The Place: Radio Coffee and Beer

The Cup: I went for my favorite of all the coffee drinks — the lovely little cortado. Tim enjoyed a decaf mocha with, as he said, “lots and lots of cream and sugar”.

The Background: Quite a while back I had coffee with Cup 53, Cole Harmonson, who then introduced me to one of his mentors, Cup 57. John Henry McDonald. Months later, Cole was the sponsor of an event that John Henry was presenting at and I went to show my support and to hear his message. At that event, I met Dr. Misty Funk, who was the organizer of the event and who told me she discovered my project when she was doing research on Cole and John Henry. That evening I met a handful of really wonderful people and even had a very brief conversation with Tim Hamilton and his lovely wife Christy.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I got an email from Misty with a few suggestions for interesting people I should consider having coffee with. She is such a generous connector and I was touched when she made the email introductions. Tim was one of those people and I was delighted to get the chance to have a proper conversation with him.

Before we get into Tim’s story and find out why Misty thought he’d be such a fascinating person to chat with (she was completely right!), let’s cover some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s your guilty pleasure? Lindt chocolate. The kind with sea salt.
2. How did you make your first buck? At lunch time in my middle school, all the kids wanted to rush in and sit at the tables with the cool kids. They had these tables and they wanted to sit at the center of the table so they could be in the conversation with as many people as possible. So there was a demand for those seats, but the supply of popular tables was constrained. I saw that and set up a service where I would stand in line to get them lunch or get them drinks for a commission on everything they ordered. So let’s say a Coke was 50 cents, and I charged them .75. I didn’t care at all about sitting with the popular kids. I’m quite an introvert, so I was sitting at my own table anyway. So I took a bunch of orders and made a 50% commission on all of them. {Is it just me, or is anyone else realizing that Tim was the original Favor.} When I graduated from 8th grade, I had $500 in quarters saved up and I bought a really tricked-out mountain bike.
3. What is the best place to eat in Austin? Dine in the Radisson Hotel on Cesar Chavez. I love it because of the decor. It’s hyper-modern and there’s the view of Town Lake. You can watch the bats come out at night.
4. What is the best way to unwind? Going for a hike.
5. What is the last thing you fixed? My wife’s computer.
6. What is one of the best books you’ve ever read? Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull. It was mind-blowing! It’s all about the new work of leadership. There’s been a lot written about leadership that’s just recycled over and over again. Ed Catmull leads one of the world’s most creative companies (Pixar). In order to preserve their most critical asset, which is an ethos of creativity and their creative talent, he has had to make all sorts of mistakes and has been incredibly introspective in the process. It’s a book packed with metaphors that help the new leader understand intuitively what’s so hard about the work of creativity and how traditional views on leadership actually stifle creativity. It is incredibly insightful and equally as difficult to implement.
7. What’s the best gift you ever got? There are two. My dad made it a priority that his kids would receive a terrific education. So I got to go to a private high school and then have university paid for in full. The sacrifice that he and my mom had to make to make that available to me and my siblings was incredible. I remember my parents bought me a Keilworth saxophone when I got into band in high school and I’ll never forget that as a symbol of the gift that they gave me of my education. The second came from my girlfriend (at the time, now his wife and the mother of 6-month old Graham). After dating for only like 2 months, we went to this retro poster gallery. There was this one poster that had been beautifully restored, of this European moped. I loved it. It was a cross-section of this moped and you could see all the inner workings. It was amazing. Christy asked to go to the restroom and instead, pulled the manager aside and told him to not sell me the poster and she gave him her credit card and told him she wanted to buy it and have it shipped for my birthday. She came back and convinced me not to buy the poster and then three weeks later I got this incredible gift. It was so thoughtful.
8. Who is your celebrity doppelgänger? People used to tell me I looked like Matt Damon. But I haven’t heard that since I grew the beard.
9. For what in your life are you most grateful? Graham immediately comes to mind. {Said with a glimmer in his eye and followed with an offer to see a photo on his iPhone. Seriously adorable little dude!}

Born in Johannesburg South Africa, Tim moved to the United States when he was just 11 years old. Tim’s father worked for Shell and had a dream of traveling internationally with his family and giving his children the best opportunities. Tim’s family moved to Houston for what was supposed to be three years, but three turned into four, and then five, and eventually the family became residents and haven’t found a reason to leave.

Problem Solved

A love of computers and technology is what drove Tim to move to Austin to attend the University of Texas to study computer science. About a year and a half in, he decided the part of computer science he really loved was solving problems. The first business book Tim read was The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and from that moment on, he was hooked on business — which certainly has an ample supply of problems that need solving. Unfortunately, Tim’s grades weren’t quite where they needed to be to get into the McCombs Business School, so he wrote a letter to the business school admissions department explaining that what he lacked in GPA, he more than made up for with his own, real-life business experience. Tim, after all, had been running a web development company, complete with paying clients, since he was still in high school. He even had an employee. Apparently, his writing skills were also top notch, as that letter was enough to get him a spot in the program.

