Club Freedom® presents Freedom Lifestyle: Living with a Seek, Go, Create Mindset, with lifestyle and business coach Tim Winders & Freedom Lifestyle Entrepreneur Clinton Young. Listen to Tims podcast, find out about his community at his website in the show notes below!
Be sure to join Clinton & Mayumi on their journey to a lifestyle filled with freedom, fun, and adventure by following them on Instagram @ClubFreedomLive. Also join their Facebook group for a more in depth look into their journey at www.ClubFreedom.org.
by Clinton Young – Freedom Lifestyle Entrepreneur
Clinton Young: Welcome to the show. My name is Clinton young and I’m so excited for our guest today. He is a minister, a husband, a father, a coach, and consultant, speaker, writer, investor, creator. He helps organizations and people grow to reach their God inspired potential. I just love that about this guy.
He’s got an amazing podcast that I just learned about recently and I’ve been following and devouring some of the content. It’s called seek, go, create he’ll talk a little bit about that. That is a podcast for leaders, business owners, entrepreneurs, ministers, and anyone seeking excellence, moving towards success, or creating something new.
That’s not even why I want to talk to him today. Why I want to talk to this gentleman is because of the freedom lifestyle that he has created for himself and his family and that he has shared with his clients. So none other than Mr. Tim winters. Welcome to the show, my friend.
Tim Winders: It’s great to be here. Clinton. Thanks for the invite. Look forward to chatting with you.
Clinton Young: Excellent. Well, I’m so excited, and I really admire the way that you’re living right now. I shared with you previously – before the show that my wife and I are so excited to do exactly what you’re doing, coming up this year.
So let’s dig right in. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. I know I gave a little bit of a bio there, but fill in the cracks there. Tell us a little bit more about what you do, who you serve, and where you are right now.
Tim Winders: I am currently actually sitting in the passenger seat of our RV that we named Theo. There’s about 40 feet behind me. It’s a “Class A” motorhome, and this is my office, the passenger seat.
My wife has an office about midway back. So this is where we live, travel, and work. This is our full time home, and we have been living here since right at the end of 2018. We kind of launched out around the first day of 2019, and we have lived full time and traveled in our RV since then. Prior to that we actually have been nomads traveling around the world and other spots since 2013. So that’s kind of our living arrangements.
I actually consider myself a coach. Sometimes I use the term “performance coach” or “executive coach”. The way I word it – I reach down inside people and organizations, and I pull out the greatness that was already there. We just manifest things that were already there.
We pull out things that people don’t even know they were there. So that’s really what I do. That’s my calling. That’s my purpose. That’s my assignment in life and I get a lot of passion from that. So everything really is a spin off from that kind of sentence, if that makes sense.
Clinton Young: I love that. That is great. We definitely align in a lot of ways. We don’t know each other that well, but a lot of what you just said, I’m like, “Whoa!” I literally got the chills when you talked about how you reach down. I love that. Okay, so just to confirm, because I didn’t hear this before, so 2013 you were traveling globally and then in 2019 you started in the RV lifestyle. Is that correct?
Tim Winders: That is correct. So, let me just back up a little.
In 2008 my wife and I were living in a 6000 square foot home. We were in a resort community with 117 holes of golf. We had a Ritz Carlton as a neighbor. We had three companies at the time. We had real estate that was valued at over $15 million, we had a lead generation company that would have been a seven figure business, and a national coaching company that would have been seven figures. We had coaching clients all over. All of them were in the real estate industry in 2008. Now, for those people that are super bright and astute they’re going to know this I was probably in a little bit of trouble.
We thought we were positioned better than we were. I won’t go through all of the gory details, but five years later in 2013, we were bankrupt. We were homeless and we moved the things we had into a Honda van and we just started traveling. We traveled and visited folks that we were friends with. We ended up living in Australia and New Zealand for around nine months. Some time in Europe, all over the US, and we have been more than restored financially. I will say that we have more ready cash available than we even had back in ‘08, but we did not increase our lifestyle expenses as that occurred. So we have flexibility and we live in an RV.
We actually believe that we are well positioned for what the future holds, whatever that might be. We’re mobile, we’re light, we don’t have overhead and if something happens, we start the engine up and we boogie.
Clinton Young: I love it, I love it. So it sounds like there was an element of things hitting the fan, and you had a way to make things work in a van. Right? So that’s what you did.
Did you also have a passion for travel or did that grow on you? You’re still doing it almost nine years later, so have you always enjoyed traveling adventures, or did that have to grow on you.
