Finding the soul of your brand
Jordan Raynor sits down with Tim Newton, Senior Creative Officer at Ramsey Solutions, to talk about how Nike, Apple, and Disney have built “transcendent brands” by mimicking personal friendships, how Tim’s faith fuels his passionate hatred of certain brands, and how you can open up space and time for God to speak into your work.
Links Mentioned:
[00:00:05] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to The Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every single week I’m bringing you a conversation with a Christian who is pursuing world-class mastery of their craft. Not necessarily world-famous, but world-class at what they do. We’re talking about each guest’s path to mastery. We’re talking about their daily habits, routines and how their faith influences the work they do every day.
Today I'm so excited to share this conversation, this energetic conversation I recently had with Tim Newton. He’s a world-class branding expert currently working as the senior creative officer at Ramsey Solutions, Dave Ramsey's company. Unofficially within the organization, he is branding guy. The one responsible for helping to bring great brands, like Dave Ramsey, into the world.
As you’re going to hear in a minute, I saw Tim give a presentation back in October of 2019. It was easily one of the best presentations I've ever seen. It was all about branding, and immediately afterwards I ran up to him, got an introduction from somebody and asked for him to come on to The Call to Mastery.
So Tim and I recently sat down. We talked about how Nike, and Apple, and Disney have built transcendent exponential brands basically by mimicking the way that we make personal friendships today. We talked about how Tim’s faith fuels his passionate hatred of credit card companies and student loan services, and we talked about how to open up space and time for God to speak into our lives and into our work.
I think you’re going to love this conversation. I think you're going to get a lot of practical advice from it. Please enjoy my conversation with Tim Newton.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:59] JR: Tin Newton, thanks for hanging out with me, man.
[00:02:01] TN: Yeah, no problem. I’m excited to talk to you.
[00:02:03] JR: Just to kind of establish some context for the audience. I was in Franklin for this Ramsey Influencer Event back in – What was that October like 2019?
[00:02:12] TN: I think October. Yeah.
[00:02:13] JR: Yeah. We’re sitting through like two days of presentations from Ramsey’s staff on media training, on publicity, on publishing, and you took the stage and you – No offense to you. I think you know this. Probably the least star-studded name on the itinerary and everyone’s like, “Who the heck is this Tim Newton guy?” 30 seconds in, everybody in the room just sat up straighter and started taking furious notes. I think somebody interrupted, it was like, “Hey, you can stop taking notes. We’re going to send out this PowerPoint,” or whatever they said and we all breathed this collective sigh of relief. But, no. Seriously, one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen in my life.
[00:02:50] TN: Thanks, man. I appreciate that.
[00:02:51] JR: I immediately texted your boss, Luke LeFevre, just one word. I just said, “Brilliant.” He texts back and he goes, “Yeah. Tim is working in the spirit,” when he talked about branding.
[00:03:03] TN: Oh, definitely. Yeah.
[00:03:03] JR: I'm excited to have you here. Before we talk about branding, you mentioned in your presentation one of your favorite brands, Nike.
[00:03:09] TN: Yeah.
[00:03:10] JR: You just showed me the Nike shoes in your office.
[00:03:11] TN: Yes.
[00:03:12] JR: I’ve got to ask since it is my top – I don’t know. Easily top five books of all time. Have you read Shoe Dog?
[00:03:18] TN: Yes. Of course, I have it. It’s one of my favorites too. Yeah.
[00:03:20] JR: Oh my gosh! It’s so hard for me to express to people how great this book is, because, listen, I love business biographies. On the surface this looks like just another one, but it is really exceptionally well-written. There is a 0% chance that Phil Knight wrote this book. Somebody ghost wrote it for him.
[00:03:38] TN: Yeah. It’s so interesting, man. Yeah, you just dive in and it just keeps on going. It’s a good storytelling. You just understand the heart; where he was coming from. It’s a great book. Yeah.
[00:03:48] JR: What was your biggest takeaway from the book?
[00:03:49] TN: My biggest take away from the book is that, man, Phil Knight, he had such a deep passion for what he was going after that he was going to be unstoppable. But he was just a regular dude, and that's what I like about it, is there was nothing amazing about him. He wasn't spectacular. He wasn't the best athlete when he went to college, but he just had a passion and a vision for what he wanted to do and he just kept going after it and nothing was going to stop him. That was the thing that I was really paying attention to, is like, “Wow man!” When you have it that deeply ingrained in your head and in your heart, you’re unstoppable.
I think about that on my day-to-day work, honestly, how the passion drives me. I know what I'm passionate about something, I feel unstoppable. When I’m not passionate about something, easily stoppable.
[00:04:34] JR: Yeah. I don't know where Phil Knight is on his faith journey, but actually think he articulates one of the most beautifully-articulated like theologies of work in the book. There’s essentially – I think it’s towards the end of the book where he’s basically just talking about the goodness of business and he says – I think he says, “You’re participating more fully in the grand human drama when you just make great things and build great brands and build great business.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh! I’m in love with this guy.” We got to talk to Phil Knight about where he's at in his faith journey. I think that’d be interesting.
[00:05:09] TN: Yeah, I’d love to find out.
[00:05:11] JR: Tim, let’s talk about your story. You’ve been at Ramsey Solutions for 11 years. You’re not that old of a guy, so I think the answer to this is going to be a pretty short story. But what's the story that led you to working at Ramsey?
[00:05:21] TN: Of how I got here? Oh my gosh! I mean, it’s an interesting story. I was a day fan. I lived in Houston and was painting and I was playing drums. Just doing those kinds of things. I was a creative director in Houston, but when I was painting, I would listen to Dave Ramsey, the audiobook stuff, and it made a tone of sense. So there’s one day I was shooting around, playing basketball, and the Lord clearly said, “Tim, you need to get out of that place,” like the place I was working.
