Aaron Walker is without question a veteran entrepreneur. Starting his first business at 18 and selling to a Fortune 500 company nine short years later demonstrates Aaron’s passion for succeeding. Unwilling to rest on past success Aaron started, bought and sold twelve successful companies over the past 40 years. Having a strong desire for personal development has kept Aaron in a weekly mastermind group for more than a decade with Dave Ramsey, Dan Miller, Ken Abraham, and seven other notable Nashvillians.
Today Aaron spends the majority of his time helping men grow in success and significance as President and Founder of view from the top, a premier life and business coaching resource, and Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Aaron Walker about helping men grow in success and significance.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- How the power of the insight and perspective of others enlightens you.
- How helping others with what you’ve learned can bring greater success.
- How there is a difference between financial success and significance.
- How people learn through failure, not success.
- How writing a book presents you as an authority.
Connect with Aaron:
Links Mentioned:
viewfromthetop.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@VFTCoach
Facebook
facebook.com/AaronWalkerVFTT
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/aaronwalkerviewfromthetop
Rob Kosberg:
All right. Hey, welcome, everybody. Rob Kosberg here. Excited to bring you another episode of the Publish Promote Profit Podcast. I have a great guest for you today, somebody I think you’re absolutely going to love and you’re going to learn a ton from, and it’s Mr. Aaron Walker. Aaron is, without question, a veteran entrepreneur, starting his first business at 18 and selling to a Fortune 500 company nine short years later. That’s pretty cool. Unwilling to rest on that success, Aaron started, bought, and sold 12 successful companies over the past 40 years. Having a strong desire for personal development has kept Aaron in a weekly mastermind group for more than a decade with some of the greats of Nashville: Dave Ramsey, which you and I were talking about just a moment ago, and I want to hear more about that, Ken Abraham, and other notable Nashvillians. Today, Aaron spends the majority of his time helping men grow in success and significance as president and founder of View from the Top. You can see if you’re watching this on video, as opposed to podcast, you can see right behind him is a reference to his mastermind group, Iron Sharpens Iron. So, Aaron, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today.
Aaron Walker:
Rob, I appreciate that, buddy. Thank you for having me.
Rob Kosberg:
There’s a lot to talk about, and of course, I want to talk about your book. I want to talk about your success. We started talking about your relationship, going back many years, with Dave Ramsey and how that led to a mastermind that you were a part of and then, of course, your own. I wonder if you can just, for a moment, kind of talk through the history of that and bring us up to date a little bit. I think people will find it intriguing.
Aaron Walker:
You know what’s funny about that? I have to take you back a little bit further, because it’s a funny story. So back in the early ’90s, I had bought a new retail outlet, and I had stopped by Luby’s Cafeteria to have breakfast at the Chamber of Commerce. They had about 20 people in their Chamber of Commerce. And that day, there was a guest speaker there starting a new radio program housed right here in Nashville, Tennessee. His name was Dave Ramsey. So, he got up and was talking about this radio show, and it was very intriguing because this guy was full of energy, and I’m like, “Man, I want to meet this guy.” So, I went up and shook hands, and I said, “Hey, I’ve got a retail outlet right down the road. You want to come check it out?” He goes, “I’d love to.” He got in his car, followed me to the office, came in and looked at it, and he goes, “This place is amazing.” He said, “I wonder if you would be one of my sponsors and sponsor my radio show?” I said, “No, I don’t even know you. I just met you five minutes ago, and you’re already wanting me to sponsor your show.” He started laughing, and he said, “Hey, why don’t you try it for free for one week. Every day, I’ll do a live spot, and if it adds value to you, then we’ll talk about it.” I said, “Well, hey, I can’t lose at that.” So, I tried it every day. Rob, three days in, I called him, and he answered the phone. I mean, there was nobody working for him but him and two other people. I said, “Hey, these people have drank the Kool-Aid. I don’t know what it is that you’re doing, but they are fired up about this financial show that you’re doing.” I said, “Sign me