070: Avoid the #1 Enemy of Excellence and Learn How to Leave Your Legacy with Aaron Walker

e when I was in the seventh grade, I brought home a C on my report.

[00:16:14] Card. Judy Bell was the English teacher, and she was so hard. This lady, my paper had these red lines all over it. It was unbelievable at how you, you can listen to me talk until I wasn’t really good grammatically or in English at all. I brought home a C on my report card and my mom said never again.

[00:16:33] I said, What do you mean never again? I said, This is a hard class. I said, That’s average. And she said, Yeah, that’s just as close to the bottom as it is the top, and you’re above average. You can do better than above average. And it really instilled in me this desire that we don’t have to do a lot to be above average.

[00:16:52] So if you’re hearing me today, it’s like you have so many opportunities. You have so many chances to get involved in accountability groups, mastermind groups, peer advisory groups, civic organizations. Surround yourself with competent, trusted people that you can aspire to, that you can reach up, get in a safe environment where you can let that facade down, where you can be vulnerable and transparent.

[00:17:17] And that scares those words, scare people to death. But I just want you to know. Real strength begins at the intersection of vulnerability and transparency. The place that you go, Hey, I don’t have it all together in this spot, right? We are all knuckleheads. There’s so many areas that we do good in, but we all have those blind spots, right?

[00:17:37] We have superpowers, we have kryptonite, but we also have blind spots. In the blind spots will invariably trip you. See, you can’t see it or it wouldn’t be a blind spot. So you’ve gotta have people that you regularly talk to, that you regularly are sharing with so that they can point out. I had a buddy of mine call me out one day, we’ve been friends 45 years, and he said, I heard you embellish a story the other day.

[00:18:00] And I said, I didn’t embellish anything. And he goes, Yeah, you did. I heard you tell this guy, you’ve been all over South America fishing. I said, I have. He said, No, you haven’t. You’ve been down there twice. And I said, Well, that’s all over. He goes, That’s not all over. You fish the Amazon chain, you fished about 10 miles of the 4,000 mile Amazon chain.

[00:18:19] He said, The reason you said that is you wanted that guy to think you were a big deal.

[00:18:23] Zach White: Mmm.

[00:18:24] Aaron Walker: And man, it pissed me off, Zach really, when he said that. But then I started to evaluate and why I said it, You know why I said it? I wanted that guy to think I was a big

[00:18:32] deal.

[00:18:34] right? And that’s a blind spot. And so I had to start getting more. With the way I depict things he said otherwise, who’s gonna ever believe you when they find out that you’re embellishing stories, they never know if it’s this way or that way. And so, listen, I could stand here the remainder of the interview and tell you blind spots that I have, right? Cuz I’ve been in a mastermind group now for 25 years, every week for 25 years.

[00:19:00] And it has allowed me an opportunity to be able to go, Hey, I’m good in these areas and I can serve. But over. I need some support. Like I don’t know how to do this.

[00:19:11] Zach White: I’ll share one of my blind spots instead then Aaron, So people don’t think it’s just about big A, I resonate with the comment your mom gave you about the c in my household. My mom was very clear. Zachary, you have one job. And your job is school. You may not have a side job earning anything if you’re not bringing home straight A’s.

[00:19:31] And you know, my home was all about academics. And I remember one time having a conversation with my mom about my grades, and I did earn straight A’s all through school and was valedictorian and all this. But I asked her one time like, Mom, what? What if I did bring home? , 

[00:19:46] Because I think I had a class that was on the bubble and I got a little nervous. You know, what happens if I bring home a B? And she told me, Well honey, it has nothing to do with how much I love you or anything else. It’s just I know that you’re capable of straight A’s. You’re incredibly smart and God’s gifted you with this incredible brain.

[00:20:04] And so for you to not get as. Means that you’re not doing your best. It means that you’re leaving your potential on the table. And that’s not how we live. That’s not how we do it. And it, it really wasn’t a long conversation. It was a really quick thing, but I had this, really great thing taught to me to show up and do my best.

[00:20:22] Well, that translated to a lot of confidence in school. I was smart, et cetera. And then that positive became a huge blind spot for me growing up where. I placed my identity in my intelligence, and I built this fixed mindset around, what it meant to be smart and needing to always be the smartest person in the room and many contexts, and totally missed the fact that perfection and, and the paralysis that that creates.

