I really enjoyed my time as a guest on The Results Leader FM Podcast which came out on September 15th 2022.
Show highlights include:
- Why throwing away your steady job is the secret to financial security (2:17)
- The weird way folding yourself up like a human pretzel accelerates your growth in the world of business (4:05)
- How to find your market’s “hot buttons” and shoot your income through the roof (even if you don’t have a marketing budget) (10:17)
- How to get a never-ending “flywheel” of clients (without changing a thing about your marketing) (12:50)
The Results Leader Podcast
Listen to this and other Results Leader Podcasts
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Transcription
Lucas Walker:
I’m Lucas Walker and I’m a Results Leader.
Intro:
You’re listening to results leader.fm.
Being a thought leader is easy, getting results is hard.
This show is for the results leader who lives and dies by their results.
Here’s your host and chief results leader Jonathan Rivera.
Jonathan Rivera:
This is the only show on the internet dedicated to results welcome back to another episode of Results Leader.FM.
So glad you guys are here. And you know what we do? We are peeling back the curtain on the men and women who are getting results for their clients.
Today Mr. Lucas Walker is joining us and he helps deconstruct tired ideas and apply them in new ways to help scale your business. Let’s jump in.
Lucas, welcome to the show. Are you ready to rock this thing?
Lucas Walker:
I am so ready Jonathan. Thank you.
Jonathan Rivera:
Well, let’s do it man. Let’s give our listeners a quick win. What book have you given most as a gift?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, so on this one, I might be different than a lot of your guests. I really believe in books as a prescription. So I don’t have one book. I really identify what their problem is. And then there’s usually a book that can maybe help. And that to me is a big difference between what you’re talking about here as results leadership versus thought leadership. What is the problem they’re having and then what will help them get that result? Some owners maybe work too hard and they need to figure out how to relax more so many different how to work harder and more organized. So it really, really depends. So kind of an out of the box not exactly what you’re looking for answer there. But I find a lot of entrepreneurs dive too deep into reading lots of books that don’t actually affect what they need to do and gets in the way of their results.
Jonathan Rivera:
So I need to relax more. What book are you recommending you to relax more?
Lucas Walker:
I would say if you need to relax more and also find more peace and like enjoyment in life. The artists way is a really good book. It’s actually meant for blocked creative people that maybe can’t write the play they want to write, but it’s wonderful for entrepreneurs, some of the thoughts there are morning pages, a kind of meditations that are like freeform writing meditations and also a wonderful thing called the artists date, which is basically a date with yourself where you go out and do something fun to fill your well back up so you have energy to enjoy.
Jonathan Rivera:
I’ll take your prescription or under call. Alright, let’s talk about failure. Tell us a story of how an apparent failure set you up for later success.
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, so for me it was actually leaving my job a job. So I always didn’t know about entrepreneurship. I started off thinking hey, you just go get a job that is safe. You grind that away for your years until retirement.
I had a job that wanted to lower the commission structure across the board. I’d been there for seven years given them my heart soul blood, sweat and tears. And I realized this isn’t so safe.
For me that was kind of a crisis of what do you do now? Do you put your faith in someone else who also maybe doesn’t care about you besides being a cog in their machine?
Or do you go out on your own?
And I didn’t know how to go out on my own. I didn’t really know what that looked like. And that started my entire journey of me trying to figure out how do you not be a kind of a slave within that machine, which is a whiplash of whatever someone higher up wants to do and take their own fate on yourself.
And that’s sort of my whole journey, which is what I put all of my clients on is how they take the skill of what they’re good at and build the business pieces around that to find their success.
So if I hadn’t had that job that wanted to lower my my pay structure in an unsustainable way to wake me up to the fact they didn’t care about me as much as I cared about them, I wouldn’t have realized that it’s actually much safer to be my own boss.
Jonathan Rivera:
And some people argue that our job is security and you’re saying it’s the opposite?
Lucas Walker:
Because it’s totally the opposite. If you’re a hard worker, I mean, a lot of my clients, I find that they’re actually the best employee ever, until they’re the worst. They’re unhireable meaning that they treat the business like it’s their own and they’re just, you know, a mid level/lower level person. And then whenever they leave, all that energy, they’re pushing someone else’s rock uphill, all that resistance of the person scooping all the cream off the top.
Jonathan Rivera:
What would you say is the most worthwhile investment you’ve ever made?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, so the most worthwhile investment I ever made was starting training Brazilian jujitsu. Do you know what that is? By chance?