up. I want to be one of your sponsors.” He said, “Well, you’ll have to sign a year contract.” I said, “What? I met you three days ago, and you want me to sign a year contract?” I think he was just pressing it. You know how Dave is. So, man, I said, “Dag gummit.” I was scared to say no, and so I said yes. I signed an annual contract, and I went 21 consecutive years sponsoring his show. Well, a couple of years after that, I was at a MercyMe concert in Nashville at The Curb Center, and I didn’t even know Dave was there. He was sitting a few rows ahead of me, and he got up for intermission, and he walked back, and I said, “Hey.” I said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “Well, I’m doing what you’re doing here. I’m listening to MercyMe.” He went and got his popcorn for he and Sharon, and he was on his way back, and he said, “Hey, I want to talk to you tomorrow. Give me a call.” He said, “I want you to join my mastermind group.” I said, “Join your what?” He said, “My mastermind group.” I said, “Dave,” and I whispered, I said, “I don’t even know what a mastermind group is.” He started laughing, and he said, “Just come to the office.” So, Wednesday morning, I show up seven o’clock, and there’s 10 people sitting around his conference table, and I’m like, “I don’t even want to be here. Dave’s going to be all up in my face. He’s going to be asking me personal questions, and I don’t even want to answer it.” That went on every Wednesday morning for about three months. Then finally, these guys started opening up. They started sharing personal problems, and cash-flow problems, and marital problems, and problems with their kids. I said, “They’re more screwed up than I am.” I said, “I’m in a safe place.” So, man, we met every Wednesday morning for the next 12 years in Dave’s office, and to be honest with you, it radically changed my life.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow. What a story! Every Wednesday. So, this was a weekly mastermind.
Aaron Walker:
Yeah, every Wednesday, an hour and a half. A weekly mastermind for 12 years, we met in his office.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding? Can you tell me a little bit about the format of those early days and what that was like? Because I sense that you were all just figuring it out initially.
Aaron Walker:
Yeah, we were. When I first went in, Dave and Ron Dole and Dan Miller, Dan Miller has 48 Days to the Work You Love. Ron Dole was with an agency and then Dave had just started the radio show a few years prior, and he was trying to figure it out. Today, I don’t even know. I think he’s on 700 radio stations. They’ve got about 12 million listeners a month now but at that time, I don’t think he had 12 listeners. Dave does a devotion. It’s mandatory if you work there. The first devotion that I did for him, he invited me to do the devotion. We did it on the dining room table at his office, and there were three people there. I was like, “Here we go. This is what you call from the infancy stages,” but in that mastermind group, it was a little bit loose initially, but we would go in, and we would kind of share a win. Like, if we had a win during the week, we would share it as a word of encouragement. And the next thing we did, we would read books. I’ll be honest with you, I’m going to be very vulnerable here to your audience today, but when I first went into this group, this is decades ago now, they said, “We’re going to read a book every single month,” and I said, “I don’t like to read.” Dave goes, “I don’t care if you like to read or not. You’re going to start reading.” I’m like, “Here we go. It’s already started.” This guy was going to blow me up. He said, “Do you think you just learn through osmosis? Do you just think you wake up smarter?” I’m like, “No.” He goes, “Well, get to reading. Here’s the book we’re going to read.” Well, since then, I’ve read thousands of books, and it really lit something inside of me to really want to learn. So, in this, we would go around, and we would take turns leading this week’s reading, and so we would go around the room. Then invariably, it would come back to a central focus around one of the men. Like, you and your wife maybe had a disagreement, or you’re having a challenge with one of your children, or it could have been financial difficulties, or whatever it is. There’s a whole plethora of problems out there. It would invariably end around one of us, and we would talk through it, and then these people would give us feedback. Like, if it was me and it was around a certain topic, maybe with marriage, and then other guys in the group, some of the guys had been married longer than me. To date, now I’ve been married 41 years, but that wasn’t the case then. I would get feedback, and I would make some boneheaded comment and