Tim Winders: My wife and I, we’ve been married over 30 years. We both grew up in small towns, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and we just always felt the pull to do other stuff. We always felt that we were maybe kind of destined for something more, without it sounding brass or anything. We just wanted more.
So we tried to do as much travel as we could. I worked corporate for a little while and started my first business while I was doing corporate. We’ve always traveled. We’ve traveled to Europe. We’ve traveled to other parts of the world. I did a lot of travel during the 90s to South Africa and India, a lot of that was business. A lot of it was Sort of missional in purpose. Some in some in Asia. So, yes, we’ve always traveled. But Clinton, it’s even more than that, we just wanted to experience more of this creation that we call the earth and the people in it. The beauty of it. I sometimes can get a little bit fidgety if I’m in one place for a long period of time. We’re recording this, and my wife and I have just started mapping out our next 6, 12, 18 months of travel. With all this going on, with the pandemic, we’ve been a little more stationary.
We came to visit some family outside of Atlanta and take care of our parents. We were in Colorado, a little longer than we had planned to be before then. I’ll tell you, I’m giddy because we just booked some time up in the mountains in Northern Georgia and North Carolina, just to see the leaves change. At the time we’re looking at heading out west and doing some things in Arizona in Zion. We’re looking to go to Glacier National next summer. We had talked about maybe Alaska. We don’t think it would be good timing for that.
I can tell you, people talk about passion all the time, you can probably tell from my tone of voice how excited I’m getting. Just that we’re about to go. So we just love to go. That would be a good word to insert into a podcast. Don’t you think if someone were to do a podcast like seek go create maybe
Clinton Young: I think that might work, yeah. So definitely check out Seek, Go, Create.
I totally get it. I know things have changed a little bit during COVID, and I actually do want you to touch on a little bit of that. Have you been completely stationary since COVID? Is this the first time you’re going to be moving? If so, do you stay in the RV when you stop? Do you actually stay in a hotel or with family, or do you always stay in the RV?
Tim Winders: We primarily stay in our RV, and let me tell you why. If we need to social-distance, I cannot think of a much better place to do it. We don’t have a lot of traffic in and out of here. We can’t entertain many people with our 400 square feet. We can’t have a lot of house parties and raise the roof or anything. As for hotels, I know they’re doing the best they can. But if this travels like we think it does, they can’t sanitize those places like that.
So to answer your question, we went to Colorado. We spent all a good portion of last year in Oregon. We spent last summer on the Oregon coast, which is phenomenal by the. We went to Bend, Oregon in the fall, just to experience that part of the world. What we typically do, Clinton, is we go to places and we spend a little bit of time. Two to four weeks, sometimes two months. We’re looking for places that nourish our soul. Places that we just thrive in. Places where we love the local restaurants, we love the atmosphere, we love the weather and the climate.
We go to places just to see if we might want to circle back later when the economy takes a dip and we know it will. We might pick up some land or piece of property. So, we spent time in Bend and then we were booking over to Colorado around the first of the year in 2020 because we had our first grandchild born there in February. So we were there. Thank you. It was a game changer. You know, you’re a young guy I can tell, but let me tell you what, when that kind of stuff happens, everything’s different. So, March came along and we just decided, you know what, we’ve got a grandchild here. It’s a little colder and in an RV in Colorado is not typically where you’d want to be right when it’s not getting above freezing. We can manage it, but it’s not typically where you’d want to be.
We just kind of hung out there until the end of May. At the end of May, we’d been getting a little bit of indication that we both needed to get back to Atlanta to check in on our parents. That was wise because they all needed a little bit of tending to. They all had a few little health issues, so we’ve done that. We think we can venture out and pop back in from time to time to check on them. The reason that’s important too, is that we could talk about just traveling, having fun, and doing cool things. But there are also some responsibilities that we have.
If I were working in, let’s say, Seattle, Washington, and it was permanent. If I had a house, and with the restrictions on air travel, it would not be easy for me to spend six weeks checking in on my father who is in an Alzheimer stage right now. And just making sure my mom’s okay, and my wife checking on her mother. So it’s really about that flexibility and freedom that you talked about when we first got started.
Clinton Young: Yeah, absolutely. A question came to me when you were talking about working in the RV. Talk to me about that. Actually, before we go there, you said before the RV you were in a van. Is that correct? What was that like, and was that for a long time, like six years, right?
