Joe Miller (00:00)
Hey guys, I'm really happy to have Tim Schmoyer on Titans today. Tim I've been following for three or four years. As I've jumped into starting my channel, it didn't take too long for me to find Tim on online and his video creators group and his teachings. And I really resonated with authenticity and style of how Tim shared.

But there was something else underneath of that that kept attracting me to come back to him and his group. I would like to use this particular episode with you, Tim, to kind of pivot into a little bit deeper conversation. So with that, welcome, Tim. Hey, you want to tell us a little bit about what you're currently doing and then we'll get into sort of your path and your journey as we talk about how this connects to my channel.

Tim Schmoyer (01:00)
Currently, I am working at a company called vidIQ, the chief creator coach there, and I have this audacious goal of helping our three million weekly users of our YouTube software to all have a one-on-one human coach, to coach them, work with them.

support them as they grow their channels and give them direction and advice and strategy and support and encouragement and all the things. yeah, we haven't gotten to three million yet, but we're looking at it. It's a big mountain to climb, and I'm excited to see it happen.

Joe Miller (01:44)
And I don't have to say I personally benefited from that. I did have a personal coach through that organization and it was very helpful and it was a great balance. You know, I come from a technology background, years of it, but it was a great balance between not so much technology, but how to present, how to package an episode, how to make sure I was more deliberate about speaking to a

to the audience, but also at the same time, and I really appreciate this, was both the nudging and the encouragement. So there was a real good balance there. So if anyone is considering this, you're not going to get beat up. You're going to be encouraged and you're going to get the information you need. So there's my plug for you, Tim.

Tim Schmoyer (02:33)
Thank you.

Joe Miller (02:35)
But as we were going back and forth, so we can get right into this, as we were going back and forth, my typical pattern is to ask my guests about their career and life transitions and kind of what prompted the changes in direction. And I've really been trying to tease out a concept of getting connected to one's unique gifts and making sure there's alignment with not necessarily your skills, but

what you're good at and how it ties into passion, all those things. But as we were going back forth in email just talking about doing this episode, you said something which I thought was intriguing but very powerful and I wanted to sort of get into that now and that is that, yeah, you've changed things you've done, where you've showed up, what your jobs were, if you will, but your mission has remained constant throughout all those changes and I'd like to get into that a little bit.

You dive into that too.

Tim Schmoyer (03:35)
Yeah, yeah. So I grew up in a pastor's family. My dad was a pastor and I went to Bible college, went to seminary. I thought I was going to be in youth ministry my whole life because the thing I just really loved was seeing people reach, seeing their lives change and impacted. And I love that in youth ministry because I could work with a family, with a couple, had some teenagers or something.

And I just love hearing the stories of like, man, my teenager has like their attitude is changing or our relationship is growing deeper now. Like, thank you for what you're doing for our family. You know, I just love those, love those stories. And so I decided to go in the full-time vocational youth ministry with the, the goal of like, how do we just reach people, change lives, make a difference for people and their families. 

And, Uh, so I, when I was in graduate school, I had a little blog, uh, that I just started. This was 2005, I believe. And I don't think Facebook was a thing yet. I think it was still, was still MySpace days. MySpace. Wow. Yeah. I remember those, those days. Um, and I was in graduate school half the way across the country from my family. started a little blog and I started using it the way that we use Facebook today. 

Um, just to give them updates on what I was doing and things like that. I started just posting just personal stuff. Then I emailed the links to friends and family back home and like, hey, here's what I'm doing. I started just writing about what I was most passionate about, which at the time was youth ministry. 

That blog grew and became most widely read blog on the Internet and youth and family space, and ended up with two publishing deals with two different publishing companies who reached out to me asking me to, which was very convenient. And I self-published two books there too. But backing up a little bit before all that thing grew up, I was also finding YouTube had become a thing. And so YouTube started in September, I believe, in 2005.

And my first video is March 2nd, 2006. And so I was just publishing videos at that time of my girlfriend at the time, her and I going out on dates and going out to the park, going out to the playground, going out to do just fun stuff, hanging out. And I'd embed those videos in my blog so that my friends and family and other people could see what we're up to and meet this girl I was dating. And before long, other people started watching these videos. And I was like, who, why?

What's going on here? Like, how are they finding me? Why are they commenting on my videos? Who is catlicker72? Why do they keep commenting on my videos? You know, like, and so I was getting a little concerned because you remember back in my space days, you don't use your real name on the internet. If you do, people will hunt you down and kill you for some reason. And so I was like, how are people finding me? Why do they keep coming back and sort of reaching out for answers? Nobody knew at that time there wasn't even such a thing as social media yet.

