Today we’d like to introduce you to Ian Williams.
Hi Ian, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
2003: Started to use drugs and alcohol at age of 13
2009: Adopted Trina, America Staffordshire Pitbull Terrier rescue
2011: Finished undergrad, went into youth education
2013: Put Trina down, a week later she came back to visit me from the afterlife (my first mystical experience). One week after that, I met the woman who would become my wife.
2014: Went deep down the rabbit hole of mindfulness, energy arts, self-study and exploration. At the same time, dove deep on climate, permaculture, and regenerative agriculture.
2015: My sobriety journey began
2016: Started teaching qigong (an traditional taoist energy arts practice for personal and spiritual development). Also started working at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum teaching nature based education field trips during the school year and the Children’s Garden Program during the summer.
2017: Married my wife, Julie Shannon Williams
2020: Went back to grad school at the University of Minnesota, started my consulting firm Still Point Insight
2021: Officially left education
2022: Completed graduate school and published my book, Soil & Spirit: Seeds of Purpose, Nature’s Insight & the Deep Work of Transformational Change. It’s a best-seller and has been featured in Forbes.
2024: Launched The Turning Point podcast with my Co-Founder at Still Point Insight, Dr. Justin Baker.
In short: started using substances at the age of 13. That occupied all of high school and college. Adopted a pitbull in college, then after putting her down she came back to visit me from the afterlife less than a week later. That mystical experience completely changed the direction of my life. I sought solace and healing in nature, and began self-study and energy arts practices to heal as part of my recovery process. The insights from these years became the foundational underpinning for all my work.
After undergrad, I started my career in youth education with the theory being, “what better way to create a healthier future than to work with the people who will inherit it?” I eventually moved into nature-based education to better align with my environmental values (I’ve always been motivated by climate change since seeing Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth). Eventually, I decided change wasn’t happening fast enough and the youth I was working with would be powerless to change it until they were voting age, so I re-evaluated my career choice.
Along the way, I learned I had an organizational development skill set. I left education, went back to grad school, and started my consulting firm to help climate and social impact organizations scale their impact. The new theory being, “we have huge existential crises like climate change and social justice that need to be solved ASAP, what better way to accelerate those movements than by supporting the organizations doing the work?”
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Addiction and recovery
Letting go of my pup Trina
Befriending narcissists far too often (glad that chapter is over) 🙂
Becoming an entrepreneur without any knowledge of what that meant or what would be required to make a living in the early stages of business development.
As you know, we’re big fans of Still Point Insight. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Still Point Insight is founded on a relatively simple, but big idea. As a civilization, we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction (and somehow no one seems to be talking about it). Climate collapse is an existential threat to all life on earth. To effectively address that, and other existential threats, we need to harness the power of the collective. Generally speaking, we can do that through policy (public sector) or the market (private sector). The private sector moves faster, and we’re on the clock. So, we focus on the highest leverage work in the highest leverage organizations (doing the most important work) to have the highest impact.
This just happened to align with my organizational development skill set. However, many organizations aren’t as impactful as they could be. So, we offer “full stack” consulting services to help climate, social impact, and other mission driven businesses optimize their internal strategy, operations, and culture to grow their impact.
We help teams scale up without burning out. Our flagship offering is the CLEAR OS install where we help founder-led companies build autonomous teams in 90-days without adding headcount. Beyond that, we offer business strategy, process improvement, tech and AI, as well as people and culture services.
What sets us apart is that we view organizations as ecosystems and embed nature-based principles into our work (not always overtly). We also view operations and culture as two sides to the same coin. So, we help improve organizational culture *through* business process improvement so people feel more effective in their work and satisfied with the impact their having. Still Point Insight operates as a Strategy + Culture + Operations Hybrid. We are an organizational design partner that focuses on designing and implementing human-centered operating systems for organizations.
CUSTOMER PAIN POINTS
–Founders stuck in 50+ hour work weeks (usually 80-90 hour work weeks)
–Teams at or over capacity or struggling with complex ops and messy business process
–Organizations with undefined or misaligned cultures that have outgrown their fly-by-night operational systems, hit a growth ceiling, or are dealing with unhealthy workplace cultures.
OUTCOMES
Big Three: save time, lower people costs, and put the systems in place to scale faster
Improve: culture, performance, employee wellbeing and engagement, purpose and meaning in the workplace, social and environmental impact
Reduce: people costs, turnover, work culture toxicity, workflow inefficiencies, work-related stress.
BRAND WISE
I’m most proud of the fact that our work creates real relief for people. We’ve had clients tell us they were able to stop medications, or their night terrors went away, or their relationships improved, etc. all because their work-related stress decreased.
Finally, I am very proud of our podcast, The Turning Point (https://stillpointinsight.com/the-turning-point) where we have conversations with climate and social impact professionals to help broadcast the good work being done in the world.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My wife, Julie Shannon Williams, and her unwavering faith and support over the past 12 years.
My family who let me roam free on a leash that may have been too long, but always let me land back home safely.
My spiritual tribe: they know how they are and they support they provide.
Jeannie Larson: a mentor who showed me that you could make a real career out of pursuing your passion, even if it’s off the beaten path.
My business coach, David Krull. Who challenged me to take on writing my first book and supports me in life and business week in and week out.
Kim Peterson, the first person who took a flier on me as a consultant and helped me learn that I really could help people in this way.
Justin Baker: my co-founder and partner at Still Point Insight who makes us a better firm and makes me a better person every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stillpointinsight.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iancwilliams.me/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-c-williams/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@iancwilliams
- Other: https://iancwilliams.me/