Ron Dole would speak up, and he’d go, “You idiot. If you say that, you’re going to end up on the couch, is where you’re going to end up. This is what you need to do,” because he and Barbie had been married longer than me. So, he would give me good advice, and I would come back, and I would go, “Ron, I did what you said, and it worked. I was blown away.” See, the value of being in these masterminds is the perspective. We only have one perspective. We only have one life filter. We only have one way we’ve done it. No matter how hard we want to see it a different way, we can’t. So, we need the insight and the perspective of other people to enlighten us. That’s where the counsel of the multitude comes in. Unbiased, trusted advisors that have a common purpose in mind: to help you accomplish your goal and dream. It would go on and on and on. I could give you countless examples. Time doesn’t allow today, but how these guys would breathe into me. They would give me help. But I would them as well. They may not have been in a circumstance and situation that I was familiar with. So, listen, we were designed to be in community. We weren’t designed to live in isolation. Isolation is the enemy to excellence. If we really want to take our life to the next level, we have to surround ourselves with competent people that can help you get there. It just radically changed my life.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Congratulations on that. It’s a story of you stepping out of your comfort zone. It’s a story of you being surrounded by men that both you helped and were tremendously helped by. Maybe take us to your book, View from the Top, as well. Take us to, Iron Sharpens Iron. You’ve had a lot of success. You’ve bought and sold many companies. A lot of people at your stage of career and business would maybe be out on the boat maybe more often than in a mastermind. Why are you doing it? Tell me about what ISI or Iron Sharpens Iron is, and what’s the premise of it?
Aaron Walker:
Here we go again. I’ve got to be honest with you all because you’re probably not expecting the answer, I’m going to give you. So, 10 years ago, or 11 years ago now, I retired for the third and final time. My wife said I’ve retired more than the law allows. But I retired, and I said, “I’m done.” So, I went to the mastermind meeting with Dave and Dan and Ken Abraham and all those guys and I said, “I’m done.” We owned a construction company, and I sold the construction company, and I said, “I’m finished.” Well, they said, “Well, what’s next?” I said, “I’ll tell you what’s next. I’m going to St. Martin down in the Caribbean, and I’m going to buy one of those little places on the beach, and I’m going to rock myself into an oblivion.” Dan Miller leaned over the table with that short, stubby, little finger, and he pointed it at me, and he said, “That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard you say.” Well, I started laughing. Well, nobody laughed. I was trying to make a joke. Nobody laughed. I said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Man, I’m tired. I’ve been working since I was eight years old. I’ve worked every day. I’ve owned a bunch of companies, and I’m ready to be done.” He said, “Aaron, you’re 50. You’re just now in your prime, and you need to help other people, you and Robin.” At that time, we’d been married 30 years. “You’ve owned 12 companies. You need to encourage and help other people accomplish the same.” I thought, “Man, he just hit me with a left hook.” I thought about it. He said, “Come to the Sanctuary and do a coaching program. You need to coach other people.” I said, “I don’t want anything to do with coaching. I’m tired, Dan.” He goes, “Well, rest a little while, but then re-engage.” Dave looked at me, and he said, “Come do EntreLeadership Mastery. I’ll gift it to you.” Oh, I done let the cat out of the bag. Don’t anybody tell Dave that I told y’all that he gifted it to me. It was a $10,000 gift. So, I went. Rob, I loved it. Dan texted me. We all live here in Nashville, and about the third night in, Dan texted me. He goes, “Aaron, did you see the people at your table leaning in listening to your stories?” I said, “Well, maybe I’m just a good storyteller.” He said, “You’ve been married for a long time. You’ve owned a bunch of companies. You’ve got a great foundation. The people need to hear what you’ve got to say.” I’m Christian by faith, and you know, us Christians, we pray about everything. So, I went home with Robin. We prayed about it. I said, “Maybe I need to give this a try.” So, I came back, and I told him, “Okay, I’m going to give it a try.” So, two guys came up to me at EntreLeadership, Matt Miller and Brett Barnhart. One lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One lives in Texas. They said, “We want to hire