Podcast

A Fulfilling Life Will Never Come From Achieving Goals With Tim Reynolds

TWS 25 | Fulfilling Life

What are the things you need to do to live a fulfilling life? Does it come from achieving goals? Dr. Tim Reynolds, author and creator of Living Every Minute, doesn’t think that’s always the case, and in this interview with host Patrick Donohoe, we learn where fulfillment comes from. We listen to Tim’s recollections about family and a story about a medical emergency he had worked on that showed him why the goal isn’t all there is, and that sometimes, the journey is just as important. Be inspired by Tim’s words and be ready to live a greater life.

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A Fulfilling Life Will Never Come From Achieving Goals With Tim Reynolds

The following five episodes are with businessman, investor, doctor, and now author, Tim Reynolds. The interview was in-person in my office. If you’re reading the episodes and want to watch the videos, just go head over to TheWealthStandard.com, and it’ll have a link there. When the five segments are complete, we’re going to post the entire interview on our YouTube channel. Make sure you check that out.

A little bit about Tim. He is a former Green Beret in the Special Forces. He was a medic and also a battalion surgeon. He graduated from Texas A&M with his Medical degree and his specialization was Emergency Medicine. He was an emergency room doctor for several years, and then co-started a company called HealthCARE Express.

He has 15 or 16 locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. He has his book. You can check it out on Amazon. It’s called Living Every Minute. It’s also on Audible. He reads the Audible audio book. Tim is an amazing guy. He is one of the first original platinum partners with Tony Robbins. He has love and zest for life. It’s throughout his book. It’s going to be throughout this interview.

You can imagine that in the roles that he’s played, he has experienced firsthand the fragility of life. He’s going to share some of those experiences throughout these five segments. I want to forewarn you. This is a PG thirteen-ish interview. There’s some colorful language. There are also some relatively graphic stories that Tim tells, but you are going to experience him, his heart, and his passion for life. You can check his website out. It’s LivingEveryMinute.com. He has some personal development programs, courses, and a lot of other resources that you want to check out. Go head over there. Without further delay, let’s start episode one with my dear friend, Tim Reynolds.

If you took the pillar of relationships in the book, we talked about the 30-second make-out session. I’ll give this as an example. I invented this thing called the 30-second make-out session. It’s a crazy, simple idea. If you’re the guy, you walk into your wife, she’s in the kitchen, or she’s at work, even better. Wherever you find her, you throw her up against the wall, make out, hair grab, and whatever it is that she likes like two rowdy kids. If you’ve been married for a long time, that doesn’t happen very often. What if you did that for 30 seconds and then you walk away? Don’t say a damn word, especially if you don’t tell her that you’ve read the book. You walk away.

What if she slaps you?

She would be like, “Wait.” I’ll grab her harder. She’d be like, “Wow.” It would make her all day. It would be like, she’d want more maybe, but you don’t give it to her and make her beg for it. You would walk away. What if you did that? It’s 30 seconds. For reasons we don’t, we create all these rules about why I wouldn’t do, she shouldn’t do. Fuck all that. Go do it.

If you did that once a day, it would change your entire marriage. That one thing. What I tried to do in the book is not just good philosophy. You go do this. I have five kids. They’ve very successful, great and wonderful. They’re not kids anymore. They’re all adults. Three doctors, one got a business degree, the other one got a brand-new degree. They’ll all come back to work in our companies.

We want the world better for our offspring than it was for us. We want to leave a better place. Click To Tweet

People say, “How are your kids so successful?” I said, “We were blessed.” Obviously, we don’t take credit for all of it. Second thing is, every week, I interview them. They remember this. I would sit in my office and they would have to come in and they’d have to have an interview with Dad. I might’ve sat on the other side of the desk.

It was like a formal interview. “How’s school? How are your friends? What are you doing with so-and-so? What are you thinking about football next year?” We have this interview. I don’t know why I started doing it. I don’t remember. They still say, “I wish we still did those interviews. I love that time.” That’s in the book. Why wouldn’t you do that? Do that. That’s not hard. It’s very simple. They treasure that time. That’s what I’ll do.

Drive up the presence.

Knowing that dad was there. Now that they’re adults, they still want me to do it. I’ll give you one more example. You’ve read this, about the family mission statement. We do what we call the Reynolds family retreats. Once a year, we go somewhere. We went to South Africa. It’s been as simple as going to up to lake camping and it doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it was. We were reading a book called The Traveler’s Gift. The book has an adult version and the kids’ version. The kids read the kid’s version, the adults read the adult version.

We’d sit around the table and I’d talk about the book. “What did you learn about it? What did you think about this?” I said, “What do you think our families should be about? What’s our family going to be about? What are our rules?” All the kids would comment. We’d write all these notes about what would make us feel special in our house. We wrote all of these things down. My daughter, Natalie, who’s now an emergency physician, took that. She was twelve at the time. She created a paragraph and we labeled it, The Reynolds Family Mission Statement. We blew it up, framed it, painted in our kitchen.

Every week when we’d have a family night and a game night, we’d stand up and we’d do like this pledge of allegiance, put our hands over our hearts. We would read the family mission statement. The kids are all 12 to 5, 9 to 14 at that time. They are now adults. Every one of my kids carries a laminated card of our family mission statement. That’s the power. Easy to do, easy not to do. That’s the difference between intentionally creating a life that’s worth creating spectacular for, or just letting the kids go to school and don’t do anything.

I want to put a stake in the ground here because there’s a couple of points in the book where it tugs on the heartstrings. What is about that guy that came into the emergency room who poured gasoline on himself to commit suicide? Wasn’t it because he was clinically depressed? Why don’t you tell that story? An unintentional life leads to this point.

They called in and said that they were bringing this guy into the hospital. I was the doctor that was on that day. He had sat in his car in a parking lot at a mall, poured a gallon of gasoline on himself and lit a match. He comes in and they had a hard time getting him out of the car. They called in and said he had 90% third-degree burns. Third-degree burns are full thickness.

The worst kind, looks like charcoal. He comes in. Weirdly, people with third-degree burns aren’t in pain. They burned through the pain receptors. They’re weirdly not look like they should be, but they’re not in much pain. That’s what his situation. The very unique situation of being an emergency physician with this guy is, after I examined him, I knew he was dead, but he didn’t know he was dead.

TWS 25 | Fulfilling Life

Fulfilling Life: The problem is that there are no rules. Somebody made that up for you. Somebody created all of that for you and then told you, that’s what it should be.

He was still awake and talking, but this is an unsurvivable injury. There’s no way you survive 90% surgery burns. I’d get to have a twenty-minute conversation with a guy who I knew was not going to survive. I asked him, “What caused this?” He said, “It’s just every day’s the same.” He had no history of depression. He wasn’t on antidepressants.

Yet, it got to the point where it was the zombie life. We talked about everything. He had a wife. They didn’t have a passionate relationship. He had some kids who didn’t have much to do with him. It wasn’t worth living anymore. It wasn’t worth doing it. People who commit suicide are always in a horrible situation. They can’t see the way to a great situation.

If you listen to the Audible part of that book. Billy and I talk about it. The thing that’s crazy about that is in order for him to get out of that situation, what do you have to do? You had to take tons of courage, more courage than I would have, because I couldn’t do that. I’d take massive action to do that. What if you use that same courage of massive action to fix his life?

That was the point. I didn’t even think about when I wrote the book and when Billy brought it up, he’s like, “What happened is this guy had a tremendous amount of courage and took massive action in order to kill himself.” If he had taken that same amount of courage, massive action, and done something different, how would things have turned out?

I often thought about society, in a sense, creates this unwritten checklist that we have to follow. You go to school, get good grades, get married, have kids, get a job, have a 401(k), and have health benefits. It’s like we’ve been programmed that if we check boxes, we’re going to have a fulfilling life. The same thing happens in religion where it’s like, “You got to do these things. Check these boxes.” Is there anything wrong with that philosophy?

The problem is that there are no rules. Somebody made that up for you. Somebody created all of that for you and then told you that’s what it should be, but they don’t know. They’re miserable. They’re beating their wife. They’re telling you what you should do. Meanwhile, they’re sitting at home addicted to porn or whatever the situation is. You have to be careful who you’re listening to. We all have faults. Be careful when you listen to me, everybody. If you think I’m perfect, you don’t know.

My wife’s right here, she can tell you. I’m open to that. I agree. This version two is going to be much better because I got a lot more mistakes to make. You don’t have to dig very deep to find some dirt on me, as the country song says. It’s true. This book says that. This isn’t coming from a guy who knows everything. This is coming from a guy who have been in a lot of weird situations. Sixty-five countries. The treatment to this whole thing that you talked about, about everybody sees the world like this, to fix that is travel. See what the rest of the world’s doing. Mark Twain said that, not Tim Reynolds, but he was right.

The more places you go, the more kinds of people you meet, the more people you live with, because when we go somewhere, we don’t like to stay in the American place. We like to be in the environment. Eat the food, do the things. We’ve been so blessed. We’ve been at the Achuar Indians in the rainforest in Ecuador, ten days from civilization. They’ve never seen civilization.

We’ve done things with them. Funny story in the book about that. We’ve been at the Achuar Indians in Africa. We’ve delved in the mosques in Egypt and Istanbul. We’ve been in almost every Buddhist temple in Thailand, funny story. In every place you go, people are the same. I feel like there’s this core base that our spirits are very similar.