Throughout college he continued to grow the business and shortly after graduating from UT, he found himself in a merger. A merger that wasn’t going as Tim had envisioned. Of the experience, Tim says, “I learned a lot. Ultimately, I realized that the employee experience, for me, was something that was non-negotiable. I wanted to create a business that was not just financially successful and not just great for clients, but was really great to work at. I also learned that questions about the big stuff — core values and purpose, are difficult to answer when things are going well. I can only get crystal clear about the non-negotiables in my life when I’ve had a really tough time and I’ve been stretched to the max.”

Reinvention

Tim made the decision to unravel the merger and write the new company vision in 2010 and then he set about building it. He had two employees at the time, and now he has 20. Tim says, “It’s taken five years. We lost our office, some clients, and momentum, but ultimately, this was an opportunity to reinvent the business.”

Reinvent they did. Complete with a name change that took place this year. They went from Astonish Designs, a name that Tim felt was confusing to people, to Praxent, which Tim explained as, “A combination of the words practice, as in practice to get good and the best practices of software development. It comes from a Greek root “praxis” which literally means practice distinguished from theory. Or the idea of going from theory to a practiced result. Combined with “agent”. As in, we are the agent that makes that possible.”

From the very start of our conversation, it is clear to me that Tim is a true entrepreneur. A man who enjoys identifying problems and coming up with creative solutions for solving them — and charging a fee to do so. I am curious where that comes from, since his dad was more of a company man — spending his career with Shell.

On Fire

In answer to that question, Tim says, “I don’t really know where it comes from. My dad asked me the same thing. There were things that happened as a kid and lessons I learned around money that added fuel to the flame. But I don’t know where the flame came from.”

Tim and I dive into some of the money lessons he’s referring to, and a story he shared really struck a chord with me. Tim says, “My parents set up very clear rules around the house. I had to do things — make my bed, make the table — without being asked. They valued initiative and productivity. If I didn’t do those things I got fined. So there was a money system in my house. And there was a ledger. Anytime I got caught walking around the house in my socks (thus making the socks dirty, creating more laundry for my mom), that would be a 50 cent fine and it would go on the ledger. I really didn’t like this disciplinary system. The best way I could figure out to rebel against it was hyperinflation. Not that I knew what I was doing or that I knew that was a thing. I just knew if I earned enough money I could undermine the system – 25 cents isn’t going to be a big deal if I have $5 in my pocket. So I got to the point where I realized I couldn’t control the punishments, because they were locked in. But I could control my income. I couldn’t control my expenses, but I could control my revenue. I started coming up with all sorts of ways to make revenue. The first was selling the Cokes, but there were lots of other things I did. So I don’t know where the flame came from, but it was definitely motivated by the disciplinary system my parents set up. And I am extremely grateful for those lessons. It caused me to prioritize and to think really, really deeply about money early in my life.”

Abundance Abounds

Tim and I chat further about money and how the lessons are important, but aren’t always taught. We both agree that the lessons we learn about money translate into other areas of our lives. Tim shares, “One of the biggest challenges I struggle with is remembering that the world is an abundant place. And that nature is abundant and it’s that way naturally. But in the darkest moments the feelings of scarcity can become overpowering. And it’s work for me to realign with and reconnect with that idea of abundance. For me, money is one of those things that sucks me into thinking about safety and mitigating risks and limiting downside. An author I love calls that ‘professional scar tissue’. My creativity comes from thinking about what’s possible and the potentiality in life. Not scarcity. So I need to unwind some of the “stuff” to get more creative.”

I share with Tim that my go-to stress response is to attempt to control. It doesn’t matter if it’s work-related or personal, I look for something in my environment that I can control and I clamp down. I know this and if I catch it early, I can sometimes rein it in. But often it’s reared its ugly head and set off some chain reaction before I can get a clear understanding of what’s happening. Before I know it I’m telling my brother how to drive, or suggesting to my husband that he change his shirt or walk the dogs differently. It’s ridiculous, but the truth is, it’s a constant struggle and I suspect at the root of it is fear and a scarcity mindset. I am curious if Tim can relate at all.

Tim tells me, “My tendency to control get up-regulated big time when I am in a scarcity mindset. And that’s the thing that undermines me as a leader. It disempowers my team. I start micromanaging or reverse-delegating. The worst thing that I could possibly do is to ask somebody to do something for me in my business and then take it away from them. That feels really crappy for that person. And it’s not at all the kind of leader I want to be. But when I do those things it’s because I’m becoming fearful.”

