Not all landscape designers are created equal, and Steve Griggs is living proof.

For nearly four decades, the New York–based designer has been quietly transforming backyards, rooftops, and estates into living works of art. His projects have earned him two spots on the Inc. 5000 list, appearances on Bravo’s Backyard Envy, Good Morning LaLa Land, and features in Forbes, Huffington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. But ask him what he actually does, and he won’t talk about fame or aesthetics first.

He’ll tell you about the guys chiseling stone in the cold.

“Most people just see a pretty picture on Pinterest and say, ‘I want that in my backyard,’” Griggs says. “They have no idea what it takes—the engineering, the plant science, the labor. The real heroes are the guys on the ground doing the work.”

That mix of candor and craftsmanship is exactly what’s made Griggs the guy to call when you want more than a pretty garden.

From “Just a Landscaper” to the Guy Everyone Calls

Griggs didn’t set out to be another name in the landscaping directory. From the beginning, he knew if he stayed generic, he’d be trapped in the race to the bottom.

“Starting out as a landscaper, you don’t want to be a landscaper,” he says bluntly. “You want to become the guy, the gal—the it person. If you don’t separate yourself from the crowd, you’re just competing on price. And that’s a quick land to nowhere.”

To climb out of that commodity trap, he began positioning himself differently. He leaned into media, became a go-to guest on podcasts, and compressed 30 years of work into a visual coffee-table book called Straight Dirt: New York City’s Premier Designer Tells It Like It Is. The book, filled with high-impact photography and honest stories from job sites, became a powerful leave-behind for clients—and a quiet weapon against his competition.

“If a client’s looking at two landscapers with similar pricing, and one of them has a book on the table, they’re probably going with the guy who has the book,” he says. “It raises your credibility the second you walk in.”

Your Backyard, Reimagined as a Story

Ask Griggs what he really does, and he won’t talk about lawns or shrubs. He talks about lifestyle, feeling, and memory.

“Some people paint, some people write music, some people sculpt,” he says. “My art form is your backyard.”

His process starts with listening—not just to what people want built, but how they want to feel when they step outside. Some clients want Vegas energy: pools, lights, late-night entertainment. Others want a zen courtyard to decompress from the city. His job is to translate those emotional cues into a design and then bring it to life in three dimensions.

He’s particularly passionate about the value of outdoor space in dense markets like the Northeast, where property and taxes come at a premium.

“I’ve had clients say, ‘I don’t want to fix up my backyard—we never go outside,’” he laughs. “And I tell them, ‘You never go outside because it looks like this.’”

Since COVID, he’s seen a massive shift in how people relate to outdoor living. Fire pits, outdoor kitchens, TVs, and covered lounges have turned backyards into the new family room.

“The backyard is the new kitchen,” he says. “It’s where memories are made. Your goal is to make your place the coolest house on the block so your kids and their friends want to be there. That’s where the magic happens.”

Money, Mindset, and the Price of Being “The Guy”

Behind the polished projects, Griggs carries a familiar story about money—one that many high-achieving entrepreneurs will recognize.

He grew up in an old-school, working-class household where the soundtrack was scarcity: turn off the lights, we can’t afford that. That narrative turned into an internal script that followed him into adulthood.

“For years I was deathly afraid to talk about money,” he admits. “I’d be terrified to give the real price. In my head it was always, ‘What are they going to think if I say this number?’ I didn’t feel worthy to charge it.”

The turning point came when he realized his clients could write a $100,000 check with the same emotional charge as a phone bill. It wasn’t that the projects weren’t worth the money—it was that he hadn’t fully owned the value of his work.

“You can’t be clipping coupons on groceries and then expect people to hand you six-figure checks,” he says. “It’s a mindset thing. You have to believe you’re the person they want, or you’ll always be just another guy with a truck.”

Today, he’s unapologetic about charging what his projects are worth. He also insists that loving your work isn’t enough—you have to treat it like a real business.

“I used to say, ‘If I love what I do, the money will follow.’ That’s not how it works,” he says. “You’re supposed to make a profit. Business is for profit. Be fair. Don’t take advantage of people. But don’t apologize for making money.”