Tim Winders: Yeah it was a Honda van. It was a 2002 had almost 300,000 miles on it and we didn’t actually park it down by the river, but there could have been times we lived in a van down by the river.
Really what happened is I’ve got a pretty heavy spiritual background and ministry. I’m a follower of Christ. So, I believe that God’s hand is involved with much of what we do. I don’t believe that he brought our downfall to be honest. But I know that he used it to his advantage, because we needed to purge a lot of materialism and wanted to keep up with people around us and those things. So what happened was, is when we left our home was foreclosed on. The Sheriff knocked on the door, and we had to leave. We had already eliminated a bunch of our stuff. And we got in the van with a few hundred bucks and we first went to visit some family. Thankfully, we had some friends that we could spend a little time with, and then we ventured out and we stayed with some friends that were gracious.
As we did that, we tapped into something that you may or may not know. This might drop a bomb on you. We actually started house sitting, and we house sat all over the world. We lived in million dollar homes, we would pull up in our van if it was in North America, we would do that in Tahoe and Fort Lauderdale, Florida and all over. People would hand us the keys. Sometimes they would stock the fridge and the wine cooler. Sometimes if we were in Australia, they would hand us the keys to their vehicle with a petrol card. That is how we traveled up until the time around 2015 to 2016 when we started a Bible school up in Colorado. We actually took that time just to go do some additional Bible study.
Tim Winders: Then to close the loop there, my wife came out of the shower, and she said she had been praying and all that, because she thought we’re supposed to travel again.I mean, our finances were in a much different position, but we just wanted to get back out. She goes, “I think we’re supposed to travel. I think we’re supposed to get an RV.”
I just kind of stared at her. And I said, “Boy, I hope that’s God talking to you because I can’t even spell RV.” I knew nothing about RVs.
Two months later, we were in the RV I’m sitting in now. We gutted the whole thing. We ripped it out, put our offices in, and moved in just a few months later and hit the road.
Clinton Young: So that leads us to now working in an RV and what you might guess it would be like to work in a van. What would it be like for an entrepreneur who leads a very successful business, podcast, multiple businesses. How do you do it? What’s important?
Tim Winders: Well, the first thing that’s important is the internet. A lot of people that are working in their, we call them “sticks and bricks” or “standing homes” right now. They’re struggling with it, because of the volume that people are having. We thought, and this was a bad assumption, but I’ll go ahead and tell you this. In 2013, we thought when we launched out to wherever we went first – Australia, Europe, North America – we thought that we would be able to find decent if not high speed internet. Let me tell you, that is an incorrect assumption. There are many places in cities and other places that you go, that internet can be a challenge.
I do like what we’re doing right now. We’re on zoom doing this interview and talking. This is what I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, because it’s the way I do my coaching. So when we got started, the internet was the biggest challenge. We can throw most things we need in a backpack and we’re in good shape.
Tim Winders: As we moved into the RV. That became even heightened. At that time, my wife was working for a Silicon Valley company, so she was working remote. I was doing my coaching. I hadn’t started the podcast at that point. So I’ll answer a question that most people would have – I have a four foot antenna on my roof that pulls in as much Wi-Fi signal as I can get. If I can get a line-of-sight, I can connect it up to almost a mile to a mile and a half. If I can connect from McDonald’s or Starbucks or something like that. I’ve got a router inside – I’m pointing up above me here right up above my head – that it pulls in Wi-Fi. I also have another four to five foot antenna that’s a booster for cellular signal. I’ve got two unlimited hotspots, one from AT&T one for Verizon so that if for some reason, I cannot find Wi-Fi signal, then I could jump to data for cellular. Everywhere we’ve been, we have at least been able to make one of those work. At times it does get a little dicey.
But, we do have workspaces. Both of us have a workspace. Mine is in the passenger seat, and in back about 20 feet behind me, there was a place where there was a little table or a dinette. We ripped that out and put an office in for my wife. Originally, she had a 34 inch curved monitor. We took a wall that’s near her, and we made it all whiteboard. We have a whiteboard wall in the mid portion of the RV. It’s really customized for the way we live, work, and travel.
Clinton Young: That’s great. Well, I do want to get into a little bit more nitty gritty of, you know, some of the details that people would want to know, like what’s the expected costs that you can expect per month. I know that can kind of vary.