you to be our coach.” I went to Dave and I said, “Dave, this is your venue, and these guys want to hire me.” He said, “Well, go for it.” I said, “Seriously?” He said, “Yeah.” So, I started coaching these guys and loved it. Rob, I’m just going to tell you, man, I loved coaching these guys. See, what we take for granted and what we do as ordinary is extraordinary to others, and we forget that sometimes. I started coaching these guys, and somebody told me, they said, “Hey, you need to advertise your business.” I said, “Well, I’ve been in bricks and mortar my whole life. I don’t know how to advertise this virtual business.” They said, “You need to get on a podcast.” I said, “What is a podcast,” and they said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I said, “I don’t know what a podcast is.” They said, “Aaron, you’re living in the dark ages,” and I said, “I don’t know what it is.” Well, that was eight years ago, and they said, “There’s a new guy that’s doing really well. His name is John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs on Fire. You need to get on his show.” I reached out to him. He had me on. When that show released, I had 15 one-on-one clients immediately. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” So, I kept doing podcast interviews but what I discovered was is I couldn’t coach everybody. That will kill you dead. So, I started a mastermind group. I said, “I’ll fill up one group.” I filled up a group. I did the next interview, Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income. Filled up two groups in a 30-minute interview. And I went, “Oh my gosh, what do I do now?” That was 20 groups ago, and now God just keeps sending us amazing people. We’ve built a community that’s unbelievable. We have women in some groups, men in groups. I’m just telling you, man, I’m having the time of my life helping people to achieve their goals and dreams. It’s just been something that I couldn’t have designed, but we keep getting these amazing people that are joining our mastermind. So that’s how it started. It wasn’t by design, and it wasn’t by choice. But I said, “Hey, I’ve got to do something with these folks.” Now we’re just building an incredible business, and it’s called Iron Sharpens Iron.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, congratulations. It doesn’t sound like you were retired for even one day based on the conversation.
Aaron Walker:
It didn’t feel like it either. My wife told me the other day, she said, “You’re working harder now than you’ve ever worked in our marriage.” I said, “Robin, I love this more than all the 12 other businesses that we’ve owned combined.” The reason is because of the transformational experience that is going on in the lives of other people, and it really keeps me motivated.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. So, tell me a little bit about it. You’re obviously a man of faith. Iron sharpens iron is a reference to a Biblical concept. What can somebody expect in it? Are we talking about help in every area of somebody’s life, from marriage and family and parenting? Do they come in with an idea of, “Aaron has sold 12 businesses; I want to learn how to grow and sell my business?” Give me an overview of what that looks like.
Aaron Walker:
I have to give you a little backstory, so you’ll understand. August 1st, 2001, 20 years ago, I was on my way to the office, and I ran over and killed a pedestrian on my way to the office. There was a real paradigm shift in my life that day, because my focus had been on me, my net worth, my connections, my network. It was about making another $100,000, getting a vacation home, a place on the beach, a bigger house. That day dawned on me how fragile life is. It’s one phone call with one accident. All of our lives are subject to change instantaneously. What I discovered through that process is that a few weeks after the accident, I sold my business. I retired the second time, and I said, “I’m done,” and I took a five-year hiatus. I didn’t do anything for five years. I went to counseling, had people around me to support me and to help me. It was a very, very dark time in my life. What I figured out was is that I had a great measure of success financially, but I had no significance. What I found out was is that people taught living a life of success and then significance. I even called Bob Buford, read his book, and I said, “I like the book, but I don’t agree with the premise. I think it can be success and significance.” So, I wrote a book called View from the Top, and in that it’s a little bit of a memoir. It tells my story a little bit, but it tells the principles of life by which I adhere to. I say that there’s got to be a measure of success, because broke people can’t help people financially and I want to help people.
