OoM 035： Live a life of Success, Happiness, and Fulfillment with Aaron Walker
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Summary
Aaron Walker is a serial entrepreneur and life coach who has built a multi-million dollar company from the ground up. In this episode, Aaron talks about how to create a plan so that you can live a life of success, happiness, and fulfillment as a man.
Transcript
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All of us want to improve in life. That is no secret. The challenge is understanding what
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needs to be done, planning a course of action, and then executing that plan. My guest today,
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Aaron Walker, talks with us about how to create and implement a plan so that you can live a life
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of success, happiness, and fulfillment. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest,
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embrace your fears, and boldly charge your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up
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one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.
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This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day,
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and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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Welcome to the Order of Man podcast, guys. My name is Ryan Mickler. I am the host and the founder of
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Order of Man, and I'm glad to be back again here with you today. First things first, last week,
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I completely neglected to thank all the veterans that listen to this podcast. If you're active
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duty military or if you're retired, I want to personally thank you for your sacrifices. It's
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because of your sacrifices and your efforts that we have the ability to do shows like this
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and live the life that we do. So I want to thank you for all that you do. Guys, this is a great show
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this week. I promise that after listening to this show, you are going to walk away feeling inspired
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and you're going to be feeling motivated to create the life that you want to create. But real
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quickly, I want to thank somebody, D. Wolf WD, who said this about the show. I stumbled upon
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Order of Man podcast 25, which struck gold with me. I have since become a follower of the powerful
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lessons given to help men become better fathers, husbands, and friends. Thanks for that, D. Wolf WD.
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If you still haven't left your review, please head over to orderofman.com slash iTunes,
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leave your review, and we'll try to feature that on a future episode. As always, I mention this all the
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time, but our Facebook group is definitely somewhere that you'll want to be. Last week,
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we talked about how to communicate with your significant other, how to develop manly skills,
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and one of my favorite posts to date, an overview of the Marine Corps leadership traits. If you want
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to join in the conversation we're having over there, head to facebook.com slash groups slash
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Order of Man. Now remember, all the show notes, the links, the quotes, the information, all of the
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stuff that you need can be found at orderofman.com slash 035. Now let me introduce you to my guest,
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Aaron Walker. He is a businessman and life coach and has inspired many through his leadership,
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mentorship, and constant pursuit of excellence. You'll be able to tell in this discussion that
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Aaron truly enjoys helping others and believes experience is a great teacher. For the last 19
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years, he has been taking classes from and has been coached personally by his friend, financial guru,
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Dave Ramsey. He incorporates education and learning opportunities into his daily routine. So he's
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always, always informed of the latest tools and trends available. A successful businessman,
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Aaron helped take his construction company from doing one or two projects a year to a multi-million
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dollar company, voted number one builder for three consecutive years. So you know the man knows
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what he's talking about when it comes to success. Aaron Walker, thanks for joining us today. Glad you're
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here. Man, thanks, Ryan. I appreciate you having me on the show. I've listened to some of the other
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interviews and the conversations you've had. And so I'm excited to have the opportunity to be
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having this conversation with you. Oh man, the pleasure is mine. Thanks for having me on.
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So my first question is, how does a serial entrepreneur, because I know you've been really
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successful in business, go from being an entrepreneur and having all these successes to
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now this something that a little bit different, which is this personal development space?
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Yeah, well, it all kind of ties hand in hand, but it's because I've been successful that I can do
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this, what I'm doing now, coaching other men to achieve their goals, their dreams, their purpose in life.
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And so it's a little bit different, but it's more of the same.
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Right. And so how does that tie in with some of the other things that you've done in the past?
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Well, the process by which I've been able to be successful is discovering what it means,
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as you say, to be a man, what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a dad in every venture.
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It's just another service or another widget, but the process by which we do that is more of the same.
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So what are some of the key takeaways? I know that's a really hard question to answer because
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there's so much depth when it comes to being successful and being an entrepreneur and being
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a husband and a father like you talk about. Are there some key metrics that you are measuring
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and looking at to help people be more successful?
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Yeah, well, there are. Well, first of all, we have to determine for ourselves what success means.
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And I had to go through that regimen myself thinking, what metrics are there out there?
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How will I know when I've won? What will I have done to achieve? And what I have found out
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by being in accountability groups and being in mastermind groups is that we always continue
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to move the bar. Don't you do that, Ryan? Don't you get to this point and you say,
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if I just had a little more of this or a little more of that, we keep moving the bar.
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So I had to determine for me, Robin and I sat on the porch and said, how will we know when we've
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won? What are the metrics that we're going to use? And so we literally wrote down things
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financially that we wanted to accomplish. We wrote down goals and dreams that we wanted to
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accomplish in writing. And then we worked to an ends to meet those things. And so we have to just
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decide for each and every one of ourselves what it means to be successful.
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I know that I've gone through that exercise and I've spent a lot of time reflecting and thinking
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about, like you said, what does it mean to be successful? What is the end game? What do I hope
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to accomplish? Are there some skills or some strategies that men are using to find that out?