Before we go there, I would like to talk to you more about the mindset, the faith, and the belief when you actually said we’re doing this. You’ve had two or three times in this span where you’ve said we’re doing this. There was the first time, and then it was the RV time and there might have been another one in there. Talk to us about how you knew that it was the right thing to do. I talked a lot in my talks about intuition. How God or spirit or whatever is out there listening to us right now, whatever you believe in, is speaking to you and you just feel it. It’s not logical reasoning, it’s this feeling, it’s this faith.
I know you have a very specific definition of that, but when was it that you knew, and how did you know? Then, what happened when you started traveling? Talk to us about that.
Tim Winders: So it’s really interesting, you know, we’re in the year 2020 and a lot of people talk about vision. Actually 2020 is hindsight. It’s being able to look back and evaluate and see things differently than when we were in the midst of them. I firmly believe right now – you used the word reignite – that there are so many people who are in a little bit of a fog or down or whatever because of all that’s happened in the world. The world is in somewhat of a state of PTSD. There’s no doubt about that.
But right now there are a handful of people, or it could be a massive amount of people who are doing some basic things that as this fog clears in their mind is going to ignite them to do great things. Now that leads to a mindset that I have always known, but these types of situations make them explode. There are two things. From my coaching, from my 56 years of living, and all of the experiences I’ve had come down to a few things. There are two ways that we as individuals make significant change in our lives. Two ways
Tim Winders: It could be higher than this. Number one, a focused, concerted effort to make a change, or make an adjustment in our lives. That is the rarest one out there. The second way is an external catalytic event that forces change upon us. Now I would love to say as a coach, as a student of mindset, as someone who helps other people reach greatness, reach down inside. I would love to say That I sat down and I meditated, and I prayed and I felt that the Lord spoke to me. That we were going to go on this journey, and it was going to lead to this lifestyle we’re leading. I would love to say that, but I would be lying. A catalytic event forced me to make a change. Now, I would not wish what we’ve been through on anyone, but I am so thankful that we went through it.
What’s going on in the world today is that people are being forced out of the comfort zones that they were in in February of 2020. The world was way too comfortable, and we are now being forced out. Let me just tell you, I don’t mean to be prophetic, and I don’t mean to be negative. From the economic standpoint, we haven’t even seen the repercussions. So people need to latch on to people like you and people like me who can really speak to them. To kind of clear up the fog, so that they can begin moving forward and get momentum.
I’d love to tell you that the mindset is – you just wake up and decide I’m going to do things differently. I think we can do that to a small degree, but you know what, most people make a change when the doctor tells them they got six months to live. Or that an artery is semi-closed and if they don’t do anything different about their health, they’re a time bomb that is about to go off. Or that a child has an illness, or that their job is moving across the country. That’s when people make changes. The thing that I think you and I would love to do is encourage people to not allow that to happen. To attempt to make those changes and ignite and do those things before the catalytic event comes along. Your mindset can help with that.
I do think people have to sort of be ready but man, it was painful. I won’t lie.
Clinton Young: Well, I think there’s there’s definitely a trend right now in more and more people looking for alternative ways to live, alternative ways to make money, and there’s been a catalytic event in everybody’s lives right now. I think even before COVID, there were so many people moving towards the idea of remote working and becoming an entrepreneur. They might call it a side hustle. I don’t really love that word “hustle”, but that side thing that generates income. RV sales are through the roof.
I think there are already people who are moving towards this type of potential lifestyle. I think, like you said, they need to be ready, mindset-wise. Although you were kind of forced into it with a catalytic event, there has been a lot of your mindset that has allowed you to be successful with taking on that type of lifestyle. It sounds really sexy, but I’m sure there were definitely some challenges throughout that whole experience. Probably several.
To share with you real quick – I actually had a similar experience that you just recounted. In 2008 to 2009 I lost my business. I lost my credit. I lost my property. It was eight months after I got married, like, welcome to the team, right. It was really challenging, and we talked about just taking off and we didn’t do it. We didn’t do it because we thought it wasn’t the best thing and I kind of wish we did. But, you know, everything’s always perfect.
I’m a firm believer that everything always happens exactly the way it’s supposed to. Even when it doesn’t seem so perfect. It’s allowed me to grow into who I needed to become to be able to live my mission of reigniting the human spirit. Now I am ready to choose this experience. There’s also been another catalytic event at the same time. So it’s a little bit of both.
Let’s talk a little bit about once you’ve done it. There’s a faith that things are going to work out, I would imagine. There’s also, I’m sure, a belief and confidence in your own abilities now that you’ve been doing it for so long. Can you speak to what somebody might be dealing with when they strike out on their own or with their family to live this kind of lifestyle.