40 Years In: Jealousy, Grit, and Showing Up Anyway

After four decades in the industry, Griggs has seen trends, companies, and entire economies come and go. Instagram, though, brought a new kind of challenge: comparison.

“Do I get jealous when I see guys online talking about making a million dollars a month? Absolutely,” he says. “Here I am, 40 years of blood, sweat, and tears. It gets to you sometimes.”

His way through it isn’t glamorous. It’s not a hack. It’s consistency.

“The longevity is just consistency,” he says. “Showing up every day. Doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.”

That grit is rooted in his upbringing. His father worked construction, getting up at 4:30 a.m. to commute into New York City and feed five kids. Griggs inherited not only the work ethic but the sense of responsibility that comes with it.

“I’m old-school now, I can finally say that,” he laughs. “Your word is your bond. If I tell a client they’ll be swimming by July 4th, no matter what happens, they’re swimming by July 4th. That’s your reputation. That’s everything.”

His biggest piece of advice for anyone trying to build something unconventional?

“Bet on yourself,” he says. “You want to be the person with the ball with two seconds left who actually wants to take the shot. Nobody’s coming to save you. It’s on you.”

Creativity in Spray Paint and Steel-Toed Boots

Despite the tough-guy exterior, Griggs describes himself as a softie who cries at movies and gets emotional easily. His creative process is surprisingly intuitive.

He doesn’t sit behind a screen and draft for days. Instead, he walks the site with old-school spray paint in hand, sketching the pool, patio, and pathways right onto the earth.

“It’s like when a song comes into your head,” he tells Jules. “For you, you go to the piano. For me, I start spray-painting the outline. I see the whole thing before it’s ever built—even down to the flowers.”

He laughs that he can’t draw a stick figure on paper, but give him a raw piece of land and he can see the finished space from day one.

The Lonely Road of Entrepreneurship—and Why He’d Still Choose It

Griggs is quick to point out that entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

“Can everyone be an entrepreneur? I don’t think so,” he says. “It’s lonely. There were times I didn’t know if I could make the mortgage or the payroll. People are cheering for you—but also, some aren’t. There’s jealousy.”

And yet, he wouldn’t trade it.

Being his own boss meant he could coach his sons’ soccer games, be present for family life, and build days around what mattered most. Now married 29 years to a wife who balances his high energy with a calmer presence, he knows firsthand that success without relationships isn’t success at all.

“I see a lot of people where one partner is working nonstop, and everything else falls apart,” he says. “It’s not worth it.”

Even with his own business, he refuses to let his kids skip the hard part.

“They see me come home dirty and tired,” he says. “They’re not following in my footsteps—and that’s fine. But if they ever want to come into the business, they’re not getting handed the keys. Go out, get beat up a little, learn how the world works, then we’ll talk.”

Why Breaking the Rules Might Be the Only Way to Live

For Steve Griggs, living an unconventional life is less about rebellion and more about refusing to sleepwalk through someone else’s plan.

“To me, the unconventional life is breaking something, living outside the box,” he says. “Don’t just do what everybody says you should be doing. Go for it. Bet on yourself. Don’t have regrets.”

Whether he’s spray-painting the outline of a rooftop pool, pricing a six-figure backyard renovation, or sending 5 a.m. emails so clients know he’s thinking about their project before sunrise, one thing is clear: Griggs isn’t just designing outdoor spaces.

He’s designing a life on his own terms—and inviting the rest of us to do the same.

Giveaway: Win a Copy of Straight Dirt + Personal Design Insight from Steve

To celebrate the episode, Steve is giving away a hardcover copy of his coffee-table book, Straight Dirt: New York City’s Premier Designer Tells It Like It Is.