And so I connected with a couple of other guys who were trying to solve this same problem. before long, that channel kept growing and my girlfriend and I kept making videos. then we, I proposed and we put that video on there and then our, honey or our wedding and our honeymoon and first house, first, like all these things we kept going. before long we were reaching about a million people a month, which back then was pretty unheard of. 

Joe Miller (07:20)
Sounds like a reality show.

Tim Schmoyer (07:21)
Yeah. Now we would call it vlogging, but back then that wasn't a word. were just being awkward in public with the camera. So we, yeah, we, and I just loved it because I was hearing so many stories of life's change coming out of stuff that we were putting on mine. People who didn't commit suicide. think I had this aha moment when I got this email from lady and basically said like, Tim,

You guys don't know me, but I've been watching your videos and I just got married two months ago. We're already struggling in our relationship. I don't know if we're going to make it. Then I saw that video of you and your wife where you talked about how you're learning to love each other better. And I shared that video with my husband. We talked about it and it's one of the, know, that we have hope again for our marriage. Just thank you for doing that. And I was like, that video, that video did that. You know, like that wasn't like an intentional goal or outcome. We were just, you know,

being ourselves and talking about stuff. so after, and I can tell you lots of stories, but they started to add up and I started thinking like, I am seeing more life change happening here on YouTube that I think I'm seeing inside of the church. And I was like, I think if I actually want to make an impact and make a difference, I wonder if YouTube's a better place to do that. so I was working at a church at the time and

That ended pretty poorly, unfortunately. And I launched out on my blog. At that time, was Youth Ministry Blog and on YouTube. And I thought I was going to get back into youth ministry. was doing the whole church interview thing. But I was just so gun shy to do it again based on previous experiences I had there. And I was living off of my blog and off of YouTube.

for about a year and a half before taking a job here in Cincinnati and moving to this area to do YouTube strategy for a video production company and their clients. So I did that and part of me felt like a little bit guilty for like, I'm gonna make a career change here. And I never really consciously made that decision. It was a little bit more of a...

Yeah, I need some time off. think like I'm I'll get back to youth industry, but I just need something that like hold us over for right now. My identity, my what I've saw is my value and everything was wrapped up in that whole industry and stuff and which is unhealthy.

Joe Miller (09:58)
I mean, just put a pin in something Tim, because I think this ties back to this long arc of mission and your tagline about changing lives. I've already forgotten it. Okay, but what you noticed was, I mean, it's one thing to get sort of the juice about people following you and all that, know, dopamine hit, but.

Tim Schmoyer (10:11)
Reach people, change lives,

Joe Miller (10:24)
What you connected to was I'm actually having more impact and influence on people's lives here, right? So it wasn't like, this is completely brand new. I've decided to completely change who I am. You didn't do that at all. You know, it was like, am noticing that I'm having more impact in this area. And then as you just said, you were trying to say, okay, that's true, but now

I'm starting to feel guilt about, know, so there's already sort of this separating which in today's environment, people put together in a way, mission and career and job into one thing. And then they get really confused. And in my coaching, find that actually people show up saying, I'm not fulfilled in my job and you know,

Tim Schmoyer (11:13)
Yeah.

Joe Miller (11:21)
this sucks and I'm not getting recognition and blah, blah, blah. But what they really didn't do is they didn't really think about what those really essential things that, they didn't have that clear idea of mission. They had an idea of making money and maybe being recognized, but they didn't have anything that was worthy of a whole life, you know? So anyway, that was just an observation. I'll put a pin in it right there.

Tim Schmoyer (11:44)
Yeah, it's the difference between like, am I pursuing a job? Am I pursuing like a work or am I pursuing a personal mission that I feel like is really important to me and I'm really passionate about? And so at that time I was thinking of this is what I do as opposed to this is who I am.

And when I was focused on this is what I do. I show up at a church building and I lead these programs or whatever, you know. And the meaning behind that was like, yeah, I get to reach and change people's lives, hopefully. But I started to make that transition, I think, to being more mission, pursuing a mission as opposed to pursuing a career when I realized like, I can actually make an impact over here too.

So that has always been the through line of that mission, as maybe we'll continue to draw out here. Spoiler alert, sorry. Yeah. And so as I worked here in Cincinnati for a production company for a year, and then at the end of that, they're like, Tim, we love you. We're never gonna be going in this direction though. We think you should start a business doing for other people what you've done for us. And I'm like, I don't really think about business. I don't even know what a business model is. I don't know.

so they, they helped me for six months, get started, get that business off the ground. And, at the end of it, when I, when my, time there was done, they gave at the end of that, end of that six months, was making $10,000 a month. I'm like, cool. This is twice as much as you guys were paying me. I should have quit my job a long time ago. And, as that business continued to grow, what I, what would, what drove me in it was I thought.

