To “get to know” Winston on a more personal level including his favorite books, movies, influences, and his heart-felt personal statement, scroll down to the bottom of this page after reading his bio…
#1 Best Selling Author and Publisher Winston Widdes is a full time Marketing Expert and Coach who has personally worked with thousands of business owners across the U.S.
For music fans who love positive, conscious music that inspires, we’ve found the artist for you.
Often described as a cross between Sublime and Tony Robbins, electronic-pop singer/songwriter, Winston Widdes is the author and publisher of the #1 Best Selling Book Series, “Find Your Flow®.”
His book, “Find Your Flow – The Social Experiment” featured a foreword by “A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul” co-author Barry Spilchuk.
Winston has been featured on CBS, JackFM and 94.9, has performed live for audiences of thousands of people, and recently performed on stage for #1 Best Selling Author, “The Hour A Day Entrepreneur” Henry Evans. With a powerful voice, captivating stage presence, compelling lyrics, and melodies impossible not to sing along to, fans around the world have gravitated to Winston’s positive vibe and love for life.
Something that makes Winston so unique is that he is also a motivational speaker who combines his on-stage charisma with his inspiring personal stories, original songs, sleight of hand magic and live interactive music creation.
Winston has performed and spoken to over 62,000 people around the country at seminars, trainings, colleges, and conferences, and has warmed crowds for and rubbed elbows with music icons Matisyahu, Jerry Heller (Elton John, Black Eyed Peas, Pink Floyd, Van Morrison, CCR), Henry Threadgill, and many others. He hosted the technology stage for TEDx El Cajon 3 consecutive years in San Diego, CA.
Winston has moved audiences since he was in 5th grade. He started on keyboard but quickly switched to the alto saxophone and joined the school jazz band.
At his first performance they played James Brown’s “I Feel Good.” The crowd immediately erupted with applause and Winston knew right then and there that he would play music for the rest of his life.
He played alto saxophone in the high school jazz band and symphonic orchestra.
The high school band was a rag-tag group of kids that were overall pretty unruly. The band leader was a great guy and fantastic musician.
He got the school band hired for an opening gig at Target, and paid each member of the band so that we could officially “professional.”
Even though that band had a hundred kids and that basically broke down to $5 each, it was significant to Winston, a high school freshman at the time.
Then, his senior year, the school got a new band director that took them in a whole new direction.
He began a rigorous routine that started before school, after school, and on the weekends.
Valhalla High School had not competed in a tournament in over a decade, and before that, Winston didn’t know that “marching band” was a “real thing.”
After months of preparation and hours of marching and memorizing, their first competition was coming up.
The big moment finally arrived, and they competed in their first tournament, and WON!
The other schools were so proud of them and cheered them on enthusiastically that it became a huge life moment for Winston.
There were only a handful of seniors in the band at that time, and all of them decided after that experience that they wanted to become music teachers to inspire the future generations.
He stepped up into one of the new leadership roles and became the Vice President of band his senior year.
He played in school bands all the way through high school and helped form two bands that played around San Diego. One was featured on FM 94.9 and the other won the Battle of the Bands at their high school. After graduating high school his friend and mentor encouraged him to go to UC Berkeley to continue his studies. So he did.
While performing around Berkeley and San Francisco, he spent time studying in CNMAT (Center for New Music And Audio Technology) and focused his studies on how music and sound can be used to synchronize people and organizations for a more positive, flowing community or company culture. He got his B.A. in Music and graduated with Honors in 2003.
Since then Winston has been published in several books and was the featured entertainment expert for the book titled, “Wedding Planning Survival Guide, ” (Axel Publishing). He has done two entertainment-based video series for EHow.com and one video in particular was among the highest viewed of all their videos. Winston’s music has been featured on some of Southern California’s most popular radio stations such as FM94.9, UCSD College Radio, and InSoulWeTrustRadio.
Winston can be found performing at seminars, conferences, colleges, and corporate events.
When he’s not traveling, Winston has been seen live at some of the most popular venues in and around his home town of San Diego such as the highly celebrated Humphrey’s by the Bay, large college campuses including the UC San Diego, UC Berkeley and other highly regarded venues such as Cesar’s Palace (Las Vegas), the House of Blues (SD and LV), the Belly Up, and even Disneyland! He also performed regularly for all of the Westfield Malls throughout San Diego and Orange County.