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Because I think sometimes we just don't know what questions to ask ourselves to get to that point.
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Well, I had to decide for me that choosing my own schedule was like on the top of the list for me to
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be successful. I said, if I could do one thing in life rather than working for somebody else,
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what are some of the things that would be, I would hit the mark. One of them for me was choosing my
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own schedule. The other one was having financial freedom. And I think we all want that. At the end
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of the day, we all want to be able to decide today if we want to go to work, play golf, empower,
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encourage others. What do we want to do today? Another thing for me was, is having an engaging
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family. And you were talking about doing some things intentionally. What can we do to be
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successful? I found out early on that meaningful relationships were paramount for me to be
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successful. My dad never had any money in his life, but relationships were everything to him.
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And in 06, when my dad passed away, we stood at the casket and we greeted the people to pay their
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condolences. For six and a half hours, Ryan, it took an hour and a half to get up to see us.
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Every single person told me, let me tell you what your dad meant to me. Let me tell you how your dad
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poured into me. Really? Yeah. Nobody said he had a great boat. He had a great house. He had plenty
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of money. No one said that. So for me, a tip that I would give you in order to be successful is to
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invest long-term in relationships. Yeah. I mean, every opportunity has its root in relationships,
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right? Whether that's relationships with your family or whether that's business opportunities,
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it all begins with a relationship. Yeah. Well, that's the way we've intentionally built our
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businesses. And we've been very successful at it eight different times now is because our central
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focus was on other people, how to fully engage and listen to the person, try to meet their needs.
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It was not about taking advantage of people. It was about encouraging people. It was about lifting
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them up and helping them accomplish their goals. When we built houses for people, we would listen
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to specifically the things that they wanted in their custom home. When we would sell diamond rings,
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when I owned the pawn shops, it was not what we had on sale or what we were trying to get over on them
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or push on them. It was, what is it you want? It's the same in any industry, whether it's service
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industry or selling a widget. If you will listen closely to the people and just try to meet their
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needs, fully engage what they're saying rather than trying to make the sale, your sales will be a lot
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more. Your relationships will be a lot deeper. They will be a lot more meaningful because you're
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trying to accomplish what they want rather than what you want. And we hear that all the time. We hear
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focus on the customer, focus on the people that you serve. But I think sometimes we just really
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struggle doing that. So why is that? Because I don't think that's necessarily new information,
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but it's not something that everybody is out there implementing. So what's the disconnect?
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Well, the disconnect is we're so busy trying to make the sale because we have mortgages to pay or
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we're paying for cars that we can't afford or we're overextended that our hyper focus is on getting and
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closing the deal rather than meeting their needs. And when you really pay attention to the way you
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leverage yourself and your time and your money, you can pay more attention to the client.
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So I'm going to go back to something you said that I've had this conversation with my wife and
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it's something that's always kind of been in the back of my mind. You talk about being successful
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and then moving that bar, right? Always wanting a little bit more and a little bit more. So my first
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question, and I've got to follow up to this is, is it ever enough? Do you ever come to a point when
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you're successful enough or you have enough? And what does that look like?
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It will never be enough unless you establish the goals, the boundaries by which you're playing
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the game. It's kind of like when you're playing soccer, you know that you're out of bounds when
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you cross the white line. If you don't have any boundaries and you haven't established the metrics
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before the game starts, no, no amount will ever be enough. And here's what I tell people. Here's the,
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here's the myth. When I get just 10 more thousand dollars, then I'll be happy. If I can just get that
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new house, then I will be happy. And let me just tell you, it doesn't scratch the itch because you
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get it and you think, is this it? Is this all there is? Because we place so much emphasis on
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tangible possessions and we place so much emphasis on our identity. When we get there, we finally
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realize that happiness is a choice, not a trait. See, we elect to be happy and content in the present
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situation we're in, but I don't want you to be complacent. I want you to keep moving the needle,
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but I want you to decide why you're moving the needle, why you want more money. What is it you're
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going to do with it once you get it? If your focus is all about yourself, whatever you get,
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the next whatever will not take you to the place that you hope it will. You've got to decide. That's
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why I wrote this document called, what do I want? And you just intentionally sit down with your mate
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and you say, what do we want it to look like in 30 days, five years, when we retire, when there's an
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empty nest, what do we want our life to look like? Robin and I did this early on when we had our
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business, our first business when I was 18, we paid off a 10 year loan in 36 months. We could have
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done anything we wanted to at that point. I could have bought a much bigger house, a nicer, faster car,
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but we said, you know what? We're going to reinvest the proceeds back into the business. We're going to
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feed the machine. We're going to grow the business, right? The Joneses though, a nicer car, bigger
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house. And I'm like, Hey, we're not comparing ourself to them. We're going to stick to the
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course. We're going to do what we want. So when I'm 21, we open our second store and then we service
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the customers. Well, we give better service than the other guy. And we grow this business. Now I'm 25.