[00:05:49] JR: Were you in an agency?
[00:05:52] TN: Yeah, you can call it an agency. Yeah. But the Lord said, “You’ve got to get out of that place.” I had no plan. No nothing. I had a baby that was five months from being born and I had no plan, nothing. The Lord just said, “Tim, you need to get out of that place.” I’m like, “For real?”
[00:06:08] JR: Are you sure? Hold up.
[00:06:09] TN: Yes. Get out of that place. I left and the CEO at the time, like he was furious that I left, because I didn’t even have a good reason for leaving. I was like, “Yeah, the Lord said I got to get out.” In his opinion, it wasn’t a good enough reason. But I left and I started looking around for jobs and I saw that Dave Ramsey needed a graphic designer and I was like, “Dave needs a designer. I could do that.”
I went up to Nashville. I didn't know it going into it, but a year after starting the job, my wife at the time left. Joined the military and left, and I became a single data at that point. It was really – It was pretty tough, but I had to figure it out.
Years later I looked back and realized that I didn't have a great support system necessarily. My family was awesome, but a group of friends around me day-to-day in Houston. But in Nashville, I came here, and instantly I had a support system to handle what I had to handle and to take care of my son and do all that kind of stuff.
He got me there, and then as time went by, I just started getting more and more into leadership and all that. But then a point came a few years ago when I started getting all these panic attacks and I was going through this, and at the time, I didn't think that panic attacks were a big deal until I was feeling to myself and I literally thought I was dying, right? I ended up at the emergency room one night I because I thought I was having a heart attack and the doctor said, “You're just stressed. Your heart is fine.” I was like, “What?”
So then I came to work the next day I had another panic attack and my leader said, “Tim, you need to go home and not think about this place for a week.” That was one of the coolest weeks, because I couldn't even watch movies because it was giving me panic attacks. But I ended up doing like three and four hour quiet times every day and the Lord showed me so much and he said, “You got to stop doing this. You got to stop doing this.”
What was uncovered for me was that I was trying to do all the work I was doing to prove myself, to prove myself as a designer, as a leader, as an illustrator, basically giving glory to myself and not glory to God. So the Lord just said stop doing all this and just do this one little thing right here. It was thinking about branding.
I was like, “Okay.” I started going down that path. Then all these thoughts about brandings just kept showing up in my journal. I’d have my quiet times in the morning and these thoughts of branding would come up and I’m like, “Oh! Not right now. I’m doing quiet time. I can’t think about that right now.” I just put those notes in the back of my journal, and after a while I had pages and pages of notes about branding and the Lord had just guided me down that path. Like every step over this journey for 12 years, the Lord just guided me to the next thing to the next thing and then he showed me this branding stuff. “Stop doing all this stuff you're trying to do. Just think about branding.” That's a really got me on this journey of how I’m talking about brands. It’s been amazing.
[00:08:55] JR: I love it. What do you think it was about branding that like drew you to the discipline?
[00:09:02] TN: I don’t know. There’s such – I'm a creative. At heart, I’m a creative. I paint, I illustrate, all that kind of stuff. There was something that just made sense to me about how brands worked and how if you build a great brand you could reach the emotions of people. That's what we’re doing with art and with creativity, reaching the emotions of people. I just started seeing the connection of when a brand is done well, then you reach the emotions of people and we act out of emotions. We just justify things with our rational brain on the backend, but we do everything out of emotion.
So branding, I just saw that connection and I’m like, “Oh my gosh! If we just build a brand like this, we can reach the hearts of people,” and what we’re doing here, we’re trying to make people change their behaviors so that their lives are changed, whether it's money, marriage, any of that stuff, and it reaches their emotions. I saw that connection with brand and I’m like, “Oh my gosh! There is something to this about if we could reach them right there in that spot, then their life can be unlocked and something great can happen.”
[00:10:01] JR: Your title is senior creative officer, which is quite broad and probably [inaudible 00:10:07]. What do you actually do day-to-day at Ramsey Solutions? I mean, internally, you’re known as the branding guy, but like how does that express itself on a day-to-day basis?
[00:10:17] TN: It is really hard to put into words because there's a lot that we’re trying to do. I am trying to guide excellence with design and creativity also and how we’re telling stories and all that kind of stuff. I do lead a lot of how we’re thinking through brands and I do some workshops within the office about setting the right foundation for our brand. There's a lot of that kind of stuff too.
I'm trying to pay attention to the business and the numbers with the business and how creative affects that and how we’re putting tests in front of people to just see what's connecting and not to affect the business. There're so many aspects to it, and my day is honestly pretty different every day. There're so many different things of pointing into. But all of it to me are tied together of creating brands that are going to change the lives of millions of people out there. That's really the basis of what that all comes to.
[00:11:07] JR: Yeah, and that includes personal brands, personality brands, like Dave, like Christy Wright, like Chris Hogan, but also I would imagine your other brands that aren’t attached to people, on trade leadership, etc. Correct?
[00:11:18] TN: Yeah. I’m not over those brands, but I do – I’m making sure that the brands that we’re building that I'm involved in the conversation but I'm seeing how all of these brands are tied together and how they make sense globally.
[00:11:29] JR: Yeah, that's super interesting. Once you identified this thing, I love how laser-focused you are. I mean, I just published a book called Master of One. You’re so clear on your one thing of branding. How did you go about pursuing mastery of that? Branding is pretty subjective, right?