It's not the goal. It's the living every minute. It's a journey to get to the goal. Click To Tweet

Our energies are very similar. We want the world better for our offsprings than it was for us. We want to leave a better place. We want to have a spectacular life. For some reason, we started to put on all these layers of society, religion, whatever it is that take us away from this core base of who we are. If you can get rid of all that and get down to who we all are, it’s amazing how much more we’re alike than we’re different. We all have these kinds of conversations and sit around and have fulfilled lives. That’s the basis of the whole philosophy.

One of those checklists is you have these end points, where you accomplish this thing and that should be, “I graduated college. I’m good. I don’t have to read again and study. I got married. I don’t feel like dating again or take care of myself.” You need to manipulate your body.

Free sex thing. It can happen if you’re not married.

For long.

You’re going to have to work harder.

That’s the point in this life. Life isn’t these end points. Life is to continue a set of milestones. Once you achieve a certain level, the next level of weights, and there’s no end to those levels.

I was talking to John about this. He knows somebody who’s super successful, who he got within Hawaii. He didn’t tell me the guy’s name, but he said the guy on the boat was still with him. He says he’s somebody he’s always to looked up to. He said, “I feel like I’ve achieved everything. I don’t have anything else to look for.”

The problem with thinking that the goal is the thing, that’s the problem. It’s not the goal. It’s the living every minute to get to the goal. In fact, the goal sometimes is a disappointment, like, “This is it? I worked so hard to get here.” It’s because you fell in love with the goal instead of falling in love with the process that gets you there.

I’m in love with going to the gym. I have some goals. I want to bench press 400 pounds. Whatever my goals are for that year, but that’s not it. I’m in love with the gym. I like the smell of the iron, putting on the gloves, making my drink, and lifting those weights. I don’t need any goals. I’ll accomplish the goals because I fell in love with the process.

TWS 25 | Fulfilling Life

Living Every Minute: Dr. Tim’s Pillars for Creating a Spectacular Life

In my business, I’m in love with waking up every morning and going, “What problems have we got to solve today? What issues are they? What trainings are we going to do? Do we have some business goals?” Yes, but that’s not the important part. You can’t fall in love with that because it may or may not happen. What will happen is every day, we get to do this thing that we get to do. If you fall in love with that, fall in love with the right thing, you still set goals, but they have a different reason. They’d have a different thing.

You did an amazing job of setting the theory, setting some frameworks, but you also have some tools for execution. Obviously, you have the book, workbooks, some material online, then you have Gladiator, and you have some other things that you’re doing. Maybe speak to those as we conclude.

We’re putting this all together. We have the Living Every Minute book. We have Living Every MinuteWorkbook. Those are available LivingEveryMinute.com or on Amazon. It’s also on Audible. I finished it. It’s weird listening to yourself read a book.

It’s awesome. You make these little side comments and interviews.

We did the Audible. There’s that, the workbook. We have the journal planner. I talked about that. It’s on LivingEveryMinute.com, all this. Our blog is there as well. We started a course. These didn’t have anything to do with each other. This was happening. I started this course called Gladiator. It’s called Reclaim Your Gladiator. The reason it’s called Reclaim Your Gladiator is because it’s a men’s course and men are already gladiators, they just forgot. For three days, I remind them of who they are, what they were born to do, and what they’re here for. It came with this whole idea of toxic masculinity, this whole idea, this bullshit concept, that masculinity is toxic.

Masculinity is protective and helpful and all of the good things. What you see negative that men do is not masculinity. That’s called being an asshole. The sideways hat and the big truck are not masculinity. Don’t mistake the two things. That’s what I literally said in the back room and designed the course. Everything from Special Forces days to Tony, to Keith, everybody I’ve learned from and said, “How can we create this into a course?” We started running this gladiator course and it’s been amazing.

We’ve put 100 men through it. We only do 12 at a time. We only do it twice a year. It’s on my ranch in Texas. Three days. There’s a physical component to it, but it’s not about physical. It’s about mental spiritual. What happens in the classroom and in the conversations is way more important than the physical part. I knew for my Special Forces days, and you did a thing, so you appreciate this, men don’t open up without a physical component. You get them to be physical, get them tired. Now I can get them to open up and I can teach them. That’s why there’s a physical component, it’s part of it. It’s become awesome. That’s at the same website, there are videos and stuff. I did that for a few years.

Everybody said, “You need a woman’s course.” I said, “I don’t know how to do a women’s course. I was in Special Forces. There were no women.” No offense to women, but all my companies are run by women, but I don’t know how to train women. It’s not my thing. I have my wife do it. She’s like, “I’m not doing it. You’re the trainer guy.” We kept going back and forth. Finally, I said, “I’ll do it.” I sat for an entire summer and I planned out what would a woman’s course be. I want them to be just as bad-ass as Gladiators, but not turn them into men.

Part of our problem in our society is we’ve mistaken equality of pay and how we’re treated for sameness. We’re not the same. There are men and women. There’s feminine energy, masculine energy. They’re not the same. That has nothing to do with equality. Sometimes we confuse the two things. Inequality means sameness. I didn’t want to make them the same. I debated how to do it. I took the whole summer. The whole name Valkyrie, if you know what Valkyrie is, they come from the Viking days of Nordic people. I originally named the course, Ninja Princess Warrior.

I was told by the other women, “That would not be the name of the course. The name of the course would be Valkyrie.” We’ve done two. We got two coming up. It blew me away. It ended up being cooler than Gladiator. Women have this unique problem that men don’t have, that we don’t think about. Women have to do everything a man has to do. I’m thinking of a single mom. Go to work, provide, be all of the things that she has to be and then go in and take a shower, put on high heels and a dress and become super feminine. We don’t have to make that choice.

Part of our problem in our society is we've mistaken equality of pay and equality of how we're treated for sameness. Click To Tweet

We just stay in that one state all the time. They have to do all the thing we have to do and then also be super feminine. The whole course is going back and forth to a masculine, feminine energy. Tony says, “How do you make your dog, your dog? You give it a name and you teach it to come on your call.” I said, “Which part of your personality do you need to teach?” You don’t talk to your child the same way you talk to your colleague, the same way you talk to your buddy at the bar.

You have to know which dog to bring to which bite. It’s about that. We ended up with Gladiator and Valkyrie and then that led into a couple’s courses. We have a couple of courses that we do. We talked about these, because it’s not Gladiator. It’s not a physical course, but it’s about strengthening people’s marriages. The 30-second make-out session, a bunch of other things we go into.

A few years into it, the Gladiators came to me and said, “What about advance? What’s the next thing? We want to advance Gladiators.” We’ve been 60 men or so at that time. I said, “You be careful what you ask for.” They’re like, “No, we want it.” I created advanced, which we call Ragtag Bastards. I created the Ragtag Bastards course, but that’s for people who’ve already done the first course. We hold that once a year. Now they’re talking to me about that Valkyrie.

We’ll see how that goes. One thing’s leading to another. Rather than me pushing what’s happening, I’m feeling the pull of what’s happening now. It’s fun. I like it. We have those tools that are available. We’re also going to do our first ever Living Every Minute Summit. We’re going to take probably three days and teach everything in the book over a three-day process and have a summit where people can come and learn.

Talk about the website.

LivingEveryMinute.com is where all this is housed. It’s where the events are. It’s where the book is. You can get books, workbooks, the planner. Everything’s on that site. That’s where we’ll announce when we go inside to do the summit where, and when that’s going to be. We’re talking about doing a podcast, we love the idea of doing it. We just haven’t got to that point yet, but eventually, we’ll do that. We’ll put all that on there as well.

Tim, it’s been awesome.

Let me put a plugin for you. I’ve been watching you over the last few years. As I’ve known you and watch you move from one office to the other, watch what you’re doing and your personal growth and path. I’ve been watching from a distance and through John and see what’s going on. I’m proud of where you are headed. This is awesome. Good job.

That means a lot. We’ve discovered similar principles. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. That’s what we have in common. The wheel has been invented. We just couldn’t figure it out and execute.

TWS 25 | Fulfilling Life

Fulfilling Life: Masculinity is protective and helpful and all of the good things. What you see negative that men do is not masculinity. That’s just called being an asshole.

Take what other people have taught and just execute it.

It’s a game where it’s not all success. You hit the nail on the head, 80% failure, 20% success. That 20%, it makes it like that. It’s totally worth all the 80% and maybe even a little bit more, honestly. I don’t think we value the success if we don’t get punched in the face every now and then.

If you are always successful, you wouldn’t know any different.

Tim, you’re awesome. Thank you. Everyone, thank you for reading. See you next time.

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About Dr. Tim Reynolds

Dr. Timothy Reynolds is the founder of Dr. Tim international Inc., a company he established in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute™ with others. He dedicates countless hours each week to helping others transform their lives through mentoring, life building, inspirational talks, and writing his motivational blogs.

Dr. Tim was the first member of his family to graduate high school. He joined the military shortly after graduation and graduated from the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret on an A-Team as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer for 17 years.

After getting out of the military, Dr. Tim graduated college with honors. His passion for helping people inspired him to become a medical doctor, and in 1993 he graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine.

Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States. Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions in the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and level II trauma center; president of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; and founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.

Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.

Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and a pilot. He also enjoys body building, golf, and hiking.