What kind of faith did you need to have what you have experienced? These miraculous things that happened that you probably could never even have predicted, probably happened even better than you probably could have pictured it. I know I asked a lot there, but speak about that a little bit, if you don’t mind.
Tim Winders: Well, the first practical thing that I’ll say is there’s a faith aspect to this. What most people are going to run into is that they have too much stuff. They own too much. We are in an accumulation-society, and you have to work very hard to not accumulate in the first world that we live in today. Let me just tell you, the biggest practical hurdle that a lot of people will go through is what do we do with all our stuff. The battle there is what do you really need. You know we’re in a sharing economy. Do you really need three cars in the garage? Do you really need two cars even? Do you need to have seven sets of China or dishes? Do you really need 18 place settings of forks and spoons?
People would say, “Well, we’re just in an abundance society. That’s an abundance mindset.” I actually have come to think a little a little bit differently about that. The faith that comes from that is that I will have the provision for what I need to do when the time arrives that I need it. When God gives me an assignment, if that assignment is to be speaking to you and your audience, then I will have the time, the focus, the energy, and everything that I need for that. I’ll be equipped for it. If I have to travel from here to San Diego, then I will have the vehicle which I do. I’ll have more than enough fuel and places to stay and things to do along the way. It’s just the mindset that with the assignment I have, all provision is going to be there.
Tim Winders: I think that’s really the attitude to have. In a lot of circles, there’s a law of attraction that they talk about. I can talk to things even outside of the faith that I’m in, because I think some of the languages and all are very similar. But it really is the mindset that everything is going to be okay. It may not be. It may not match up to our expectations, because we may not know how to define “okay”.
Everything is going to be okay, because had I gone back, if you and I were doing this interview in 2010, you would have heard some stuff coming out of my mouth that would have been whiny. I mean I was a man of faith. I spent a lot of time in prayer, but I am sure God got tired of hearing me begging. But, he was there. He was watching. He was giving me my space and show and grace and I would have thought that in 2010 he was going to pour out money so that we could restore our home and live there and all that. That’s not what happened.
Had that not happened, Clinton. We wouldn’t be talking today in my RV. My wife and I absolutely love the lifestyle we live. We never would have done it living in a country club subdivision and a big old house on a golf course. We thought we lived in paradise. We didn’t feel like we needed to leave it. We didn’t realize that paradise was wherever we decided to go.
Clinton Young: Love that. Excellent. This is a lot of fun. You know, I’ve got a couple more quick hitter questions, and then a couple deeper questions, then we’ll wrap up.
So do you drive a RV with a car behind?
Tim Winders: We actually don’t pull it. I actually travel in the RV. The 39 foot RV when we travel and my wife is in our, in our little SUV. She we call it chasing after 30 something years we say she chases me.
Clinton Young: What made you do that?
Tim Winders: Well, some people actually pull. They’ll hook up and tow their vehicle. We just said, “You know what, we’re already 40 feet. I don’t really want to add another 15 to 18 feet and make things even more difficult.”
We would have to pull into a place when we need to unhook and all that. What we do is we multitask. She’ll pop in a Costco when we’re traveling through town. I’ll keep tootling along to the spot. When we’re going through cities like out near where you are in Southern California, those people have a tendency to crowd people like me. So she’ll run a little bit of interference, you know, we’re like smoking abandoned. Or something like that. So anyway, we do have a car.
Clinton Young: Yes. Got it. Now, boondocking which I think means not hooking up to hookups and just finding a spot in nature, or do you use actual RV campsites. What do you prefer and what do you typically end up doing
Tim Winders: We do both. We prefer having plenty of electricity, plenty of water, and plenty of places to go with our sewage and that they allow us to make sure that the Internet and everything else is working. Those things have a tendency to like electricity. We do have a set of batteries. We do not have solar currently. I have a lot of space on the roof, and I’ve looked at it. I’ve considered it, tried to evaluate it.
Currently we have found out that our rhythm is we like staying in places four to eight weeks. We like a concrete pad, that’s nice and level, and we like it in a cool spot so that we can jump in our car and go visit, like I mentioned to you. As this year finishes up, we’re probably going to be spending December and January just outside the entrance of Zion National Park. So we will be in an RV park there, and we will be hooked up with all the electricity and everything. We will have some propane if it gets cold, which it could, but we’ll jump in our car and go do hikes and go do things.