[00:11:43] TN: Yes, it is.
[00:11:44] JR: How do you purposefully practice the art of great branding? How do you go about mastering this thing?
[00:11:51] TN: Well, one thing that I realized pretty quickly is that when most people talk about brand, it all feels like fluff, and it's really hard. Like you said, like it's hard to nail down what is brand exactly. That was the first thing I wanted to tackle, is how to how to create systems to get people to understand tactfully how to build a brand, because I couldn't find anything that did that. All the books that I read, nothing says try this order. Do this first. Do this, and this, and this. It all just seemed like fluff, and that just wasn't good enough for me.
When it comes to brands, there are so many garbage brands out in the world that take advantage of people and don't actually help people, and that drives me insane. What I want to do, the reason I care about this so much is because I want more brands out in the world that genuinely care about people and I want to destroy the brands out there who are genuinely taking advantage of people.
[00:12:43] JR: I love it. I love the word choice, destroy garbage. I’m serious, right? That’s part of your personal brand, this compassion about the topic.
[00:12:51] TN: Yeah, it is. That passion is a God-given passion, like for granted. I can only describe it that way. I have such a heart for it because I can see it. I can see what it needs to be and I can see what's happening to people out there who believe in lies from bad brands, and it drives me insane. I was like, “Okay. I got to figure out how to make sense of all this so that I can guide other people on how to build a brand that is going to care about people.”
[00:13:16] JR: I want to talk about that process in a minute, because it is the best distillation I've ever heard on how to build a great brand. We’re going to get to that in a minute. But first, talk about your definition, how you define the word brand and how that differs from what you call a transcendent brand.
[00:13:32] TN: Yeah. So brand, when it comes down to it, there's a lot of different definitions of brand, but the best one I've ever heard is its trust and meaning fueled by experience. At every touch point that you have with a brand, there has to be deep meaning in it. There's going to be meaning no matter what. It’s going to be bad meaning or good meaning, but it has to have deep meaning and then you have to be able to trust it, which means extreme consistency over time. Every experience needs to be a reflection of that meaning. Its meaning and trust fueled by experience.
But a transcendent brand takes that and a transcendent brand exponentially grows outside of your control. That means you have to emotionally connect with people so much that they're spreading the brand for you. If we are just limited to our abilities as a company to grow our brand, it’s not going to go very far. But if our audience is building the brand for us because they have been affected by it and it has emotionally reached them, then we’re going to reach millions and millions of people. That’s the difference between the two. You can have just a brand. You could build a good brand or you could build a transcendent brand that has reached the hearts that makes everybody else talk about it for you.
[00:14:36] JR: Yeah, and I come from Silicon Valley tech startup culture. I would call it an exponential brand. I think that terminology is probably interchangeable, but a brand that your super fans are just multiplying over and over and over again because you're creating a product that's so great that they have to tell others.
In your presentation you talked about Nike. You talked about Apple. You talked about Disney. Some of the brands that you respect the most. How has this happened? How do you build these transcendent relationships with customers?
[00:15:04] TN: Yeah. I was thinking about it and I was like, “Man, we don't trust companies. We don't trust brands. We don't trust businesses. We just don't.” Times have changed and we don't trust them. But what we do trust is humans. That's why we read ratings and star reviews and general reviews. We trust that. We trust people on Twitter. We want to hear from real people.
[00:15:25] JR: We trust random people by the way.
[00:15:26] TN: Yeah, I know.
[00:15:27] JR: People we don’t know. Yeah.
[00:15:28] TN: And not companies. I think it’s because so many bad brands out there have lied to us. So we don't trust them. More studies are coming out. I’ve read one that said 84% of millennials don't trust companies at all. I’m like, “Man, 84%. That's a big number. That probably is just going to keep climbing.”
Okay. What do we trust? We trust humans. We trust humans. I started thinking about it and I started thinking about my history with brands that I'm emotionally connected to, and you mentioned Nike. I’m emotionally connected to Nike. It started with the Jordan 11s. The ones with the black patent leather on the bottom. Amazing shoes. First time I saw them I was like, “Gosh! Those are unbelievable.” But I couldn't afford them, so instantly I thought they’re for the rich kids or the popular kid and I wasn’t either one of them. I was like, “Wow! Those shoes are amazing. Those must be for the top people.”
Then I was watching Jordan win championships and he's the face of Nike and I was watching them win over and over again. Then all these – I have all these memories with Nike, of me playing basketball wearing Nike shorts and me having great games wearing Nike shoes and all that. Then overtime I was seeing my Houston Rockets associated with Nike, and the messages they were putting out in their ads were connected to me. Those things meant something.
Then I realized that over time they had never changed. They just stayed extremely consistent. Then as I thought about it, I realized, “Wait a second, that's how we build friendships too. It’s that exact same path.” So I mapped out, it was like, “Yeah, we see them and there’s something we just like about them we see. We can’t put our finger out, but some we just like.” Then we talk and we realize we have stuff in common. Then we build memories together and do some really cool stuff and then we grow our understanding with each other. Our families grow together. Then you realize that they've been consistent for years and years and that's why you trust them.
I’m like, “Oh my gosh! If you just follow that pattern and do it intentionally, then you could build something pretty good.” But the biggest difference those is that with the human, the soul already exists and everything about them is a reflection of the soul. With a brand, you have to identify what's the soul of the brand and then all of those steps are a reflection of that.
The biggest thing is understanding what is the soul of the brand? What is the deep meaning? What is that fiery passion behind your brand, behind you that’s creating this brand that you’re going to put out in the world and then how are all of those other steps going to be a reflection of that? If you do that and you're extremely consistent over time, you could build a strong friendship with this brand and then you want to tell everybody about this friend and you want to share about it and you want to buy it from them and all that because they're such a good friend. Does that make sense?