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We open our third store, 26, my fourth store. Now I've got something that's big enough that a
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fortune 500 company, cash America, they're in Fort Worth, Texas. They notice I'm on their radar.
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Now they want to be in Nashville. So rather than doing a startup, they growing through acquisition,
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they come to Nashville and they say, we want to buy your stores. And I'm like, I'm 27. I don't want
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to sell out. Right. Right. Right. And I go back and say, no, I'm not for sale. They come back a second
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time in 90 days. We want to buy your store. And I'm like, I'm not for sale. I'm doing really good.
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What would I do if I'd sold out? What would I do? Right. At 27. Yeah. They said, we don't care
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what you do. We want to buy your business. And so the third time I finally said, you know what,
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I'm going to get rid of them. And I said, if I were going to sell my business, this is what it
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would take. And they said, sold. And I'm like, what? Are you serious? And they said, we want it.
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We want to be in Nashville. So, you know, in a couple of months I was done and I found out and
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discovered it was one of the worst mistakes I've ever made. And let me explain why. Yeah. I had
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a little bit of money, but 18 months later I was depressed. I didn't have a purpose. I didn't have
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a reason to get up every day. I gained 50 pounds in 18 months. And my wife woke me up one day in the
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middle of a nap and she said, Aaron, what are you doing? You got to do something. You got to get
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another job. You got to go into business. I don't care what you do. Do something. I went back,
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went in partners with a guy I started with. We spent the next 10 years. Now I got a purpose again,
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right? I've got a reason to get up because I want to grow this business. We grow it four times the
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size it was when we started 10 years earlier. And then my life changed forever. August 1st, 2001,
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I'm going to work at 730 in the morning. A pedestrian's crossing the street to catch a bus. He didn't look my
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way, stepped out in front of me. I hit him. He kills him three days later. He's in Vanderbilt trauma unit.
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And my life stood still for a moment. And I'm so nervous. I can't dial 911 with my phone and
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I'm shaking. And I'm like, that could happen to me just as easy as it did him. And I went back to
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home. My wife and I had a meeting. We decided to sell the business. I'm going to take time off.
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I've been chasing money, right? What I discovered over the next five years is that my life had no
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significance, right? I was all about success. I was all about the stores, getting more money,
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but I wasn't doing anything for the community, for people outside of my sphere. There was nothing I
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was doing that provided meaning and success and significance for others. It was just all about
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myself. Went in the construction industry, built houses for eight years, number one, three consecutive
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years at 50. Uh, I retired for the third and final time. My wife said, you've retired more than the
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law allows. I'm in a mastermind group with Dave Ramsey and Dan Miller and Ken Abraham. Some of
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those guys you may or may not know. And they said, Abram, you cannot retire. You're too young.
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So Dave invited me to do entree leadership mastery series. And I went and did that. Dan Miller invited
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me to do innovate. I went and did that. And I fell in love with coaching. I thought now I'm making an
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impact on other men's lives. Now I have clients all over the world and mastermind groups, and I'm
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leading guys to teach them how to have meaning and purpose, success, and significance. Ryan,
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I'm having a better time now than I've ever had in my entire 37 year career. I was going to say,
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you don't really sound retired for the third and final time. You sound like you're just as busy as
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always. You've always been. My wife looked at me last week over her glasses and she goes,
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you're working harder than you've ever worked. And I started laughing. I said, but you know what?
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It's different now because now it's not all just about me.
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Well, so how do you suggest that men find the balance? Because it sounds like early on in your
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life, it was either go, go, go, go, go, or stop. I'm going to retire and sit back and do nothing and
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have that. And like you said, have no purpose. How do you find balance between, you know, for example,
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with me, I'm young, I've got a young family and I've got to be, spend my time with them because
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that's what excites me and that's what I want to do. But then also I need to drive my business forward
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and be able to provide a lifestyle. And so how do you find the balance between those couple of
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things? Well, I don't know that you fully ever get what I would call good balance. And as I said
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earlier, first of all, you've got to develop boundaries. You've got to establish when you
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have won. You have got to establish things in your life that you want to accomplish written down.
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It's just a dream unless it's written down. Now we have a goal. So be sure and write it down.
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The second thing is, is embrace the tension. And I tell guys this all the time because the
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tension never goes away. I don't mean to be a downer. I don't want to depress you,
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but the tension never goes away because we're all overachievers. We want to accomplish. It's
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just innate in us to want to do better and want to accomplish. There's always one more email you
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could write. There's always one more letter you could send. There's always one more customer you
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could talk to, but you've got to establish clear boundaries. You've got to say, I'm going to work
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from this time to this time. Now, when you're an entrepreneur, it doesn't always work out like
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that. Believe me, I got 40 years of this. I know there's often times that you're going to have to
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work more at this stage in your life than you will later, but have open communication with your
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spouse, be willing and able to sit down and say, Hey, these next two weeks are going to be tough.
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And I want you to know right now, I can't be at Billy's baseball game and Susie's recital.
