Ep. 27 – Choosing To Live A Life Of Success & Significance – with Aaron Walker
Aaron Walker is a businessman and life coach who has inspired many through his leadership, mentorship and consistent pursuit of excellence. 35 years of entrepreneurship and marriage have given Aaron a wealth of valuable experience. Aaron is currently on his twelfth venture as an entrepreneur – that’s right, twelfth. He is the founder of View From the Top, a coaching service and community that aims to help men live a life of success and significance.
Aaron is an authority on leadership and what it takes to lead a holistic, successful life. In this interview, Aaron discusses how grit and determination have paid off, how he helps ordinary men become extraordinary, how to live a successful and significant life, and the power of Masterminds and community.
“I’m helping ordinary men become extraordinary, and we do it in a holistic fashion. We don’t do it just in business and we don’t do it just in life. We do it in both, because I think they’re inseparable.”
Retirement doesn’t agree with Aaron. He has retired three different times – sometimes because of success, sometimes because of traumatic events – but not working always makes him (and his wife) unhappy. After his most recent retirement, Aaron was invited by Dan Miller to speak at an Innov8 event.
“I’m having more fun today than I’ve ever had in my life.”
Before Aaron was in a car accident, he was very successful. However, the accident helped him realize that, while he had great success, he had no significance. Nobody cared about his success but him and his family, but he realized he wanted to leave a legacy of people happy to have known him.
“I don’t believe in failure. I believe you either succeed or you learn.”
For Aaron, success means:
- Choosing his schedule
- Having and engaging family and meaningful relationships
- Having a clear conscience with every transaction that he does
Aaron also believes that you can easily define significance: it is meeting the needs of others. Success has something to do with you, significance has something to mean for others.
“I want to learn to be content, but not complacent.”
Relationships are everything. Literally. For example, Aaron is in the construction business, and he formed an alliance of sorts with his competitors. By pooling resources, they all saved money – and in the process, they also support a number of local tradesmen. Now all of the people in the alliance are more successful, and they’re friends.
“When you start helping, you start sharing, then what it does is it drops the veil and everybody starts helping. There’s enough business for everybody, but we have this mentality that the pie is only so big, but there’s nothing further from the truth.”
Aaron brought a gift for the Impact Entrepreneur audience. It is a personal assessment that dives into your identity, ideals, relationship, career and faith. Answering the questions can help you think, and help you realize what it is that you want. Go to ViewFromTheTop.com/Impact to pick up your own copy of the personal assessment, and hopefully they will help you live more successfully and significantly.
I am extremely thankful to Aaron, or Big A as he is sometimes called, for sharing so much with us all. He is an incredibly generous person, and he has a lot of valuable lessons to teach the Impact Entrepreneur audience.
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This episode is brought to you by SY Partners and Unstuck, helping you make a change by identifying the things holding you up. Their new program “Life Courses” are based on decades of learning about what inspires people to change. It is created by SYPartners, a transformation company that helps individuals, teams, and organizations become the best version of themselves, so they can create massive positive impact in business and society.
To start making your change, visit Life Courses by Unstuck on the web.
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Resources:
- Learn more about Aaron: View From The Top | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
- ViewFromTheTop.com/Impact to pick up a free personal assessment
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by George McKeown
- Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk
- The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want by Dave Kerpen
- CommitTo3
Production & Development for The Impact Entrepreneur Show by Podcast Masters