[00:20:55] And, uh, and, and honestly the ego that came with some of that, that plagued me. And I remember being in a leadership training. week long leadership training in my career at Whirlpool. And we got to the final day and there was a feedback, a really authentic feedback session with everybody in your group.

[00:21:17] And this one gentleman in the training with me, Aaron, said, Zach, it’s been amazing to get to know you and you really. Like a super smart guy, but I don’t really feel like I know you at all because you’re just too perfect. you always have to come across like you have it all together and that you didn’t actually open up.

[00:21:37] I don’t feel like I actually saw any part of you this whole week, and it crushed me. I felt like, how is that possible? And honestly didn’t wanna receive it at all. You mentioned you’re just kind of pissed you off for me this. It just, I got numb. It was like this. How is that possible? And I’m so thankful for that moment.

[00:21:57] Zach White: So Aaron, 

[00:21:59] Aaron Walker: You know the truth is though, and I bet your mom’s answer would’ve been this if you had brought home all Cs, but she knew Zach was giving her best, that would’ve been fine. If she knew you were giving your best. See, that’s what it is in business like we’re not gonna all succeed financially at the same level, but the guys that I coach all the time are the guys in the Mastermind all the time.

[00:22:22] I tell ’em the things to do and then a week later they go, Well, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do this, or I tried it for six weeks and it didn’t work. I said, Six weeks I wear a shirt longer than six weeks. Like, you gotta be consistent. And that’s what it is. When you surround yourself with accountability, it’s like, Man, I wanna see you busting it.

[00:22:40] I wanna see you going for it. Robin and I started our first business when I was 19 years old. She was 18, two weeks outta high school. She turns 18 in March. We get married in June, two weeks after she graduated, and I set her down to our kitchen table, this little condo we bought for $19,500. And I said, Rob and. We can’t mess this up, like you come from a family broker than mine and we can never mess this up. We worked around the. Like literally around the clock and before we had kids, we were at the store at night. We were handing out flyers in the day, flyers on windshields at Kroger’s parking lot. We would send out messages.

[00:23:19] I mean, it was constant, like I’ve literally shaved in the sink and changed clothes and sponge baths. In the stock room and open the store the next day. See, that level of determination doesn’t exist anymore. You can’t hardly get people to work and they wonder why they’re not successful. So if you’re hearing my voice today, determine what it is that you want first, which is a whole nother podcast interview within itself.

[00:23:45] But most people, Zach, don’t know what they want. We’ve got to be proactive in our life. We can’t be reactive. We can’t just be going out there getting bigger, better, shinier, faster, Just gimme. That’s not gonna satisfy you. You’ve gotta really align with what your zone of genius is. Not your zone of competence, but your zone of genius.

[00:24:04] You’ve gotta do what really gives you energy. And I can’t imagine 43 years now, I’ve been self-employed. I can’t imagine punching the clock, doing something I hate so desperately figuring out a way I can’t wait till Friday gets here so I can have the weekend. Like, listen, if you’re hearing my voice today, stop doing that.

[00:24:25] Figure out a way to change that. Life is too fragile. In my book view from the top, I wrote one column, one chapter about uh, being blindside. See, we don’t realize the frailty of life. We don’t realize how quickly our life can change, and it’s too short in order to live in a miserable environment where you have golden handcuffs and you do something that you despise each and every day.

[00:24:50] So first exercise. Is to figure out what it is that you want. I mean, sit down. Literally, I wrote a document called What Do I Want? Be sure and email me, or at the end of the interview, we’ll give you a website. You can get that document for free, but go through it and say, Where do I wanna live? How much do I wanna make?

[00:25:09] What do I want to give away? Like what is it exactly that I want? And then you’ll know when you’ve.

[00:25:16] Zach White: That’s so beautiful and. Would you be open to sharing the accident story from 2001? Cause I think in terms of the fragility of life and being blindsided, there’s no, better moment to talk about how quickly things can shift and how to overcome. But yeah, tell us about that.

[00:25:34] Aaron Walker: And it did. Man, things were so good. Like when I sold out to the Fortune 500, I was 27. I took about a year and a half off, got bored, gained 50 pounds, went back, bought the company that I started with when I was 13, we grew it about four times the size it was. I was working three days a week. Uh, my partner was working the other three days a week.

