making decisions.
Kevin: Ok. And you've been doing this for how long now? How many years?
Tim: 3-1/2 years, I've had my accreditation.
Kevin: Can you give us a few success stories?
Tim: Well, my first client is kind of interesting. A gentlemen, by the name of Peter Rosenberger, has a ministry
with his wife. His wife, Gracie, is a double amputee. She lost her legs several years after being involved in a
very, very severe traffic accident. She is a singer and entertainer. She does public speaking. She's a
motivational speaker. And they have created a ministry called "Standing With Hope" . They have a couple
different aspects to that. You can find out about it at www.standingwithhope.com . But they minister to our
wounded military. They have an open door policy at Walter Reed. They're invited up, often, to work with
soldiers and military personnel who have lost limbs. But they also have developed a ministry under the
inspiration of Joannie Erickson Tada to go to Ghana, West Africa. And they have, actually, partnered with the
national prosthetic clinic in Ghana, West Africa. They have taken Gracie's prosthesis in with them. They've
trained the workers there, who went from whittling pegs for amputees to, now, an amputee can walk in on a day,
have a cast made of their stump, and the next day they'll walk out on a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb. Gracie
likes to say that she'd never put leg on anybody that she wouldn't be willing to wear herself. And they have
upgraded the quality of care. Along with the leg, now they've gone into other limbs as well - arms and things -
the people hear that these are provide by Jesus Christ. So, it becomes a ministry as well.
Peter was my first, mentoring client. He took 45 minutes to tell me how his business was unlike any anybody
else's business. And I agreed with him and said, "you're right, your business is just like any other business."
And, after I picked him up off the floor and dusted him off, we started talking about his business and how to
grow it. In the three and half years I've been working with them, we've been able to grow the business. The
budget has probably increased threefold. The fundraising has improved comparably with their budget. They
have put probably close to a half-million dollars worth of materials into Ghana - into the clinic. They have
gotten support from international corporations. Ghana, West Africa, will probably, in the next 5 years, become
the center for prosthetics in all of Africa and it's going to be in large part due to the work of this business that is
performed to accomplish ministry as well as to improve the lives of the people.
It's interesting, when I came on board, their web traffic was at about the rate of 14,000 visitors per year. Peter
just shared with me the stats that in 2009 we fell just short of 100,000 visitors to their website. So, that's kind of
indicative of the type of growth. I do have a background, 15 years, in web-based communication technology.
So, that is one of the services that I brought to our mentorship in helping their web presence grow to be able to
support that type of traffic as well.
Kevin: What was that website, again, Tim?
Tim: It's www.standingwithhope.com.
Kevin: Ok, Terrific. Now when you first met Peter and - what was his wife's name, again?
Tim: Gracie
Kevin: Gracie. Now, when you first met them, where did you start with them on getting their business up and
running?
Tim: At the time that I met Peter...
Kevin: ..because a lot of people out there have an idea for a business or they have a concept but they don't
have any clue where to start. And I'd say the first thing to do is to call you. And, by the way, why don't you give
out your contact information, Tim.
Tim: I have a website. It's called www.ybuf.com. And it stands for "your business friend". "Y", "BU" for
business, "F" for friend. And it's a dot-com. And it's one way for you to contact me. And you can see some of
the things that I do on that site. I also host a social networking site for business owners, entrepreneurs,
decision makers. It's targeted, primarily, to people in the middle Tennessee area but we have people, actually,
from all over the world that come to that site. And that is www.ceonashville.com. And that's a great place
because it's a free site to join, create a profile. You can then, through the members tab, you find me there and
communicate with me. We currently have almost 300 business people who have agreed to come together in
the spirit of communication to help move all of our businesses forward. So, it becomes a place to find peers
who are willing to help you to the extent that you're willing to help them, as well. And it's a wonderful place and,
I think, Kevin, you're there so you can speak to the effectiveness of CEO Nashville and helping people move
their business's forward.