Connect with Steve

• Website: https://stevegriggsdesign.com

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevegriggsdesign/

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteveGriggsDesign

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/stevegriggsdsgn

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ3rPHh3yC3FgzQ_nw9xenw

• Houzz: https://www.houzz.com/pro/stevegriggsdesign/stevegriggsdesign-com

For nearly two decades, Christopher Mackin lived what most would call the dream: a fast-rising financial advisor, top of the leaderboard, driving deal to deal in a suit and tie across the Northeast. He had the income, the status, the success.

But beneath the polish was a truth he couldn’t outrun: the hustle was hollowing him from the inside out.

Today, Mackin is a different kind of wealth advisor altogether — one blending financial strategy with spiritual insight, money with meaning, and prosperity with planetary stewardship. As a Certified Wealth Advisor, Reiki Master, retreat entrepreneur, and author of the forthcoming book Conscious Wealth, his mission is simple:

Turn wealth into WELLth — a life that is emotionally rich, spiritually anchored, energetically aligned, and financially empowered.

And the path that brought him here was anything but predictable.

From Childhood Scarcity to Corporate Success

Mackin traces the origins of his drive back to a painful childhood moment: overhearing his parents argue about money. He cried himself to sleep and made a vow the next morning — he would never ask them for help again.

That promise turned into a relentless work ethic. By 16, he had two jobs and had dropped sports to earn more. By adulthood, he was the classic high performer:

• Suit and tie

• Cold calls

• Long drives across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania

• Manager-driven quotas

• Leaderboard success

On paper, he had arrived. But inwardly? His health declined, his habits worsened, and his emotional world flatlined.

“I was doing something I loved and making good money. But something was deeply off within.”

That misalignment would become the pressure point that cracked him open.

The Sedona Moment That Changed Everything

When therapy didn’t resonate, Mackin followed a more intuitive pull: a life coach, energy work, retreats.

Then came Sedona — the trip that marked the beginning of his spiritual awakening.

A session with a shaman. An astrology reading. An energy clearing. Vortex hikes. The result?

Thirty days of sustained bliss. A nervous system he’d never felt before. A sense of lightness that made the financial hustle look one-dimensional.

He calls this his “Pandora’s box” moment — the experience that pushed him headfirst into consciousness, somatics, energy work, and eventually, Reiki mastery.

Holding Space for Transition: Why Quiet Leads to Clarity

Many of Mackin’s clients seek him during transition — after burnout, before a pivot, or in the numb space where success no longer feels like success.

His perspective is grounded and compassionate:

• You cannot make aligned decisions from survival mode.

• You need spaciousness before clarity arrives.

• Sabbaticals aren’t luxuries — they’re recalibration portals.

• Even your home holds the energy of your old identity.

• You don’t have to know the next step before leaving the wrong one.

Whether the sabbatical is three days or three years, Mackin believes the most transformative insights emerge in silence.

The Conscious Wealth Philosophy

When Mackin talks about wealth, he goes far beyond money.

In fact, he challenges the entire premise.

Wealth as Well-Being

The word wealth originally stems from a root associated with joy and well-being — concepts that rarely appear in financial statements yet determine the quality of our lives.

His definition includes:

• Emotional wisdom

• Spiritual grounding

• Physical vitality

• Mental clarity

• Relationships

• Energetic coherence

• Financial support

Money is part of the story — but far from the whole.

Money as Energy

One of Mackin’s core teachings is deceptively simple:

Money is energy. Energy is power. Power can be directed with intention.

Rather than viewing money as accumulation, he sees it as a conduit — a way to amplify what you value.

“And you don’t have to sacrifice returns to align with your values,” he notes. Alignment creates clarity, and clarity creates better decisions.

Sacred Ohms & the Business of Conscious Transformation

After years of attending retreats, Mackin realized something striking: most retreat leaders booked venues through Airbnb or Google, never truly considering the energetic quality of the spaces.

Yet set and setting profoundly shape transformation.

This insight birthed Sacred Ohms, Mackin’s experiential hospitality platform — a curated retreat-venue marketplace designed to support leaders, protect participants, and elevate consciousness.

It ties directly into his three global priorities:

1. Elevating human consciousness

2. Ocean conservation and climate stewardship

3. Clean drinking water for all

Philanthropy From the Heart, Not Obligation

Although Mackin had been involved in philanthropy for years — education, Rotary involvement, nonprofit boards — something felt missing.