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I don't want to miss those. I can't help that. But on this date, I'm going to say, I'm done now for
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this period of time and stick to that and have open dialogue and communication with your wife or
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your husband, whoever the case may be and say, I'm not going to do this forever. And here's the
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thing. You're an addict when you catch yourself sneaking into the bathroom to check your cell phone
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and you're doing under the covers and you're looking, you know, the wife turns her head and
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you're checking an email. It's like, have open conversation, be adult enough to sit down and say,
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we want to live a great life. Here's the biggest fallacy of all. More money is going to make me
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happier. I just want to tell you that's not the case. I don't want to squish your dreams. I want you
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to do good because money does make a difference. It gives you options and it allows you to do some
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things. It gives you great opportunity. But if you're not happy making $50,000, chances are,
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you're not going to be happy making 150,000 or a million dollars. As I said earlier, happiness is
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a choice. It's not a trait. So let's enjoy the kids today at two years old. Let's don't wish them
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grown. So they're driving. Let's enjoy this time. I'm all about family. I love family. Both my daughters
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work for me. They're my full-time assistants. They live five minutes from me, you know, six miles down
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the road. I got four grandkids. I always want to spend time with them. But when I'm spending time
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with them, oftentimes it'll creep in and go, you could be doing this other client. You could be
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doing this other mastermind. You could be doing this other whatever. And I'm like, you know what
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though? Money is a tool to help me live the life I've chosen to live. It's not my life. It's not my
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central focus. Money is not my God. It is not the only reason because here's what happens.
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successful people often climb that ladder and they get to the top and it's not the view they
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thought. And they do it at the expense of their family. They come home one day. They hadn't been
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to any of Little Billy's baseball games or any of Susie's recitals. And you've got a lot of money,
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but you've got a family that don't know you. That is the ultimate failure, not success.
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Well, I'm glad you said that because one of the questions I was going to ask you is,
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you know, what's the point that your desire to get ahead becomes dangerous? And it sounds like
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it's just a different level for everybody based on the boundaries that you've set for yourself.
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It is. I mean, once you determine this is good, I mean, I'm content here. I can be happy with this.
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The quality of life is good. I don't have to forsake my family, you know, to have 10 more clients.
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I can say this is enough. That's the reason you need to predetermine some of these things.
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You need to say, what's the kind of neighborhood we want to live in? What are we willing to spend
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on a house? I could spend way more on a house than I did way more, but we live in a very modest
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house. We live back in the woods. I've got a quarter acre of grass and I've got eight acres of
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woods that surround my house. I could have way bigger house, but it, this serves the purpose.
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It meets my needs. I don't, I'm not a slave to the house. The last house that I owned was big.
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It was a big house on the hill, you know, in the big yard and it's very expensive to maintain.
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And I'm like, Robin, we're a slave to this house. We spend every weekend working in the yard and
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for what, what is the reason? I mean, when is that day coming where we go? Today's the day,
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right? It's like, well, later when we get, well, later may never come. Something may happen that
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will prohibit you from living the life. I've heard of people spending their whole life waiting for
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retirement. They retire, they get cancer and they die. They've missed their whole life. I don't want
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people to do that. I want people to have that good balance, but it's done intentionally. It's not done
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accidentally. If you're not sitting with your mate and saying, what are these things? What do we want?
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How can we go about it? Delay gratification. That's the biggest hangup I see with young
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entrepreneurs today. They want it and they want it now that they want the big house, the big car,
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the boat, the vacation home, and they want it now. So they leverage themselves to death. They borrow money.
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They can't repay. One hiccup happens in bat in business and the whole business comes tumbling down
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and then they've lost everything. Now their identity is tied up in their possessions. They don't have a job
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anymore. They feel like a failure and they're forever crawling out of that. Let's go slow. What about that?
00:21:19.700
What about let's do this incrementally? Let's do it how we can afford. You can tell I've spent 20-something
00:21:24.780
years with Dave Ramsey, right? We've been in the same room together for 20 years. The message sounds familiar.
00:21:30.120
It's the same, but it's true. It works. That's the thing. That's what's so cool about it is we live
00:21:36.120
below our means and let's prepare for the future and let's do it right and let's do it methodical
00:21:41.520
because it works. That's what I want your audience to hear is what I'm teaching works and then you can
00:21:47.780
enjoy it. You don't have those pressures on you that if one card falls, the whole deck falls.
00:21:54.060
Let's assume that somebody has an idea of their purpose. They've created some boundaries,
00:22:00.460
but there's still a lot of things that they need to do, a lot of hats to wear, if you will,
00:22:04.920
which I'm not a big fan of that. I think just you have one hat and that's your life,
00:22:08.800
but let's just assume that's for a minute. How do you prioritize? Are there some things that you do
00:22:13.760
internally or ask yourself some questions to prioritize when and where and how much effort you
00:22:20.380
put into each one of these activities? Sure. First of all, if you haven't read Essentialism by
00:22:24.920
Greg McCowan, you need to order that book today. Greg McCowan helps us discover what is essential in
00:22:31.740
our life. You get the non-essentials out of the way, the things that really don't matter, and you
00:22:36.400
focus on the vital few things that really move the needle, such as your faith, your family, your career.