Kevin: Yeah, we have the luncheons at Corky's in Brentwood, which is basically a Nashville suburb. Although,
I'm sure that people who live in Brentwood don't like to hear that.
Tim: They like to call Nashville a suburb, I think.
Kevin: We have lunch there every Tuesday and we, actually, have a lot of fun, don't we Tim. It's just very
positive.
Tim: They are fun.
Kevin: You're networking with people who have dreams. And not only do they just have dreams but they're out
their pursuing them. They're actually trying to realize those dreams.
Tim: And, weekly, we have people walk in with needs and walk out with a way to get those needs met. And I
think that's the beauty. Like I said, I get a joy when I see people move closer towards realizing that dream or
vision that they had. And so, it's a great place to be.
You asked me, a moment ago, about what my experience was with business. I had a father who believed that,
when summer vacation came around, you went to work. So, starting at 9 years old, I was a scab. We had a
family business and we had a strike going on. So, I spent the summer sweeping floors and packing boxes. Our
family business was Cummings' Signs. It was, at one point, the largest manufacturer of signs for national
customers like Ford, Chevron, Chrysler, American Motors, Holiday Inn. At one time, we owned every Holiday
Inn sign in the world. They leased them from us. Lots of stories there but, basically, I started 9 years. I worked
summers all through the business. By the time I'd graduated from college, I had done every aspect of the
business. Even spent a summer working in Paris, France, when I was 16, which was fun, in a sign shop over
there. When I went through college, I actually went through a 5 year program in engineering and the graduate
school of management at Vanderbilt University. I went into R.O.T.C. and got a scholarship from them. So, I did
the 5 year program in 4 so I could get commissioned with my year group. I spent 7 years on active duty as an
engineer. I went to school how to learn how to engineer and then I went into the army and became one. I had
a heavy equipment platoon doing port construction. I, then, commanded a diving detachment for the army for
three and a half years which was quite an experience. I was sent to Germany and spent 3 years defending the
Fulda Gap as an engineer officer in support of an armored cav squadron. At that time, my Dad, who had
retired a full colonel from the air national guard, came over to visit. He was briefed on what my job was in war
time. He came out of the briefing and grabbed me by the shoulder and said, "you're coming home with me." I
said, "well, not quite yet," but after my tour was over, I did come back to the family business. We had a 200,000
square foot manufacturing facility located in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which is about 27 miles southeast of
Nashville. I moved down there and took over the engineering department. I ran that for a few years and then
was promoted to vice president of manufacturing and I ran the entire facility. We were, at that time, producing
about 22 million dollars worth of sign products a year on an assembly line process, state-of-the-art facility. I
became certified as a quality trainer. So, I have experience in quality and manufacturing. I've studied
bottle-neck theory and became adept in that. I was the person who integrated cad-cam and and cad assisted
drawing to cad assisted manufacturing. So, we actually brought in and implemented computer manufacturing
systems. So, I have exposure to being in a family business. I have exposure to manufacturing. I understand
thermoforming, paints and coatings, metal manufacturing - we used a lot of aluminum extrusions. I hold a
patent for a device that controls the processing of neon tubing. So, I have a broad experience to help people
whether their business is going into making goods and products or its into services or web-based technology.
As I said, when I left my family business, we brought in investors and it went from being where I had influence
and could make decisions to where someone else was doing that. So, I didn't really want to stay there. So, I
launched a business that was web-based communications systems, that I programmed myself, for membership
organizations. I had products called "the school buzz", "the church buzz", "the political buzz" where I provided
web-based relationship for membership organizations. So, I bring that experience, as well, into business, how
you can leverage technology to build relationships because all business, basically, boils down to relationships.
You establish relationships. You set a value proposition for your goods or services where people see that they
get more from you than what they pay you in terms of compensation and that becomes the basis of the
business relationship.
Kevin: Right. The idea of under-promise and over-deliver, so to speak.