So he paused everything.

And asked himself a simple but revolutionary question:

“What do I genuinely care about right now?”

The answer was immediate: the ocean.

Growing up on the water, snorkeling, fishing, spending countless hours in nature — the ocean was where he felt most alive, and most heartbroken when witnessing pollution and degradation.

His environmental giving now flows from passion, not duty — and he encourages others to do the same.

“You don’t need to be a millionaire to give. Even $1 shifts your energy.”

Living the Unconventional Life

When Jules asks what the unconventional life means to him, Mackin smiles — people have been calling him “the unconventional wealth advisor” for two decades.

He shares a simple truth:

He builds his business around his life, not his life around his business.

That has required:

• Letting go of relationships

• Choosing alignment over approval

• Prioritizing authenticity

• Living with the awareness that life is short

If he can look in the mirror and know he is being his truest self, it’s worth the cost.

The Giveaway: A Portal of Healing

As part of this episode, Mackin is offering listeners a powerful experience: a 44-minute Reiki session, facilitated through Holy Fire and Karuna Reiki modalities.

He uses Reiki daily, integrating it into his morning practice — a practice that includes spaciousness, breathwork, and writing.

For many listeners, this is the first time an energy-healing session has been offered through the show.

• Instagram:@iamchristophermackin
• LinkedIn:Christopher Mackin

When Tim Rexius talks about hunger, he doesn’t mean a mood or a mindset.

At 19, he was sleeping in a 1983 Oldsmobile, choosing between paying rent and betting on himself. He picked the business. The business failed. And for about six months, he lived in his car, sneaking into McDonald’s to steal ketchup packets, mixing them with hot water to make what he now darkly jokes was “tomato soup.”

That kind of hunger imprints on you. In Tim’s case, it became the throughline of everything that came after: a short-lived NFL shot, a science-heavy career in pandemics, a hard pivot out of Washington, D.C. politics, and ultimately a bootstrapped empire of gyms, nutrition stores, and a protein popcorn brand now in roughly 30,000 retailers across 16 countries.

“I remember what it’s like to be literally hungry,” he shares. “That changes how you show up. All I had was me. I had to figure it out.”

Today, he runs four companies, parents six kids, is a new grandfather, and still insists on being the first one in the building on Mondays.

This is how he got there—with no investors, no trust fund, and no safety net.

When Hunger Becomes Your First Investor

Tim grew up in a house with a simple rule: when you’re out, you’re out.

At 19, he had a fork-in-the-road decision: use his limited money to pay rent or start a business. He launched a lawn-mowing service while in college, believing hustle alone would cover the gap.

It didn’t.

He mowed some lawns, but not enough to survive, and ended up living in his car for about six months. The low point? Walking into McDonald’s, pocketing ketchup packets, and heating them with water so he could at least drink something warm and flavored.

For almost three decades, that memory has stayed live in his nervous system.

“I don’t mean hungry like a metaphor,” he says. “I mean literally hungry. That will drive your sales ability. You realize nobody is coming to save you.”

It’s also what makes his later decisions—walking away from comfortable salaries, doubling down on unproven ideas, cutting employees into ownership—make a lot more sense. Once you’ve built from zero, you don’t romanticize safety the way other people do.

From NFL Bloopers To Pandemic Specialist

Tim eventually dug his way out of his car, finished college, and landed what many would consider the dream: a shot at the NFL.

It didn’t last long. Eight weeks into his pro career, he got injured “touching nobody” and ended up on an ESPN blooper reel—a perfect metaphor for plans that look promising on paper and fall apart instantly.

From there, he moved into the nutrition retail space he loved, but with no idea how to access capital and no wealthy family safety net, he did what a lot of undercapitalized entrepreneurs end up doing: he took a job that paid well, even if it wasn’t aligned.