[00:18:07] JR: It makes total sense. There's no way we’re going to have time to talk through all the six steps of this process, but let's start with the most important one. Let's talk about the soul of the brand and how do you go about clearly articulating that? Especially for an established brand, I think this is probably – I shouldn’t say. It may be easier to do when you're starting up, when you’re starting a new brand, starting a company. I mean, you’re walking into an organization that’s decades old. I've got an existing business, a lot of people listen to this have existing businesses and brands that they are a part of. How do you go about articulating the soul of a brand?
[00:18:45] TN: Yeah. People follow people who have passion. We want to follow people that have a lot of passion. When you think about Nike, Nike is a total reflection of Phil Knight. Everything about it is written in Shoe Dog. Nike is a reflection of Phil Knight all the way. I try to talk to business leaders to identify what are the three main things that you’re passionate about. What do you believe? What are the things that make you angry in the world? Anger causes change. What are those things that you are so passionate about?
With business leaders I’ve have been around for a while, I got to talk to a lot of business leaders at our entrée leadership event and I was talking to some and I was like, “Why did you start this business to begin with?” Because I realized that they had kind of lost what it was that really drove them. I said, “What made you do this in the first place?” and they started identifying these things that almost made them cry of why they started doing this. I’m like, “Have you ever told your team members that story?” They’re like, “No, I never have.” You’ve got to tell that story to your team members. But it’s that passion that we follow?
With Phil Knight, I’d say with Nike, what they believe is that you can overcome obstacles. You could achieve the impossible. They also believe that we should innovate the future of sport and then they believe that if you have a body, you're an athlete. Those are the three main things they believe, and everything about their brand is a reflection of those three beliefs.
I tried to guide teams on really digging in getting it so clear, like a lot of companies that they want to say, “We’re about these 30 things.” If you say you’re about 30 things, then no one's going to remember any of it. You have to have three very clear, “This is what I believe. This is what we’re angry about in the world. This is what's not right. We believe that this is what should happen.”
When you start putting that kind of stuff out in the world, people will follow it because most likely they believe the same thing. They just don't have a voice in the world to say it, but you do. It's really – That’s the big part is identifying those three really core beliefs. Like I said, I love the question of what pisses you off in the world because that’s when you’re really going to find, “This is why my business exists.”
Then from there you just start identifying, “If this is what I believe, then what is the visual expression of that?” The way we dress, the way we walk, the way we talk, all of that is a reflection of our soul. We do all this stuff because of who we are on the inside. It’s the same with the brand. If you've identified, “This is what we are about on the inside,” then how does that need to be expressed on the outside?
[00:21:09] JR: Yeah. You talk about kind of this three-tier hierarchy, right? Kind of going from the middle of a circle, outward from the middle. At the middle, there are these core beliefs, right? Then this next rung is, “Okay. How are those beliefs perceived? How is the brand perceived? Then finally, like what is the brand expression?
You already mentioned Nike's kind of three core beliefs. You could achieve the impossible. You could overcome internal enemy. You could be victorious, etc. How is that perceived and how is that expressed?
[00:21:39] TN: With Nike, I haven’t talked to Nike about if there’s –
[00:21:42] JR: Let’s do a Tim then. Do Tim Newton? Do you have a personal version of this?
[00:21:47] TN: Yeah. I believe – You’ve already heard one of them. I believe that businesses that take advantage of people shouldn’t be in business. I believe that. I believe that you have to have genuine passion for what you're doing in the world. I believe that. You just have to love people well. You have to love people well.
Those three things make me on the outward. When it comes to people, I am very inviting when I talk to the team. At least I hope I am, but I try to be. Like the way that I dress, the way I’m around work, like I try not to look too stuffy or too much with all the nice clothes and everything. But I still want to be nice, but I do try to make it look like you can come and talk to me. My door is always open, that kind of stuff.
When it comes to the business, you shouldn’t be taking advantage of people. You can you can hear it in the way that I talk, of how angry I get about it. In my words, I use words like destroy and passion, all these –
[00:22:41] JR: Garbage.
[00:22:41] TN: Yeah, and garbage. This is garbage. Yeah. That is a reflection of what I believe about that. It’s not right that these companies are doing that. So you get here in the way that I talk and in passion, like that comes from it too. When I'm on stage, I can't help but be passionate, and you hear it in my voice. It’s the same kind of thing. I don't like reading anything off my phone on stage. I don't even like having a podium. I like walking all over the stage because I want people to see this stuff matters and I’m passionate about this. It's expressed like that when it comes to me personally.
[00:23:08] JR: Yeah. I think for any personal brand, it's probably expressed in tone and body language. Speaking about personal brand, you talked about in this presentation that exponential brands tend to sell lifestyle, right?
[00:23:21] TN: Yup.
[00:23:21] JR: I’m really curious – I mean, you're working at Ramsey Solutions. Talking about that personality, Dave’s personality. What lifestyle is his personal brand selling?
[00:23:31] TN: Yeah. I mean, you take a look at it, he is selling a lifestyle of freedom with money. He’s selling lifestyle of debt freedom, a lifestyle of building wealth and a lifestyle of giving outrageously. That's all being free with money. That's what he’s always been about on the radio, and it's expanded now because we talk about marriage and parenting and all that. But when it was mostly about money, like that was the lifestyle he was selling.