I reached my million people a month and I had the impact, but there's plenty of other people out there who have stories I don't have, who have missions I don't share, who have, yeah, like what would it look like if I could help other people reach their million people a month? That I could maybe potentially start to scale life change. Like I could maybe only reach a million people and with a couple stories and I have a couple of things that maybe are helpful.

But what if I could have other people reach their million? It's like, okay, now we can really make an impact, reach more people and change lives. So I started an agency, 2013 Video Creators. And over the course of about 10 years, it grew and we had a lot of success with that. Did a lot of big deals with Disney, Warner Brothers, Yeah, a lot of Fortune 100 companies. All the way down to new creators who are just getting started.

And I loved it. Our vision was to work with 10,000 life changers, we called them. Like, how do we identify life changers? It was someone who was mission-oriented, people first, and results driven. And if we work with someone who matched those criteria, we'd internally mark them as like, this person's a life changer. And then our goal is, how do we get them to their million people a month and help them scale their mission that they're pursuing?

And so it was working. had a, yeah, we worked with a lot of creators and, and so still like the mission here is reach people, change lives. And now I'm like, how do I equip other people to reach people and change lives? And I don't remember the stats now it's been a little while, but it was like something ridiculous, like 40 billion views or something we could take credibility responsibility for through our clients and things like that. Then.

In 2021, I believe, maybe 22, I don't remember. I got an email from someone who was like, hey, we want to buy your business. I'm like, what? So I reached out to a couple of guys, a couple of the people I knew who were more familiar with mergers and acquisitions than I was. I'm like, what do do with this? And kind of curious. so had some conversation with that company.

And before long, other people like, Tim, we weren't, didn't know you were open to selling. And I was like, I didn't know that either until just now. Before long, had five companies interested, YouTube being one of them. had offers from three, two, no, three. Yeah, three. And, and through that process, I realized I,

one kind of bored with what I'm doing. Like I didn't know what was next. I kind of lost vision for what am I doing here? Like I've already done a lot of these big brands and most of the, a lot of the big creators on YouTube and, it's just kind of like, what's more, just more of the same kind of like I wanted a new mountain to climb. wanted a bigger vision. How can I scale life change even more? And so this company that I Q came along and as one of the

He was like, I didn't know you're open to selling. And so they gave me an offer and I took that offer because I like, I think I'm going to need help with software, building software to really help reaching back creators. I'm going to need access to more creators. And the idea of how do I build a one-on-one human coaching program for 3 million users? At the time it was 2 million, I believe. So we kept growing, but now it's 3 million.

What is that? I was like, okay, there's my new mountain to climb. Now I'm excited again. Now there's like a bigger vision. So how do I continue to reach people and change lives? And so now I'm coaching the coaches who coach our coaches. You can figure out all the, he says bourbon and out in there, but yeah. So that's that hopefully I think is going to be, and it already has been like, I probably can't share numbers here. But we have already reached and impacted and worked with far more creators here in coaching than we did maybe not quite total in 10 years at video, but pretty close. did that just in our first. So we are impacting and reaching more. And I, and I love that the coaches I'm working with also had that, a similar mission. 

Tim Schmoyer (18:22)
I love helping people and making a difference and making impact. So I still think there's a lot of room for us to improve and what we're doing there and make a bigger impact. And no one's ever done this type of coaching program before at this type of scale. So there's a lot of, a lot of lessons along the way, a lot of learning opportunities that we're leaning into. I think we're probably at like 15 % of the way there. When I, like, when I picture the vision, I think we've like scratched the surface. So career changes along the way.

one from youth ministry to my own business on YouTube, and then I'm selling my business to doing this even bigger coaching program. the mission has stayed consistent throughout the whole thing. And I think that's how I see what I do now. It's not just about the work I actually do or the industry I'm in or the job I hold, but it's the mission I'm pursuing wherever I'm

Joe Miller (19:17)
And that mission, I'm just reflecting on kind of you taking us through that, impacting that journey. It's been the same mission, but it seems like what's changed is you kind of pushing the boundaries of how you can have even greater impact and engage more people and enable more people to change lives. That seems like that's what's been keeping you excited, you know?

Tim Schmoyer (19:44)
I get bored after a little while. like, okay.

Joe Miller (19:47)
It doesn't take me that long to get bored, I can understand. But still, yeah.