[00:25:56] We had a beautiful home here in Nashville. Fancy cars, kids in private school, you know, it’s all the stuff, right? I’m painting a picture so you can understand what I’m talking about. We had a place on the beach with a couple of partners and it was like, pinch me, this is my life. it’s hard to believe I was 40 years old and, We go to our church every Wednesday morning to pray with our pastor, for our families and for our church.

[00:26:21] And I had just left there seven 30 August Spurs, 2001, headed to the office. And uh, there was a guy across in a four lane highway to catch a local bus. And he didn’t look my way and just didn’t see me. And I ran over him and. I won’t take you through all that horrible experience. But, uh, three days after, the accident, the Vanderbilt Trauma Unit called me and they said, uh, Mr.

[00:26:47] Walker, he didn’t make it. His name was Enrique. He was 77 years old. And, uh, he had been warned countless times not to travel alone. He just didn’t see you. And so, uh, I sold the business. I retired, for the third time. My wife said, I’ve retired more in the law, allows I retired and I said, I’ve been chasing money my whole life.

[00:27:09] So I took a five year break. I didn’t do anything for five years. my wife came to me again. My wife’s been a trooper, Robin and I will celebrate 43 years of marriage, uh, next June. she came to me one day and she said, Listen, you know, our kids and our future grandkids, they’re gonna need you.

[00:27:27] And you’re not really doing anybody any favors by not working by disengaging. James Ryle called me on a Saturday morning. He was a promise keep speaker. He was in our mastermind group. Dave Ramsey had invited me years ago to be in his mastermind group, and uh, we met in Dave’s office every, Wednesday from about seven o’clock on to about eight 30.

[00:27:53] And, uh, God, really, his timing is always perfect because it was right after the accident when he invited me to join that group. And, um, I needed that group. I needed people around me, but I couldn’t get over this thing. Like I couldn’t forgive myself and I just couldn’t work through it. And James called me and said, uh, says, and Isaiah chapter 41, Take the chains from around your neck and move on.

[00:28:18] He said, It’s time you were moving on, and it really rattled me. It really got my attention, so I was able to work through that. You know, You don’t get over killing somebody, right? God gives you the grace that you learn how to deal with it. And so it was a paradigm shift in my life. It was a time in my life to where I said, you know, nobody, would’ve cared that I’d had any measure of success.

[00:28:40] And I started thinking about my legacy cuz we’re all creating a legacy, whether you’re doing it intentionally or not, you’re creating a legacy. And I said, if I had been killed that day, what would my legacy?

[00:28:52] Zach White: Mm.

[00:28:54] Aaron Walker: And I said, You know what? It would be, it would be poor kid from Nashville, Tennessee makes enough money to retire at age 27 and nobody cares.

[00:29:05] Zach White: Ooh.

[00:29:08] Aaron Walker: And I thought, Man, that is not what I want my legacy to be. I said, I want Zach’s life to be better as a result of having interacted with me. I wanna be the giver, not the taker. And I say, God, you’ll gimme another chance. I’ll turn the ship around and I’ll start giving and helping, encouraging and edifying and teaching.

[00:29:29] And that’s what we’ve done. So we started Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind. Today we have 150 members. We’re in five different countries around the world, and God’s really given me a vision to grow it. And so we’re helping very, very successful people and people that want to be success. accomplish their dreams and help them grow in every area of their life.

[00:29:52] And so each and every day I get an opportunity to get up and train and teach and encourage and help people avoid the landmines that I’ve had to go through and show them that we can be the giver and not the taker.

[00:30:06] Zach White: I’m brought to tears at this part of, and nobody cares. Really resonates for me, Erin. could you give a word of encouragement if any engineering leader listening has a weight, has those chains around their life may, maybe it’s not at the level of having, you know, killed someone in an accident, but the regret or the shame that they might carry from something in their past.