00:22:43.120
See, we think we can do 15 things well, and Greg talks about in the book, when you do that,
00:22:50.500
you stretch yourself so thin that you're a mile wide and an inch deep. If you'll take that same
00:22:56.880
energy and niche down and get about two or three things that are really important, you'll be an
00:23:03.280
inch wide, but you'll be a mile deep. You'll really become an expert at that niche market. Now, think about
00:23:10.220
this. I deal with a lot of people that have internet-related businesses. The world, we have
00:23:15.640
7 billion people. It doesn't take many to be really successful, and when you have an internet-based
00:23:21.180
business, if you're niched down to ... I heard a guy tell a story the other day about a business he
00:23:26.820
owns called Chicken Whisper, and I thought, what in the world is Chicken Whisper? He teaches people
00:23:32.140
how to raise chickens in their backyard. I'm like, there's no way you can make a business on this.
00:23:37.560
This guy's making millions of dollars. He has a magazine out now. He has a huge following,
00:23:44.060
an audience. I just gave him a shout out here on your show.
00:23:48.540
Well, I probably ought to link up to that because I know my wife would be all over that. We've got
00:23:52.840
10 chickens in our yard, and she just got attacked yesterday by one of them, so we need that.
00:23:56.640
Well, she's not watching Chicken Whisper enough to get on there. My point is that you can make a living
00:24:02.160
really niching down, and some of the things that I teach people is just before you launch your
00:24:06.940
business, you probably should niche down about 50% more, and then you're probably not down far
00:24:11.960
enough. There are all kinds of business that we can do, but see, we think we've got to know about
00:24:16.320
everything. We think we've got to do this and this. The secret is having your 10,000 hours invested in
00:24:22.400
a particular niche in order to be the expert at doing that, but we so diversify, and we get ourselves
00:24:29.580
spread so thin. We're not good at anything, including being a husband, being a dad, being an
00:24:35.360
entrepreneur in the community because we want to do everything. You don't need to do everything.
00:24:40.840
Figure out what your purpose is. Figure out what your gift is. Figure out the areas that you would
00:24:46.320
do it for free anyway because you so enjoy it, and you can monetize that. You can then not have
00:24:53.160
to work for a living. You do what you enjoy doing. You get paid as a result of it. I know it sounds
00:24:57.920
like a pipe dream to somebody that's out there that's in the nine-to-five or they're doing something
00:25:02.760
that they hate to do, but you weren't created and designed to do that. You're not going to do good
00:25:08.200
either at it if you take that approach, and you'll flame out pretty quick, so do it slowly.
00:25:13.720
Transition into something else. Don't just quit today because you've got responsibilities.
00:25:19.020
I'm not suggesting that, but you can slowly build another business. You can slowly transition into
00:25:25.260
something that you so love and then work your way into that full-time.
00:25:29.660
Right. I think motivated and ambitious men, a lot of the guys that are probably listening to this,
00:25:34.160
myself included, need to get very good at the skill of saying no tactfully so that they can focus
00:25:41.040
on the things that are important in their lives.
00:25:42.580
The shiny object syndrome kills people in anything. That looks good. Dan Miller, as you know,
00:25:48.840
we're good friends, have been for two decades now. He's my personal mentor. He's the reason I'm
00:25:54.220
coaching now, 48 Days to the Work You Love. Dan's just a champion guy. Dan will take his calendar,
00:25:59.980
and I've watched him do this now for almost two decades. He will take his calendar. He can tell you
00:26:04.280
today. We're in August right now. Dan can tell you right now in September on the 23rd,
00:26:09.080
November 22nd, December 26th. He can tell you right now that day what he's going to be doing.
00:26:16.080
And then when the shiny objects don't come along, he says, no, I'm not doing that because it's not
00:26:20.740
in my plan. He doesn't have to decide then. He's pre-decided. Dave Ramsey's the same way. He'll get
00:26:28.260
all of his 12 guys together, you know, the department heads, and they'll say, we want to do this. And he'll
00:26:33.320
say, is it on the schedule? No. Well, I don't even want to talk about it then. What's the next thing?