Tim Schmoyer (19:53)
There might be like an entrepreneurial drive maybe. It might be a little bit how I'm wired to, not that bigger is always better, but it's, yeah, I just want to have new challenges. I want to work on new things and.

Joe Miller (20:08)
Something else popped up in my feed. You have a new newsletter. Yeah. And we should talk about that a second. Let me just finish the little mini story here. So the whole idea of rhythms came through. I think you had a newsletter go out.

Tim Schmoyer (20:25)
The video, the newsletter, that'll come out in probably two weeks.

Joe Miller (20:28)
Okay, but anyway, I definitely saw you speaking and talking about rhythms you had implemented, I think related to the church you're attending now or the one you were speaking at, how the festivals that are celebrated in the Old Testament, how you and your family have put them in the place. I'm going to tie this into our discussion just a sec. But the whole concept of rhythms,

We've heard so much about habits. I'm a big fan of, you know, atomic habits and great material, but how do you actually practically keep your vision alive and your mission alive, if you will, and keep it in front of you so that you're continually checking yourself against it? so, yeah, so talk about that a little bit. Rhythms and of course you had the...

I'm going to drop a little teaser here. The death calendar.

Tim Schmoyer (21:26)
So yeah. Yeah. So there's another theme that we haven't maybe brought up yet that has run through my life and that is wrestling. When I was in Peewee Lee, I wrestled in Peewee through middle school, then high school. And then I coached, I did a little bit of wrestling in college. Cool. We should go out and see who wins.

Joe Miller (21:49)
I did that. In jr. high.
Iowa ride?

Tim Schmoyer (21:58)
No, it was not an Iowa guy, but I would have loved to be there. They're amazing. yeah. And so, and then I coached, I was assistant coach at a high school. was a youth pastor at a church and they were a wrestling team and did that for a few years. And now I do jujitsu, which is like, it's not wrestling, but it's the closest thing for adult. And so on a physical sense, I love the struggle.

You know, it's a one-on-one struggle. But metaphorically, I really like wrestling with ideas, with concepts, with thoughts, with values, with these things. I worked with, I think anyone who actually believes in coaching should have their own coach. So I had a professional life coach that I was working with for a while. And at the end of our, I think we worked there for like nine months or something. And at the end of it.

He was like, Tim, I have never met anyone who wrestles with life like you do. And I was like, is that a compliment? I wasn't sure. I think he meant it as one, but I, yeah, my head is always taking these ideas and these thoughts that impact my life and my family and business. they mostly tend to revolve around business around family and faith type of things. And I just wrestle with them because I think it's a very worthy endeavor to

take something and get down to the root of like, what's the wisdom that's found in this principle. And so, I've started a new project on my website at timsmorey.com where I'm like, Hey guys, I don't know who wants any of this, but probably nobody, but I just want to wrestle out loud with and get back to my roots of blogging again. I just want to wrestle out loud with some of the things I'm, I'm personally wrestling with and.

And some things I have wrestled through and came to some conclusions on. So like the rhythms would be an example of that. That was a probably like a 10 year journey of wrestling for my wife and I. And how do we live rhythmically in a way that maybe another way of thinking rhythmically is like systematic. That's not the right word. But where you have this repeated thing going on, the annual rhythms.

monthly rhythms, weekly rhythms. And when you live these rhythms, they create a system or a process that gives you the desired outcome. Anyone who's a business owner knows that systems are important, right? And not that we've systematized our life to the point where we're robots, but there's these annual, weekly, and monthly rhythms that come up. They're like, okay, this is what we do right now because it

It creates this result in our relationships or in our family or in our faith. Yeah.

Joe Miller (24:54)
Well, to me it's kind of like a combination of intention and kind of optimizing the process for getting to the result you want. So you set up these things that you know will aid you in, so you intentionally proactively set up these things, these patterns, these rhythms to help you get to where you want to.

Tim Schmoyer (25:20)
Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't know if it's where.

Joe Miller (25:23)
I wrestle with it, go ahead.

Tim Schmoyer (25:25)
Well, yeah, I don't think it's where I wanted to go. I think it was more of, here's something in the Bible that says this is how I should live. Let's try this. my gosh, this is really amazing and fruitful. Let's try this other thing it says too. We just kind of kept going that direction and we're like, maybe these things haven't lost their value just because they're labeled old. Maybe they're old and like the really valuable sense of the word, you know?

not in the throw away discard sense of the word old time tested. And yeah, that was so as we started living into those, we started seeing the results, the fruit of those things. And we're like, let's, do more, more of this. So that one was more of like probably one step of obedience after another. And rather than it was like, I want to get there and here's a tool.

to get me there. was like, I wouldn't have even thought that this type of thing could be this amazing. it wasn't on my radar. I just started following what the Bible outlined and I, we arrived here and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. Oh yeah. I give myself, there's, I can't take too much credit for that one. That was just one, one step at a time type of a thing rather than like a vision and how do I get there type of thing.