Aaron Walker:
I hate it when people with money go, “Money’s not important.” I want to go, “Yes, it is. You’re a liar. It’s very important, but don’t make it your single focus. Don’t make it your god. Don’t make it the only reason you do what you do. Along the way, have your focus set on significance, bringing other people along, because you can be a mentor and a mentee. You can always reach back, and you can always strive to go forward.” I wanted to develop that concept with people, and now which I’ve been able to do successfully with thousands of people, to teach them this concept of go make money. I want you to make money. I’ll teach you to make money. I’ll help you make money, but at the same time, bring along others. Focus some energy and effort on helping other people. So, this ideal life, be successful, simultaneously being significant. The concept for me was, is that I almost came home. Years ago, prior to this revolution in my life, or revelation, that I had a pocket full of money, and I came home to a house full of strangers. What I did was is that I realized that I was spending the vast majority of my time making money, but I really wasn’t nurturing the relationships that mattered most, which was Robin, Brooke and Holly, my two daughters and my wife. They didn’t really care how much money I had. They wanted to spend time with me. I thought I need to work around the clock and buy bigger, better, shinier, faster things. Then that wreck brought me to the realization, was that we only get one go-through with those kids. We don’t get a do-over. We only have one opportunity to be all God called us to be for our wives or for your husband, whichever the case may be. Businesses are always going to be there. I can always make more money. I’ve always been able to start other companies and make more money, but I don’t get a second opportunity with the kids and with my wife. I just didn’t want to offer them on the altar of sacrifice for success. To answer the question is that 60% of our focus is professional, 30% is personal, and 10% is spiritual. So, I feel like those three areas can encompass every area of our life. So, we teach people to make money, but we also teach them to build boundaries. Like, hey, if somebody else is taking your little girl to piano recital, or somebody else is pitching ball with your little boy in the backyard, you’re going to grow to regret that at some point. You’re going to come home, and you’re really going to have nothing in common with your family. One day, you’re going to have plenty of money, but your kids are going to already have moved on. They’re not going to have time for you. You’re going to be ready, but they’re going to have already moved on. I don’t want people to have regrets. So, for our mastermind, it’s not niche specific. It’s life specific. We help you accomplish your goals and dreams in every area.
Rob Kosberg:
Is that kind of the premise of the book as well, View from the Top? Can you maybe just for a moment talk a little bit about it? I know it’s more biographical, but maybe talk a little bit about the inspiration of that book and kind of give us some overview of that.
Aaron Walker:
Well, here we go again, because it seems like everything in my life I don’t want to do, and I find myself doing it. So, at the mastermind with Dave Ramsey, Dave is very accomplished. By this time, he’s sitting to my right. He’s written 15 books. He’s selling millions of books a year. Dan Miller is sitting across the table. He’s written a dozen books. Ken Abraham is to my left. He’s one of the most prolific ghost authors on the planet. He’s got 105 books to his credit. Somebody said, “Big A, you need to write a book.” I’m like, “Who would read my book? We got all these authors in here.” Then Ken Davis, which is an author in his own right, he goes, “Now, wait a minute, Big A. You’re writing the book for the wrong reason. You’re not trying to measure up to Ken Abraham or Dan Miller or Dave Ramsey or any of the rest of us. You need to write a book because your story is unique. You’ve got a message to tell. These guys can’t tell your story, and there’s somebody that needs to read your book.” He said, “Don’t you want to change somebody’s life?” I said, “You’re dog gone right I do.” I spent the next 18 months writing my book, telling my story, giving inspiration, giving them a little bit of my past history, and giving them the inspiration to go out and accomplish things on their own. In the book, I teach. I mean, I barely graduated from high school. Everybody says, “Oh, well, you must have had a great education.” I came from a very poor family. I came from a family that we lost our house in bankruptcy when I was seven years old, a house my dad gave $6,500 for. I didn’t have anything. We were broker than a convict. We didn’t have anything, and I was able to make something out of myself with grit and determination and perseverance. The book is an inspirational book to help you realize, listen, if I did it, anybody could do it. So that was the reason that I wrote the book. I didn’t want to write the book, but I felt compelled and led to write the book. That’s what got me on that journey.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. I love also that so many things in your life are both a product of these relationships in the mastermind that you had with Dave and Ken and the others, and also that they were things you were initially resistant to. It’s funny that oftentimes success and significance is on the other side of some type of resistance that we have to go through in our life. Is that something that you noticed, not just in your life, but in the lives of the men you coach?