00:26:37.400
I want to talk about our plan. And see, people don't have plans. That's the problem. They don't
00:26:42.620
take the time to sit down to craft out and design a plan, how you want to live and how you want to
00:26:48.380
do business. When you do that, you quit chasing the shiny objects. How long are these guys and
00:26:53.480
yourself included planning your calendar out, planning out your business and your life? Is it a
00:26:57.940
quarter? Is it a year? What's it look like? I just left Nashville, Indiana three weeks ago. My COO
00:27:03.860
lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He met me there. And that was, uh, in July and we planned through
00:27:10.060
February. Now I know every week what I need to blog about. I need to know what the community's
00:27:15.720
doing. I know what Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind groups are doing. I know I don't have to think
00:27:20.660
about it. See, it's like, what am I going to do today? What am I going to do next month? Well, I don't
00:27:24.840
have to decide because you get six or eight months ahead of you. Now you're a content creator. You
00:27:31.340
go out there and you're gathering information to build on what you've already established you're
00:27:36.020
going to do. If something else comes along now, I don't have to decide. I know what I'm doing in
00:27:41.260
November, in December, in January. I know what's coming. Dan does it a year in advance. That's a
00:27:47.560
little far for me. Six months for me is, is good because things change so quickly. You know,
00:27:53.260
of course, of course. But if you're not doing at least six months, I feel like you may be chasing
00:27:57.880
the shiny objects. That's a, that's a great way to be extremely productive. I just, and we talked
00:28:03.620
about this before we hit record on this podcast. Uh, I did a video about how to be more productive
00:28:08.840
throughout the week and we talked a little bit about it. That's a great way to be productive
00:28:12.520
because you're not spending a lot of downtime thinking about what needs to get accomplished.
00:28:16.160
Are there some other productivity tips that you have? Because I know that's a big wheelhouse
00:28:19.440
area for you. Well, I wrote what's called steps to a productive day and all a life is, is a vast
00:28:27.620
amount of productive days, right? You can't think about if you're not doing today well, you know,
00:28:32.480
tomorrow's not going to be well either. And so in this document that I wrote, it's kind of like a
00:28:36.980
to-do list on steroids. I'm a very regimented, methodical kind of person. That's just the way I
00:28:43.020
think. I like it. I like my life that way. I like to know what I'm doing. So I get up usually within
00:28:48.240
30 to 45 minutes between four and five o'clock every morning. You know, I go through drinking
00:28:53.480
some coffee, drinking some water. I'm a Christ follower. So I spend some time reading the word.
00:28:58.420
I listen to praise and worship. I get my day focused and centered. I have two prayer lists,
00:29:03.100
one for family, one for clients. I really take serious how I teach and train people. So I pray,
00:29:08.020
God, give me the direction, give me the right things to do. And then I go through just like
00:29:12.540
everybody else with my email, coaching clients, doing interviews, whatever I do. But then I live by the
00:29:18.160
calendar and then I block out times. I know that on Thursday and Fridays, I block out a certain
00:29:22.520
amount of time. This is going to be for my family. This is going to be for me personally.
00:29:27.020
I've decided, I know that I'm going to have that time coming. I'm willing to work really hard
00:29:32.040
today. And then I know that these days are coming and I can take a little break.
00:29:36.240
But if you just grind away, working, working, working, you know, you're going to get tired of
00:29:40.740
that. I don't care what the money is. You're going to get burned out and then you're not going to be
00:29:44.300
any good to anybody. And I guess balance is the best word you can use. You know, there's going
00:29:49.260
to be a tension always there. I can do a little more. I could do a little less, but it's just
00:29:54.200
designing. That's the important thing is predetermining what you want in advance.
00:29:59.960
Now we can back up. We know what we've got to do to do that. There's a certain amount of money I want
00:30:04.080
to make to live the kind of life that I'm living. And so I know what I got to do to make that happen.
00:30:08.880
And when I get there, then you can say, is it ever enough? Yes. Because now I'm doing what I've
00:30:14.820
pre-described that I want to do. Right. Once you reach that point of not necessarily dollar amount,
00:30:20.000
but the lifestyle, like you said, that it provides. Well, that's what we want. You know,
00:30:23.660
there's some things that I don't want. You know, there's a great big house I don't want. I'm like,
00:30:29.600
man, because when you buy something, I don't care if you pay cash for it or not,
00:30:33.100
you've got to insure it, put it away, clean it, store it, maintain it. It takes time.
00:30:38.620
To do all those things. I don't want to invest the time. One of my clients had a camper. He paid
00:30:44.520
$50,000 for it and I saw it at his house and I said, how often did you use that? And he said,
00:30:50.160
I used it for a week last year and I've used it for a weekend this year. I said, so 10 days. And he
00:30:55.860
said, yes. What did you pay for it? Well, I came home. I didn't tell him. I came home and I wrote a
00:30:59.800
blog and the title of the blog, you can read it later. It's called count the cost. And I figured it up
00:31:05.480
and it was costing him $1,150 a night to stay at the KOA. And I said, I hope you enjoyed your stay.
00:31:11.960
Right. Yeah. Most of the time we don't count the cost. His mother-in-law read the article. They
00:31:16.260
had a vacation home. She went and sold the vacation home. You start counting the cost of what it's,
00:31:22.540
you know, you, you spend that much money. You can stay anywhere all over the world you want. You
00:31:27.280
don't have the headache of owning it. I'm saying be deliberate in your transactions.