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A Framework To LIVE In Every Minute With Tim Reynolds

TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

 

Everyone’s lives, be it their personal or professional ones, follow a guide, a framework to live by. In Part 4 of Patrick Donohoe’s interview with businessman, investor, doctor, and author Tim Reynolds, we hear more about how your mission, your framework, affects everything around you. Tim discusses the Living Every Minute concept and how it can change your life. Tim shares the value of writing down the magical moments in your life and chronicling what you do in a journal. Tune in to this thought-provoking conversation and learn how to make the most out of your life.

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Listen to the podcast here:

A Framework To LIVE In Every Minute With Tim Reynolds

The following five episodes are with Businessman, Investor, Doctor, and Author Tim Reynolds. The interview was in person in my office. If you’re reading the stories and want to watch the videos, just head over to TheWealthStandard.com, and it’ll have a link there when the five segments are complete. We’re going to post the entire interview on our YouTube channel.

A little bit about Tim. He is a former Green Beret in the Special Forces. He was a medic and also Battalion Surgeon. He graduated from Texas A&M with his Medical Degree and his specialization was emergency medicine. He was an emergency room doctor for several years and then co-started a company called HealthCARE Express. He has 15 or 16 locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. He has his book. You can check it out on Amazon called Living Every Minute.

It’s also on Audible. He reads the Audible audiobook. Tim is an amazing guy. He is one of the first original platinum partners with Tony Robbins. His love and zest for life are throughout his book. It’s going to be throughout this interview. In the roles that he’s played, he has experienced firsthand the fragility of life. He’s going to share some of those experiences throughout these five segments. I want to forewarn you.

This is a PG 13-ish interview. There’s some colorful language and there are also some relatively graphic stories that Tim tells. You guys are going to experience him, his heart, and his passion for life. You can check his website out. It’s LivingEveryMinute.com. He has some personal development programs, courses and a lot of other resources that you want to check out. Go head over there. Without further delay, let start this episode with my dear friend, Tim Reynolds.

I can’t remember who said this, but picture yourself with them in 30 years and if you can’t. I used to have a funny saying. I don’t even remember where I got it but I heard it one time and I caught it. When I learned something, if I can remember how I learned it, that means I made it up. It’s one of those things. If I wake up three days in a row thinking about you and we’re not having sex, you’re fired.

If you have a mission in life and if you know your major definite purpose is, that has an effect on everything about you. Click To Tweet

I shouldn’t have to wake up thinking about you for three days in a row unless we’re having sex. I don’t remember where I learned, but I thought it was hilarious. It’s true. I’m sure it’s happened to you. You have a team member, a partner or something, it’s just weighing heavy on your heart. You retrain, rethink and have the hard conversations, then you part ways.

You think, “Why did I wait? Have you ever fired anybody?” I should have waited longer. Every time you’re like, “Why it took me so long?” That’s a sign that you’re a good person. If it weighs heavy on your head, firing so many and you enjoy that, you’re not the right person. If it weighs heavy on your heart and it’s hard, that’s right.

It goes the other direction too, whether it’s an employee or even in an intimate relationship, it becomes non-intimate. You hold on for too long. You know I’m here for a paycheck or I’ll just deal with this. You don’t realize the weight that has on the other aspects of your life.

In the pillars that we talk about, all of them affect the others. Your health affects your wealth. Your wealth affects your relationships. Your revelations affect your mission. If you have a mission in life and if you know what your major definite purpose is, that has an effect on everything about you. My favorite analogy is food poisoning. Everybody had food poisoning. When you have food poisoning, you have the bucket here and the toilet here. Nothing in life matters. Not your marriage, not your money, nothing. Just that bucket, not a toilet.

That’s what people are headed. They’re saying a healthy person has 10,000 problems. A healthy person has one.

It’s the same as the Living Every Minute concept. You don’t appreciate it until you don’t have it. You don’t appreciate your eyesight every day. You get up in the morning and it’s like, “I’m glad I can see you now.” We don’t. We take it for granted. Part of the Living Every Minute philosophy is that, “How do I live every minute? How do I create and appreciate this moment for everything I have?” My hands and my fingers can do this, then you and I consider to have a conversation.

That changes everything and then you start to look for what we call magic moments. We haven’t talked about it. We created a journal planner. It’s called Living Every Minute Journal Planner. We talked about working on your life, so I created a tool. I said, “How can I create a tool that will help people to do this on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?” I created this planner. It has this daily ritual and essentials that you go through.

TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: When you have food poisoning, you have the bucket here and the toilet here. Nothing in life matters. Not your marriage, not your money, nothing. Just that bucket, that toilet.

 

The first thing is three things that you’re grateful for, then the next thing is rewrite your top ten goals. Most people are already have written goals. Most people do write them, then later look at them, but if you rewrite your top ten goals every day, there’s something that happens in your brain, especially if you do it by hand. There’s a place you rewrite them every day. I hate it sometimes because I’m like, “I didn’t do anything on that.”

That’s why you do it. It takes you through this process. It’s not a calendar. There’s a calendar in it but it’s not a calendar. It’s a planning-your-life thing then there’s a journal section on the other side. I teach people who’s like, “I don’t know what to write in a journal.” I said, “It’s pretty easy. We give them a little outline. It’s called Go Pam.” My wife’s name is Pam. It’s gratitude, obstacles and opportunities, people who’ve influenced my life, accomplishments, and magic moments.

Imagine if you just wrote those down every day. The magic moment is you think on the day and you think, “What was cool and magical that happened? Patrick and I were having this conversation and this thing happened or whatever.” You write that as the magic moment, “I spent some time with my daughter, one-on-one laid in the bed and we just talked.” Whatever that’s going to be. This cool thing happens. We’ve taught this over and over. If you write down a magic moment every day, guess what you start looking for?

Magic moments.

You start seeing it, “I got to write that.” You start looking for them and then something magical happens. You start creating them. That’s what I’m about. I’m about creating magic moments. That’s what the train is about. When that happened, I was like, “That’s going to be a magic moment. Let’s create that. We’ll never forget that.”

It’s because of that philosophy. We started thinking, “What if I was the creator of magic moments? Instead of just having a barbecue, we had a barbecue and we invited two of the neighbor families over. We did an anti-roast.” A roast is where you say bad things about people in general so we say great things about. Nobody would ever forget that. It’s just easy to do, but it’s just a matter of twisting it and saying, “I’m wasn’t going to create magic moment. I’m going to create spectacular.”

Two things were going through my head. First, the power of frameworks. An individual’s mind without frameworks is scattered. Naturally, we create our own frameworks, but typically they’re not done strategically. They’re done just by happenstance based on survival instincts. To conserve energy and process everything that’s going on, we create our own framework. This is a strategic framework.

We all have same 24 hours. What you do at these 24 hours makes all the difference. Those who end up successful and those who ended up in the homeless shelter started with the same 24 hours. Click To Tweet

The second thing is those frameworks design the way we view the world if we do them on an ongoing basis. If you go to an event and you see Tony Robbins, “I went to that event.” You don’t remember anything about it is because you did nothing with it. Our body were designed where you can’t fit much more information in there. If you don’t repeat, the old stuff is going to dominate anything new. There are instances where you have this like, “Punch in the gut, kick in the balls” moment where if you don’t do something, it’s just going to be super painful. If you’re trying to design things strategically, you need that dynamic of repetition. There’s science behind this.

Atomic habits, the power of habit, and all of these different things. That habit is just a little piece of string, putting our piece string and another piece of string. Pretty soon, you’ve got a rope.

It strengthens.

That’s great if that’s a good one.

It’s terrible if it’s cigarettes or any other bad habit. It’s just so hard to break once it’s a rope. What you just said is perfect. What we did with the journal plan was create a framework. It’s an intentional framework because otherwise, we create an unintentional framework and then we live through those. I’ve realized that’s what we’re doing. That’s where the rules come from. It’s a perfect analogy. I’ve been a big planner guy for a long time. I’m originally from Salt Lake.

There was the Franklin Planner before Covey. There was a guy named Hyrum Smith at a little shop downtown and he invented the Franklin Planner. I bought the first Franklin. We went to the Franklin Planner. It was this little planner and it had all this different stuff. The shop became FranklinCovey because Stephen Covey had a different company. The two join together and become FranklinCovey. Day-Timer came out, so I went to the Day-Timer. I had all these planner ideas. I went to all the courses. Why? I don’t know.

I’ve always been obsessed with this time thing and the idea that no matter who you are, how rich, poor, healthy, or sick you are, we all have one thing the same, 24 hours. Every one of us every day, unless we die, is born with 24 hours. It might be the last 24 hours, but we have 24. I’m fascinated by the idea that what you do at these 24 hours makes all the difference. Those who end up successful in all areas of their life and those who ended up in the homeless shelter started with the same 24 hours.

What they did every 24 hours is what made all the difference. That’s the Living Every Minute. I’ve been obsessed with time. I’ve tried every time-system, planner, and journal, all those kinds of things. Finally, I took all those 30 years’ worth of try-them-once and, “What if I created one that envelops our philosophy?” What the world didn’t need was another calendar. In fact, your best calendar is here. It is recurring, remind you and all that stuff. This isn’t a calendar.

This is a creative stepping out of your life for 10 or 15 minutes a day and recreating it. That comes with the daily and then weekly. There’s a weekly retreat where you spend an hour or so planning the week or what that should look like. It is not planning your events. We call it the most important things. The big rocks, “What am I going to do this week for my health? What am I going to do for my relationship with my wife? If I could only do one thing this week to be a better husband, what would it be? I can only do one thing this week for my business. What would the most important thing I could be?”