Tim: Well, I don't like to under-promise. I like to promise and deliver. But understand that whatever I'm
delivering, whoever my client is, has to perceive that they're getting more than the dollars they're giving up.
People don't buy on need. I mean you can convince me all day long, "I need a brand new car from an
automobile dealership" but to take a 30% hit in depreciation the moment I drive it from the lot will never
convince me to buy a brand new car. When I see that I have a need for a new car and buying a used car that
maybe 2 or 3 years old where someone has taken the depreciation hit and I can now get a good deal on it, then
that's the value proposition where I perceive that the money I pay is equal to or less than the value of the car
that I get. That's how people buy. They buy based on benefit, not on need.
Kevin: Yeah, that's true. Something just struck me as you were going through your list of experiences. Would
you call yourself a serial entrepreneur?
Tim: Well. Yeah. I am one of those guys who sits in the shower and my water bill gets pretty big because the
ideas just keep coming. In fact, one of the sessions that I do with people, sometimes is - I do it a lot with
inventors - how do you handle creativity? When you keep getting all these ideas and you actually have more
ideas than you would ever be able to execute on. That becomes a big frustration for a lot of people because
they feel they have an obligation to do something with the ideas. They feel that they've been given these ideas
as a gift and if they don't take advantage of them, then they're squandering their gift.
Kevin: That's what I was going to ask you is how do you handle that if you're in the middle of a project? If
You're in the middle of a project. You're building a new business or you're working with a new client. All of
sudden you think, "oh, I have another idea for this." So, at what point do you walk away from whatever you're
working on to pursue something else.
Tim: Well, the first thing is that I would never walk away from a client. But I do see my role with clients to be a
tenured role. It's there for a time. One of the things that I understand about what I do is that handing my client
off to someone else is not a failure, it's a success. It says that they had a need for what I could offer, they've
taken advantage of that, and they've grown to the point where, now, they need something else. So, the fact
that I'm able to pass them on to someone with a different set of skills that takes them to the next level is not
failure. I haven't lost a client. I've been successful in addressing that client's needs and moving them to the
next step.
Kevin: I'm sorry but in the case where it's now your business, at what point can you walk away from that, still
earn an income from it perhaps, but then pursue another idea.
Tim: That's a good point. And all of that goes into the vision you have for the business. And this is one place
where I find a lot of satisfaction working with people in that they get an idea and, rather than developing the
vision for a business, they latch hold of the idea and they start to implement the idea. And they're so focused
on accomplishing that aspect of it without ever really asking, "where is this going to take me in 5 years or in 10
years or in 20 years?" And, what happens is that time goes by and their head is down and they're working and
what they find out in five years or in 10 years is that they've had a j-o-b! They've not created a business.
They've worked a job. And their time is consumed. They can't do other things. And they can't let go of this
"job" because nothing's put in place to sustain it. And what I like to do when I find people who are in this mode
is to get them to step back and I help them build a vision that's tied to having multiple streams of income.
Perhaps I can walk you through a sample of someone I actually met at a meetup event.
Kevin: Yeah, that'd be great.
Tim: She was a personal chef. She'd just gotten new business cards out. So she was proud of her card and
I'm looking at her card and it was a nice impressive card. And I started talking to her about what she does as a
business. And it turns out that she's not only a personal chef but she specializes in gluten-free cooking
because she has a gluten allergy. And that's becoming something that's really growing within our society,
whether it's something that's been misdiagnosed in the past and now we see more of it or whether it's actually
an increasing problem, we have families that are finding their kids need to be put on a gluten-free diet. They're
thinking about, "we can't ever eat any good food, anymore." And so, her role, initially, was looking for families
where she could be their personal chef. But her real desire was to teach them how to cook for themselves.