00:31:31.960
Right. Yeah. Such a great point. I want to shift gears a little bit because you're rubbing shoulders
00:31:36.840
with some extremely successful men. And I'm sure a lot of guys out there, myself included, are
00:31:40.780
wondering how you do that. How do you surround yourselves with the likes of Dave Ramsey and
00:31:45.940
Dan Miller and some of the guys that you're around? I'd like to have a little bit of insight to that.
00:31:49.640
Well, in 1995, I had a pawn shop in Madison, Tennessee. We just built a brand new 10,000 square
00:31:55.900
foot store. It was state-of-the-art. Everything was really cool. I was at a chamber of commerce breakfast and
00:32:00.500
there was this guy speaking there, never heard of, didn't know who he was. And he was starting a radio
00:32:04.960
show in Nashville called the money game with a guy named Roy Matlock. And I went up, introduced myself
00:32:10.220
to him. He came to the store and looked at it and he said, this is really cool. I'd love for you to
00:32:14.700
advertise on my show. And I said, no, thank you. I'm not interested. That was my first encounter with
00:32:20.140
Dave Ramsey. Interesting. And he said, listen, I'll give you a week free. Just try me. And I'm like, well, I can't
00:32:27.420
lose on that. So I signed a contract for a week. He did a week and three days. I called him and I
00:32:32.740
said, listen, I don't know what you're doing, man, but I want more of it. We signed an annual contract
00:32:36.720
every day since 1995. We've been an advertiser on his show. Now it's 20 years in the makings.
00:32:43.580
Dave and I have become very close friends. My point in telling the story is not to boast that Dave's my
00:32:48.880
friend. My point in the story is Dave was nobody, right? Dan Miller had just started his business.
00:32:55.140
He was nobody. See, we were just a bunch of knuckleheads trying to do our businesses together.
00:33:00.440
Dave invited me to join his mastermind and I came together. Now Ken Abraham was a guy in there.
00:33:06.040
It's got over a hundred books in print. He's got 10 New York times, number one bestsellers.
00:33:10.720
He didn't then. My point was we grew our businesses simultaneously. So if you're waiting to get in a
00:33:17.620
mastermind group with Dan Miller and Dave Ramsey, don't do that. Go out and get a bunch of great guys and
00:33:24.260
y'all grow your businesses together collectively and build that rapport and that relationship where
00:33:29.920
you have trusted advisors that are around you that you invest inordinates amount of time in
00:33:34.980
that you build that trust where you can say, I think I'm going to do this. What do you think?
00:33:38.800
They go, no, you idiot. You don't need to do that. Or hey, do more of that. Come on,
00:33:43.740
you got this. You can do it. And they encourage you on. I can't even imagine living my life without
00:33:49.380
a mastermind group. I can't even fathom it because I attribute the bulk of my success to my mastermind
00:33:55.720
group, not because of what they did, but because they were trusted advisors. They had no skin in
00:34:01.380
the game. They didn't have anything to win or lose based on what they were telling me other than they
00:34:06.780
cared about my wellbeing. And so they have stopped me from running off in the ditch so many times and
00:34:12.280
I have them. And we just spent time together. We built that relationship to where we empower each
00:34:18.720
other and encourage each other. So don't go looking for famous, wealthy people. Get a group of people
00:34:23.840
that you want to do life with and do business and form a mastermind. Are there some traits that you
00:34:28.540
should look for? Because I know it's easy to find somebody successful and say, I want to spend time
00:34:32.060
with that guy because he's already proven himself. So are there some traits that we should be looking
00:34:36.380
for in potential mastermind members or guys that we should be around? Absolutely. Well, first of all,
00:34:42.340
just because you've been successful financially doesn't mean I want to do business with you or life
00:34:46.960
with you because the means by which you acquired it may be good, may not. I don't know. But what I
00:34:53.020
look for, first of all, is character, right? Because everything else stems out of that. I'm a person of
00:34:59.000
faith, as I pointed out a while ago. And so I want to be in alignment with people that have the same
00:35:04.400
faith as I do. I want to have the diversity of different occupations, but I want people to be
00:35:10.600
credible. I want them to be honest. I want them to have high integrity. Those are all things. Now,
00:35:16.060
whether you're doing a service or selling a widget, it doesn't matter to me. If you have those quality
00:35:21.020
traits, the rest of it will go. The second thing, or the final thing I should say, is the chemistry.
00:35:27.160
If you're going to align yourself with people, you want to like them, you know, first of all,
00:35:31.560
you're not going to be in a group of somebody long-term you don't like. And so I would just
00:35:35.760
suggest that you really test the boundaries on the chemistry to see if you would enjoy spending
00:35:40.940
an inordinate amount of time, whether it be virtually or whether it be in person. A lot of
00:35:45.880
the mastermind groups that I have now, I have people all over the world that are in these groups
00:35:49.840
and we do it virtually. We meet on, it's called Zoom. It's like Skype, but we meet together.
