“None of us is as smart as all of us.” — Ken Blanchard.

On episode 133 of The Entrepreneurial You podcast, I had a conversation with Aaron Walker of View From The Top. Aaron is a veteran entrepreneur. Having started over a dozen businesses during his four-decade journey has been pretty awesome for him. Beginning at the age of 18 years old and selling to Fortune 500 Company just nine years later, that has set Aaron on an adventure of a lifetime.

Entrepreneurial Beginning

Heneka: I would love for you to share your entrepreneurial beginning with us and what inspired that.

Aaron: I was very young; I was 13 years old when I started working for my dad during the summer and then I got a full-time job. It was full time for me it was after school and then a couple years later when I was 15 years old, I started working each and every Saturday and then the remainder of the time I wasn’t in school. By the time I was 18, I met a couple of guys that had a lot of money because I was broke. I didn’t have any money and I came from a very poor family. We took their resources and my experience and opened our own retail outlet. A year later I got married. My wife got out of school and two weeks out of high school, we get married. Then we’d go on this amazing journey of pouring all the resources back into the company and we paid off a 10 year loan in 36 months and then I repeated that three additional times. By the time I was 27, I had four retail outlets and a Fortune 500 Company approached me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and so it sent me on a journey that I never anticipated. Since then, this is our 14th business to date. 41 years now being an entrepreneur and I’m having the time of my life being a life and business coach and we facilitate mastermind groups. We have 15 mastermind groups and I am actually having more fun today than I’ve ever had in my entire life with the people. We are in eight different countries now, representation in the mastermind group and I am just having a blast helping ordinary people become extraordinary in all they do.

Heneka: Wow, that is simply amazing. No joke. Now, I’m not letting you off the hook just yet because I want to hear a little more about that retail business. What was it that you did? What got you to that level of success? What did you do in that retail business to the point that you got it sold to a fortune 500 company?

Retail Success

Aaron: Well, when I was 13, my dad came to me in the summer and he said, “Hey, you want to help me remodel a pawn shop?” And I said, “Can I make any money?” And he said, “Yes.” I said, “Why me? I don’t even know what a pawn shop is.” For those that don’t know, it’s a small location that you bring merchandise, you borrow money against it, and then you come back in 30, 60 or 90 days you redeem your merchandise. You pay the merchant back his money, and you go on your way. So it’s just a means by which people can borrow money and I had no experience, didn’t even know what a pawn shop was. Well, I fell in love with this business because it was so diverse. There were so many different things that you could deal with and the people were so amazing.

When I turned 15 years old, I had worked there for two years and I said this is what I want to do professionally. So I went to summer school in night school for 18 months and I was able to graduate by the beginning of my junior year in high school. I was able to work my junior and senior year, all day long every day and we ended up opening our first pawn shop when I was 18 years old and God just blessed it. I can’t even begin to tell you how God just anointed this business and he really blessed what we were doing and then I continued to open new stores and I started buying out the competition. Then we had something that a Fortune 500 wanted because they were in Fort Worth, Texas, they had about 300 stores at the time, they were growing through acquisition rather than start up and so to date, they have about 1,100 stores. I actually kept the property and they are still my tenant after 31 years. They are still a tenant of mine and they are just an amazing company. They wanted it worse than I did, so I made a proposal and they accepted it. It put me in a place that I could do some things that I wanted to do with my family and other business opportunities. So it kind of set the stage and gave me the resources to be able to do different things over the course of my career.

Heneka: Wow. Okay, so that story is one of success, obviously, and persons think oh you know, that’s just a straight line to success, like there are never any bumps and curves.

Giving Up Two Thirds of the Business

Aaron: Oh, that’s not true at all. In fact, there were many bumps in the road, a lot of people say well, yeah, you’ve had a lot of success and you’ve owned all these businesses. But see, I didn’t then, I didn’t have any money. I had to give up two thirds of the business, to get the resources to open the business and I was willing to do that. And Robin and I got married a year after we opened the store. So I was 19. She was 18 and Robin’s family was poorer than my family. If you can only imagine we didn’t have anything and I said, “Robin, we can’t mess this up. We’ve got to focus, our energy and our effort and we have got to pour all the money back into the business, we’ve got to pay this loan off.” And so we delayed gratification for the greater good later and that’s the message that I want to share with your audience today. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t have any money, you can accomplish your dreams, you can accomplish your goals.