Also our son, he’s 26, lives full time in his RV. Is a 25 foot Studio on wheels he calls it. He’s a photographer and does some great things. He actually is the producer and engineer for our podcast. He’ll be meeting up with us there, and we’ll probably spend the holidays near each other at the entrance of Zion.
Clinton Young: That’s great. So right now it’s just you and your wife and the RV. No kids. Okay, got it.
Now I know that this all comes down to where you choose to stay and choose to eat and all that, but what could somebody expect for living expenses to actually do this? Is there an estimate that you could provide.
Tim Winders: I could tell you exactly. I did an episode back in March on our podcast that was basically a summary of our 2019. It was all the details of where we traveled. I don’t have that pulled up right now, but I went through the number of miles, number of states, RV parks we stayed at, places where we just stayed overnight, how many days we actually traveled, how many days we were parked and staying somewhere. I kept track of all the costs, minus the cost that we would have had regardless of where we are, which would be food, by the way. Some people say, Oh, you didn’t add food in But I can tell you it was a smidge under $25,000 for the entire year of 2019. That was our overhead costs, gasoline, RV parks, maintenance. Maintenance and getting things fixed when they didn’t go well, was one of our bigger expenses, truthfully.
Clinton Young: So that was everything except food. If you had to guess food per month, would you be able to guess?
Tim Winders: I don’t know. My wife is an excellent cook. At that point 2019, we were still going to restaurants. I think everybody’s food budget is different. I mean, they know what it is, where they’re sitting right now. It wouldn’t be that much different if you’re in an RV.
That’s, that’s kind of what I say. You’re eating today, what you’re going to eat in your RV. I mean, we’ve got a three burner gas stove. We’ve got a convection oven. We’ve got Instapots. We’ve got all the cooking utensils. We’ve got a grill that we love to cook on when we can.
Your food is going to be very similar whatever it is. I don’t know if that’s high or low for people, but I can tell you that we stayed in some places that were pretty pricey. We spent a little over 2000 a month to stay 20 feet from the Bay in Coos Bay on the water in Oregon for an entire month. There was a gym and an indoor pool in that RV park we were at. Then we stayed in places that were less than $450 a month that are pretty reasonable. We had a little electricity.
It just depends, like you said, on what someone wants to do. We’re looking at one now in Montana, that if we decided to do it, it’s $4,000 for the entire month of July, just outside of Glacier National Park
Clinton Young: Hey, location, location, location.
I guess it comes down to, as compared to what your normal expenses would be, I would imagine it’s much lower than what your normal expenses were. That’s really the ratio that people need to be looking at
Tim Winders: Yeah, absolutely. If people have mortgage, or rent, or all that type of stuff, my guess is that just an average type home in most places, they are probably spending 1-2-3 thousand a month. Which means they’ve already busted over that 25 k that 25 K is just a little over two thousand. Now we don’t have any other bills. That’s it.
Clinton Young: Now, I guess somebody doing this new they probably wouldn’t rent an RV, they’d buy one, I would imagine. So that’s probably not factored in. I’ve looked at some RVs that are “C Class” in the $45k to $50k range for a used one. I’m curious what you would recommend starting off with. “A Class” for two people, or “C Class” or what kind of range would you guess there?
Tim Winders: What you really need to decide is what you are going to do. Recreational RVs are much different than permanent living. We looked for something that the floor plan fit, knowing that we were probably going to gut it and paint it. You’re able to see the RV behind me. We gutted it out, we took all the brown out. I know people might like brown and carpet. We’re not carpet or brown fans. We ripped it all out. So we’ve got some teals and grays and whites and things that we painted. But I’ll go ahead and tell you the numbers. It doesn’t matter to me. We found a 2006 “Class A”. It was a gas powered “Class A”. Some people love the diesels, but I was okay with gas powered, and it had 21,000 miles on it. So think about that, a 2006 with 21,000 miles, and we picked it up for $35,000 cash.
Clinton Young: Oh my goodness. That was in 2018 or ‘19-ish?
Tim Winders: That was the summer of 2018 that we were able to get that. Then we got it and we did a lot of work for about four to six weeks. We put more into it, you know, we probably put another $10k in it. We put floors and we painted everything on the interior. We haven’t done anything on the exterior. The one my son has, he picked up from some of the rental companies which sell theirs after they’ve rented them. I’ll tell you that his was less than what we paid. I’ll just kind of leave it at that. His was a 2015, but the mileage was higher. However, it was also maintained.