Joe Miller (26:44)
I get it. I get it. You know, we've talked about, we're throwing out a lot of terms and they're used differently by different groups, know, mission, vision, purpose. Maybe we take a couple of minutes and talk about our thoughts on those things. I mean, usually mission, lots of times, at least organizationally, mission is utilized to sort of a shorter time horizon. And then you have vision being sort of the longest arc out there.

Tim Schmoyer (26:55)
Yeah.

Joe Miller (27:13)
Of course, we hear purpose all the time. We got Simon Sinek and his, yeah, you know, start with why and what's your why. So when you talk about mission, where do you place that with these other concepts?

Tim Schmoyer (27:27)
Yeah, I think about vision that's like pretty far out of what does it look like at some point in time. Mission, I think of it as like what's driving me to get there. Values, I think these are the filters I use to start deciding what is an opportunity and what's a distraction. Because sometimes it's very hard to tell the difference between, right?

Tim Schmoyer (27:53)
So core values help me understand who do I partner with and yeah, and then purpose is more of a, this provides meaning to me. So I don't know, maybe a whole lot of difference between purpose and mission, but I do see the others as a little bit more distinct. Yeah.

Joe Miller (28:17)
The other thing I've recently kind of revisited, and I mentioned it earlier, and that is Atomic Habits and why the author has slipped my mind. But anyway, he talks about asking yourself the question, what a person of this identity choose this behavior, or what's natural for a person of this identity? And I'll just use the faith question, if you will.

So as a believer in Jesus Christ, is this the kind of thing I would want to undertake or is this the kind of behavior that I wouldn't want to have as part of who I am? And I thought that was very powerful because lots of times we talk about forming habits as, you want to get in shape, you want to lose weight. So I'm, you know, I'm going to exercise every day. And the question isn't, it's about sort of the result but not who you are. It's kind of like if I do these things, it's very external. If I do these things, then therefore I'll get to where I want to be versus I am the person that has these attributes, if you will. I just thought it was a very powerful distinction. I don't know what you think about that or if you have wrestled with that whole concept of identity to help.

Tim Schmoyer (29:41)
Yeah, identity.

Joe Miller (29:43)
James Clear, sorry about that.

Tim Schmoyer (29:45)
Well, what I'm thinking is like identity is like, so some of the examples you use would be like, the weight loss one, I want to lose weight and so I do this and there could be a sense of identity around.

what I'm supposed to look like maybe or feel like or something like that. I think of identity a little less of aspirational though. Like this is what I'm trying. Like I need, I want to lose the weight. I think of it a little bit more as like just what is, like let's just be honest about what it is. Like now if you're honest with yourself about your identity and you don't like what you're saying, that's a different conversation. But

Uh, yeah, identity does shift and change over time as we grow mature and have different experiences and things. But, um, yeah, I don't know. I haven't really wrestled through that one, to be honest, but I don't think of them as aspirational. Think of it as more of a clarity of this is who I am. And if there's something that I don't like, then like, it was probably a value issue somewhere. I like, want to, I say I value this, but I don't really.

Like I say I value working out, but I don't really value working out because I'm not doing it or I don't value working out, but I value how I look like even more. So that's what's driving.

Joe Miller (31:13)
Well, I mean, this is a, I mean, I'm going faithy in this episode, but this is a very common discussion in the Christian world, you know, about grace and works and, you know, about the writings of Paul versus maybe, you know, the book of James, you know. So there's this, you know, I say this, you you say you're this person, you know, believer,

and yet you do these things. But if you do these things, you must be deceiving yourself because you shouldn't be doing these things. So it's being made in the image of God and then there's living that reality. And I think that that tension is, talking about wrestling, is part of the spiritual formation and growth process that we all.

Tim Schmoyer (32:08)
Yeah, take that to mean like motives matter. It's not just what we do, but why we do it. Are we trying to earn something or are we reacting in an appreciation gratitude for something? I think that matters, that motive.

Joe Miller (32:24)
Yeah, so sorry to take us too deep there.

Tim Schmoyer (32:27)
That's fine. 

Joe Miller (32:31)
All right. So I think we were in the middle of, no, you went through the merger acquisition with that and the scaling of that. A little bit about you and your family, if you don't mind. Since you go out public on this stuff, I figured you don't mind, but.

You have a kind of an interesting life. mean, you're out in the country. Don't you have chickens? Don't you have a farm and a whole bunch of kids? Tell us a little bit about Tim's life outside of technology.