Aaron Walker:
If you think about it, it’s in everything, because we never learn through success. We only learn through failure, because if you were successful at it, you didn’t learn anything. You already knew how to do it. It’s the same way with going to the gym. I’ve lost 54 pounds in the past seven months, and it was very difficult to do that. I decided that I really needed to take care of myself. And when I first started going to the gym, I hired a trainer to work out with me. I couldn’t hardly do anything. Literally could not hardly do anything. He said, “Just get a couple of reps,” and I did. And that turned into three reps and four reps and five reps, and then three sets of eight, and then three sets of 10 and three sets of 12. And it’s the progression as I was moving the ball forward a little bit at a time, but there was resistance every single time. I would reach a threshold. I would bounce up against a glass ceiling. It’s like Gay Hendricks talks about in his book, The Big Leap. There’s always that place that we get to that we meet this resistance. Then when you push through that, you find out that there is life on the other side of that. There’s more opportunity on the other side of that, and there’s a greater education through that. If we never push through, we never push ourselves to the next limit. It’s like muscles have to be torn down before they can be rebuilt, and it takes numbers of reps to do that. We are fearful of tearing down the thing that is precluding us from going forward. I find that true in every area of my life. Like, if I’m not nervous, I’m probably not really trying anything that’s pushing the limits. When I’m nervous, I need help, I need assistance, I need encouragement, I need coaching, I know that on the other side of that there’s going to be something amazing. So honestly, I live my whole life scared to death all the time, because if you don’t, you’re never going to experience it to the fullest. If you’re always staying in a lane of comfort, you can never experience anything amazing.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s good. That’s a writer-downer right there. That’s a good one. I guess we’ve talked about where things are at right now with your mastermind and some of your business and a little bit of the book. But Publish Promote Profit is also about how your book has helped you to get more of what it is you’re trying to get. One of your best friends, Dave Ramsey, is maybe the poster child of that kind of success with the first book that he wrote and his radio show. Tell me about, View from the Top. How has View from the Top helped you to get your message out to people? How has it helped you to maybe attract people for ISI, et cetera?
Aaron Walker:
Well, thank you for that. I probably could have done a much better job with my book than I’ve done quite honestly. There, again, being totally transparent. The book has done good, but it could have done way, way better. We only have so much bandwidth, and we only have so much time that we can promote and do. The thing that’s been most beneficial for me is that, the book presents you as an authority. Whether you deserve that recognition or not, it does. It just presents you as an authority. So, it’s given me many opportunities to get onto venues that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. People consider you to be an expert if you’ve written a book. You may or may not be the expert, but they think you are. It’s presented an opportunity for me to speak. Many venues around the country today, you can’t even speak if you don’t have a book. They won’t even consider you. So, I would suggest that it’s important. The thing that it really helped me do also was to clarify my message. When you really start going through this, you really start thinking deeply about what it is that you’re trying to convey. The other thing that it’s done for me, and we talked about this pre-recording a little bit, but one of the things that I do for me, and I’m not suggesting everybody do this, but I give the book away. Let me give you an example. I went and spoke recently at a venue and they said, “What will you charge us to come and speak?” I said, “I’ll come and speak for free.” They were like, “Really,” and I said, “Yeah.” I said, “If I can do one thing,” and they thought I was going to say, “Sell my book.” That’s what they thought I was going to say. I said, “If I can give my book away.” “You’re not going to charge, and you’re not going to sell your book?” I said, “No.” So, they went, “Okay, well, we’ve got either a real loser here or somebody that’s crazy.” So, here’s what I did. I went and spoke, and it was an hour talk, and I gave my book away. They’re like, “Why would you do that?” Well, these books don’t cost hardly nothing, right, for me to get, comparatively speaking. What it allowed me to do was stand at the back of the room for hours afterwards and autograph the book and meet each individual person, at which a number of them joined our mastermind group because I had an opportunity to share. The life expectancy of our mastermind group is 3.2 years. That’s how long they stay in our group. Our churn rate is very, very low, which gave me about a $23,000 client, times three is $69,000 the way I do the math. Over giving my book away, giving me an opportunity to autograph it and sign it and get before people, and they joined my group.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. I love it. Thank you for sharing that and the details of that. It’s certainly something we talk to our clients about, whether it’s using something like a funnel. My book, Publish Promote Profit, we do what’s called a free-plus shipping funnel. Yes, the book is free, but we still charge a small shipping fee and then have a number of other upsells and down-sells. The whole idea is that you get the book into the right hands. Especially when you’re face-to-face from a speaking engagement, when you’re able to communicate with people that are excited about your message and they have your book, oh wow, you’re going to grow your revenue. You’re going to grow your audience. So, congratulations. I love that story.