It’s putting those in and stepping back. Monthly looks a lot like that and then it comes every quarter. It’s like a 90-day sprint because business is done in 90 days. It’s got a business section and a personal section for the next 90 days. This is the top goal in each of these areas. What you would end up with is about 10 goals and 10 areas of your life. Every day, you have to rewrite those top ten goals for the 90 days. It’s amazing how effective that is.

TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: If you’re happy with the results you have, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re not happy with the results you have, keeping doing what you’re doing is stupid.

 

This is more time. I imagine people that are reading this are like, “That’s a lot of time. I’ll don’t have enough time.” It’s amazing how we respond to it. Biologically, our bodies are like, “You have so much going on. Don’t put any more in there,” and it responds that way. In your experience in coaching people and seeing this successfully adopted, what’s the accountability structure in order to get to the point where you do that consistently?

If you and I are going to have a contest to chop down trees for the day, I would spend the first hour sharpening my saw. That’s what Stephen Covey said. I would accomplish a lot more. If we forget to sharpen the saw, we call it the sword. If we forget to sharpen the sword, then we will spend a lot of time doing a lot of things that we don’t have to do with a dull sword. This also the winning the inner battle before you go to the outer belt.

I call it the hour power or whatever you want to call it. If you don’t have an hour, it’s 30 minutes. If you don’t have 30 minutes, it’s 15 minutes, whatever you have. If you spend that time with yourself, planning, thinking, meditating, re-looking at your goals, praying, or whatever it is that you do during your time, the whole rest of the day seems different.

It’s like your, “It’s your day.” Don’t ever feel like you catch up. You feel like you have to it all day. “I ran around with my head on fire, but I didn’t get anything accomplished.” That’s the difference. Once a year, I do four-day hibernation. I’d disappear for four days before I show up. For four days, I plan the year. The first two days, I don’t allow any plans. First two days, all I do is review the previous year.

At the end of the day, what we all want is fulfillment. Click To Tweet

I do review my journals, my P&L’s for my businesses, and my interviews. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? How did I screw up as a husband? How to do good as a teacher? What could I have done better? It’s such an amazing gratitude exercise for two days, just to look at how the year went and then for the next two days, I have a little pad of paper. As I’m doing it, I’ll write down how next year is and then I spend the next two days thinking, “I going to start with this one question.” When I’m sitting here this time next year, what would have made it spectacular? Three hundred sixty-five days from now, what would have made this the best 365 days ever? That’s the premise I started for and I started outlining health, wealth, relationships, or dad. We have five kids. What could I do? That’s what I do. Once I’ve done that, I’ve outlined what the year looks like.

Some of those things are set in stone. They’re dates. “We’re going to Africa. We’re doing this.” There are so many things I want to accomplish. My mistake that I make often is I just have too many. I ended up with 200 things and because I want to do so many things. I make myself narrow it down and then narrow it down again and go with the top ten. I’ll usually have a top 2 or 3 in each area then the top ten for the year. If I only get these things done this year, these are the top ten.

Once a month, I’ll take for September and say, “This is the first of the month.” I’m going to look at the year, and I’m going to say, “This is September. How am I doing on the things I thought I said I would do? What does September need to look like in order to be in alignment with these?” It takes about an hour once a month. Once a week, I have the weekly laid out. Where do I go check? Every month, I need lots of the year.

Let’s go to September and say, “Where are we at in this month? How do I fit these things into this?” That takes an hour. Once a day, I take ten minutes. The ten minutes I take in the day isn’t really scheduling. That’s the weekly thing. It’s really going through the process that I’ve just told you about. It puts me in a place of harmony with myself and with the world to do that.

TWS 24 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: Dr. Tim’s Pillars for Creating a Spectacular Life

I’m sure you know quadrants 1, 2, 3, and 4. I’m more in quadrant two, which are things that are important and not urgent. The more time I can spend in things that are important but not urgent, the more fulfillment you have. All your fulfillment comes from that quadrant. Important and urgent is also important, but important and non-urgent are equal to fulfillments. We don’t need to move from quadrant 1 to 2. We need to move from quadrants 3 and 4 to 2. That’s what it does. By the way, the people who thought, “I don’t have time to do that.” They spend two hours on things and procrastinating.

What are the contingencies? What has to happen in order for that to be successful? I’m going to revert back to hunger, which is the obvious one. That’s the fuel to execute this when you know what’s on the other end of it. Doing this for the sake of doing it, there’s maybe one in a billion people that like doing that. When you start to connect because of this, this is what’s going to happen to my life. This is the moments I’m going to get to live, the places I get to go, the people I get to be with, and the feelings I get to feel. That’s where I look at it again.

I sent you some feedback in a text about the book. It’s so comprehensive because it talks through not just the theory, which we’ve focused on the theory behind it, but it’s how it’s personalized and then what it means for a person’s life. You have the execution. It’s one of those, “You can have all the theory in the world, but do jack shit in your life.” You don’t have a strategy, a framework to execute. If you don’t have it, you’re going to try to use the one that you already have, which will work. That’s why he gave you results you got here. You already have the results from it.

I tell people that. If you’re happy with the results you have, keep doing what you’re doing but if you’re not happy with the results you have, keeping doing what you’re doing is stupid. Don’t keep banging your head into the wall. That doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got to completely change what you’re thinking and what you’re doing to try different strategies. If you don’t use mine, use somebody else’s but use a different strategy. That’s going to get you to where you want to go. At the end of the day, what we really want is fulfillment. We want to be fulfilled in life and feel like, “If you just spent 80% of our misery and our happiness as our relationships with others.”

Important links

About Tim Reynolds

Dr. Tim Reynolds is the President and CEO of Dr. Tim, International, a company he founded in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute with others.

Dr Tim was a graduate of the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret medic on an A-Team, as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer from 1980 until 2000.

Dr. Tim graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah in 1993. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States.

Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions across the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and level II trauma center; director, Texas College of Emergency Physicians Board of Directors; president of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.

Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.

Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and a pilot. He also enjoys body building, golf, and hiking.

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Conversations Are Only Hard When You Make Them About YOU With Tim Reynolds, M.D.

TWS 23 | Conversations

We can only do so much by listening just to ourselves. Most of the time, we need to broaden our narrow perspective and start listening to others. Still with businessman, investor, and author, Dr. Tim Reynolds, Patrick Donohoe guides us into their discussion about finding others who think differently than you. Tim shares the value of having a team with different strengths and learning more about their character than their skills. Join into this conversation and discover how business is not such a lonely thing after all.

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Conversations Are Only Hard When You Make Them About YOU With Tim Reynolds, M.D.

This episode is sponsored by the new and improved Financial Independence Calculator. One of the driving forces of human beings is freedom, which infers financial freedom, too. Years ago, I set out to discover how any individual, regardless of their financial situation, could evaluate their finances in five minutes or less and have a firm date when they could achieve financial independence. The latest version of this calculator, which is free for the audience, can be found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. The calculator is going to take you only a few minutes to complete and it’s going to provide you with a specific financial independence date. Go check it out.

The following five episodes are with businessman, investor, doctor and author, Tim Reynolds. If you are reading these episodes and want to watch the videos, go head over to TheWealthStandard.com. Make sure you check that out. A little bit about Tim. He is a former Green Beret in the Special Forces. He was a medic and also a Battalion Surgeon. He graduated from Texas A&M with his Medical degree. His specialization was Emergency Medicine. He was an emergency room doctor for several years and also co-started a company called HealthCARE Express. He has many locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

He has a book. You can check it out on Amazon. It’s called Living Every Minute. It’s also on Audible. He reads the Audible audiobook. Tim is an amazing guy. He’s one of the first original Platinum Partners with Tony Robbins. He has a love and zest for life throughout his book. It’s going to be throughout this interview. You can imagine in the roles that he’s played, he has experienced firsthand the fragility of life. He’s going to share some of those experiences throughout these five segments.

I want to forewarn you, this is a PG 13-ish interview. There’s some colorful language and there are also some relatively graphic stories that Tim tells. You are going to experience him, his heart and his passion for life. You can check his website out. It’s LivingEveryMinute.com. He has some personal development programs, courses and a lot of other resources that you will want to check out. Go head over there. Without further delay, let’s start episode one with my dear friend, Tim Reynolds.

My dad’s old. We visit them every year. They live on the East Coast on the beach. We were on the beach with a three-hour conversation around rules. Most people are so resistant but he realized that his rule to feel that he was significant, worthy and happy is he always had to be helping somebody else. Good on him because that’s his whole life. He does so much good for people. The thing he realized is number one, it’s a big burden to carry and he doesn’t allow people to help him. It hit me. It’s profound where we walk around with these rules.

If you only feel like it’s never good enough, then it doesn’t matter how good it is. Click To Tweet

I have the rule to pick up every check. Luckily, most of the people around me also think I should pick up every check. That’s not big of a problem but every once in a while, somebody else picks up the check. I almost get like, “This is how it’s used to be.” One day I realized, “Why is that?” For some reason, I created a rule that I should be the guy picking up the check. I wouldn’t allow anybody else not to realize that it was a favor to me. How did I make up that stupid rule? What a stupid rule but we all do that. We make up rules. I shared this with you before.