Tim Schmoyer (33:12)
We had, my wife and I somehow managed to have seven kids in eight years. Our oldest right now is 15, our youngest is seven. It is possible, in case you were wondering. It's quite the feat. And yes, we had a pretty intense season of life there for a while. We have just five acres and we try to live and eat somewhat in healthy lifestyle.

Joe Miller (33:18)
It is possible.

Tim Schmoyer (33:40)
What that's turned into for us is we now raise all of our family's meat for the year on our own property. We raise our own chickens and turkeys and lamb. And we do buy half cow from a neighbor down the street twice a year or two. So we grow a lot of our own food and we, yeah, homeschool our kids and work from home. Yeah, we were, we were,

Before the pandemic hit, we were homeschooling and working remotely and everything. And then that hit and we just found out that everyone refers to our way of life as quarantine. know, so it was like, no, come on guys, it's not that bad. But yeah, we like it. like it out here. Cincinnati, Ohio area.

Joe Miller (34:27)
Yeah, is it in Ohio or in Kentucky? wasn't sure. So it's just like, we don't want to reveal exactly where you

Tim Schmoyer (34:35)
We're in the suburb of Cincinnati. We're just across the river on the Kentucky side.

Joe Miller (34:40)
Yeah, yeah. I had some friends that lived in Covington. So I remember going up the highway and seeing the big Florence, y'all. Yeah, yeah. Water tower. I don't know if it's still there or not. It's still there, yeah. Yeah, Barbara and I went to college in Williamsburg at Cumberland. so, yeah, so we used to drive by there. We're upstate New York. So we passed by there all the time. Had friends, like I said, in Covington. So that's cool. It's beautiful up there.

We're in Florida now, West Coast, poor Charlotte, doing my remote semi-retired gig. And I have a similar story in terms of, a mission, but I didn't really have a good clear idea of what it was. I mean, 35 years leading IT and biotech and pharma, but I kept finding myself being much more interested in people than technology and having conversations with people and being interested in helping people find out who they are and make sure they were in the right slot. know, first it started out with my staff and then I got a lot of help with a with a coach as well as I was going through a tough transition and thought to myself, oh, I want to do that. So I started doing that on the side and I felt like this is kind of what I've been doing all along really. mean, helping people change organizations change what they have in place. And so I've just continued that. 

And this is why I get into this whole discussion with my guests often about understanding and getting connected to your gifts. And most of the time people aren't even, they don't have a they don't come from a place of faith, but they do agree that people do have these natural talents and skills. And often when you have conversations, people are frustrated. They're working against the grain. They're pushing that rock up the hill and they don't know why they're exhausted. So it's a good common shared concept for having, I think, conversations about, I want to live a life that's fulfilling. I want my life to matter.

And most people share similar, I mean, your mission statement is some of that same territory. I wonder what you think about that.

Tim Schmoyer (36:55)
The territory of meaning and purpose to our work. It does give me meaning.

Joe Miller (37:01)
But isn't it challenging people that you engage with a little bit to live a deeper life?

Tim Schmoyer (37:06)
Maybe, yeah, I guess I don't know how it's impacting others to be honest with you, that my personal mission. I think while that mission is still true, I think the shift it's been making over the past few years for me is I really need to reach my kids and impact their lives too. I know that's often an externally focused type of thing, but my wife and I have been

more more intentional about how we raise our kids because our oldest are in their young teens now and don't have as much time at home. started talking about colleges with our oldest and our two oldest have jobs now too and it's, you know, so we're getting to that season of life.

Joe Miller (37:42)
Good that you're doing that.

You made a pivot when your business was very intense, your own personal video creators, observing that your job can overtake your entire, all hours of the day, your entire life. I worked in a very intense career where people would call me in the middle of the night because something was down somewhere around the world and they wanted it fixed instantly and that was very challenging. And I have to say,

I have regrets because I just think I put too much emphasis on making the buck and having a great career. just, you know, I'm just being honest here. Yeah. And so I think it's good that you're, I mean, they're, it may seem like they're getting really old to you, but you know.

Tim Schmoyer (38:42)
I didn't say I'm doing it well. It's on our radar.

Joe Miller (38:47)
It's on your wrestling with it. It's on your radar. Yeah.

Tim Schmoyer (38:51)
Yeah, so it's because ultimately what I believe if you really want to reach people and change lives, like I can scale it through YouTube and through coaching and others, but I can have a multi-generational impact if my kids grow up as mature people who make good choices and decisions, who go on and have kids who reach people and change lives. Not that I need to impose my personal mission onto them, but I think it's just this idea of my kids are gonna outlive me, hopefully, you know, go longer than me, and they will be meeting people I will never meet. They will be in situations and industries I am not in and leaving and making an impact in ways I never can.