If you’re really hyper focused on what it is that you’re wanting to do, it may not be ideal in the beginning, it wasn’t ideal for me, but it gave me a start. Once I sold that business, I had the resources to do other businesses for nine years. We took an $18,000 a year salary, and we had two children during that period of time. I could have lived in a bigger house. We lived in a $19,500 condominium for the first two years and then we upgraded to a $79,000 house. We lived there for nine years while we built our business. So I just want to say if your income goes up, don’t spend it, pour it back into your business and grow something that a fortune 500 would want.

Importance of Masterminds

Heneka: You said something earlier that was not based on me at all and it was that, you know, God anointed your business and I am a believer, I’m a woman of faith and so that for me is just putting icing on the cake. Now, for businesses to be successful, you know, no man is an island, no man stands alone. It’s important to get together in groups in mastermind, coaching and all of that. So, we’re going to segue right now into your mastermind. You have been running a very successful mastermind, Aaron and so I’d want you to now take us through what exactly is a mastermind, what do you do and why is it important to become part of a mastermind group.

Aaron: Heneka I want to go back just a little bit because I think this is an important part of the story and if I leave this out, people won’t have full context of the reason I’m involved in masterminds. We were very successful early on and when I turned 40 years old, we had just completed our second business and I was on my way to the office. This was August the first 2001, so it has been 18 years now that this happened. On my way to the office, a pedestrian was crossing the street to catch a local bus and didn’t look my way and I ran over and killed a pedestrian and it radically changed the paradigm shift of my life. It really made me think through life differently and in my book View From The Top, I talked about this, I was blindsided, I never saw this coming and I was praying God, why? Why would this happen to me? My two beautiful children, my great home, my great business. I feel like I’m doing the right thing and out of nowhere, I get this left hook. And I’m like, man, I never saw that coming. Well, it made me rethink my priorities and I started thinking in my life, What if that had been me? What if I had been the one that was killed? What would my legacy have been? It would have been poor kid from Nashville, Tennessee, makes enough money to retire at age 27 and nobody cares.

Feeling Guilty

I started feeling extremely guilty about that and I said, “I don't want my legacy to be that, I want my legacy to be, Heneka says, hey, my life is better as a result of having been around Aaron Walker, he has encouraged me, he has helped me accomplish my goals and my dreams and it changed the way I look at success. What was missing for me was the significance. We had success, but nobody cared but my family and I said, “God, please give me a spirit of significance.” And since then we've changed our outlook to be givers and not takers and as a result of that we've poured into the community and we have helped other people accomplish their goals and as a result of that, and this was so cool we've been hugely significant but we've been twice as successful as we have been in any business that I've owned. 

See, we’ve got to do business the right way. We’ve got to do it with the right spirit and that’s what I’m trying to convey to people. Fast forward a little bit in the early 90s. About 1993, 1994 I was at the curb center in Nashville, Tennessee, listening to a mercy me concert and sitting in front of me was a friend of mine, his name is Dave Ramsey.

Dave Ramsey’s Invitation

Dave Ramsey came up to me and he said, “Hey, big A, would you consider being in my mastermind group?” and I said, “I don’t even know what a mastermind group is.” And he said, “Just Come to my office. I think you’ll love this.” Well, at the time, Dave was only on one radio station here in Nashville and I had agreed to be his sponsor. I was his second advertiser. Dave and I have been together since the early 90s. I was a second sponsor and I spent 21 consecutive years sponsoring his show and being an advertiser on the show. We developed a great friendship. When I first went into the mastermind group, I was scared to death. I was like, I don’t want anybody to know, the things that I’m not doing or doing. I don’t want anybody to think I don’t know what’s going on. And he said, “Just relax. It’s going to be okay.” So there’s 10 people in the mastermind group and week after week, we would start meeting and they would share, they would be vulnerable and transparent. I said this is a safe place. So that’s what it provided for me.