The major rule that I had to change was I have to be making everything better all the time. It’s a great rule. Honestly, if you think about it, I’m always trying to make things better. The person I was working with said, “What is the role of presuppose?” I presuppose that I will never be good enough. I was like, “That’s exactly how I feel all the time. Nothing is ever good enough,” and I never realized that. I thought it was a great rule. You are always making things better.

It’s a loop that you can’t get out of.

No matter how good it is, it’s never good enough. If you only feel like it’s never good enough, then it doesn’t matter how good it is. I had to readjust that rule and rethink that so I can say, “It’s good enough exactly as it is. The world is exactly as it’s supposed to be and let’s go make a better.”

What’s your new primary question? What are the simple rules you operate because it doesn’t mean that we don’t have rules? You didn’t get rid of every rule. We try to create rules to get us what we want.

I changed that role to, “How can I be content and ambitious simultaneously?” I’m smart enough that I can say, “I’m perfectly happy with exactly as I am financially, health-wise and relationships-wise. If nothing changed, I’m so blessed.” That’s what it is. Let’s go create and be able to do both of those things. Before I had the, “Let’s go create,” but I didn’t have the, “I’m very content with exactly where I’m at right now,” and that’s a gratitude thing. I was grateful but I wasn’t grateful that the world was exactly as it is.

TWS 23 | Conversations

Conversations: You need people in your life who are willing to call you out.

You had said something before. Do you find it easy when a person is trying to go through these exercises on the road? Even though it’s simple in theory, oftentimes there are limitations but when they are going through an exercise with someone else, that’s when people can have more epiphanies. This has been my experience. Is it pretty easy for a person when they are going through these exercises to recognize the rules, accept them, and then move on or is there typically resistance to it?

It’s a combination. You have probably had the same experience. Stephen Covey used to say, “You have to win the inner battle before you can face the outer battle.” You have to win the man inside or the woman inside before you can face the outside. A lot of the revelations or a-ha moments that you will have will be with yourself during your own thinking, meditation, prayer or whatever you call that. I also think there’s a limitation of how far you can go on your own.

That’s why I recommend it in the book and I know you are a big advocate of this, too. Find some mentors or groups that you can go out to or whatever mentor you like and go learn from some other people too both live and through reading and listening. My secret to success has to be, you don’t have to do it all on your own. There’s plenty of people who have treaded the path before you and you can learn from them not only what to do but sure as heck what not to do. Don’t step on that landmine. That’s a big one. Trust me, I stepped on it.

Going through that and I love this analogy of Tiger Woods has a golf coach. He can beat his golf coach in golf so why would he need a coach? Here’s the reason. Tiger cannot see himself swing. He can’t see the golf club. You need somebody to look at you who’s objective, who’s not trying to sell you something. Who can tell you, “If you turn your foot a little bit, I think everything will get better on your swing.” You need people in your life who are willing to call you on your ship. You need somebody and as you get better, richer and as you get higher in your status in life, it’s harder and harder to find people who are willing to tell you that your breath stinks. You need somebody willing to tell you, “You need a Tic Tac.”

It’s two things. It’s somebody willing to do that and you willing to accept it.

Even if you are willing to accept it, it’s hard to find somebody willing to do it. It’s hard to find somebody who works for you who can be completely honest because even if they don’t know, there’s a secondary agenda. It is not an equal relationship when somebody calls you on your crap.

There’s a limitation of how far you can go on your own. Click To Tweet

Candid conversations are not part of society. When candid conversations happen, there’s never an objective response or an objective filter that the criticism goes through, which is interesting. Trial and error get a person eventually to the point where they realize that another person’s perspective is another perspective. It doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong but it could be helpful.

We don’t have to and that’s the thing. If I tell you, “Those jeans just don’t look good on you.” If I were to tell you that, it doesn’t mean I’m right. It means you should go, “I like them. Thank you for your opinion,” but be willing to be open to that idea because what we tend to do is get very defensive. I have sat on boards for many years and every time the CEO of a company or whoever is being interrogated, if you will, as a board member, the automatic response is to become defensive.

The objective with the board over time is to say, “Instead of being defensive, including me, by the way, because it’s hard when somebody tells your baby is ugly but instead of being defensive if you can listen and say, “That’s interesting.” It doesn’t mean they are right but it’s worth listening to. This is the key. It’s that emotional bank account you talked about. If you know I have your best interests at heart, it’s easier for me to say something. If you are not sure I have your best interest at heart, then if I say something, you don’t take it the same way.

Also, if you say something that will placate somebody. This is an experience where a big company and I know the CEO well. He’s gone through executives over and over. His executives are yes men. As much as the idea of receiving feedback and perspective from someone else, we also have to realize that our view of the world is one way. It’s pretty narrow because every single person on Earth has a different perspective of life. Sometimes there are similarities but usually, it’s a little bit different. You are complimenting personalities, whether it’s business acumen, marketing acumen or entrepreneurship. Tony talks about the personas, the entrepreneur, the artists, the tactician or the manager. You have different strengths and personalities. Sometimes, we think we need to know everything and it’s not reasonable.

We surround ourselves with people like us.

Again, it reinforces a narrow perspective. It makes it stronger. When you understand that other people have strengths, abilities and uniqueness that can broaden a perspective and strengthen it, it creates a superpower in anything. Not just in business but in most aspects of life. You use coaching in sports.

TWS 23 | Conversations

Conversations: When we hire people, we hire them for their skillset, and we forget to ask them about their character.

It’s a huge a-ha moment the day you realize that I need to surround myself with people who are not like me. It was big for me. I’m not a dot the I and cross the T person so I need to surround myself with people who are exactly like that. In the beginning, I was hiring and working with people who were like me. The big pitchers, thinkers, creators, strategy, all that stuff and nobody did the work and the work has to be done.

The a-ha moment is when you say, “I need somebody who is opposite of the way I think who thinks this way, which I couldn’t do.” We have our main headquarters that run our companies. It’s called Oz as in Wizard of. When I walk around Oz, I walked to every office and go, “That person is smarter than me in what they do.” They are all smarter. I couldn’t do any of their jobs. Once you realize that, everything changes. In the beginning, especially if you are an entrepreneur, you think you have to know everybody’s job even better than they do.

In the beginning, that’s probably true. If you are starting a small company, you are the only guy and you are everything, you probably do know everything better than everybody. If you are going to skip that thing, if you are going to make it bigger, you have to be your specialist, which is being, “I’m the guy doing this. I don’t know how to play the violin. I don’t know how to play the oboe but I can conduct the orchestra. Nobody who can play the instrument can conduct the orchestra as I can.”

What’s amazing about the book is you have principles that you teach but you have a myriad of stories to illustrate how that plays out in real life. Maybe along these lines when it comes to you recognizing the value, the importance of a team with different strengths in the roles of team members. I would assume Special Forces is probably a good example but through business, how have you discovered that and understood that value?

Of having their strengths?

Having people surround you. Did you have to learn the hard way or did you get taught by somebody?

We fire people because of their character, rarely because of their skillset. Click To Tweet

I’ve got lucky going into Special Forces in the beginning because it’s such a unique environment. If you are in a Green Beret team room, I always use this analogy so people can understand. We will go steal from everybody else. When I say steal, I’m talking about jokingly take things from people and not like robbing a bank. In the team room, I could put $10,000 cash on my bed. I could leave for three months, come back and that $10,000 cash would still be there. I have no doubt about it. It’s 100% guaranteed. That’s the environment. Luckily for me, I was raised, at the age of eighteen, it was instilled in me very early.

The other thing on a Special Force A-Team is everybody has their role. I was the medic. We had a weapons guy, heavy weapons guy, demolition and the commander. Everybody is counting on everybody else to do their job because if you don’t, you die. The brotherhood is high because the stakes are high. I have carried that with me through business entrepreneurship to say, “I want an inner circle that feels like that. I want an inner circle that feels like a group of people.”

My inner circle, the people I was talking about, I guarantee you at 3:00 in the morning, I could call my CFO, Amanda and say, “Amanda, I need you at my house in 30 minutes.” She wouldn’t say, “For what?” She will say, “I will be there.” A stolen analogy, “We need to bury a body,” and you say, “Who’s driving?” You don’t say, “What happened?” That comes from what you said. We have been together for many years. I have poured so much into her and the whole team that you develop that relationship, which is why it’s so hard. The answer to the question is I don’t think it has anything to do with their skillset. It has everything to do with their character.

We mistakenly think it’s about their skillset. When we hire people, we hire them for their skillset and we forget to ask them about their character. We fire them because of their character, rarely because of their skillset. How often have you fired somebody because they couldn’t do the job? It’s 1% of the time that this person can’t do the job but it’s rare. Usually, it’s a character flaw and yet we hire on skills and we fire on character. It’s backward a little bit.

If I were to say the one thing I have learned over time is to interview a lot more about their character. You can always teach them the skills. They have to have some skills. As Jim Rohn used to say, if you have an idiot running around like crazy, running as fast as he can East looking for the sunset, he’s not a motivated idiot. They do have to have the skillset but the skillset is probably less important than the character. When you are building a company or an organization of any kind, think about, “Is this a person whom I would go to war with? Is this a person whom I would get in the foxhole with?” If they are, the rest is all you can figure.

Important links

About Tim Reynolds

Dr. Tim Reynolds is the President and CEO of Dr. Tim, International, a company he founded in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute with others.

Dr Tim was a graduate of the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret medic on an A-Team, as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer from 1980 until 2000.