The reason I say that is because we’re not really selling products. We are selling that lifestyle and the product is a means to the lifestyle. With us, specifically, with money, what we’re selling is stuff that people don't want to do, like budgeting, doing your taxes, and insurance, digging into that kind of stuff, and learning about money. That’s stuff that people don't really want to do. But once they get a vision of what life can be like, and that’s what Dave is doing. When you hear him on the radio, he is giving a vision to millions of people on this is what your life can be. You can go to a restaurant and look at a menu from the left side instead of the right side where the prices are. That is possible. You can buy this shirt even though it’s not on sale. Little things like that or more like you can have millions of dollars in retirement, and teachers do it all the time, and police officers do it all the time. You can do that if you invest wisely.
Dave is constantly giving a vision of what your life can be. Then it comes down to how do you get there? Well, you could start with every dollar, a budgeting app. You could start like that. But the products –
[00:24:56] JR: You’re leading with lifestyle, right? You’re painting a vision of a picture of what life could be like in this family, in this community, right? Then selling products. That’s brilliant.
[00:25:07] TN: Because emotionally that’s what grabs us.
[00:25:09] JR: Right. Then the product is the answer to the rational questions of, “Well, how do I do that?”
[00:25:14] TN: Exactly. Yeah. That’s why you lead with that. Yes.
[00:25:17] JR: You talked a few minute ago about the fact that you don't have a typical day in terms of what's on your calendar. But I am curious if there are daily habits and routines that get you going, right? From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, what is a day in the life of Tim Newton look like?
[00:25:32] TN: Yeah. Well, I’ll start off when I go to bed, because I go to bed like 8:30 and I get my –
[00:25:36] JR: Amen, brother. Yeah. Preach.
[00:25:38] TN: Yeah. I kind of feel like nothing good happens at night. All the great stuff is in the morning.
[00:25:44] JR: That's right.
[00:25:45] TN: I wake up at 4 o'clock every morning. I have a coffee pot set to go off at 3:55 so that I can get my coffee and then I'm upstairs doing quiet time for an hour. My day has to start with that. I talked to a guy years ago. He was an older guy, a mentor of mine, and he said, “Tim, you have to start your day aligning your heart and your mind with God,” because if you do that, what tends to happen is we end up talking about our problems to our friends and to people and all that, and that's fine. But if that happens all the time, like we’re just spreading all this stuff out, all these problems, when really like it becomes a self-focused act over time if you just keep doing that.
But if you're aligning your head and your heart with God every morning, he’s telling me, “If you do that, you’re going to express those things to God and you can be taken care of so you could spend the rest of the day serving everybody else.” When he told me that, I was like, “Man, that's – Okay. That makes a ton of sense.”
[00:26:37] JR: Park here for a second. What does your time at the Lord look like every morning? What are you reading? How are you praying? What does that look like?
[00:26:44] TN: Yeah. I'm reading the Bible. Everyone once in a while, I’ll read a book, like Soul Keeping by John Ortberg.
[00:26:48] JR: Yeah, sure. Yeah, great book.
[00:26:49] TN: Yeah. Sometimes I read that or those kinds of books, but it’s mostly the Bible. I do try to stick to the Bible and what the Word is saying. So I'll spend about maybe 15 to 20 minutes reading and then I'll spend about 30 minutes or so journaling and then praying after that or while I'm doing that, but whatever. Depending on what comes to mind.
I believe it's important that I spend a lot of time in journaling and prayer, because the first few minutes is just a jumbled mess of thoughts, and it takes a little while to spread through some of that and get to the quietness where I can start getting a sense for what the Lord is saying.
[00:27:27] JR: Yeah. Your leader at Ramsey Solutions, Luke LeFevre, was on the podcast recently talking about journaling. Did you learn this discipline from him?
[00:27:35] TN: Well, actually for my sister years ago.
[00:27:37] JR: Interesting.
[00:27:38] TN: I have a twin sister and I was going through a really hard times, maybe like 10 years ago or something. She said, “Tim, you really need to be using your mornings in the word and journaling about it. You really need to be doing that. I was like, “Oh, okay. Yeah. I can do this.” She goes, “I bet you can’t do that 10 days straight.” I was like, “I bet I could.” I'm competitive, so I was like, “I want to show her.”
[00:27:57] JR: Double dog dare you.
[00:27:58] TN: Yeah. So she would text me. I told her I was getting up at 5 and she would text me at 6 and say, “Hey, did you read this morning?” I’d text back, “Sure did.”
[00:28:08] JR: So much pride. I love it. I love it.
[00:28:11] TN: So 10 days went by. Then after 10 days she was like, “I bet you can’t do 10 more.” I was like, “I sure can.” The same thing would happen. Then it started becoming a habit and I started realizing that I had so much more clarity in my days when I was doing that. So then I craved it. I wanted to be doing that every morning and I looked forward to the coffee and to the time with the Lord to get some understanding.
Then I start realizing, “Well, 5 o'clock. I don't have enough time. I got to start doing a 4:30.” I started waking up at 4:30, and then over time I realized I still need more time. I got to wake up at 4. I started waking up at 4, and then that was my cap. I said, “I can’t do anything earlier.”
[00:28:44] JR: I can’t do any earlier. Can’t do earlier than four. That’s the cutoff.
[00:28:47] TN: That’s really what got me started in journaling, because that helped me grab my thoughts and make them clear and everything.
[00:28:54] JR: What is it? A lot of people have talked about journaling on this show. What do you think it is about journaling that makes that practice so spiritually rich?
[00:29:02] TN: I don't know. I think because we’re so in our heads all the time and everything seems so much like a big deal when it's in our heads, and once you write it on paper and see the words, you can make sense of all this stuff that was in your head. For me, when I write it out, I feel like I'm doing something with all these thoughts that are randomly showing up in my head and I could see it, and so it just gives me clarity on, “Oh, that’s what's going on.”