Jonathan Rivera:
I have so many friends that tell me about this. And I want to hear your reason for that being your thing?
Lucas Walker
Yeah. So it’s kind of like wrestling like it would be in college or in the Olympics. Not like the fake WWF wrestling.
And the goal is that it’s another person as a puzzle that you solve physically, while you’re trying to essentially strangle that person or put them in a joint lock where they have to admit that you won and “say uncle” more or less.
The amazing part about learning Brazilian jujitsu for me was that when I started it, I didn’t really know how to learn. I was a smart guy. I made it through school very, very easily. I didn’t have to study very much. And with jujitsu whenever you start, even if you’re a great shape, a marathon runner, a power lifter, you’re gonna go in there your first day, and some person that weighs 100 pounds less than you is going to just demolish you. They’re going to strangle you 99 times. There’s nothing you can do about it.
So with that, it really teaches you some humility and some humbleness and also you realize there are some things you can’t try any harder to do any better. You just sort of take your losses. You learn some new lessons, you lose a little bit less. And then you repeat that over and over again, and you repeat that skill over time, which is really how life works. It really accentuates how that process should work.
The chances of sitting in your armchair and thinking of the perfect way to stop all of the things they’re gonna do everything never works out. It’s really an iterative process. And so it really taught me that iterative process of learning of failure being okay. And it’s only failure if you don’t learn and slightly improve over time.
And I started that about 10 years ago, and it’s really been a life changer. Yeah. It’s changed how I view everything. It’s really informed how I do my consulting practice as well with clients. It’s that we’re not looking for the exact right answer just one in the general direction of right. And then we can adapt it and tweak it over time and improve it.
Jonathan Rivera:
I keep hearing stories of Jiu Jitsu but I can’t get down with the wrestling.
Lucas Walker:
So the jujitsu part is nice because it really benefits the nerds. So wrestling is more of just physically grinding as hard as you can against someone else to try to grind them down. jujitsu was more about like, nerds, when if you can think through, it’s like that chess with your body. You can feel like if I have this grip and this grip, they can do this thing. You can advance just by being smarter and having a better awareness of how the pieces fit together.
Jonathan Rivera:
That is fascinating, man.
Let’s think back over the last five years what new belief behavior or habit has most improved your life?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, for me, it definitely it was focusing on time management.
I’ve always been a super hard worker and never had any problems working 70,80, 90 hour weeks and just getting things done.
But when I really doubled down on focusing on time management, the basics like planning tomorrow today, mapping out a project so that in advance knowing “Hey, in two or three weeks I have this event coming up,” what are the preparatory steps to get ready for that? Looking at each day and making sure I have my top priority items in the order they should be done. That basically made it like I had two Lucas’s. It was like having an assistant because I was twice as productive oftentimes before I was working really hard and staying really busy.
But whenever I started really prioritizing what was important I found I was busy doing the most important things and that changed everything. With my clients whenever they just add a few time management skills to the repertoire, they can really double or triple their operational capacity very quickly.
Jonathan Rivera:
What about these guys that are out there? And I’ve seen it before. They’re always putting out fires. What do you say to these people that are eternally putting out fires?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, I think that that’s part of the initial part of the journey. is you have to be running around putting out fires. But the goal is, is that you have to just have a little bit of proactive approach.
You have to be reactive to put out fires and then when you have a second to catch your breath, you have to say, well, what’s the next fire that’s going to pop up?
Or how can I make sure this fire I just put up isn’t a trick candle that just pops up again.
Tomorrow, I’m putting in a more permanent way that you finally get an a proactive foothold and now you have to really capitalize on that 10 minutes that you got back to focus on future fires.
And eventually you can have a proactive approach where you’re sort of a burn crew.
And now you’re more than Maytag repairman sitting around not having to worry about things as much but to me. That’s an early part of the journey that everyone really has to face. And that reactive putting out fires and the goal is to rise above that and to set up systems so that you don’t have to fight those same fires again and again.
Jonathan Rivera:
What are some bad recommendations you hear in your area of expertise?
Lucas Walker:
So I might get a lot of flack for this but probably the thing that probably drives me the craziest is people looking for marketing as the magic wand to fix all of their problems.