Dr. Tim graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah in 1993. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States.

Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions across the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and level II trauma center; director, Texas College of Emergency Physicians Board of Directors; president of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.

Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.

Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and a pilot. He also enjoys body building, golf, and hiking.

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Tim Reynolds Episode 1 – The First Step Through Fear

TWS 22 | Change Your Life

Life is fragile, and you only have one chance. It’s about time that you change your life and take some risks. Always ask yourself, what’s the worst thing that can happen? Tim Reynolds asked himself that same question, and he is now the founder of Living Every Minute. Learn Tim’s story on how he started his business and how he accepts some of his shortcomings. Learn how to change the rules of the game as Tim joins your host Patrick Donohoe. Also, learn more about his book, Living Every Minute, today.

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Change Your Life: First, Change Your Rules With Tim Reynolds, M.D.

The following five episodes are with businessman, investor, doctor and now, author, Tim Reynolds. The interview was in-person in my office. If you’re reading the episodes, go head over to TheWealthStandard.com and it’ll have a link there. Make sure you check that out. A little bit about Tim. Tim is a former Green Beret in the Special Forces. He was a medic and also a Battalion Surgeon. He graduated from Texas A&M with his Medical degree and his specialization was Emergency Medicine. He was an emergency room doctor for several years and then also co-started a company called HealthCARE Express. He has, I believe, 15 or 16 locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. He has his book. You can check it out on Amazon. It’s called Living Every Minute. It’s also on Audible. He reads the audible audiobook. Tim is an amazing guy. He’s one of the first original Platinum partners with Tony Robbins. He has a love and zest for life. It’s throughout his book.

It’s going to be throughout this interview. You can imagine that in the roles that he’s played, he has experienced firsthand the fragility of life. He’s going to share some of those experiences throughout these five segments. I want to forewarn you, this is a PG-13-ish interview. There’s some colorful language and some relatively graphic stories that Tim tells. You are going to experience him, his heart, his passion for life. You can check his website out. It’s LivingEveryMinute.com. He has some personal development programs, courses and a lot of other resources that you will want to check out. Go head over there. Without further delay, let’s start episode one with my dear friend, Tim Reynolds.

Whether it’s this experience writing a book or where people are held back by fear, first, what are maybe some stories of you confronting your fears and overcoming them? Are there some principles that you’ve found where people can follow and get through their fear?

I had an emergency medicine contract, I contracted with the hospital to run their emergency department. My business was I hired the doctors, paid the malpractice, build the patients, did all that stuff for the hospital. The doctors work in the ER. They don’t usually work for the hospital. They do in some cases but in many cases, the hospital outsources that to an ER company and the doctors. I owned that company. When I had the experience, I’ve been there for ten years. We’ve been doing this for many years. I get called in the office and they say, “We’re putting your contract out for bids.” I had been in the office maybe three months before. I said, “I’m about to put roots down about to buy a ranch.”

“I want to make sure we’re good.” “We’re good.” Ninety days later, he calls me in the offices and says they are putting the contract out for bids, which they had not done in ten years. I knew what that meant. “What did we do wrong?” “Nothing. You guys are great. We want to see if we can get it cheaper.” “I know you can get it cheaper but you aren’t getting the quality of now.” There’s that whole conversation.

We had been thinking about building the business we have now, HealthCARE Express. I walked out of that office and it felt like somebody hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat, partly because financial, partly because it became who I was. I was the Medical Director for a Level II Trauma Center. That was part of my personality. I had mixed up my career with who I was as a human.

When you start a business with no money, the fear of losing the money gets taken away from you. Click To Tweet

I was scared to death. I didn’t know what we were going to do. I didn’t know how I was going to feed my family. That was the first time that ever happened. I had two choices, go get another job because I could do that I was a Medical Director for ten years or go out on her own and try and do this ourselves. That was a big step. You’re leaving a multi-six-figure career to zero and it was zero for a good year. That was a big fear.

You have the fear where you’re losing this contract and then you decide to go completely the other direction. You took a set of fears and then you pile it on top of the other.

It was weird, too. It was like life happens for you because I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do it, had that not happened. It had been crossing my mind but the thing that had kept me there was the money. It was too good to walk away from. When there was no money, for some reason, the fear of losing the money got taken from me so I didn’t have that fear anymore. Money was already gone now. It wasn’t that I couldn’t go get it again but I was at the crossroads and I thought, “What if we go build our own thing?” Finally, the fear was, I thought, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

The worst thing that could happen is a question that people need to ask themselves. The worst thing that can happen is where we’re at now. Why don’t we go try and build this thing, work our asses off for a few years? If it doesn’t work out, we’re just right here. I’ll often do that and say, number one, “What’s the worst thing that could happen? Is it worth that risk?” Number two, “What’s the best thing that could happen? Is it worth that time and effort?”

If you’re going to build a business and the best thing that can happen is you’re going to make $5,000 a month, it’s probably not worth the effort. It’s not a huge risk but for me, there needs to also be a reward because I’m going to spend my time, money and brain damage trying to make it successful. One of the things that help me is to say, “Honestly, what’s the worst thing that could happen?” I bet I’ll go back finally to my old Special Forces days, we used to have a saying, “If this doesn’t kill us, it’s going to make a great story.” We’ve been in some shit where you’re like, “This might be the last day but if it doesn’t kill us, what a great story this is going to be.”

That adds sometimes to where you’re able to understand, worst-case scenario. You found that when a person is afraid of something, they have difficulty confronting that and asking that simple question like, “I’m afraid. What’s the worst that can happen? This could happen then this is going to happen and it’s going to happen.” “Why is that? Why are you afraid of that?” “I’m afraid because of this.” It’s not a very difficult exercise but a lot of people don’t tend to go there.

If you can help them and say to them, “Literally, what’s the worst possible case scenario that could come from this and this? Could you accept that? Could you live through that? What would you do if that happened?” “I would do ABC.” That’s the worst thing that could happen. What are you afraid of? Jump. People don’t do that analysis themselves. Another thing that happens that I help people with a lot is we don’t think logically at 2:00 in the morning but people get in their fears at 2:00 in the morning because you wake up and your brain goes circle, think about a million things.

Turn on the light, get your journal and write all those millions of things down. Those millions of things are four things, you just can’t stop circling. If you’ll take and write those down, you’ll get to a page and go, “That’s what was keeping me awake.” You can shut the journal. You’re like, “I didn’t read that somewhere. That’s what I had to do,” because we all get in that circle. The brain goes running around.

How has your hunger evolved? I assume hunger comes from what we talked about. You obviously have fears, you’re going to unpack fears but then when you understand, “What’s a level ten success look like, getting excited and inspired by that? Does hunger come from more than that? Is that where the source is?

For me, hunger comes from having this desire. I don’t know if I was born with this if I can teach this to other people but some people have more of it than others. You can certainly learn more. We listened to a lot of the same stuff, mentors and you can learn some tools and skills along the way but what made you listen to those in the beginning? What made you start? Somebody was born with this hunger for the better. I always wanted to create something spectacular. That’s why it’s called create spectacular.

If something doesn't kill you, it will at least make a good story. Click To Tweet

How do I create a spectacular life? If my life is a clay image that I’m creating and I’m putting new clay on every day, I’m scraping some off what I’ve done, the sculpture that’s done was my life, I want that to look spectacular. I want it to be awesome. I want to be able to say in the last second before I die, if I had one last thought I want to go, “That was awesome. That was a good life. That was a life worth living.” It should be a tough one.

It’s that trade-off. You always have yin and yang. Nothing comes without price and contrast. Especially with animals or relationships, there’s so much beauty about it but we understand that life is fragile. Things are going to happen. People are going to move.

Everything has a price. You said it right. Being healthy has a price you got to pay so as being sick. Having a great marriage, there’s a price to pay so as to divorce and it’s an expensive one. Being wealthy has a price. You have to work hard. To be poor also has a price.

I’m not sure where I learned this from but I look at marriage as a horrible way of looking at it. To me, it works where it’s a bank account where you could build up a massive amount of money in that bank account, say one thing and it’s all wrong. The same thing goes with business, with your health. You’re making an investment. You’re saving, putting things aside. Your passion is to eat chocolate or ice cream. You’re putting that aside but you’re building up your whole thing. We were talking about Jesse Itzler and Tony Robbins is the same thing.

They eat super healthy, strict and then their significant other is eating cheesecake or chocolate. This was one of those things where you could pay that price if you built up enough capital in that bank account. In businesses, it’s the same thing. Your team is like, “Kudos, rewards. You guys are amazing,” then you can be critical. It’s a high-interest debt.

TWS 22 | Change Your Life

Change Your Life: The hardest thing about business is when you thought somebody was going to go with you and they don’t. They have their life, and maybe they’re not on the same road as you anymore.

The toughest thing in business, I heard Dave Ramsey say this. When he said it, I was like, “I wish I’d thought of that.” He said, “What’s the hardest thing about being a business owner? The hardest thing is when you thought somebody was going to go with you and they don’t. Get on the train. What do you mean you’re not coming? I thought you were going to the end. I thought we were together.” It happens to all of us. If you do it long enough, they have their life and you thought that they were on the same road and when they’re not or when you find out even worse, they betrayed you. I’ve had that happen. They stole from you or betrayed you. It’s not about the money. It’s about what happens when somebody steals from you, what that means. That’s the hardest thing in business because I thought we were like this and they’re gone.