For decades, I’ve been in the mastermind group. We spent about 11 or 12 years meeting in Dave’s office with the same ten people and it taught me how to be vulnerable, it taught me how to be transparent, it taught me that if you let that veil down, and you’re transparent to a few, how they can help you be successful in life and there’s just so many ways today that I could talk to you about the value of being in a community. I started thinking about the accountability and encouragement in the relationships and the blind spots. It points out how it gives you access and perspective and insight and how you get this affirmation and the spiritual health that you can develop in all the resources and the vision and the mission and the values and the network and the upper limit challenges. I could go on for hours telling you the value that these masterminds have given me over the course of two decades and that’s the reason that today we have Iron Sharpens Iron, just as one man sharpens another as iron sharpens iron and we need these people in our lives today.

Paradigm Shift

Heneka: Wow, you know when you were talking about that paradigm shift, Aaron if I were in church I would have shouted hallelujah and it’s just amazing I’m listening to your story and it’s gripping every fibre of my being and I can tell that it’s something that you’re truly passionate about from the inside, it’s not just something you’re doing to earn from but it’s something that’s coming from the core. I really like what you said. What if it were you? It is sad that somebody had to go but what if it were you? You would not have been here to now be doing what you’re doing so I’m really grateful that you’re spared and that you are here now to have this mastermind and impact lives. Now, what is the glue that holes Iron Sharpens Iron together in your mind? What is That glue that is holding all together and who are some of the people that are involved in terms of what they do you know, what their goals are their vision and so on?

Aaron: Yeah, thank you for asking that question. It’s a very good question. We teach very quickly in our mastermind groups that if you’re not willing to adhere to the core values that we possess honesty and integrity and fairly these are the things that hold us together, you have to be vulnerable, you have to be transparent, you have to be willing to say, “Hey, I’m going to let the veil down, I’m going to let you guys, I want you to see who I really am. When you do, then I can give you advice and help and the other members can circle around. If I don’t know your life experiences, if I don’t know the filters that you’ve been using and where you’ve been, I certainly can’t help you today and I certainly can’t give you good advice for going forward. There’s so many people going to these groups and they have this Facebook persona.

Trust Takes Time to Earn

Everything is great, I’m making plenty money and that’s just not reality, the majority of the time. There are many people with addictions, there’s substance abuse, there’s relationship fractures, there’s financial devastations but you’ve got to be willing to subject yourself to the scrutiny of people that you trust and they have to earn that trust, it takes time for people to earn that trust, but once you get there it is so nice to be able to come to a room and go now don’t tell anybody this and that’s understood. In the beginning we signed an NDA, a nondisclosure agreement to protect people legally because there’s some very important people as all people are important, but there’s some people that run very large businesses that we deal with and they have to have a safe place. So, the glue that holds it together is the camaraderie, the safety, the security, the vulnerability, the transparency and adhering to these core values. You’re in an environment that is conducive for this level of transparency and once you get there, it’s very relaxing because you can say, this is who I am, this is the real person.

Heneka: What is it that you think they walk away with as far as you see?

Aaron: Without a question, I think it makes you a better person in your relationship at home, it makes you a better father to your children and you’re better in your workplace because we stress the importance of honesty and integrity. A lot of the people that we have our solopreneurs and the people that are in my mastermind group are men but there are great masterminds for women. There are certain things that men have to deal with just like there’s certain things that women have to deal with.

Niche Market

My niche market is men because women have become our biggest advocate. They’ll say, “What have you done to my man? I mean, we’re getting back somebody that is absolutely different than when he came.” We’re saying, Hey, we don’t want you to gain wealth at the expense of your family, at five o’clock, let’s go home, let’s be with our families. If you can be successful at work at the expense of your family, you’ll come home with a pocket full of money to a house full of strangers and I do not want that happening to anyone. My daughter is involved in an all-women’s mastermind group. And they talk about things, how they can be good moms and good wives and the things that they deal with. There are other groups that work amazing as gender neutral, so everybody comes away with different things, but we talk about things that men struggle with from a pride and ego standpoint. Things like substance abuse, pornography is a big deal today for men and so we’re saying hey, that’s going to ruin your life. It’s going to ruin your relationship but let’s really be called to task, let’s really be called to what God would have us to do in these situations.