And, so, in a matter of ten minutes, we walked through a vision of: she starts in that role; she develops a
pattern and curriculum of how you take a family through this process and get them where they can cook for
themselves; and then she starts training other chefs through this process so that they can add that to their
capability; and she basically creates an organization and licenses these other chefs as being skilled in this
area. And, so, her initial job of training the families is turned over to others whom she has approved of. She's
trained them, educated them, and given them the skill-set - gives them the methodology to follow. And she
derives additional benefit every time one of those chefs goes in and executes her training in a family
environment. So, now, where her income would be limited to the hours she could actually cook, she now has
leveraged her intellectual property so that she has multiple chefs out there, cooking, and she's deriving income
from each of their hours. Now, as that income grows she then can become more focused on the training and
the expansion of the licensing program. So, now she has a business. And, then, she starts drawing in all the
incidentals: the cooking tools, the meal planning, the sources of people who provide gluten-free raw products
that then can be used in the meals and stuff. And that becomes the business focused on providing alternative,
gluten-free, tasteful foods to families that has need for those services.
Kevin: So, she originally envisioned her business looking like what? And, then, you helped her take it to what?
Tim: She saw herself as an individual chef cooking for an individual family that had need to learn how to cook
gluten-free.
Kevin: And then you took it and you said, "you need to create leverage."
Tim: That's right. And you take your intellectual property and you leverage it so that multiple are using it and
paying you for the intellectual property that you developed so that you have multiple streams of income. And,
then, that frees you to spend your time growing the business as opposed to cooking for an individual family.
Kevin: I think that's a key concept you just covered is that a lot of business owners, when people think starting
their own business, they think of something that is, essentially, just another job. They create another job for
themselves. But the true path to success in business is to create leverage so that you're not tied to that entity.
Tim: Let me fine tune that statement a little bit. The idea they get is a good idea for a business but as they go
to implement it, if they've not done the vision work, up front, they start to implement it in pieces and the pieces
become the job. And because they don't know where they're going and what sort of milestones to look for, I
need to work with a family and cook for that family to develop the curriculum of how you bring a family from, "I
have no idea how to do this" to where they're actually producing weeks and weeks and weeks of good meals.
Ok. That intellectual property has to be developed. If you don't see that as the means, then you end up
cooking, cooking, cooking, cooking and you never develop the system that makes intellectual property
reproducible. What I help to do is say, "well I need to cook for a family for the next 18 months, or several
families, to develop the intellectual property but at the end of that time I need to be looking at how to leverage
this to train others to do what I'm doing and get money from them for implementing my intellectual property.
And to the extent for each one I bring on, that frees up more of my time to build my business. So, I need to be
looking at milestones to be developing the property and then leveraging the property by training and licensing
others to then building a greater support structure for all of those people, I have licensed, to make the property
I provide them with, more valuable." Does that help?
Kevin: That helps. And I think it helps a lot of people who hear that description.
Tim: But you need to lay that ground work, for the end game, at the beginning or you'll never get out of the
beginning.
Kevin: And that's what you help your clients with.
Tim: Yes.
Kevin: They, basically, might come to you with something that they see as, maybe, a $30,000 a year job. And
you fine tune that so that they then see, and their vision changes, and becomes a $20 million dollar a year
business.
Tim: It could be.
Kevin: And you take them through the steps to get them where they, then, have that vision.
Tim: That's correct.
Kevin: Ok. Now, my question to you, Tim, is for that person who maybe listening to this and they're thinking, "I
don't have an idea for a traditional business." Maybe they're part of a network marketing company and so
they're thinking, "I don't need to talk to Tim because Tim doesn't deal with people who are in network
marketing."