That job turned out to be in industrial chemicals, specializing in pandemic outbreaks like West Nile, avian flu, and swine flu. He went back to school, got a master’s in biomechanical engineering, and spent years as the “science nerd” in the room.

The work eventually took him to Washington, D.C., where he spent about six years working around politicians.

For plenty of people, that would be the success story. For Tim, it was the early onset of a slow, spiritual burn-out.

“I know some people might like it,” he admits, “but I despised it. There wasn’t enough money to make me okay with what it did to my soul.”

Burning The “Good Job” To Start Over In Omaha

At 29, with a couple of kids and a respectable career, Tim did something most people only fantasize about: he walked away.

“I was just young enough and dumb enough to go for broke,” he says.

He left D.C. and went back to what he loved—helping people transform their health—and opened his first nutrition store, Rexius Nutrition, in Omaha, Nebraska.

The timing wasn’t romantic. He went through a divorce in the middle of building. Growth wasn’t overnight. But he kept going.

To this day, his framing of the work is telling. He doesn’t talk about “supplements” or “retail” as much as he talks about the emotional context of his customers:

• People rebuilding after divorce

   

• People crawling out of depression

   

• People drowning in financial stress

   

• People navigating grief

   

“Look good, feel good is an expression for a reason,” he says. “It’s not just vanity. There’s real power in helping someone change how they look and feel. I consider that honorable.”

It’s why, even now, with multiple companies, he prides himself on being the first one in the building on Mondays. That early hunger never fully leaves.

The Gym That Banned Him—And The Empire It Accidentally Built

By 2017, his wife Brittany had gotten into amateur bodybuilding. Tim followed suit. At 37, he beat a crowd of twentysomethings to win the LA Open.

The week before that victory, something else happened: he and an employee (now business partner) were kicked out of their gym in Omaha.

The reason? The gym wanted to sell supplements. Tim already did.

They banned him.

The average reaction would have been outrage, maybe a rant, maybe a lawsuit. Tim’s was different: if he couldn’t be in their gym, he’d build his own.

That idea became Iron Heaven Gyms. What started as a planned hole-in-the-wall soon turned into a 33,000-square-foot flagship—and a whole new model of what a gym could be.

Instead of just machines and mirrors, Iron Heaven evolved into a “look good, feel good” ecosystem:

• Gym and training

   

• On-site barbershop

   

• Tanning

   

• Hormone therapy clinic

   

• Massage therapy

   

• Saunas and red light therapy

   

If it supported transformation, they layered it in.

At the same time, Tim was quietly working on the product that would eventually explode far beyond Nebraska.

Cracking The Code On Protein Popcorn (And Bleeding For It)

The catalyst was deceptively simple: his kids and his elderly parents weren’t eating enough protein.

“Try getting protein into kids and 70-something parents that doesn’t look like chicken nuggets or chocolate milk,” he laughs. “My youngest is like negotiating with a terrorist.”

He asked a basic but powerful question: What’s the one thing both generations eat without complaint? The answer: flavored popcorn—caramel, cheddar, all the “fun” versions.

Most protein snacks in the U.S. use the cheapest possible protein because it pads margins. As a serious athlete and a science nerd, he refused to build something he wouldn’t eat himself.

So in 2017 and 2018, he went to war in the lab.

• ~600 batches, most of them terrible.

   

• One disastrous batch where his wife forgot to remove the seeds and someone cracked a tooth.

   

• He jokes: “I bled for this company.”

   

Eventually, they hit the eureka moment: a caramel corn that tasted indulgent but used high-grade, flavorless protein and athlete-level macros.

He also knew better than to market it as “healthy” up front. “You tell people it’s healthy, they think it’s gonna look green and smell like socks,” he says. So he went stealth.

At family Christmas, he put bowls of the popcorn out without saying a word. His brothers (both doctors) and his mom (a career RN) demolished it. Only then did he drop the truth: it was engineered to be high-protein.

That validation turned into a first product launch: Optimal Performance Popcorn, with candy-coated flavors aimed at post-workout and cheddar flavors aimed at pre-workout.

The market, however, didn’t care about his intention.