Winston Found His Flow NYE 2000
New Years Eve of the year 2000 was a pivotal time for Winston. He had recently parted ways with his bands, which were like family, and was out in a new direction in music and in life.
He had been going out to some underground dance parties, “raves” as they might have been called.
Leading up to NYE 2000 some of you may remember the Y2K scare, where all of the computers might mal-function and there could be a complete meltdown of society. Well, Winston and his friends went out to the desert just in case it happened.
That night as they were listening to music around the campfire, Winston started to find his flow. He had been practicing a dance style known as “liquid” when all of the sudden, he started to float above his body! His body kept dancing, even better than he ever had before! And he could look down at it, but it seemed to be dancing by itself!
Even when his foot slipped in the sand, it turned into a graceful spin!
If he tripped, it would become a cool new move he had never done before!
He could literally do no wrong!
He then heard a wise sounding voice tell him that, “This experience is ‘FLOW.’ You will write a book about this and bring the experience of flow to all areas of your life. Mind Flow – Body Flow – Spirit Flow – Social Flow – Cash Flow.” Winston was deeply impacted by the experience.
And so here we are today and Winston has been working on that mission since that fateful night, NYE 2000!
But it wasn’t until he went to his first “Massive” party called, “How Sweet It Is” that he realized he wanted to DJ, perform and produce live electronic dance music.
He sold his motorcycle and bought two turntables and never looked back!
Over the years he got to perform at all sorts of amazing events!
From fashion shows to weddings, school dances, company parties, a reality show and even a couple of funerals(!) Winston has had the opportunity to get people from all walks of life dancing and moving!
Real Estate
Winston grew up around building and construction. His grandfather, Leonard Widdes, along with the help of his sons, Scott, and Winston’s dad Zack, built “Widdes Construction” in Los Angeles, CA.
Over the years, as his Grandpa retired and his dad ventured off into a different business, Winston knew that real estate would still be part of his life, but not in construction.
When he graduated high school, he started working for a local guy who was flipping houses. Winston and his friend worked for Rich 7 days a week while he was going to community college.
Richard “Rich” became a good friend and mentor to Winston and he loved working and learning on the job.
Winston was getting paid to learn real estate flipping and was considering dropping out of college to start flipping houses full time.
BUT, Rich told him not to.
Rich said that getting a good education and learning as much as you can was crucial, and that he himself had graduated from UC Berkeley.
No one in Winston’s family had graduated from college, so it wasn’t a very big deal in his family growing up.
But now, suddenly, it seemed really important.
He doubled down on his college classes with the help of a girl he met in his guitar class.
She was always pestering him asking him how to play this chord or that scale. The teacher would constantly have to ask them to be quite.
Although Winston was good on guitar, he was not good with the logistics of getting his classes figured out to get into a four year college.
Fortunately, this girl Elena, was pretty darn good at it. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all…
He took a ton of classes and started working on getting into UC Berkeley, which was now his dream school to attend.
Elena and him had started dating, and as he was starting to like her, she got accepted to UC Santa Barbara.
He thought that would be the end of it, but she wanted to stay together, and he thought that seemed like a nice girl and was worth the long distance relationship.
College as a Music Major
Winston worked day and night doing construction on Rich’s flips, going to community college, and working on his college applications.
He finally sent off his applications, and over time started getting some responses.
Him and a couple of friends had taken a week to tour all the California colleges and decided that UC Berkeley was still his first choice, and Santa Cruz would be his #2 back-up.
As the responses came back, he got some rejections, and some acceptances.
But he was holding out for the big one.
Then, it happened. He got “the BIG envelope.”
He couldn’t believe it as he opened it. But somehow, this B student almost college dropout had gotten accepted into one of the most competitive and highly ranked universities in the country.
He would be majoring in Music at UC Berkeley to fulfill his dreams of becoming a music teacher.
Married His College Sweetheart
After graduating from college, Winston and Elena decided to move back to San Diego, CA to be closer to their families.
They got married and officially started their lives together.
Elena got a job as a special education teacher at a local charter school, and Winston started to get bookings at local night clubs as a DJ and Live Performance Artist.
He also starting taking private music students and was happy to be living his dream as a music teacher and performing artist.
Winston started his record label, Level 3 Records in December of 2003 and started producing music and promoting it in Southern California.
He got started promoting night club events and was later signed to a management company.