And so it's like, all right, so I could do some coaching and make a difference in other people's lives. But these people live with me and I with them. And how do I raise them in a way that they feel like they're enabled to pursue what they want to pursue and and and do it with excellence and make wise choices? For example, my older two kids, we've they're starting to learn how to do investing in mutual funds and bonds and stocks and stuff and they're doing pretty good. Like that have a skill, not that that's going to equate to maturity or anything, but yeah, those different types of life skills and things. I don't know. I don't, I haven't, I can't articulate that one as clearly, but that's where my wife and I've been leaning though is towards that direction.

Joe Miller (40:41)
Awesome. So you're still on track with your current company and you're shooting for what was it? 3 million. 

Tim Schmoyer (40:54)
A{4} million creators who currently use our software every week. Yeah. And we're like, how do we help each of them have their own one-on-one coach?

Joe Miller (41:02)
Can you tell us a little bit about that program? How does it work?

Tim Schmoyer (41:07)
Yeah. So like, what is it like from the creator side? How does it?

Joe Miller (41:12)
Yeah, what does it look like? know, it's for just, that's a lot of people.

Tim Schmoyer (41:17)
Yeah, well, we're not at the three million yet. But yeah, so we have a team of YouTube coaches that my team and I have trained. And we are working with creators who go to vidiq.com slash coaching and register there. And they get paired with a YouTube coach who's aligned with their niche and their goals and the challenges that they feel like they have as a little coach matching profile quiz that you go through. And it matches you with the coach on our team; the best fit for you. And yeah, then you get connected with them and they take a look at your channel and give you a quick little audit, some feedback on here's what's working, here's what's not. And usually it's a couple of clarifying questions as well. And all this happens over asynchronous video chat. So it's video messaging back and forth, kind of like tech messaging, but with video. Although you can use text if you want.

And yeah, and so then together you come up with a plan. All right, what are we going to work on here? What needs to happen on this channel to get more views, more subscribers, turn into a sustainable growing thing. And you come up with a plan for that together and then start working on each of those phases. Here's step one, here let's do that together. Okay, it's step two. And just like having someone hold your hand and support you through it. our goal is to take all the guesswork out of growing your channel. So that it's.

You have someone there just with you each step of the way showing you what to do next and kind of light shining a light and all the fuzziness and Like what happens next? What do I do here? How do I respond to that? You know, just good content. How do I improve it all that stuff?

Joe Miller (42:59)
Yeah, I found it to be a very practical approach too. At first, I wasn't sure about the asynchronous aspect because most of my coaching is live. I found it to be very practical. You'd have a question, you'd get a return video or mostly time of mine was video, message back and speaking directly to my question. And the other powerful thing was because of that, union with vidIQ's really rich tool set, you know, it was very practical because then, you know, point directly to what tool to use and, you know, where to look in the analytics, the extra level of analytics capability that vidIQ gives you. That it was really a powerful combination, I thought.

Tim Schmoyer (43:52)
Yeah, I don't think we've cracked the code yet, so to speak. There's still a lot of improvements and changes to make. There's enough people who went on synchronous calls that we're looking to figure out what that looks like too. And other people who went faster responses. We try to have response time within 24 hours, although lately it's been improving, which is good. It's been a little bit more back and forth starting the day.

Yeah, there's a lot to uncover, a lot to figure out there and uncover and unpack.

Joe Miller (44:25)
Yeah. Well, I, you know, it could be that some, you know, might have some layering of things. So you might have some group stuff layered in or something like that. Yeah. But I just, I thought it was great. I mean, I came in pretty early days. Okay. I was in. I'm sure it has, but it was still very valuable. And I found, okay, I just need to apply some of this stuff. So I'm going to go away for a while and work on it. And then.

Tim Schmoyer (44:41)
It's changed significantly.

Joe Miller (44:55)
I'll reengage when the time is right. So it was really good. Let's see, other closing thoughts. We talked about the rhythms, we talked about mission, how it fits into some of these other concepts. We talked about the long arc that although you'll refine your mission over time; maybe get more clarity over time as you go through your life and your life experience and your wrestling process that you're doing tends to be a lot more static. Where you show up may change, but the mission probably doesn't change very much. Shouldn't hopefully change terribly, but it could.

Tim Schmoyer (45:41)
Yeah, it could change. There's nothing wrong with that.