You could easily spend $300,000, 400,000, I’ve even seen half a million. Or you could pick up something that has been gently, maybe a little more than gently, used because we knew we were going to paint it rip stuff out. So it didn’t have to be immaculate on the inside, because of what we were going to do so. That should give you some numbers to work with.
Clinton Young: That’s beautiful. I would love it if you’re open to it, if we can link your episodes specifically. Later on I’ll get the link from you, where you talk about that on your show. That might be a good driver for people from this show to go over to your show to really get some more specifics on how you did it.
Tim Winders: One of the things I’ll mention is that we did an entire season, it was season two of our podcast that was on living the Nomad life. We talked about house sitting. We talked about getting rid of your stuff. We talked about the mental aspect of having a bunch of stuff. We talked about going into the RV. This was prior to the end of that year, so I didn’t have the summary of the numbers like I did later.
That whole season has about seven episodes. I think there’s an entire episode on the mindset of living as a nomad, because there are pros and cons to anything. We’re not on vacation, we just live our lives as nomads in cool spots, but we still work.
Sometimes we work too much. My wife and I have talked about how we need to actually block downtime, instead of just going someplace to work, work, work. Just because we can look out the window and it’s cool. You know, I’m sure you’re not that way. I’m sure your low key Cool Hand Luke.
Clinton Young: Now we’re entrepreneurs, you know, sometimes I think entrepreneurs work harder than someone who has a job. The beauty is we have the flexibility, right? You have even more of that. You know that the freedom lifestyle is so important to me. I’m curious if you could share what’s the biggest thing you’ve learned either about yourself or about life or about business since you’ve been on the road. Not to put you on the spot, but what would you say?
Tim Winders: Both my wife, and I’ve discussed this. Life’s all about being stretched. If someone’s not being stretched, in my opinion, they may not be living. They’re somewhat just kind of coasting along. That may be harsh, but I think you get what I’m saying there.
We have learned that we would love to be spontaneous, but we are not really good at being spontaneous. We love to plan, and position ourselves. The last week or so, we have begun taking action and laying out our next 6 to 12, possibly 18 months. I have gotten so excited about the planning process and knowing where we might be going.
There are some people that probably do what we do and they wake up and go, “Where are we going today?” We tried that a little bit, and it’s just not us. We do like to get places and maybe do spontaneous things once we get there, but because we’ve got so much going on with business, writing, and creating and my wife has a business now, we like to position ourselves so that we can be creative and then go out and wind down or enjoy where we’re at. Instead of using a lot of that energy to say, “Where are we spending the night?”
Clinton Young: So you and I are similar in that respect. Whenever I go somewhere, I do all the research so I know all the options. Then when I get there I allow myself to be spontaneous. I might plan one thing, but then I know all the options so I’m like, “Oh, what do we feel like doing? Now let’s go do this.” And I already know it. So, I can kind of relate to what you just said.
Tim Winders: One other quick thing. We’ve learned that we’re not good tourists. We actually do not do the touristy kind of, I’ll say cheesy, but we don’t really do those well. Which means we also don’t really do big cities well. We love the hundred thousand or less areas that are a little more relaxed and laid back. We just don’t do the tourist things. We like to kind of live an average life when we’re in places to experience them.
Clinton Young: Love it. So, tell me some of your best advice or hacks for people when they’re thinking about this. I know I keep doing these cliffhangers, but I’m actually going to save that for my last question. Let me ask this other question, what are some of the funnest places you’ve been that have just been really memorable over the last eight to nine years.
Tim Winders: Well, I kind of referenced it, but I’m going to mention two. Since you kind of want cliffhangers, I’ll see if I can be dramatic with this.
Okay, first one – in summer last year, we spent time around the coast of Oregon. It was phenomenal. You know, we didn’t spend it in one spot. We didn’t pop in for a long weekend and pop back out. We traveled all up and down the coast of Oregon, and we did the dunes along the coast, we did ATVs on the dunes, we parked right up along the bay. We drove our other vehicle all up and down the coast. We went and watched whales and seals. We went to local restaurants. We had a blast. If people are in the United States or really anywhere for that matter, they should spend time in the area that’s the coast of Oregon.
The second thing I’ll mention is when we were living on the South Island of New Zealand house-sitting for three months, we were in a small little town, and the people gave us their car. So we traveled and ventured out and explored. We actually traveled all over New Zealand in a camper van before we settled in there.