Tim: Well, that's interesting because that was a discussion we've had. I have to give credit to, there's a
gentlemen who talks financial planning and management, called Dave Ramsey and his firm is called Financial
Peace. He had someone call in, one day, talking about being a network marketer or multi-level marketer
thinking that Dave would not be favorable to that type of job. And Dave said, "oh, no. That's a great job to
have if you understand what your role is." And, if you really want to generate a large income from network
marketing, your role is not a salesperson. Your role is being a recruiter and a trainer and a developer of the
people in your down-line. And you have to nurture them. And a large portion of the revenue that you get is a
reflection of the job you do as a recruiter and a trainer. Not everybody is a recruiter and a trainer. Now, within
a downline there are people who are salespeople. They're going to buy for themselves. They're going to buy
for friends. They may sign-up a few people into their downline. But mainly those people will be relationship
type people and income from that will be modest but tend to be steady. I met a few weeks ago with someone in
network marketing and I said, "what's your goal by the end of 2010?" and she said, "by the end of 2010 I want
to be making $15,000 per month." And I said, "Ok. Do you know how to do that?" And she said, "no." It's great
to have a goal but goals need to be smart. They need to be manageable. They need to be attainable. They
need to be time-sensitive. There's an acronym for SMART and I'm not hitting all the points, right now, because
I don't have them in front of me. But one of the keys is that a goal is something that you have to be able to
achieve. So if you want to achieve that level, you have to understand, "how do I achieve that? What do I have
to have in the way of downline. How many salespeople in my downline? If an average person, who is just doing
sales, not really building their own downline, what does they return a month, on average? And what does that
mean to me, on average? Then, how many people in my downline are building their downline. They are
recruiters. They are trainers. They understand that they build more wealth by the more people they get
involved and the longer those people stay involved and the more they grow and that brings revenue to those
recruiter-trainers that are in my downline. And what's the average return from a recruiter-trainer who's really
doing their job versus a salesperson. So, if I want to be at some level of performance, I got to know, based on
compensation and how the multi-level payout works, how many recruiter-trainers do I need to develop and how
many salespeople do I need to develop below me to give me a chance to achieve my goal? And if I don't
develop those people in my downline, there's no way I'm going to get to my goal because my goal is dependent.
The flip side of that is if I bring someone on, I need to identify if they're a salesperson or if they're a
recruiter-trainer. If they're a salesperson, then I need to help them see a goal for themselves of operating at a
certain level that will bring the level that I expect into my return. In other words, if I say, "to meet my goal of
$15,000 per month, I've got to have 20 people selling at a $1,000 per month at their level, then I need to get
20 people in my downline operating at that level. If I bring someone into my downline operating at $500 per
month, then I need to get someone else who's operating at $500 per month or I'm not going to make my
objective."
Kevin: Somebody who is - not just network marketing but any business - and they have a specific goal. Let's
say the $15,000 per month. They have to understand - and I think this is where a lot of people don't do their
homework - because they have to understand their compensation. You have to understand the type of people
you're bringing people into business with you.
Tim: Right. In my type of business, we know that, on average, I'm going to make 10 proposals to bring in one
new customer. That means I'm going to hear "no" 9 times before, on average, I hear a "yes".
Kevin: And I'm sure you have that on a spreadsheet, somewhere, because you're an engineer.
Tim: It becomes fun.
Kevin: Like me. I have spreadsheets for everything. I don't know where half my spreadsheets are.
Tim: But the reality is when I hear, "no," from somebody, for me that's a success story. Because I'm one closer
to my "yes." And I know that I need to be talking to, on a weekly basis, I need to be talking to twenty, thirty, forty
people to be filtering down to the ten people I'm going to approach in terms of really talking about visioning for
their business and the services that they might have need of, realizing that of those 10 that I narrow down I'm
doing it to get to the one who's going to bring me on and pay me for the benefit of services I bring to the table.
And it's a filtering a process. And people get frustrated because they hear, "no" when, if they understand the
process and they've laid out what they need to achieve and their goals, a "no" is a success story because it's
one step closer to that "yes".
Kevin: So many people get frustrated because they ask Aunt Millie to join their business with them. She says,
"no." Then they go back to their sponsor and say, "nobody wants to do this!"