[00:29:30] JR: I like the practice of – I think this is really important, right? Journaling after you have spent time listening to what God has said in his word. Otherwise, I'm just jotting down my thoughts. I'm not responding to what God has already said in Scripture.
You talked about your mornings. You brought us up to 5 AM. Take us through the rest of your day.
[00:29:52] TN: Yeah. That’s just fine. When it get to 5, that’s when I start working on stuff, whether it’s stuff for work or if I have a review to do with somebody on my team or something like that. I'll spend about 5 to 6 o'clock, or 5 to 6:30 thinking about that, because I find that that's when I have the most clarity of thought. I'm an internal processor. I have a hard time in meetings keeping up with what's going on, because so many words are said and I'm trying to understand the perspective of everybody while I'm trying to think of my own thoughts. It's really hard to stay in it to where I need to stay in it.
I use that time in the morning to really pry my brain for what I want to be going through in the day and understand what do I feel about this thing we’re going to talk about. What do I think about this? I need that morning time to really dig into that, because during the day, I can't in real-time. I’m a terrible brainstormer, because I just need time to think. Usually in brainstorms, everybody is talking. I use that time to pry my head for the day of what I’m going to be going through, or I'll go play basketball. There are guys I play basketball with at 5:30 on Wednesdays and Fridays. I’ll do one or the other. Yeah.
Then I’ll get to work and I’ll just take a look at the day and see what meetings I have coming up, at what time, and I’ll usually point out what are the three main things I need to make sure I do today. Based on all these stuff I got ahead of me, what are the three main things? Because if I try to think about all of it, then I’m just going to get overwhelmed and stressed. But if I just have those three main things, it keeps everything feeling pretty simple, which is where I want to stay.
[00:31:20] JR: So you just jot that down on a piece of paper? It’s like, “Okay. If I only get these three things done, that’s a good day.”
[00:31:25] TN: Yeah. I have an Evernote document and I’m just always going through and say, “Okay. This is what I want to have done today. This is what I want to go after.” I just stay locked-in on those things. If I don't get to the other things below those three, totally fine. I’ve given myself the okay to not get to those, which is fine, because it’s impossible most days.
I’ll do that and then I’ll just go through the day, hit all those meetings. Think about the things I got to think about, any of that stuff. Then I'll go home after that and I’m just with family. We don't watch a lot of TV. We’re not really on social media. You’ll never really see me post about anything. My wife doesn’t have any social accounts. We just spend time as a family. We open up that space and time and play games and have a great time at home. I love it.
[00:32:05] JR: I love it. I love it. I'm really curious about your faith story. Were you raised in a Christian home? Did to come to faith later in life? What do that look like for you?
[00:32:15] TN: Yeah, I was raised in a Christian home. My dad, he was the worship pastor at the church we went to. It’s a Methodist Church in Houston. He was the worship pastor there. So we grew up in it, but I didn't really have my own faith until much later on. So I was like 21 years old. That's when I really met the Lord and I really started developing my faith and all that. My dad laid the groundwork for it. He’d read the Bible to us at nights. There was five kids, five of us, and he’d just read the Bible to us.
He set the foundation, but it was really I started going to a Baptist Church when I was a little older and I was like, “Oh, this is very different from a Methodist Church.”
[00:32:50] JR: Very. Yeah.
[00:32:51] TN: I like all the clapping and dancing around and all this. Great! Yeah, I started going to Baptist Church I really met the Lord then when I was 21 and it’s just been an ongoing understanding and uncovering of stuff years and years since, and there's a lot more to uncover.
[00:33:05] JR: I could attest to that myself. This podcast is all about how our faith in Christ impacts our relationship to our work. How it influences our work. I'm really curious, what are the spiritual dynamics that fuel your passion for great branding? Have you made that connection in your mind? If so, what does that look like?
[00:33:23] TN: Well, I mean, we’re talking about loving people, serving people. The Lord calls us to love God and love people. With brands, it is all about loving people well. That's really all it is. That brands that always have won and always will win are the ones that are the most human. The ones that are the most human love people, because people love people. We are wired to be around people.
I see branding as – That’s how I tell teams that we’re basically building a human. When we’re building a brand, we’re building a human and we’re building a best friend relationship with our human that we built and the audience that’s out there, the customer.
What that means then is just loving people well. I see that connection, and when I think of people who I genuinely love, what is it about them that I love about them? Whether they care about other people, they give constantly, they tell really compelling stories, they're engaging with me like, they listen to what I have to say and a brand should do all those things too. Brands should act the exact same way, because that’s loving people well. So that the biggest connection I make with brands and spirituality is we’re called to love people.
[00:34:33] JR: Yeah, love your neighbor as yourself is a full sentence. We talk about that a lot here on The Call to Mastery. That is good. That is glorifying God in and of itself. As you’re talking about these characteristics; trustworthiness, telling great stories, being empathetic, listening, I was like, “Oh! You’re describing Jesus Christ,” right? That is the characteristic that you’re talking about and just applying that to business. What are some practical examples of brands that don't love people well? When we are not – Yeah. Sure. Share some of these things that really piss you off other than like overtly lying to customers. That's an obvious one.