As his business grew, he expanded beyond night clubs to start working with corporate clients and eventually wedding clients.
Over the years he would keep a schedule of live events and music students. But he still wanted to be able to retire rich with plenty of passive income at some point and felt that real estate was still a part of that bigger picture, so in 2005 he got his California real estate license.
California Realtor®
Winston got his real estate salesperson license and became a Realtor® in 2005 and joined Century 21 Award.
He started diving deeper into marketing and learned about direct response marketing, and online marketing.
He discovered that he could use marketing and technology to automate his systems and gain an edge in a competitive market.
Winston became a top producing agent and went on to publish his first book aimed at his favorite niche, For Sale By Owners.
He also still dreamt of becoming a real estate investor, and wanted to work with more investors.
As a music teacher, he worked all over San Diego County, and developed great relationships with some amazing people.
One parent of some students decided that she was going to start real estate investing, and they eventually started working together.
She bought and rehabbed the houses and Winston sold them.
He then published a book to help other real estate investors develop their own systems for rehabbing and selling real estate.
He went on to produce additional trainings and marketing materials for real estate investors.
Little did he know what the future would hold…
Father of Two
Winston and Elena had so much love to give that they decided to have a couple kids to share their love with. Bradley and Ethan came into this world and made their family complete.
To keep up with the fast growth of the kids, Winston, who had put on some “sympathy weight” realized at a certain point that he needed to do something to get the weight off.
The traditional gym didn’t seem to help him lose any weight, he needed something different. Something more fun.
One night, while going out to dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet (oh the irony) he noticed a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy right next door.
He took down the phone number and tried a class and was immediately hooked.
He began training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and he lost the weight and hit his health goals so that he could keep up with his kids.
He currently holds a 3rd degree purple belt.
He has had the good fortune to train under some of the best practitioners in the world.
Internet Marketing Consultant
As Winston got older and tired of spending so much time out at night and on weekends performing, he decided it was time to switch things up. His son Bradley was getting older and Elena and Winston were now expecting a second child!
Winston decided that he wanted to shift his focus to marketing, and specifically, Internet Marketing. He thought that he would start to get some marketing clients, but then, a very unique opportunity presented itself.
While marketing for new clients, he discovered an opportunity to work for a local education company, that was teaching people how to flip houses!
The job was specifically to consult real estate investors about internet marketing!!
Winston couldn’t believe it!
It combined three of his favorite things; real estate, teaching, and internet marketing!
He got the job and got to consult to thousands of real estate investors across the country.
He loved helping business owners build the business of their dreams.
Paid Media Strategist - Paid Advertising
After working with so many business owners over the years as a consultant, Winston wanted to be able to help more business owners with the implementation side of their marketing.
As a consultant, he could tell business owners what to do, and provide guidance, but couldn’t provide the services.
So after 6.5 years of consulting, he decided to move onto something that would allow him to get more involved with the day-to-day marketing, more of the marketing agency side of things.
Now, he is running paid advertising on Google, Facebook and Instagram for real estate brokerages including Berkshire Hathaway and RE/MAX.
But what about other industries?
He still feels passionate about helping entrepreneurs share their messages with the world, and he still loves publishing books.
That’s why he has decided to take his publishing services to the next level with Find Your Flow Publishing.
Now he can help business owners and entrepreneurs get more traffic and leads by being featured experts in the Find Your Flow® book series, Podcast, TV show, and Winston can even help them publish their own book and produce their own TV Show and TV Channel!
This is the next level of the calling that Winston experienced back in 2000 to spread flow into every area of his life.
Now, he is helping business owners and everyday people tell their stories of finding their life purpose, and finding their flow.
Winston has created Promotional Entertainment for...
Winston has Performed at Venues including...
Getting to Know Winston
Favorite Movies: Alice in Wonderland, The Matrix Trilogy, The Secret, The Hunger Games, The Usual Suspects, Hook.
Books: The Celestine Prophecy, Alice in Wonderland, The Alchemist, The Power of Now, Rich Dad Poor Dad series, Dan Kennedy series, Think And Grow Rich.
Activities: Spending time with family, playing musical instruments (alto sax, keyboard, guitar, bass) singing, training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, dancing, reading, practicing magic, finding flow.
Influences: Sublime, Sting, Talking Heads, Flowbots, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana,
Favorite Quote: “Slow is Smooth. Smooth is Fast.”