“For five years, it was a disaster,” he admits. “Everyone who tried it liked it. I just couldn’t get over the hump.”

The breakthrough would come from a place he didn’t expect: a grocery chain, a consignment deal, and a demographic he’d never explicitly targeted—kids and old ladies.

The Hy-Vee Experiment: Kids, Grandmas, And A Reality Check

When Tim was “voluntold” into becoming Chamber of Commerce president, a local Hy-Vee grocery store asked if they could carry his popcorn.

He didn’t think it would move. His wife was already questioning the spend. So he structured it as consignment—if it didn’t sell, he wouldn’t owe buyback money.

What happened next shocked him.

In one month, the grocery store outsold his own retail locations 50:1.

He sent his daughters to “spy” at the store and report on who was buying. The answer came back clear: young kids and elderly women.

When he spoke to the in-house dietitian, she told him it had become her only reliable snack recommendation that both groups would actually eat and rebuy. Some older women were buying six to eight bags at a time.

Hy-Vee expanded him to 10 stores. The performance replicated. Eventually, corporate moved to roll out much wider.

He was on his way—but the real acceleration came after a humbling experience at the Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago.

From Empty Booth To 400-Person Line: The Power Of Saying What It Is

On Hy-Vee’s recommendation, Tim invested heavily to exhibit at the Sweets & Snacks convention at McCormick Place in Chicago:

• 200,000+ qualified buyers

   

• 1,200+ vendors

   

• A literal 60-foot chocolate fountain at Hershey’s booth

   

He spent big on branding and staff. Day one: not a single person stopped at his booth.

“I wanted to go straight to the bar,” he says.

His wife, again, cut straight to the blind spot. “Do you think the fact that our label doesn’t say ‘healthy’ or ‘protein’ anywhere might be confusing?”

He’d been designing for his own ecosystem—gyms and nutrition stores—where everything is assumed to be healthy. On a regular grocery floor, shoppers had no idea what made his product different.

So at 10 p.m. in Chicago, they went to Staples, paid $200 for a rush banner that simply read “PROTEIN POPCORN.” They safety-pinned it to their expensive backdrop.

Day two and three?

They had a line of 300–400 people for two straight days.

A representative from Hershey’s even walked over to offer brutally candid feedback: the bag was ugly, the name didn’t make sense, there was no mascot, no clear branding, and the only good thing about the product was the taste.

Most founders would get defensive. Tim took notes.

On the flight home, his wife pointed out something else: he hadn’t been grocery shopping in 10 years. When they’d let him go once, he’d bought the cheapest bulk items he could find—dad brain, not brand brain.

So he did something a lot of founders struggle with: he got out of the way.

He let his wife and daughters redesign the packaging, rename the brand, and rebuild the front end.

That’s how Omaha Protein Popcorn and its flexing popcorn mascot were born—designed to be, as his daughter put it, “aesthetically pleasing.”

The numbers since then tell the rest of the story:

• Over 16,000% growth in the last 24 months

   

• Now in roughly 30,000 global retailers

   

• Presence in 16 countries and counting

   

• Projected 300% additional growth in the next six months

   

His in-house R&D department is simple: six kids spread across 20 years. “If I can get all six to agree on a flavor,” he says, “I know I have a home run.”

Scaling Through Owners, Not Employees

A lot of founders talk about “team as family.” Tim has operationalized it in a way that directly affects his ability to scale.

He doesn’t see employees as fixed roles. He sees them as long-term interviews for partnership.

• Many of his business partners and franchisees started as employees.

   

• His partner in the gyms, Nick, went from staff to owner after Tim told him plainly he couldn’t have both a safe paycheck and true partnership.

   

• His GM and Director of Logistics for the popcorn company used to be his kids’ chemistry teacher, working part-time in summers before Tim invited him to leap. Today, he’s a shareholder.

   

“I look at employing people as long-term job interviews for a future business partner,” Tim says. “If I find somebody with talent and I’m pouring into them, why would I just let them walk away? You make them an owner.”