Energizing

I want to know what the most significant thing that’s happened for Tim in the last 30 days is and he tells me, “I’ve been doing Strengths Finder coaching and my coach has helped my understand something she calls the ‘toxic triangle’ where you can go from independence to dependence to co-dependence. The right balance of the three is interdependence.”

“Strengths Finders allows you to take a look at those things you’re good at and those you’re not good at. Marcus Buckingham has written about this, and he says strengths aren’t necessarily the things you’re good at doing, and weaknesses aren’t necessarily the things you’re bad at doing. He says the conventional definition is wrong. Strengths are the things that after you finish doing them leave you feeling strong and weaknesses are the things that after you finish you doing them leave you feeling weak.”

“I’ve been working on figuring out the things that leave me feeling strong and then recalibrating my life so I can really focus on doing those things. And forgiving myself, to a degree, for the things that are at the bottom of that list, so to speak, that leave me feeling weak. I had a couple of interactions with stakeholders last week that hammered home those lessons.”

I asked if that meant there were going to be some shifts in the business and Tim confirmed that. I asked how that felt and he said, “Terrifying. But also energizing.”

Taking Steps

He then told me a story about when he was 11 years old and was at the neighborhood swimming pool. Having just moved to Houston from Durban, South Africa, this was the first time he’d seen a high dive. He watched the kids jumping off the diving board and decided to give it a try. He went up and then realized he’d completely underestimated how high it was. He describes the scene and recalls the moment when the fear overtook him, “I tucked my tail between my legs and retreated back down the ladder. It was humiliating.”

By the side of the pool he watched the kids jumping off, one by one, and bubbling up to the surface, without issue and eagerly running up the ladder to do it again, it occurred to him that all he needed to do, once he got up there was to take a step. He’d taken thousands of steps in his life and he decided to script it in his mind like it was a computer program. He said, “I knew how to activate my muscles and skeleton. All I had to do was take a step and I knew how to do that. So I did.”

Now, as it relates to this next business move, Tim says, “I’m sure there are many things I’ve done in my life that have set me up to take this next step. Like the high dive experience, the next step is both terrifying and exhilarating. And I won’t ever know what it’s going to be like until I just take that first step. The key it to detach emotionally from the outcome and to trust in the process.”

What a wise lesson for an 11 year old, and how interesting it is that it doesn’t really matter how old we get, we continue to have the opportunity to re-learn the same lessons, time and time again. The circumstances change, of course, but the tools and programming needed to get us to move forward are remarkably the same.

Begin Empty

If Tim had 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, I am curious what his message would be. He says, “I would borrow something I learned from reading Rookie Smarts by Liz Wiseman, and it’s the idea of starting everything you do with a beginner’s mind. That everything you know, in fact, can hurt you, because it can cause you to think smaller. It can cause you to think about how to protect yourself. It gets you to think about mitigating risk, which will get you away from thinking about what’s possible. And I think starting with a beginner’s mind, as a rookie would, allows you to really tap into and align yourself with what is possible. Because you don’t know otherwise. The word naive has a negative connotation in our vernacular which I think is unfortunate. Because I think going about things with a certain amount of naïveté, is, in fact, a really beautiful thing and it can produce a world of much more exciting possibilities than just doing the things you already know how to do.”

Tim offers so many powerful reminders and things to be conscious about in order to experience life to it’s fullest. His openness about the challenges of a scarcity mindset and how one only need to look to nature to be reminded that abundance in all around is something I certainly needed to hear. The work he’s doing right now with his coach around strengths and weaknesses was fascinating. It has inspired me to take time each day to evaluate the work I do and get honest about the tasks that make me feel weak and trying to create more opportunity to focus on the work that makes me feel strong.

Tim’s high-dive story was so relatable. I think we’ve all been there, at various times in our lives. Looking out ahead of us and feeling the fear course through our veins. But when our hearts are pounding not simply out of fear, but also because there’s an excitement there, that’s when we know we’re leaping in the right direction. Knowing that the future is unclear, but trusting the process and believing that something greater is ahead. And the only thing we need to do — something we’ve done thousands and thousands of times — is to take that first step.

An hour with Tim goes by in a flash, and yet as I sat down to write my notes and reflect on our conversation, I realize we covered some vast conversational ground. Which was a reminder to me of how quickly a deep conversation can happen when two people are willing to be open and, dare I say, a little vulnerable. We’re all weak at times. We all have fears. And yet we believe we have to put on a courageous face and confidently march out into the world as if we’ve got it all figured out. It’s okay if you don’t have it all figured out. No one does. And as Tim reminds us, by approaching something with a beginner’s mindset and a level of naïveté, we realize the world of possibilities is infinite. And knowing that makes taking the first step towards something new and exciting just a little easier.

To learn more about Tim, I highly recommend checking out his weekly podcast, Commanding Business, where Tim interviews authors he admires and shares great tips and ideas on leadership and life. Great stuff!