Are you a Lord of the Rings fan at all?
Clinton Young: Yeah.
Tim Winders: Okay, in the first movie. There’s a place called Rohan. There was a place that was built on top of about a 1000 foot little peak that was in the sweeping valley. There were snow capped mountains surrounding it all around. Well that’s a little place called Mount Sunday that’s in the north central area of New Zealand. We found out it was there, we got in our car, and we drove 30 miles down a gravel road. When the road ended, we got out and we were in the middle of 10 miles long, two to three miles wide, the most stunning – my words that we use for describing these places – “How Great Thou Art Location” that you could ever see. Peter Jackson built rohani on top of it. They had to tear it down, but you can actually go over the little streams and all. You could climb up to this thousand foot peak that Rohan sat on in the Lord of the Rings. And you could do a 360 around and there’s snow capped mountains, almost all the way around you. It is the most stunning, breathtaking location that one can see, I believe. I mean, I’m including Grand Canyon, Zion, all of these other places. It’s fantastic – Mount Sunday in New Zealand. You gotta want to get there, though.
Clinton Young: Okay. All right. Well, I’ve just written that one down and Oregon’s definitely already on the list. So Those are definitely going to happen in the next two years for me. I love that.
So now rounding out, before we find out where we can go to learn more about you, I know, we’ve kind of talked a little bit about, but I’m going to combine two questions here. This kind of falls in the category of knowing what you know now. What do you wish you did differently, and that leads into what is your best advice or hacks for those looking to take the leap and live this freedom lifestyle of travel. Knowing what you know now.
Tim Winders: Yeah, I’m going to reverse those. The hack that people need goes back to something I said earlier, start evaluating your baggage. Evaluate the things that may be slowing you down. Well, we’ve got our house here, we’ve got our mortgage, we just need to kind of stay here, because this is the place that we need to be.
It’s really probably weighing you down more than its blessing. I actually use the term, is it a blessing or a curse. You probably need to do that with your stuff. You probably need to do that with a lot of things in your life. Everyone needs to probably go through that analysis. You know, read some books like you know Greg McEwen, you know, Essentialism or read some books on minimalism. Find the things that are essential in your life, and start hacking away at everything that’s not essential. The good thing is, as we’ve already said, people are probably recognizing that with all that’s going on in the world, the things that are probably burdening them.
The second thing, knowing what I know now, I would have started this process sooner, because I was attempting to live the lifestyle that I thought we should live. That society tells us we should live. That culture tells us we should live. Which is get a job, your work, you get a house, you fill it up, you get the next house, you fill it up, maybe get a second house, maybe get a garage.
Tim Winders: I can tell you that the inertia that it takes to reverse that process is massive. That’s why earlier we said it takes a catalytic event. The first thing I’d recommend people do is check on the essentialism, read up on that. Then just start stretching yourself. If you haven’t visited the national parks near you, get a little camper van. You could rent it or something. Load the family up, and go on a three to four day long weekend, just to get people out and experience things you’ve never done before. Start stretching and using the muscles that you’ve never used.
To make the leap from nothing to full time like us, it takes some transition. But that can pull a muscle real bad. If someone does it too quickly. Does that make sense?
Clinton Young: Yeah, I’m sure there have been some big challenges along the way.
I know we need to wrap up here. It’s been a great pleasure and I want to find out for everyone who’s listening, what do you want the audience to know about you? How can they learn more about you, how can they support you, how can they learn from you?
Tim Winders: I want them to know that our motto, our tagline where we are now is to redefine success. If you notice, a lot of the theme of this entire conversation is redefining success. Success is not living in a 6000 square foot home.
It might be, but people can define success on their own, we redefine success on our podcast and our business. We redefine success in leadership, business and ministry. If people want to come hang out, learn more about us and see what we do, the best place to do that is Seek, Go, Create wherever they listen to their podcast or SeekGoCreate.com. I recommend they go there, SeekGoCreate.com, there’s probably a place they could pop their email address in. We’ve got some bonus things we will give them. We also give away T-shirts and a bunch of stuff like that. They could just hang out there and join our community. We’d love to have them, it’d be fun.
Clinton Young: That’s beautiful. So definitely go to SeekGoCreate.com, we’ll make sure that link is in the show notes where your episodes are. We can find you there for your podcast. Tim, thank you so much. It was so great to have you on, and I am so inspired. I’m so ready, and I really appreciate you. Have a wonderful rest of your day.