That’s another thing too with reputation and trust, you can spend years building. I can’t remember who said it, it’s gone in five minutes.

It takes a moment to ruin it. We’ve seen it and our society loves it. Our society hates a hero because there’s a hero, somebody who’s done great, they look at almost anything to find their fault. If you dig deep enough, we all have faults. We’re human.

What you see on the surface especially whether it’s social media or the news, there are so many surfaces out there but everybody has their demons, shortcomings and insecurity. It exists in everybody. It’s that compliment. You have two sides to it. That’s the price of it. It exists at all levels.

That’s part of the problem with social media is our way of social media life and it has a real life. It’s one of the things I love about Itzler’s wife so much. She doesn’t care. The question is, is she a billionaire so now she can do that or she becomes a billionaire because she’s just that way?

It’s one of those things where you oftentimes have an image to get something. You want to put yourself out there and portray yourself as something because you want something. When you realize that all you want is a good relationship with yourself, with God and with your spouse, you don’t need anything else so you’re able to be more real.

When you’re asking about the hunger part, what’s happened is the hunger’s matured over the years is I’m still plenty hungry. I can be pretty dang happy with exactly the way things are now. Nothing changed. I’m pretty happy. One of the difficulties we’ve had with the book and with Living Every Minute, the company, the concept is I don’t have a desire to be famous. I don’t want to go do 50 keynote speeches. I want to spend time with my wife and my family on the ranch and things. It’s a dichotomy of, “I want to get the word out and make sure people know about it because it’s life-changing and has helped a lot of people but at the same time,” I have no need for fame.

Don't just work in your life; work on your life. Click To Tweet

That’s a dichotomy that I’ve run into. I remember when we were talking about Will. We have a course called Gladiator. He’s read the book. He comes to Gladiator. He had a heart attack. He’s a great guy, a great person. As he starts to get better with himself and starts thinking about, “This is the only time I have to create spectacular with my family and my life,” he goes home. Maybe more than anybody else has come through the course. He went home and literally did housekeeping. He said, “Here’s my help. These are all the things I’m going to do. Here’s my relationship with my wife. Here’s the relationship with my kids.”

He literally made this like a workbook. We have a workbook that goes with it. He took a year and went through every chapter for a year. At the end of the year, he’s transformed his whole life. He had a great job but now he also has a side business and he took the leap of faith. He didn’t know if he could do it but he did. Now he’s got the side hustle that he does and he’s super proud of that. Seeing somebody transform their life like that, that’s the whole reward.

Usually, it’s a moment of decision where destiny is shaped. It’s that realization. When you have examples of experiences, you’ve had a ton of them being an emergency room MD where you see the fragileness of mortality and you realize, “This is all that I have. All I have is now. We work on some things to have a better experience.”

This is all we have. As far as I know, this is not a dress rehearsal. This is life. We got to make the most of it we can so it will be spectacular. We can say, “This is it. This is amazing.” What most people do is they live the zombie life that I talk about. They get up in the morning, “Twenty minutes to get to work, get my coffee down, get in the car, drive the exact same way I always drive, check-in my brain at this clock, go in, do the work that I have to do. Check out, go home, turn on the TV, pop a cold one, fall asleep in the chair, go to bed.” Every day is Tuesday. Every day starts to look like every other day.

TWS 22 | Change Your Life

Living Every Minute: Dr. Tim’s Pillars For Creating A Spectacular Life

People talk about, “Don’t just work in your business, work on your business. Don’t just work in your life, work on your life.” What we do with the Living Every Minute stuff and the courses we teach, we give people a chance, “Step away from your life for a few days and let’s work on it. Let’s work on the six pillars. Let’s work on your health, your wealth, your relationships, your mission. Is it okay? If it’s not okay. What can we do to shore that part up? Okay with who? It only matters if it’s okay with you. Are you okay with where it’s at? Do you think maybe you should do something different in that area?” What the whole concept is about is can you make it purposeful? Can you live on purpose, as people say? Can you do that instead of going through the motions and living every day?

I’m going to go back to whether it’s Will or others when they have that realization, is there anything else that they realize whether it’s about themselves, what they want, what they’ve been doing. What are some of those primary realizations people have that caused them to like, “I’m done. Enough. I’m making these significant changes?”

One of the things that people realize is that there are no real rules, whether we were at church or at home or at school or wherever it was, we were taught a bunch of rules. The reality is we’re all making this up. There are no rules. You can do whatever you want. That’s one of the major realizations that they go through. They’re like, “I was told all these things but I made those up. Those aren’t even real rules. I made them up in my head.” We’ll go through a rules evaluation. I know you’ve done a little of that probably with Tony’s stuff. We do it live with each person and go, “What are your rules? After, we’ll help you with that.”

They’re conflicting.

It’s crazy what people will do with themselves. They don’t even know they exist. If you get real with yourself, there’s an a-ha moment where you go, “I made all that up and I can redo the whole thing.” I would say, “That worked great to tell this moment in your life. Is that also going to be the thing that gets you where you want to go? If it is good on you, do that.”

The rule works.

If it’s not, think about it a little bit. Change the way you think about it.

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About Tim Reynolds, M.D.

Dr. Tim Reynolds is the President and CEO of Dr. Tim, International, a company he founded in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute with others.

Dr Tim was a graduate of the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret medic on an A-Team, as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer from 1980 until 2000.

Dr. Tim graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah in 1993. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States.

Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions across the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and Level II trauma center; director, Texas College of Emergency Physicians Board of Directors; President of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.

Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and a successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.

Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and is a pilot. He also enjoys bodybuilding, golf, and hiking.

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The First Step Through Fear With Tim Reynolds, M.D.

TWS 21 | Living Every Minute

 

The past is a great place to learn from, but it’s gone. It won’t do us any good to dwell on it. Patrick Donohoe introduces Tim Reynolds, M.D., the Founder of Living Every Minute. Tim talks with Patrick about how many people dwell in the past, which is not a great place to live. Are you afraid of the future? Don’t be. We don’t even know if it’s coming! We’re all just passing through this life, so let’s enjoy the time we have and the gifts we were given.

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The First Step Through Fear With Tim Reynolds, M.D.

This episode is sponsored by the new and improved Financial Independence Calculator found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. One of the driving forces of human beings is freedom, which infers financial freedom too. Years ago, I set out to discover how any individual, regardless of their financial situation, could evaluate their finances in five minutes or less and have a firm date when they could achieve financial independence. The latest version of this calculator, which is free for the audience, can be found at TheWealthStandard.com/calculator. The calculator is going to take you only a few minutes to complete and it’s going to provide you with a specific financial independence date. Go check it out.

The following five episodes are with businessmen, investor, doctor and author Tim Reynolds. The interview was in person. It was in my office. If you’re reading the episodes and want to watch the videos, go head over to TheWealthStandard.com. It’ll have a link there. When the five segments are complete, we’re going to post the entire interview on our YouTube channel. Make sure you check that out.

A little bit about Tim. Tim is a former Green Beret in the Special Forces. He was a medic and also a battalion surgeon. He graduated from Texas A&M with his Medical degree. His specialization was Emergency Medicine. He was an emergency room doctor for several years and also co-started a company called HealthCARE Express. He has 15 or 16 locations throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

He has his book. You can check it out on Amazon. It’s called Living Every Minute. It’s also on Audible. He reads the Audible audiobook. Tim is an amazing guy. He’s one of the first original platinum partners with Tony Robbins. His love and zest for life is throughout his book. It’s going to be throughout this interview. You can imagine in the roles that he’s played, he has experienced firsthand the fragility of life. He’s going to share some of those experiences throughout these five segments.

I want to forewarn you. This is a PG 13-ish interview. There’s some colorful language and there are also some relatively graphic stories that Tim tells but you are going to experience him, his heart and his passion for life. You can check his website out. It’s LivingEveryMinute.com. He has some personal development programs, courses and a lot of other resources that you will want to check out. Go head over there. Without further delay, let’s start episode one with my dear friend, Tim Reynolds.

What led to the title and maybe describe what the philosophy is of that title?

Living Every Minute is something that I came up with years ago. The concept or the idea was the past is gone. It’s a great place to learn from but it’s gone. There isn’t anything you can do about it and yet so many people live there or dwell. It’s not a great place to live. It’s a nice place to visit and a great place to learn from. The future is unknown. Maybe this might be your last interview. There’s an earthquake. We leave here and the building falls down. This is it. We never know. The future is uncertain.

It’s something we should plan for because if it’s coming, your business and all businesses knows, you need to have a plan for that. It’s also not a place you want to live. The whole Living Every Minute philosophy has learned from the past, plan for the future and then once you’ve done those two things, spend your time living every minute, in this minute, in this time because this is the only day we get. As far as we know, this is it.

TWS 21 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: Dr. Tim’s Pillars for Creating a Spectacular Life

I’m making this as an assumption that being an emergency room doc wasn’t your average family practice where you had. This is a routine thing. You didn’t know what to expect on a day-to-day basis. Some of the stories you tell pull on the heartstrings, some of the kids’ stories or the older depressed people’s stories. What’s your experience as an emergency room doc? Is that what credit or played a part?