So oftentimes, I talk to people who have a pretty decent product, and they don’t really know what to do next. So they hear the magic wand and marketing will fix it. They pay some marketing firm 1000s of dollars a month to have absolutely no results from that. And then they have to go out of business because they spent their money on marketing.
So marketing has its time and its place to me though. It’s whenever you have a product that’s irresistible that people truly desire and that will sell itself more or less with repeat and referral business, then marketing turns up the volume knob on that.
But if you don’t know how to sell your own product, to hire someone else to try to do it, that’s probably a low level success piece, and oftentimes an expense and it’s more of throwing your hands up and saying I don’t really know I’ll just trust someone else to do this for me.
And a lot of marketing firms, in my experience, don’t retain clients long term. They have a client for three months, six months that pays them a lot of money. They’re not seeing the results. They fire that marketing firm, but that never really catches up with the firm’s reputation that hey, we’re churning and burning people and we’re not having sustained ongoing results where we’re generating 3x ROI month after month for people.
So to look at marketing as a magic wand solution is one of my biggest things that I see happen that really takes advantage of entrepreneurs who don’t really know where to turn so they say, hey, this person says they’re an expert. I have to trust them.
Where marketing is so good at is marketing marketing. It is so good at saying hey, if you give me $10 I’ll give you $30. That’s a an easy to fall for proposition for clients, unfortunately.
Jonathan Rivera:
How do you get into sales opportunities without marketing?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So to me, I think the difference is small scale marketing.
So there’s two types of marketing. There’s brand awareness marketing, where you’re saying, Hey, I’m over here, come find me. And there’s a lead generation marketing. So lead generation marketing is focused on when you’re talking to someone actually having a sale. And oftentimes, when people are hiring marketing firms and looking at outside marketing, they’re more of just yelling from the rooftops I exist. Come find me the Field of Dreams approach.
For a smaller business, the best thing to do is to go to like networking events face to face join groups socially have those one on one interactions. That’s where you get the feedback and you see when I say this to their eyes light up or not when I say this, does the conversation die down or not? That really small scale pieces.
Then if you do hire a marketing firm later, you have the information to say, these are the buzzwords that my clients really care about. This is what really activates my base and this is so you still do some level of that but it’s not the sort of spray and pray method. It’s really cost efficient and when you have limited dollars and resources, you can’t afford to do that.
Jonathan Rivera:
Why do results matter?
Lucas Walker:
Results matter because they keep you in the game. I mean, the goal of a business is to make money.
You might have other goals like helping people but if you’re not making money, eventually you shut the business down. So if you’re not getting those results, where the effort you’re putting in is yielding a higher return. You are just going to be out of business and have to stop.
And I’d say the number one reason that business fails in my experience is that the owner gets tired. If the owner has energy, they can adapt. They can change. They can pivot they can adjust services. Once they’re too tired to solve problems. It’s over.
So if you aren’t having oversized results, you’re going to be using every inch of energy you have and eventually get burnt out and unable to to move forwards yet to have leveraged results. You’re getting an asymmetrical return on your effort in versus your results out. Or you’re just gonna have to stop doing what you’re doing.
Jonathan Rivera:
How do you get that leverage? What are things that we need in place to get leverage like that?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. So it kind of varies.
The biggest thing is creating something that gives a surplus of value to the end consumer. So basically, they’re gonna pay you a certain dollar amount to get a certain product. If they get an even exchange. They’re pretty happy, they might use you again, the more surplus value they get, though, the more likely they are to tell their friends, family neighbors. And so what happens is if you have a product of surplus value included, then you get a flywheel effect, where more referrals and repeat business come into your ecosystem without you having to do the work yourself, you know, early on you to do all that marketing that sales outreach. But as you get a stronger and stronger product loop, it kind of loops back on itself and you really get a lot of momentum going.
So that’s numberone. Two is systems to make operations run smoother so you can deliver the same result using less capacity. You know, early on, you’re probably doing everything just customized one to one, but after you’ve helped 37 people in a similar niche, you kind of have a system and a process, kind of like your podcast, you’ve done this enough times interviewed enough people you have a system so that you can just kind of juggle this in the back of your brain without every one taking every ounce of your energy.
Jonathan Rivera:
Does this work with only products or does it also work with services? Is it possible?
Lucas Walker:
I think actually with services is a bigger opportunity. The problem with products is that they tend to be less flexible. You can make adjustments on the fly with a service you can adjust one customer to the next make an adjustment. What if I deliver it this way? What if I deliver it that way? What if I pitch it this way? What if it’s this scope?