Tim: You think of it as a funnel. And the question is you want a lot of people coming into the top of funnel but
you don't have enough time to spend with everybody. And you've got have some kind of automated processes
to start to weed out people who are just lookers - kicking the tires. So, there are some processes that, and
each business is different, but there are ways that you have to bring, in the prospecting role, of filtering through
and coming down to people who are willing to pay something for the benefit they get. And, then, as you get
those people identified, you start working with them to see who is willing to pay full boat for full engagement.
And I'll be perfectly honest, the mastermind meeting I love because we have good fellowship and we have
success stories and things but the mastermind meeting is, to a certain extent, one of the filters that I use as I
meet people because we charge a wopping five dollars a meeting for people to come.
Kevin: And they have to buy there own lunch.
Tim: Well, they get to eat their own lunch. But to an extent, if people are willing to pay five bucks to have
people........we talk about five bucks......One thing we learn in Proverbs that if people aren't willing to pay for
something, it has no value to them. It's when you're willing to invest in what is of value to you to gain the insight
and the wisdom that you really start to appreciate and incorporate what you learn.
Kevin: Tim, is your phone breaking up? Can you hear any breaking up on the line?
Tim: Early on, I heard you breaking up, a little bit, but now it's sounding ok.
Kevin: Ok, good.
Tim: Let me go back, a minute, for all your creative people. We started down a path of how do I deal with
creativity - overwhelming creativity - and we kind of got away from that and focused on goal setting. Let me
share something that I do with my people that I work with who are inventors. I basically have what is called a
bucket system. I have created, in my mind, three buckets. When I have an idea - pops to me in the shower or,
wherever, driving down the road in the car - I classify that idea and I place it in one of my three buckets,
mentally. And the first bucket I have is "giveaway". And I know that I have so many ideas that I could never do
them all. Well, I have one right now that could be huge. It could be a multi-million, maybe billion dollar business
but I'm not really sure how to attack it.
Kevin: What is it?
Tim: I'll share that at another time. That would be a reason to have me back. But, basically, I go ahead and put
it in that bucket to share. And when I find someone, I may even be sitting in Panera Bread and overhear a
conversation at the next table and they're talking about something and this idea might be a fit for them, I share
it with them. If you can do something with this, have at it! I don't expect anything in return. I'd just be happy
just to see somebody take advantage of it. So that's the first bucket.
The second bucket is for an idea that needs some development work and probably needs some time invested
in it but I'm probably not the person that, actually, brings that idea to the marketplace. So, I put that in the
second bucket and as I have time or events occur around me that I go back and revisit and work on it a little bit
and I try to bring it to a point to when I find the right person I give it to them. I don't charge them anything. I
don't expect any return, financially, at that point. But I give it with the understanding that, if they're able to bring
that to a paying type endeavor, then they will at some point include me as a part of the board or compensate
me in some way or pay me a license fee or something for having solved the problem they had or bringing them
closer to that step in their business. And so that's one where I hand it off with the expectation that if it does
become economically viable then, in some way, I'll share in the benefits.
And the third bucket is things that I have a passion for and I'm not going to trust anybody else to develop them.
I'm going to be involved in their development and bring it to a point of - and it may not be tomorrow, may not
next week, may not be next year - but it's something I've got on the shelf that is exciting enough to me that I'm
going nurture it and keep it viable until a point that I have the right connections, the right resources, to move it
forward to the point of being an economic venture and keeping involved in it to the extent that I see that it
actually comes to fruition. So, the bucket system is a great way to get rid of the guilt of, "I have all these great
ideas and I don't have time to develop them all."
Kevin: Have you seen some of those come to fruition - an idea that you shared with someone else and then
they took it and they ran with it?