[00:30:32] What was it? What was it that, when that voice was spoken into you and you let go of that, that self forgiveness? Can you just talk through that? Maybe encourage

[00:30:41] Aaron Walker: Golly. That’s the part. It’s funny, you and I have never talked about this. That’s the part that was the hardest was it wasn’t even my fault, like I don’t drink. And I wasn’t on a cell phone and I wasn’t speeding, like I wasn’t doing anything wrong, right? If I had been, I probably never would’ve gotten over, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but forgiving myself.

[00:31:06] I told my buddy, I said, Man, if I had just jumped on the interstate this morning and gone down the interstate, and rather than Gallatin Pike, he said, Yeah, you know what might have happened? You might have hit a school bus and killed 50. And I’m like, Yeah, you’re right. He said, You can’t do that. Here’s what I come to realize.

[00:31:24] This is one of those moments right now for the interview. Listen, you can allow whatever devastation in your life to continue holding you back and defining who you are as an individual. Or you can go, You know what? That’s who I was. That’s what. It was the financial devastation. It was that affair. It was that substance abuse.

[00:31:46] It was whatever it was. But today is the day like I’m declaring. Today is the day that for no longer will I allow that to identify me. Or you can continue to muddle in it. You can crawl under your desk in a fetal position. You can suck your thumb balled up in a ball. You can do whatever you want, or you can go out and live your life like God created you to live.

[00:32:09] You just gotta go. You know what? This is who I was and this is who I am today. And my wife came to me. She grabbed both shoulders and she looked at me and she said, We need. Like, We need you to get over this. And I was like, Man, she’s right because she didn’t sign up for this. My kids didn’t sign up for this.

[00:32:26] My peers and colleagues didn’t sign up for this. I gotta bring my best self in order. Nobody can be me but me. And so I said, I’ve gotta make a decision consciously today. So if you’re listening to my voice today, I don’t care what it is. If you’ve killed somebody, whether you’ve had an affair, whether you’ve had drug addictions, alcohol addictions, whatever it is today, that’s not who you are today.

[00:32:49] That’s who you were. So we went through an exercise. I normally don’t share this, but I’m gonna share it. I feel. A friend of mine told me that there’s an exercise he did because I couldn’t get over it. I, I, like, I, I couldn’t let this thing go. And he said, Here’s what we did. and he said, I suggest you write a letter to yourself with this offense.

[00:33:10] Whatever it is, you fill in the blank. And he said, Get together with friends. And as I’ve mentioned a number of times in this interview already, I’m Christian by faith, so I got together with six of my friends. Robin wrote a letter and I wrote a letter, and it was February 23rd of a given year. And we burned those letters.

[00:33:32] Nobody read the letter. I, I wrote the letter, put it in an envelope. My wife wrote a letter, put it in an envelope, and we burned it. We had praise and worship music. We had prayer time. We said never again. Never again are we gonna deal with this issue. It is not going to define us. So I can point back to February 23rd of that year that I let it go and it has so relieved me.

[00:33:57] It has so given me the ability to point back and goes That’s, that’s was then, and this is now. See, this is. Not a trial run. This is not a practice run. This is our life that we’re living right now. And are you gonna squander

[00:34:11] it or are you gonna maximize it? And I just consciously made the choice that I was gonna go for it.

[00:34:17] And I wanna tell you, man, these past two decades have been the best two decades of my life. I don’t wanna repeat the school,

[00:34:24] Zach White: Yeah.

[00:34:24] Aaron Walker: I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna do it again, right? I learned the lesson and that’s the reason I do these interviews. I want these other people to let this stuff go, man. Go burn.

[00:34:34] Zach White: appreciate you sharing that, and I love when you take a bold action along with the choice and the declaration of a new identity. And in the spirit of things I’ve never shared, one of my moments, people who know my story, I, I divorced as an adult and had a really, really challenging time right after that, in depression and embarrassment and shame.

[00:34:58] You know, I allowed all of the weight of that to become my identity for a period and my moment of decision that I wasn’t gonna let that divorce define me. I took. Wedding band from my first marriage. It was wintertime, and went out to the St. Joseph River here where I live. And same thing, I, it took that ring with me and had a time of prayer and fasting and just a, a declaration of the fact that this was my past and not my future.

[00:35:26] And I, I hurled that ring out onto the ice and I could hear it. It was a totally silent morning, really early, still dark out. I could hear the ring kind of clink, clink. Click like disappear and you know, it’s at the bottom of the river now. But, it’s just powerful. So I hope the engineering leader listening is encouraged to, to make that choice and to start living it.