Jonathan Rivera:
In the last five years what new realization has helped you get better results for your client?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, the biggest realization is that I can’t do it for them. I can be a trusted adviser. I can be a secret weapon. I can offer them some guidance and help but they have to be the one in the end that wants that result. And so for me, I can help them teach them the knowledge helps them work on the skill. Sometimes it just takes time, but they have to be the one driving forward. If it’s me driving, it’s just not going to work.
Their pain has to be severe enough that they really want to do the thing that they need to do.
Jonathan Rivera:
What area of your business would you like better results?
Lucas Walker:
So this is a weird one. For me. It’s that whenever my clients are very successful, they have the business that they want that they’ve grown and scaled to the level that they want. It’s how to help them find out what to do in life. Whenever you’re successful it’s really hard to figure out if I have infinite opportunities and choices. What do I even want to do?
Whenever you’re trying to struggle and grind and make your way forward? That pain is really evident it guides you down the path, you know, sort of I need to not go that way I have to avoid that.
But when you get to the pinnacle and you look around and say “Well now I’ve got the money I wanted and I’m putting in the time I want at work like this has been my identity for the past five or 10 years to grow this business. Who am I? What do I like What hobbies do I have? I haven’t had time for a hobby. What do I even want to do now? I have the money I have the time. How do I find these new passions?”
That’s the hardest part is whenever they’re successful is what next?
Jonathan Rivera:
How do you figure that out?
Lucas Walker:
That’s a really hard iterative process. And typically it involves things like I talked about that book The Artist’s Way earlier than just trying different activities. I typically warn my clients when they’re headed on the way to success is that they’re going to be successful soon to a spot where they have time and they better start finding a hobby now. It’s very similar to people in the workforce. When they retire. I think that most of them I think 80% die within five years of retiring. They lost their work identity they don’t have another sense that they do they sit around and watch TV for a few months and then they’re bored and they don’t know what to do with their life anymore. And you know, after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon he came back and you’re depressed you hit your goal. What now? You had that driving passion, that ambition to know you look around and what next?
So I really encourage them to start experimenting with different things trying different hobbies. Entrepreneurs tend to need something that’s infinite, meaning that painting you know a skill like Brazilian jujitsu something that will keep driving them; chess something that has a long long learning potential where they don’t just okay, I can do this. And now I’m done. I have to find a new hobby.
They need something that’s going to be a long bone to gnaw on to keep them active for a very long time.
Jonathan Rivera:
What results are you most proud of? I’m most proud of the clients that I’ve worked with that have ended up making a business they actually wanted to have.
A lot of times whenever a business is starting up, there’s some momentum that can pull you in directions that aren’t the best for you. It ends up being a jail. You build a prison for yourself. You’ve built a job that you hate. You’re working 90 hours a week you’re on call 24/7. You have employees that aren’t doing things right and you hate going into work.
The flip of that is that you can have a business setup how you want it and oftentimes has sacrifices I’m going to work a little bit harder on these days. I’m gonna make a little bit less money, there sacrifices you make but then you build it exactly how you want it so it’s sustainable and you’re happy.
And through that I helped save marriages. I helped to prevent people from having heart attacks and and really major critical health issues.
Jonathan Rivera:
Any parting thoughts you want to share with the results leaders who are listening right now?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, my biggest thoughts are keep looking at people as individuals and humans. I think oftentimes we forget and assume that they’re robots a lot of the business books seem to indicate you can just be a robot and do all of the things but we all have human psychology, human desires, and by focusing on the human element, we can find out what matches up best with the operations and systems for success.
Jonathan Rivera:
I know the results leaders who are listening are going to want more from you. Where can they get it?
Lucas Walker:
Yeah, the best place to find me is on my website, ConsultWithLucas.com. My social media is there. I have blog entries and a mailing list that you can subscribe to.
Jonathan Rivera:
Excellent. We will have links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you for hanging out with us, Lucas and thank you results leaders for tuning in another show is in the can.
That is a wrap for another edition of results. leader.fm if you are out there getting results for your clients and you want to be featured on the show, go to results leader.fm NOW and apply beyond the show. And if you love what you’re hearing, share the show.
Give us a rating and review you anything to help us get the message out there. Thought Leadership is easy. For results. Leadership is hard. We’ll catch you on the next one.
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