Tim: Well, yeah. Actually, I had an idea working with Peter in this "Standing With Hope" that was, kind of, one
those - something that I'd been exposed to in the past which was through my quality training. When they make
these resin sockets for these artificial legs, they need some strength in those sockets. The best absolute best
product used is carbon-fiber mat. That's like the stuff that they use to make airplane wings and stuff out of. It's
very strong. They basically take this woven mat of carbon-fibers and embed it in the resin and it provides a
structural integrity. Well, it's very expensive. The alternative is to use fiberglass and other types of materials.
In this case, Peter was talking, one day, and saying that was what they would like to use but they can't afford it.
And I remember something back from my quality process. Chrysler was punching out aluminum blanks for car
doors. And they punch out the openings for the window and that aluminum would go down a chute, right to
scrap bin and be sold off as scrap. And as they brought in their quality process, people brought up the idea,
"well, why don't we take this window sized opening piece of metal and cut smaller parts out of it rather than just
scrapping it." So, that was one of the ways they reduced their waste. I thought of Peter. I said, "Peter do you
know who makes this carbon fiber mat?" And he said, "well, yeah I do." So, I said, "well, why don't you contact
them and see if they'll tell you, share with you contacts of the people for the people that are buying their
material from them." I said, "how big of a piece do you need?" He said, "well, I need a piece that's, maybe, 6
inches wide by 12 inches long to go into these sockets." And I said, "well, when you make a great big airplane
wing, you gotta have drop." They can't use every single, little fiber when they're making a wing that has a
shape to it I said, "why don't you see if they'll let you contact some of their clients that buy their products and
see if you can get them to donate some drop?" A couple weeks went by - that's one where I wasn't going to
make some money off of but I passed it off to Peter to maybe improve the product of his company. A couple
weeks later, I asked him, "did you make your phone call?" He said, "Yeah!" I said, "well did they share any of
their clients with you?" He said, "Well, no, they didn't?" I said, "why not?" He said, "they told me they have drop
every time they manufacture the stuff, when they put it on the rolls. They extra left over. And how much did I
need?" For now, a couple years, Peter's been getting all the carbon-fiber mat that he needs for this prosthetic
clinic in Ghana provided to him by this manufacturer that was just throwing this stuff away. So, the quality of
their product has gone up. The cost hasn't. In fact, the cost has gone down because they were having to buy
the fiberglass. So, there's an idea that came from exposure I had to something else. In came up from a
conversation I had that idea floating around in my head saying, "oh, why don't you try this?" And it resulted in a
good outcome for a client of mine.
Kevin: How many clients are you currently working with, Tim?
Tim: I am probably in some stage of involvement with in excess of 20 clients - some are more active than
others. And then I have, probably, I would guess, somewhere in the number of around about 100 different
people, who, either through the mastermind luncheons, things like that, that I have had some input into what
they are doing with their business - folks like you, Kevin.
Kevin: Well, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do. There's several people in that mastermind luncheon
that seem to be into too many things - they're trying to develop too many ideas at one time.
Tim: Sometimes, there's the approach of, "let me throw all this stuff against the wall and see what sticks."
Sometimes, it's a little bit different. Sometimes it's a case of, a lot of these projects take some time to develop
and you have to find the right resources. So, there are some people who are involved in a number of things
and they're, kind of, nurturing them along and they've got them out there, visible, because they're looking for
the right players to come along. So, there has to be some level of publication about what they're involved with
to, maybe, make that connection of who are the right people to step in and assist in moving that project forward
to the next level.
So, what I look at is how organized are they? How intentional are they with their vision of that project? If it's
just, kinda, "maybe I'll do this, maybe I'll do that, maybe I'll do something else," and I don't see that intentional
development - those are people are just casting about for what's a good fit for them. But people who, kinda,
have projects and the projects are pretty well defined - and, "I know where I am and I know what I need next.
I'm just waiting for that resource to become available" - I don't worry so much about those folks. I'm kind of a
person like that. I'm blessed in the profession that God has placed me at this point because I get that
opportunity to work with different projects and bring my expertise to them and, yet, be actively engaged in
moving forward because there are other people who have the day-to-day tasking of moving that project forward.