Practically, that has meant:

• Allowing people to buy in via promissory notes

   

• Selling locations to high-potential staff

   

• Cutting key players into equity even when they don’t have cash up front

   

It has also meant making choices his board finds baffling—at least at first.

“My board has probably wanted to have me committed more than once,” he laughs. “But it’s worked so many times they mostly just let me do what I want.”

The payoff is loyalty. Owners care differently than employees ever will. When people know there’s a real path to partnership, they show up at a different level.

Passion Before Paycheck (But Not Instead Of It)

When he was making good money in Washington, D.C., Tim found himself spending heavily on everything outside of work just to feel alive. The work itself didn’t do it.

“I still ended up broke,” he says.

Now, it’s flipped. The work itself—building, mentoring, creating products that genuinely help—is what fills the tank. The money is real, but it isn’t the core reason to wake up.

“When your passion is your paycheck, material things stop being the driver,” he says. “You can absolutely make your passion your paycheck—you just have to make sure the passion comes first.”

That philosophy bleeds into how he thinks about legacy.

It’s not just about what his kids or grandkids will be told about him. He asks a more confronting question: What will his employees’ grandkids be told about him? Did he change the trajectory of their family story?

“If you really want the hair on the back of your neck to stand up,” he says, “ask yourself that. Have you impacted people to that level?”

Calendars, Faith, And The Myth Of Balance

On paper, Tim’s life looks like chaos: four companies, global travel, speaking, six kids ranging from grade school to adulthood, and now a grandson.

The solution has been radical intentionality.

“We have seven calendars,” he says flatly. “If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t happen.”

Every quarter, the family and the business have joint meetings. He walks everyone through the next round of travel—Las Vegas, Grand Cayman, Montreal, Mexico—so no one is left guessing where dad is or why.

He doesn’t just calendar deals and flights. He calendars presence:

• His daughter’s show choir performance goes on the calendar, along with his role as “show choir dad.”

   

• Workouts in his own gyms are scheduled like meetings—otherwise he’ll sacrifice his health for the business.

   

• Even creative outlets like guitar and hobbies like golf get specific time slots: 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there.

   

On family vacations, he’s up at 4:00 a.m., working quietly for a couple of hours before anyone wakes up. By the time his kids are up, the laptop is away. They feel him fully there.

He’s also unapologetically anchored in faith.

Every morning, on the drive between office and warehouse, he listens to devotionals and the Bible app. When emotions or stress spike, that’s his re-center point.

“You can get really angry and emotional,” he says. “But that practice resets me back where I’m supposed to be.”

The Global View: Popcorn In Dubai And A Bigger Story

Recently, Tim traveled to Dubai to represent Omaha Protein Popcorn under a “Made in America” initiative, pitching to 25 grocery chains across eight countries in the UAE.

He assumed popcorn was a deeply American thing. It wasn’t.

What struck him instead was how familiar everything felt underneath the cultural surface: shared cravings, shared ambitions, shared humanity.

“We have a lot more in common than what separates us,” he says. “There are good people literally everywhere.”

For a guy who once heated ketchup packets in an Oldsmobile, it’s a long way from where he started. But in his mind, it’s all one continuous story: hunger, faith, family, and a stubborn refusal to let someone else define what’s possible.

“I’m not willing to live a 9–5 on someone else’s terms,” he says. “I’m going to live on my terms—for my faith, for my family—and do the things everyone said weren’t possible so people know that they are.”

Giveaway: Win A Super Pack Of Omaha Protein Popcorn

To celebrate the episode, Tim is giving one Unconventional Life listener a Super Pack of Omaha Protein Popcorn—a full taste tour of the brand that went from failed batches and cracked teeth to 16,000% growth.

The winner will receive one full-size bag of each flavor:

• Caramel corn

   

• Peanut butter

   

• Chocolate peanut butter

   

• Rainbow candy

   

• Nacho cheddar

   

• Spicy jalapeño cheddar

   

• White cheddar

   

In total, you’re looking at roughly 500–600 grams of protein across the pack—disguised as the kind of snack you’d crush at movie night.

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