Joe Miller (45:43)
Nothing wrong with it. Yeah, so I think the big question at this point would be, if you were to look back, this is my look back question, so you know where I'm going with this. What things would you suggest to folks as they're going through their career and their life that they consider? What kind of advice would you have to others who would be on the video right now or listening to the podcast?

Tim Schmoyer (46:10)
think it's just helpful to reflect and like what's the through line that's kind of driven most of the decisions and choices I've made. Not on a micro level, a macro, like a high level. Yeah, career choices, places I choose to live, people I surround myself with type of thing. I think it's it's just, it's helpful to do that because if you can start to see the through line, like, I tend to gravitate towards blank. Then as you look forward into the future, like where this is going, it kind of gives you a little bit of some guide rails to kind of know what's going to work well for you and how you're wired and what you enjoy and get excited about and things. So I think without having that through line and you look into the future, like what's my next career going to be or what, it's a little, it's probably overwhelming because it's like everything is an option.

But if you can narrow it down a little bit based on the current trajectory, I think that's like the value of history in general probably is like, you know, what has happened so far to lead to this point? And based on that, where is that trajectory pointing into the future? And so I think that's worth, you know, a few hours of time.
A solid afternoon or something to sit down and reflect. The way I do something like, and this works differently for different types of brains, but the way I like to it, I just have a stack of Post-its and I just, anything comes to mind, I just write it on a Post-it, stick it on the wall until I've probably burned through, you know, a pack of Post-its or something. And then I sit back and start trying to like overlap them together. Which, which ones like, these kind of have these theme. I'll do another different color Post-it and like label this stack here is like that kind of thing. And that type of thing until I've kind of have them in groups that make sense to me. I'm like, okay, that's what these things mean, or that's the implication of these or something like that. And that starts to help me take a lot of things and start to kind of synthesize it down to a few main principles that are now actually helpful. So no one else has to do that. That's just what works for me. Yeah.

Joe Miller (48:18)
Yeah, I think that's really good. I I'm an improviser and I've sort of took advantage, looked for opportunities as they came to me along the way and probably wasn't as reflective earlier in my life. And organically, I'll call it, came to kind of a similar kind of process where I would actually, at key moments, of transition in my life or at, I wouldn't say I did this every year, but I certainly think about it every year, look back and say, well, okay, what was good, what wasn't good? Yeah. What do I want to move towards, what I want to move away from? And I don't think it has to be so rigid, but I think being more, having more awareness about it and asking yourself some key questions at least to try to gain clarity and continue to refine that over time, I think.

Similar kind of process. You did sort of a brainstorming process with categorization. I think a lot of people just sort of beep up their way through life and then don't get reflective about it until it's kind of, they're well down the road, let's put it that way. Yeah, that. Yeah, makes sense.

Tim Schmoyer (49:27)
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know if that helps.

Joe Miller (49:42)
Yeah, I'm sure it will. It's been great talking to you, Tim. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's a, you've got a really interesting journey and you're laid back about it, but you've accomplished a ton and you have helped a lot of people, clearly. And one of the big things I appreciate about you is you're you. You're not trying to be somebody other than you.

Tim Schmoyer (49:47)
Yeah. If I can, yeah.

Not anymore, I used to, but yeah. I made a post about that I think actually last week because of that. that's fine. No, no, Just more about like, I feel like I started to become the person I thought people wanted. Like when I started getting some success on YouTube, I'm like, this is the person they need to be in order to have more success. And so I started tempering other parts of myself and moderating them online.

Joe Miller (50:16)
I missed that one. I have to go back.

Tim Schmoyer (50:36)
In order to keep having the success I was experiencing. But now I'm like, you know, I want to go back and talk about other things that are important to me, like faith and family and systems and processes and all that kind thing.

Joe Miller (50:45)
Hey, people see through that.

Tim Schmoyer (50:52)
I had a good response. I'm like, okay, well, all 12 of you, here we go. No, okay. I'm a little bit more than that, it was, still though, was affirming and also a little bit intimidating. I'm like, shoot, they're actually listening. All right, here we go.

Joe Miller (51:09)
So again as we sign off one last time, how can people reach you? Where are you most easily found?

Tim Schmoyer (51:16)
Yeah, TimShimori.com is my personal blog now, where I'm writing about the things I'm wrestling with and just trying to boil down and get to the practical wisdom that comes out of these things, primarily relating to faith, family, and business. Awesome. Yeah, TimShimori.com is where you can sign up and get those wrestlings, I guess I'll call them.

Joe Miller (51:39)
Cool. Thanks again, Tim. Thanks for being on Titans. All right. Hey, thanks for joining me today on Titans of Transition. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please check the show notes for additional information.