Kevin: I see. Tim, How many people are part of CEO Nashville.
Tim: We are actually approaching 300 members on the website.
Kevin: And you've only been there for how long?
Tim: Well, it was started by another gentleman by the name of Vinny Ribas who is also a mentor. Vinny, um...
Kevin: Vinny's been on this show, by the way. Vinny came out with that book, CEO Secrets, and I had him on
the show.
Tim: CEO Secrets - great book. Anybody looking to build their own business needs to read that book.
But, Vinny has, over time, developed his own business called Indie Connect which is, again, mentoring but it's
focused on people, specifically in the music industry. And that came to the point of consuming his time. So, I
stepped into the CEO Nashville, which is doing something similar, but its across a broader scope of business
interests not being targeted so directly into the music industry.
Kevin: Hello. Hello. Hey, Tim. I think we lost Tim. Or else I'm lost. With 4 minutes remaining, almost 4 minutes
remaining, let's see if Tim comes back on. Actually, I lost him. He's no longer on the switchboard. But, let me
give you out Tim's contact information, again. Tim, if you want to call back....Here we go. Let's see.
Tim: I'm sorry. We got dropped, somehow.
Kevin: I don't know what happened but this is the internet you're calling through. So, who knows? Somebody in
China sabotaged your call.
Tim: Maybe Al Gore didn't pay his internet fee.
Kevin: I don't know. But, ah, you were finishing up, there, on how CEO Nashville came about but we have
almost 4 minutes remaining. If you'd like, why don't you go ahead and take the balance of the time. Give out
your contact information, again, and any parting thoughts that you have for us, this morning.
Tim: Well, ok. Again, my name is Tim Cummings and I'm on Linked In. You can find me there. My email
address is cent, c-e-n-t, like a penny, cent at interserv. Interserv is a very, very old isp that's been bought out,
and everything, but it's i-n-t-e-r-s-e-r-v dot com, there's no e on the end of serve. So it's c-e-n-t,
cent@interserv.com. Website at www.ybuf.com, it stands for "Your Business Friend", ybuf.com. And you can
also find me at ceonashville.com. And I get excited to hear about people and what they want to do and love the
opportunity to step back and help them develop their vision for accomplishing that work. As a part of my
accreditation by the Institute of Independent Business, I am required to do a certain amount of pro-bono work
each month. So, you may actually qualify, a client may actually qualify to get an hour or two of my time for free.
And that generally is, anything that I provide in that time frame is free and it belongs to that person to use in
their business. So, I would just like to recap that, when you have a business, a key factor to success is
speaking out the vision for that business so that others can share it and participate in it and, then, setting goals
that allow you to, step-by-step, move toward that vision.
Kevin: And I would encourage anyone, who is interested in learning more, to call you or visit you on your
website or through ceonashville.com, Tim, because I think what you offer is a valuable service.
Tim: And thank you, Kevin, for this opportunity to be on the air and talk to all the people that enjoy listening to
you. It's important that I do pray that I've provided something of value for you and your listeners, today.
Kevin: Oh, absolutely you did. And we will have you on again. So, keep your calendar open. Keep your dance
card open. What is it? Keep your dance card open.
Tim: Dance card clean.
Kevin: Ok, Tim have a great Saturday.
Tim: Thank you so much.
Kevin: And we'll talk to you next time.
Tim: Bye-bye
Kevin: And for the rest of you, listening today and on the podcast, let me give you my contact information so
you can contact me at any time. At twitter, I'm kjmastaw. My cell phone number is 615-290-2000. My email
address is kevin@kjmastaw. That's kevin, k-e-v-i-n, at k-j-m-a-s-t-a-w dot com. You can also find me at
facebook.com at facebook.com/kevin.mastaw. And with that, I'll say, "have a wonderful weekend" and thank
you for joining me on "Kevin and the Giant Peach."
(Exit Music)