It’s certainly a big part. I would see people who would come in. I was putting the philosophy together in my head at that time. I didn’t have that completely yet but I would see, “I hope they kissed him goodbye this morning.” They were in a fight. He took off in the car and killed himself or we have a guy who came in and this isn’t in the book. He went to the doctor and the doctor said, “You have prostate cancer.” For those of you who don’t know, prostate cancer is very slow-growing. You’ll have prostate cancer for 20, 30 years sometimes. Usually, you’ll die of something else before you die of prostate cancer.

All this gentleman heard was cancer. He went home, took his 45, drove out in the field and shot himself in the head. I was like, “I hope he remembered to tell everybody.” The whole philosophy, I would see case after case like this of these tragedies that would happen as you say. You start realizing this is the only day. It’s all that we have and know about, for sure. If you waste this minute, this day or this time living, regretting something you did, wishing you would have done something else or so obsessed about what might happen, which is our society, “What might happen? What does this mean,” then you forget to have gratitude for where you’re at.

It comes to our perspective of life where we think we’re going to live forever. There are examples of people everywhere. We have medicine and competitive things. Life isn’t as dangerous as it was even years ago. You have stories that we hear but nobody realized it. They say, “That will never happen to me.” Therefore, you think as far as the future is concerned, they dwell on the past. They don’t operate at the moment.

The antithesis, particularly during these last years, was everybody so afraid. They went from thinking they were going to live forever to thinking that just walking past somebody is going to kill them. Both of those two are bad. We have this great moment that we’re in that we can live well. Nobody lives her life. We’re all dying. Let’s enjoy the time we have. The gifts were given. God gives us our health, our body, where we live and our family. We give back to God the things we do with those things. What do we make and do with those things? That’s the Living Every Minute philosophy.

The past is a great place to learn from, but it's gone. Yet many people dwell there. It's not a great place to live. Click To Tweet

What are maybe some of the other major impact points of your life that led you down the path to some of the careers?

One of the biggest was I’m the oldest of six kids. My dad was a truck driver. Mom was a stay-at-home mom and so we didn’t have a lot of money. The good news is nobody around us had any money either so we didn’t know we didn’t have any money. I became obsessed with this idea over time especially as I got into high school. I was like, “I don’t like being poor.” I don’t like it. I can do it but I see people with this abundance. I never went through the period where I hated those people. I went through the period of thinking, “How do I get that? How do I get some more of that?”

I became obsessed with the idea of how do I do that? How do I get to that point? That was a big thing that led my life. I remember at eighteen years old telling my girlfriend at the time. She said, “What are you going to do with your life?” Here I am at eighteen, I said, “I’d like to be a doctor. I’d like to travel the world. I’d like to own a ranch with horses and cows. I’d like to have a house in the mountains and on the beach.” She said, “You already thought of all that?” I’m like, “No, just right now. That’s what I decided. Those are the five things I want to do.” Then I want to build a financial empire. Those are my six things.

I look back years later, that’s what I did. It’s amazing to me. I didn’t have any benefit of anybody else. My mom had me when she was sixteen years old. My dad was sixteen. I’m the first Reynolds in the history of my family to graduate from high school. Let alone go to college. It’s not like I had some advantage but I became obsessed with the idea. Years later, I have a financial empire. We have a house in the mountains and on a beach. We have a ranch with horses and cattle. I’m a doctor and we traveled the world into 65 countries.

What kept the fuel going in that obsession?

It’s hunger. Always being hungry for what else could we do? How else could we create? When a lot of people say they don’t like to work hard, I was the opposite. If I’m awake, I might as well be working. Work was my friend. If you think about it, work’s gotten you everything you have. Why would that not be your best friend? Everything I have come from work. I didn’t become scared of work. It became my friend. I learned how to moderate that later on but in the beginning, it was full work. I remember when I started college, I’d already been in the military so I came back as behind. I was already 22 going on 23.

When you catch on to something that succeeds, keep doing it. Click To Tweet

I remember going up to the school. This is a funny story. It’s not in the book. I didn’t know anything about college. I lived here in First South, Salt Lake in the ’90s in a little 400-square-foot apartment. I had a car. It was a 1968 Chevelle convertible. It’s a beautiful car. My dad got it when he was in Vietnam and I bought it from him. I drove it all the time when I was in the military and came back. I drove up to college, up to the University of Utah.

I walked into the admissions office and said, “I want to go to college. What do I have to do?” She said, “First of all, you have to get your high school transcripts.” I said, “I can do that.” She said, “You have to get ACT score.” I said, “I don’t know what that is.” I went to the high school where they don’t do that because nobody goes to college from my high school. She tells me what it is and I said, “Do I need to study for it or what is it?” She said, “You can.” “When can I take it?” She said, “You can take it tomorrow if you want.” I said, “I’ll take it tomorrow.”

I go in the next day. I take the ACT test. I did well, weirdly. I’ve been out of school for five years. She said, “We got the transcript. Here’s what you’re going to do.” I said, “Can I start school on Monday?” I didn’t know there were semesters that you had to wait. She said, “You got to wait until this semester.” I didn’t know anything about college. I just knew I wanted to go. She says, “I got everything arranged. I got all hooked up.” I said, “How much is the tuition?” She said, “$1,600.”

This was in 1984 and $1,600 tuition for this semester. They were quarters back then so $1,600 for the quarter. She might as well have said $16 million. I went and called a friend of mine. I said, “You still have that 1968 Chevelle?” He’s like, “Yes.” I said, “$1,600.” He said, “Done.” He gave me $1,600 cash. I drove up to the University of Utah. I got $1,600 cash and that’s how I went to school. I always thought to myself, “Find a way.” I didn’t know I was going to pay for the next semester but then I knew I had to so I started getting jobs and one thing led to another.

The only way to get better at something is to be bad at it for a while. Click To Tweet

I assume that you had obstacles along the way. Were there points in the business where you had this vision, this grandiose plan and you had to fight pretty hard for it, that work maybe wasn’t the only variable that led to the success?

There’s a thing we underestimate. I’m sure you know this as well. We underestimate how much we fail. When we look back, we only like talking about the things we succeeded at but I would bet if I look in my business career or in my life, I’d failed at 80% of things I’ve tried, at least. That 20% was worth it. I’ve probably tried twenty different businesses and 200 different things in each of those businesses. Most of those things within those businesses fail but when you catch on, something succeeds. You then keep doing that thing. You say, “Do you know what would be a great idea?” It turns out not to be a great idea but it sounds like it.

If you take ten things, they all look the same and you say, “This could be good. Let’s go down this path,” here’s what’s going to happen. Two of them are going to be dogs. Six of them are just going to sit there, not do much and two are going to be great. You can’t tell at the beginning which of those tenants is going to do those things. I hate it when people try something and say, “I already tried that. It’s not going to work.” I’m like, “You know how not to do it.” It’s Thomas Edison, “9,999 light bulbs won’t work.” I’m going to make the tenth.

I had a guy who came up to me and said, “You’d like to invest in real estate?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Is real estate the best investment?” I said, “The best investment is whatever you’re good at.” He said, “I would never do real estate.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “I bought two houses. They were rental properties. I found out after I bought them, the roofs were bad. How to replace the roofs when I never got my money?” I said, “You know how to inspect roofs now? Good job. You’re the perfect guy to go buy two more places.” He would never do it again.

You have some programs we’ll get to that you coach people. You take people through experiences based on your experiences. What do you find as the biggest obstacles that hold people back? People want these end results and where they’re at but then there’s a gap in between.

TWS 21 | Living Every Minute

Living Every Minute: Be hungry for what you can do. How else can you create?

 

It’s fear of failure. People are so afraid of the very thing that we talked about. People don’t realize that every single thing you’re good at, at one time you were bad at, from tying your shoe to eating with a fork. The first time you tie your shoe, you suck at it but you keep tying your shoe and until now, you don’t even think about it when you tie your shoe. That’s how we get better at something. I love this analogy.

When I give a talk, I’ll say, “How many in this room speak a foreign language?” Usually, about 10% of the room raised their hand, unless you’re Utah and in Emory. I said, “How many would like to?” Everybody raises their hand. I said, “Let me ask you a question. Why don’t you speak a foreign language? Is it because there are not enough apps or there are not enough classes? You can’t find an internet site that teaches it?” There are millions of ways to learn a language so why did 99% of people want to learn one but only 10% of people know one?

It boils down to one thing if you think about it. You don’t want to look stupid. In order to learn a foreign language, you have to look stupid for a while. You’re not going to sound good. You’re going to sound terrible but in order to learn it, you have to sound terrible until you get better. That’s a great analogy for everything we do in life. I was bad at writing this book. I was terrible at it. It took me a lot longer than it should. I knew I had a book in me that needed to come out. I sat at my house in Jackson Hall and typed for twenty days. I wrote the whole book in twenty days.

Unfortunately, it was all over the place. There were no chapters and organization. The editing took two years because that’s not the way to do it. The way you do it is to do an outline and then you decide what chapters you’re going to have. If I were to do it again, that’s how I would do it. I unloaded everything I taught for the last years and keep typing. I was with this mess of 200 pages I didn’t know what to do with.

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About Tim Reynolds, M.D.

Dr. Tim Reynolds is the President and CEO of Dr. Tim, International, a company he founded in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute with others.

Dr Tim was a graduate of the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret medic on an A-Team, as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer from 1980 until 2000.

Dr. Tim graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah in 1993. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States.

Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions across the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and level II trauma center; director, Texas College of Emergency Physicians Board of Directors; president of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.

Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.

Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and a pilot. He also enjoys body building, golf, and hiking.

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