So we’re hardcore. It’s not like a coffee meeting. This is like we’re getting down to business. We have an accountability tool, they fill out every single week, there’s 10 questions you have to rank yourself in and then we post those results in your group’s Facebook group, so everybody can see your level of progress and we call you out if you’re not measuring up to the standard by which you were called. I could go on for hours. We have 150 people now operating in 15 different groups in 8 different countries and it is absolutely life transformational. You know, what’s so cool is a lot of people have been reaching out to me over the past year to 18 months, and they’re asking, how are you doing this? How are you scaling mastermind groups? A lot of people will do one group or two groups, but now we have 15 so we created the mastermind playbook and it’s to teach every individual.

Additional Income Stream

A lot of podcasters are reaching out to us because they want an additional income stream and they want to be transformational in the lives of their listeners. So we’re really helping them authors, coaches, and we’ve developed this course that is absolutely the most involved you’ve ever seen. There are 30 videos, 100 tools and we have white labelled all the lead magnets and everything you need to run your mastermind group. We’re teaching people all over the world now to scale, run and facilitate their mastermind groups.

Heneka: Aaron, I listen to you, and I’m literally saying you make me want to be a better person and I’m grateful that we met in person at podcast movement earlier this year.

Aaron: I am as well.

Heneka: Really grateful for that. It is so interesting that we really were meant to have this conversation because when JLD introduced us and said Aaron is somebody that you should be talking to on your podcast, and when the name was mentioned View From The Top, somehow, as I mentioned to you in the email prior today, it sounded very familiar. So when I went back to my record, in my email, I recognize that you were actually booked to speak before but somehow it never materialized because of scheduling etc. so we were meant to have this conversation and I am very grateful that we are indeed having this conversation. You are, in fact, transforming lives and just people listening to you right now on this podcast, I know that their lives are going to be transformed. So, for those who are on the fringe of masterminding and considering whether it could be a possibility for them, just leave your closing thoughts as to why it is Important to become part of a mastermind group.

God Designed Us for Community

Aaron: You can call it a mastermind, you can call it an accountability group, you can call it a small group, whatever you want to call it. God designed us to be in community. Isolation is the enemy of excellence and if you want your life to be transformed to go to heights you’ve never been, it’s incumbent on you to get people around you that you trust, people that can point out your superpowers, people that can show you that Achilles heel, people that can call your blind spots out so that you don’t repeat such a flagrant fall going forward. When you do that and you subject yourself to these people, your life is transformed. We need people around us to edify us and give us that encouragement. So, you can call it whatever you want, I just desperately want you to get into community and you watch your life change.

Heneka: Wow, community can change and will change your life, absolutely. Now I’m going to ask you, Aaron, to share your contact details with us as well as I know that you have some freebie that our audience members can take advantage of so go right ahead and share that for us please.

Connect with View From the Top

Aaron: Yeah, thank you so much. The easiest way to get in contact with me is to go to ViewFromTheTop.com. All of our social media platforms are there, my email is there, I even put my phone number out there. I make myself very available to people. I want to help you be successful at what you’re trying to accomplish as well. You can also download some documents that we’ve prepared. One is a personal assessment. One is a what do I want? and one is a spouse survey. Some of these are very deep and they really pride to your personal life but if you answer these questions and you present that to the necessary people around you that is in your sphere of influence, watch the transformation begin.

Heneka: What a pleasure it has been Aaron Walker, it certainly has been a pleasure of mine to have this conversation with you, again it has been life transforming for me. Listening to you I do want to be a better person; I do want to improve my own life so thank you so much for coming on.

Aaron: Thank you. I certainly enjoyed it. Have a great day.

***Click here to listen to this episode or visit henekawatkisporter.com/teypodcast to listen to others. You can find vides on my YouTube Channel here.