[00:35:11] TN: Oh my gosh! Credit card companies, student loan companies. They are lying to people when it comes down to it. These businesses are only making money when other people are losing. They’re only make money when people are in debt or when they're being charged fees of their money for no reason. That’s how they’re building these big skyscrapers up in downtown. They lying to be people, and it drives me insane when I see these commercials of these credit card companies having their happy coffee shops, and they show someone getting their credit card in their mail and then they start daydreaming about all the great stuff they can do their money. They're not showing the debt that gets accumulated and the marriages that fall apart because of money. They’re not showing any of that stuff, the reality of these things. They’re not letting you know that their debt and your fees, that's how they're making billions and billions of dollars. They try to paint this picture of this happy life. Do whatever you want. Yeah, you can, but then you’re going to pay for it later on.
All that stuff is a lie. It drives me crazy that they’re taken advantage of people like this. Student loans, that is terrible, man. They’re going into schools to talk to kids who haven't really learned about money yet and painting this picture of you can get this degree, you could have this life that you want if you sign up for a loan. These people, the interest rates are so high. They're paying off these student loans for decades after they have them, and these kids don't know about that when they’re coming out of school. I hear stories of kids who committed suicide because they can't handle the pressure of paying back these bills and creditors coming back to them. This stuff is happening, but in their ads, they’re just painting this picture of this perfect life you can have with debt. It drives me insane. It’s totally taking advantage of people. We see like advanced loan, like you see these loan kind of companies –
[00:36:52] JR: Yeah, payday loan groups.
[00:36:53] TN: Yeah, in the poorest neighborhoods taking advantage of these people when all you got to do is money to save it in and say like what we do isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. It's a get rich slow scheme, but it is for real. It’s legit. It’s the way to do it. It’s how God says to handle your money. It’s how our grandmas handled money. That’s the way to do it. But man, the way these companies are taking advantage of people, it is not right. It’s not right, and it angers me.
[00:37:18] JR: It's predatory in a lot of ways.
[00:37:19] TN: Yeah, it is.
[00:37:20] JR: One of the things I really appreciate about Dave and all of Ramsey Solutions is you guys are trying to redeem. I would use that word. I think you guys use that word internally, redeem a very dark industry by just telling truth and telling true stories. It’s this get rich slow story. That is truth. By the way, that is biblical. I think a lot of us fall for these get rich quick schemes. But get rich slow is pretty biblical, pretty tried –
[00:37:45] TN: It’s patience. Yeah. Patience is what will do it. Let me tell you that. Oh! It angers me.
[00:37:50] JR: Tim, three questions I love to ask to wrap up every conversation. I'm really curious which books, maybe Shoe Dog is your answer, that you recommend or gift the most to others.
[00:38:00] TN: Let’s see. I mentioned Soul Keeping before. That's one that really affected me. That was a good one.
[00:38:05] JR: How so? Talk about that.
[00:38:07] TN: It got me to understand the soul in a different way. I always thought soul was just this thing that's inside of you that you can’t describe, but it started articulating what the soul really. When I started reading that, I totally connected it back to brand too. We’re talking about understanding the soul of your brand. The same kind of thing about how the soul is connecting all these parts of you. What’s the word that he used? Anyways, it connects all these parts, but just like the soul and branding
The way he was describing soul, I've never understood it like that before, and he gave so much clarity on how to take care of the soul. I haven’t thought about it the way that he said it. Anyways, that one was a great one that when I was done, I was like, “Oh my gosh! Amazing.”
[00:38:48] JR: What else?
[00:38:50] TN: Other books that I like. Yeah, you mentioned Shoe Dog. Love that one. Also, I just got finished reading The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger, the CEO.
[00:38:57] JR: Yeah. That’s good. So good.
[00:38:58] TN: That one too. Then the one by Yvon Chouinard, the owner of Patagonia, CEO there. It’s called Let My People Go Surfing. That was interesting also. I like seeing how these CEOs, like those brands that I consider transcendent brands, and I like seeing their passion in their words and seeing that their brand became a reflection of what they were naturally passionate about. It started with a passionate human. Those three books are great.
As a business book, I still go back to the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell.
[00:39:27] JR: Yeah. It’s so good.
[00:39:29] TN: That one is also one. I still go to him like, “That is a very good point that you made right there.”
[00:39:35] JR: What was your biggest takeaway from Iger’s autobiography? I loved that book. Is there anything that stood out to you?
[00:39:41] TN: Well, the biggest thing that stood out like it’s kind of personal to us as a company, but the ways that they had to bring together Marvel, and Lucasfilms and ESPN, like they had all these businesses they acquired. Iger, he mentioned that he had to talk to all his leaders and let them know that their business is going to have to take a step backwards for a little bit for the greater good of all of these things working well together. We’re kind of doing the same thing at work. I know that Luke mentioned you do global branding. We have all these brands out in the world and we have to make sure that these things are all living together in the same world in a way that makes sense to our audience, because I want Ramsey to be the Nike of money out there in the world and we totally can be because of how we’re going in the market with a message that nobody else is going out there with.
But I want our brands to be living together in the same world, and we’ve done a great job of getting it there, and there still some room to go, but our global brand, the way it’s all connecting. I was connecting those dots with us and what Disney has done and I like, “Oh my gosh! Disney, they’re going through the same thing. That's great.”
[00:40:45] JR: Yeah, learn from Iger. Yeah, that's a good mentor to have. What one person would you most like to hear talk about how their faith influences their work?
[00:40:53] TN: Oh, yeah. That’s a good question. Okay. I grew up in Houston, right? Love the Houston Texans. I know that it’s a weird team. They do weird stuff. But Deshaun Watson.
[00:41:02] JR: Yeah. It’s a good answer.