Aaron Walker:
Yeah, I appreciate that. Could I give one other little tip that was helpful to us in the beginning stages? When I was launching the book. Maybe you’ve got people that listen to this show, and they’re in the middle of a launch. I was thinking how to be creative in getting the book out there. So, I called around and talked to a lot of influential people that had companies, and I said, “Listen, if it would be helpful, I would like for you to buy a hundred books. As a result of buying those hundred books, I’ll coach or teach or train your staff for a period of time.” Now, you can work out whatever package it is. “Then the book can become a gift to your clients, and so you’ll look like the hero to a hundred people, where we’ll send the book to those hundred people. But in exchange for that, for a two or three or four-week period, I’ll coach, encourage, and train your staff, which if you had to buy that, it would cost three times what those hundred books were.” They saw it as a grand slam. They were like, “I couldn’t get you for that amount of money.” So now everybody wins. Their team is being trained and coached. There are a hundred guests for giving the book out. It’s just a win-win. Plus, it was an opportunity to sell a hundred books.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. And who knows what comes from that? If you have five, six, seven organizations that do that, those five, six, seven organizations may hire you on a continual basis for coaching. They may refer you three other organizations that you can go in and coach. I don’t know if any of those things happened, but certainly those things can happen because you’re in there making an impact on people. So, I love that. Thank you. So, Aaron, where can people learn more? I mean, obviously people are listening. They’re interested perhaps in ISI. They certainly want a copy of your book. Besides the obvious, you can get a copy of the book on Amazon, where should we send them as far as like maybe getting a free copy of your book or learning more about your mastermind?
Aaron Walker:
Yeah, man, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. The easiest way to find me is on all the social media platforms. But the easiest way is viewfromthetop.com.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s simple enough.
Aaron Walker:
You go there, and it’s pretty easy to access me. My phone is on there. Some people reached out to me recently, and they called me, and I answered the phone, and they said, “Man, I didn’t expect you to answer the phone.” I said, “Well, it rang. I mean, what did you expect me to do?” They’re like, “Well, why did you?” I’m like, “Well, because you called, and what is it you want? How can I help you?” We want to help people. So, I encourage you to reach out. aaron@viewfromthetop is my private email. Reach out to me. I want to help you be successful. That’s our whole objective. We want you to be successful. If we can’t communicate, I can’t help you. If you’re a man or a lady and you’d like to get involved in a mastermind, you’d like to be in a community, we would love to have you. You know what we also do? We didn’t even touch on it at all. We can touch on it more for people that are interested. We teach people to do exactly what we’ve done with The Mastermind Playbook. That’s teaching you how to develop your own mastermind so that you can be influential in your community, and you can make mid-to-high six figures with not many hours a week. We teach people to do that all over the world. If you’re interested in starting your own mastermind, reach out to me. I’d love to help you do that as well.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Boy, I’m blown away. I’m encouraged by talking to you. So, thanks so much for spending some time with me today. viewfromthetop.com, Aaron’s telephone numbers on there if you want to call him. He gave you his personal email. I don’t know anybody that does those kinds of things, so you are a unique individual. Thank you. Thank you for your authenticity and your warmth today. Great being with you today.
Aaron Walker:
Yeah. Thanks, Rob. I enjoyed our time.