[00:35:48] One more thing I wanna get your experience and expertise on before we wrap today. And this is just so powerful. We probably could end the interview 20 minutes ago. It’d be powerful. But you mentioned accountability. Several times today. And I feel like even with my clients, and we have a lot that we do in the spirit of accountability, but for many of us, I don’t feel like we really understand what true accountability is and its power and effect and it’s leverage in our life.

[00:36:17] And if anything, sometimes it’s seen. Something that is a crutch or it’s because I’m weak that I need this, and it’s like, I wish I could just do it on my own. I don’t need all these other people. Can you just speak to accountability and really what that looks like and its true power and effect in our lives.

[00:36:35] Uh,

[00:36:35] Aaron Walker: you gotta make a determination of whether it’s gonna be real or a facade, Just under 30 years now, I’ve been meeting with an accountability group, Chris Freeman, You, Morris, Randy Butler. We meet six 30 every Monday morning and we have been now for just under 30 years. Uh, this particular group we’ve been meeting for 15 years.

[00:37:00] I’ve worn out two other groups and we get together every single week and there’s nothing in my. They don’t know nothing. They know my finances. They know about intimate relationships. They know about my thought life. They know about my superpowers, the kryptonite, the blind spots, everything in my life.

[00:37:20] Aaron Walker: They know about everything. And we meet every Monday, six 30. We get together, we do life together. We also live in, uh, close proximity of each other. We vacation together. we’ve been friends 25, 30 years, and some of you’re like, Man, I don’t even, I don’t even know anybody that long, but I didn’t either at the. See, the important thing is that you get started and it’s not gonna look exactly like I do it. you have to design it. But what I wanted to do, Zach, was to be better. Like I knew I couldn’t be better on my own because you don’t know what you don’t know.

[00:37:56] And you need people around you challenging you.

[00:37:59] And oftentimes men are confronted with things that women are not. Women are confronted with things that men are not. So for me, I can’t have, mixed gender. And it’s gotta be all men because I need to talk openly and candid and outta respect. I can only do that with men. women are listening to me today, get a women’s accountability.

[00:38:19] I don’t recommend that you have accountability with the opposite sex. I think that there’s so many things that you need to talk about that that wouldn’t be really a safe move. A lot of people say, Well, my wife or my husband holds me accountable. That’s okay to a degree, But there’s times in Robin and I, as I’ve mentioned earlier, are celebrating 43 years.

[00:38:38] There’s times that I need to go to these men and go, Robin doesn’t get it. Like she doesn’t get it. She’s not a. Robin and I talk about things oftentimes, and she wants to understand. She’s very supportive, but she’s not a man. She doesn’t understand how men think. I don’t understand how women think she needs women accountability partners.

[00:38:58] Right? Because I know I drive her crazy. I’m a high D on the disc profile. I’m I’ve red line all the time, and she doesn’t understand that. It’s like I don’t get that. So my point is, is that everything in my life is an open book to these three guys and they call me out, they encourage me or they hold my arms up when I’m tired.

[00:39:19] They lend me their strength, they lend me their support. they throw the flag on my bs. They’re like, Hey, no, this is not right. I’ve known you too long. If I need to go to them and say, I’m thinking about doing this, they have all the history. I don’t have to catch ’em up. They know all the history and they can say, No, this hasn’t worked well for you in the past, or You should do this.

[00:39:38] Here’s the thing. And it’s very scary. Men, primarily, it’s very scary, but you gotta make a decision. You gotta either make a decision to hide behind your ego and pride and not let anybody in, or you’ve gotta make a decision to let that veil down, be vulnerable, be transparent, for the benefit of getting better.

[00:39:59] And so I just elected, I want to be better. I wanna maximize it. I don’t wanna get to the end, Zach, and lay there on my deathbed and go, Man, I should have done this. I should have done that. I wished I had been more vulnerable. Nobody lays on their death bed and goes, Man, I wish that, I had been more private.

[00:40:17] I wish nobody had known me. I wish nobody, nobody does that, right? We all say we should have let people in. I guess the bottom line is, is that I wanna live life to its fullest, and I can’t do that alone. Isolation is the enemy, and if you’re gonna maximize life, you can go faster alone, but you can go further together.