[00:41:03] TN: I love Deshaun Watson. Yeah, he's extremely talented, obviously, but then when you watch what he does in his personal life, there are these stories about how he gives money to people working in the stadiums and people around town because they need it. He gives it freely. We talk about giving outrageously, like he gives outrageously. I follow him on Twitter and everything and the stuff that he tweets out about Scripture and what is pastor says and all that, I love seeing a guy who’s so talented out in the world clearly stating he's a follower, showing he’s a follower.
Really, when athletes are her saying that stuff of TV, thank God for this and that, I love it when they do that. I don't think it’s cliché. I love it, because I think if kids are watching these athletes and kids just want to be cool and they see that this guy is a believer, then they might make connection, “Oh, believe in a God. It must be kind of cool.”
[00:41:51] JR: I love that you brought that up, because I think we can get really callous to these God be the glory and raising your finger up after you scored a touchdown. But who am I to judge somebody, they say that they believe that God helped them win the game. That's a good thing, right? It's a good role model for kids.
[00:42:08] TN: It is. It’s a good message. Kids are looking at these – Looking up at these athletes wanting to be cool, wanting to be like them. If God is associated with them, like in their brain, there is an association of how cool this guy is and God, then they’ll start connecting the dots that, “Oh, God must be cool.” That's a simplified way to look at it, but if that's how kids, if that’s how young kids are looking at life early on, then yeah, let's start having them believe that God is cool and to at least plant that seed that this is a good way of life.
[00:42:36] JR: I think there's also an application for all of us whether we’re branding experts or entrepreneurs or authors or whatever, associating our Christian faith with excellence, right? Makes us winsome in the world. Kids want to be around winners. People want be around winners. Man! What a charge for all of us to pursue mastery of whatever we’re doing so that we could be winsome in the world.
[00:42:58] TN: Yes. That is such a good point. Yes. I listen to a rapper, Sho Baraka. Do you know Sho Baraka?
[00:43:05] JR: No. I have no idea.
[00:43:07] TN: Oh my gosh! You got to check him out. He’s pretty awesome. He’s a Christian rapper, but when I listen to him, I was like, “Man! This music is awesome,” and then I started paying attention to words, and he was rapping about Jesus and his relationship with the Lord. I was like, “He's a Christian?” and I love that first I saw that he was just awesome at his craft. Then I realize he's Christian. It wasn't like he's great for a Christian rapper. He was a great rapper and he happens to be Christian. I love seeing that.
[00:43:33] JR: You’re basically reading chapter 9 of my new book, Master of One. I talk about Lecrae in the exact same context, right? And contrast him against the “Christian film industry”, which leads with message over mastery of their craft and shockingly produces really crappy movies where as somebody like Lecrae just focuses on making great art. Oh, by the way, I'm a Christian. If you listen closely enough, you’re going to find Jesus. That's the way the church is winsome in the world.
[00:44:05] TN: Yeah, I agree and that's what I hope we’re doing at work. By helping people with their money problems and being excellent at that, we build a relationship by helping them with their initial problems hopefully to the point where they trust us and then they realize, “Oh! Jesus is behind this stuff. This is God's way of money. Oh! There must be something there.” We want to be excellent for that reason. So that we handle their initial problem so they build enough trust to see, “Hey, there’s something deeper here.”
[00:44:29] JR: There’s truth at the core. All right, last question, Tim. What one piece of advice would you give to somebody who's pursuing mastery of their craft? Whatever that is, maybe they’re a branding director, or maybe they’re a sales executive, maybe they’re an author. What advice would you leave them with?
[00:44:48] TN: Man, the biggest thing – And I talk to my team about this, is make sure you open the space in the time for God. You have to. I talk to a lot of Christians who they pray in the morning but realize like their prayers like 10 minutes long, 15 minutes long, and it’s not a time thing necessarily, but you have to get to that place where you can shift through everything to get to that silence to really understand where the Lord is guiding you. I can't tell you how many times in my quiet time I could sense God saying, “Go this direction right here.”
My job, honestly, I can't believe the life that I get to live right now. I honestly can't. My wife is amazing. My kids are amazing. I love my job. I get to be a senior leader here and I look around at the other leaders and I’m like, “Wow! They're so smart. What am I doing being the senior leader here?” But God has led me to all these places that when I was trying to do it myself, it led to panic attacks and it led to stress. But God's way has been so much fun, but it was from opening up the time and space to understand clearly, take this next step right here. God will show you the way if you open up the space and the time. It’s not just a quick prayer here and there. Open the space and the time to understand it and God will show you the next step. You’ll get a sense for it and then your path will just start getting so ridiculous. A lot of it is going to be tough too. It’s not like you’re going to pray and it’s going to be fun and easy the whole time. It’s going to be difficult. But where he starts taking your path, man, in the greater scheme of the story is something so amazing, but we have to open up the time and space to listen to what the Lord is saying.
[00:46:18] JR: Well, said. Tim, I just want to commend you for working, as your leader says, in the spirit, doing exceptional work to where you clearly are feeling God's pleasure when you’re what you’re created to do.
[00:46:31] TN: Thanks man.
[00:46:31] JR: Thank you for serving your company and your customers well and thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. I appreciate it.
[00:46:36] TN: Oh, yeah. No problem man. Thank you. Thank you. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate the kind words too.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:46:41] JR: I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Seriously, if you've not read Shoe Dog, I can now recommend it highly enough. Such a great read. I think I'm good to be reading this thing once a year from here on out. I’ve already read it two or three times.
Hey, if you’re enjoying The Call to Mastery, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode in the future. If you're already subscribed, do me a huge favor, take 30 seconds and go leave a review of the show.
Thank you guys so much for listening to The Call to Mastery. See you next time.
[END]