00:35:55.400
There's 10 men that come together and we do exactly what I'm talking about virtually that you can do,
00:36:01.000
you know, in person. So those are some of the things. If you're trying to get somebody
00:36:05.260
like you that thinks like you do, you don't need them. Right. I mean, right, right. You already
00:36:11.240
know that stuff. You get 10 people that think just like you. You don't need nine of them if they think
00:36:15.000
just like you. So get a wide, diverse group. That's awesome. There's people in our group that
00:36:20.440
are solopreneurs that just have an office, no virtual assistants, no secretaries. And then we have
00:36:26.380
people like Dave Ramsey who have, they're on 800 radio stations. He has 550 employees and have 8
00:36:32.920
million listeners. But we all have common ground when it comes to character, integrity, honesty,
00:36:39.100
and the rest of it will flow nicely. Great characteristics to look for.
00:36:43.740
We've talked about a lot. And so I just want to make sure that everybody knows we're going to have
00:36:47.580
all of these resources, the books and everything that we've talked about in the show notes. So just
00:36:51.020
make sure you stay tuned for that. You know, as we wind down on time, I want to ask you a couple
00:36:56.320
additional questions. And the first question I want to ask you is, in your opinion, what does it
00:37:01.320
mean to be a man? Well, to me, it means being a servant leader. And I think about my personal
00:37:07.400
family and I want to, first of all, put my faith first, my wife second, my children third, and then
00:37:13.500
my business. And if you'll keep things in that order, you will be a great man. Awesome. Thank you for
00:37:19.840
that. And then I want to know how the listeners can connect with you, reach out to you. You also
00:37:24.140
mentioned a, for lack of knowing the right title, the productivity tool or tip that you have. Can
00:37:31.300
you tell us how we can connect with you? Sure. Absolutely. Well, first of all, if you don't
00:37:34.960
mind, Ryan, I've got a little gift for your audience and it's, all right, go to viewfromthetop.com
00:37:40.900
forward slash order, O-R-D-E-R, all in lowercase letters. I want to give you the three documents I was
00:37:47.880
talking about earlier, the personal assessment, what do I want and steps to a productive day.
00:37:52.740
I've taken the cost off. It's free to your listeners. So go there, download those. Hopefully
00:37:57.380
it'll be a catalyst to kind of move you forward. You can connect with me there also at viewfromthetop.com.
00:38:03.860
Twitter is at VFT coach. The thing that I'm most excited about without a doubt is the community.
00:38:11.340
I started it a couple of months ago. We have people from all over the world that's joining.
00:38:15.160
They are people that have really excelled in business, have 20, 30, 40 years of business.
00:38:21.440
And we have guys that are transitioning out of the corporate job into being an entrepreneur,
00:38:27.440
solopreneurs, the resources, the encouragement, the accountability, the empowerment that is going
00:38:33.500
on in the community right now is phenomenal. Every Wednesday at five o'clock central time,
00:38:38.460
I teach a webinar for an hour, a lot of interaction. We have authors like Dan Miller come and speak to us,
00:38:44.260
Bob Berg just spoke to us last week. We have phenomenal resources. Here's the best part.
00:38:49.620
It's $37 a month. That's it. 37 bucks. A lot of people can't afford me one-on-one. A lot of people
00:38:56.460
don't want to invest the money in the mastermind groups. Anybody can afford a buck a day. Okay.
00:39:01.540
So it's $37. Get involved in the community. And I'm telling you, it'll take your life to the next
00:39:07.080
level. Aaron, I appreciate you sharing all that and the resources, then gift, and then just taking your
00:39:11.600
time to impart some of your insights and your knowledge that you have. Thanks for being on the
00:39:15.160
show today. It's been awesome, Ryan. Thanks for having me, man.
00:39:17.860
There you go, guys. Mr. Aaron Walker. I really appreciated this conversation with Aaron. And I,
00:39:22.240
for one, am motivated to implement what Aaron talked about today in my personal life. I hope
00:39:26.600
that you'll do the same. We begin to change our lives when we take action on the information
00:39:30.520
that we have. Now, we talked about a lot of things today, including some resources you'll want
00:39:34.940
to check out, which can be found at orderofman.com slash 035. If you want to say thanks to me and
00:39:41.180
Aaron for this episode, you can do it orderofman.com slash iTunes. Leave us a review. Tell us what you
00:39:45.880
thought about the show. And we'll try to feature that on an upcoming episode. Last reminder of the
00:39:50.180
day to join in the conversations we're having on our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups
00:39:54.620
slash order of man. Now, next week we talk with a guest. I'm so excited to introduce you to,
00:39:59.280
we're going to be covering how to be a better presenter. Now you might think that this only applies to
00:40:03.440
professional speakers, but as my guest shares, learning to present yourself in the best light
00:40:07.780
possible is applicable in so many different situations, job interviews, first dates, team
00:40:12.860
sports, even communicating an idea to your team. So I hope you'll tune in for that guys. I look
00:40:18.380
forward to talking with you next week, but until then take action and become the man you were meant
00:40:22.260
to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life
00:40:28.360
and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order