[00:40:39] Zach White: my best friends, and I use the phrase being fully known as our identifier around that. It’s just like I wanna always have at least a few people in my inner circle who I’m fully known with. And that’s the exactly the spirit of what you’re talking about. And I can tell you isolation, you mentioned at the beginning of our interview the enemy of excellence.

[00:41:00] And it for me, I. Was without a doubt, one of the key root causes to my ultimate demise in my first marriage and the failures that defined the first chapter of my life, which is now ancient history. But, um, Woo. Okay, Aaron, I know everybody’s gonna wanna get connected with you. And before I ask you my last question today, can you just share with us what’s the best place for those who wanna explore iron sharpens iron and view from the top?

[00:41:26] Where can we go to just get more from you and explore this amazing work that you.

[00:41:32] Aaron Walker: Yeah, we’re on all the social media platforms, but the easiest thing to do, Zach, would be to go to view from the top.com, like Victor View, view from the top.com. My phone number’s there, my email address. Somebody said Your phone number. I’m like, well, if people are gonna call me, they need my number.

[00:41:50] So, uh, my phone number’s there, my email is there. Uh, all of our social media platforms are there and uh, yeah. Reach out. check us out. Listen, a lot of you have heard this today and this is such a foreign concept. You’re like, Man, I don’t even know where to begin. I would suggest going to view from the top.com.

[00:42:08] There’s an application there. You’re not bound to it. It’s not making any formal commitment, but it allows me and you to talk together, right? And there’s never any arm twisting and high pressure. I don’t believe in that, cuz I want people in our community that want to be there. But if you just wanna learn more, And you’re testing the waters and you say, Hey, this sounds like a good way for me to maximize my life.

[00:42:30] reach out. Let’s just have a conversation, but fill out that application. I’ll call you and talk to you and we’ll see what it looks like. So reach out to us. View from the top.com.

[00:42:39] Zach White: Please do it for engineering leader listening. If your heartstrings are tugging or your mind, the wheels are turning, Don’t overthink this. Just take action. To Aaron’s point, there’s no commitment, and I cannot speak highly enough about Aaron, his leadership and his team, and the work they’re doing at isi.

[00:42:56] It’s tremendous. So with that, I’ll always end in this place and love to hear where you take it. That great engineer. Just like great coaching and the work that you do. I believe that, questions lead, answers follow, and if we want better answers in our life, let’s pay attention to the questions that we’re asking ourselves.

[00:43:19] So for the engineering leader who’s been with us in this whole chat today, who wants to experience that next level of, of success in their career, but. Leave that legacy in, in their life that you talked about, what would be the best question that you would lead them with today?

[00:43:38] Aaron Walker: Yeah, you’ve gotta ask yourself two questions. first of all, do you have the right. Do you have a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. Very important. You even touched on that earlier in the interview. And second of all is that we’re afraid of failure. And I’m like, I don’t know what everybody’s so afraid of.

[00:43:56] You know? It’s like, Hey, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We’ll do something else. And I just say fear missing an opportunity more than your fear failure. I mean, I could lay in bed at night and think, would it have. And I just want to go out there and try to accomplish the dreams and the goals that God has placed on my heart.

[00:44:15] And so I would ask myself, what is it that I really want? Do I have the growth mindset and am I willing to do the reps? And if you’re willing to do that, those are some of the hardest questions that you could ask yourself. But just. Have the can do attitude. My mom would always say, Can’t, couldn’t do it and could did it all.

[00:44:34] And I was like, That’s me. I’m fixing to do this thing and I’m not afraid to fail. Fear missing an opportunity more than your fear failure, and you too can go out there and have a successful and significant

[00:44:46] Zach White: Ooh, that’s so good. I really appreciate it. Well, Aaron, I just wanna acknowledge you again for your generosity, your incredible work, and the legacy that you are leaving. We were chatting before we hit record today, that there’s thousands of interviews that you have brought your wisdom and your heart into the world, and it’s such a gift.

[00:45:05] So thanks for sharing that with me and the happy engineers today. I can’t thank

[00:45:09] Aaron Walker: Thanks a lot, Zach. It was fun buddy. We’ll see.