Episode Transcription 

Brittany Anderson  00:15

Welcome back to your ultimate advisor podcast, Brittany Anderson here and I could not be more excited to have with us today’s very, very special guest. I got to set this guy up because he is a gem and has so much value that he is going to be providing to you today. So, at 17 he was lost in life without purpose or direction. years later and now a veteran marine he founded Corsica technologies, which grew to be one of the best in class IT companies in the United States. After nearly two decades of rolling Corsica to eight figures in revenue with multiple acquisitions, he sold and founded Lyons guide, he now spends his days fulfilling his passion to help others learn high performance and leadership skills to apply in their lives so they might achieve their own personal and professional goals. An entrepreneur, veteran marine father of three husband to one an inspiration to many, I welcome Dale walls. Dale, I’m so pumped to have you here today. Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you. Awesome. Well, you know, I gave a little bit of your formal background, but there’s so much more behind the person. So I would love for you. Just talk a little bit about your journey, where you started and what got you to where you’re at right now. Hmm, yeah, I’m not sure your podcast is long enough for the story there. But I’m here, my friend, we’re here all day.

Dale Walls  01:47

But no, you hit on. I mean, you came from broken home, you know, I grew up, you know, my dad was gone. I was in the second grade. So what put me seven. And, you know, at that time, I was living with my grandmother and my mother, which was, you know, in a way, good, you know, because my grandmother comes from the age where she was one of 14 living on a farm, you know, and I just had a long talk with her the other night about when she just turned 94. And like, What would life was like for them. And she, she literally said that they only went to the store, her mother only went to the store to get sugar and coffee, everything else they provided for themselves now, you know, and so I was fortunate to be raised, you know, you know, by her, my mom was young, she had me at 17. So, you know, she was still finding herself growing. So as you can imagine, I’m troubled, you know, so all through high school, I’m just trouble.

Dale Walls  02:40

junior year, I get in a fight. I’m in the hospital afterwards, getting stitched up. And I’d come home afterwards. And I’m a bloody mess, my grandmother’s losing it, you know, my mom’s got to come home from work, pick me up, take me to go get stitched up. And I’m, you know, and I’m sitting there, and my mom’s just kind of like, and there and I see she’s upset. And we had just gotten this invitation mail for Boise State, which is run by the American Legion.

Dale Walls  03:07

And while she’s sitting there, I just got the Novocaine needle needle on my lip, and the nurse, whoever it was walks out and my mom’s like, will you do this boy state? No, like, yeah, no, because I was finally seeing like, my actions, I didn’t care I didn’t care about anything, you know, is whatever. And I was finally seeing like, that attitude of mine was affecting others. It wasn’t all about me, you know, I kind of saw that hurt in her eyes. And I agreed to go to Boise State, which introduced me to it was run by marine, so American Legion, you know, sponsors, it hosts it and all that stuff. But it’s facilitated by, you know, marine, so it’s kind of like a boot camp week long, in the summer between a junior and senior year. And that kind of opened me up because I was from a small town like I didn’t, I only saw what’s here, you know, really, until that point, which is Small Town Living when I grew up 2000 people here, you know, blue collar town bedroom community. And so, you know, I just got talking to this marine one night that was in charge of my platoon. And, you know, I came back, I enlisted in the Marine Corps before my senior year. So I came back and listed, I was actually enlisted in the Marine Corps during my senior year of high school, and I took off the following summer, and that was it. And then I just got introduced to a life of leadership that really got shown my own potential, really, and got to work from there.

Brittany Anderson  04:29

You know, that’s an incredible story. Actually, I know. It’s kind of like, oh, yeah, that’s my journey, you know, whatever. But I think that’s an incredible story. And I think it fits so much in the theme of, you know, it doesn’t matter where you came from, it matters where you’re going. And you use the term leadership. So I want you to kind of hone in on that a little bit here. You know, what does leadership mean to you? And how can anybody regardless of what their title, position, whatever is in life, you know, how can they define leadership and how can they lean into it?

Dale Walls  04:59

Yeah, I mean, I think We’re I learned this first was in the Marines, you know, 13 weeks of boot camp. And there’s a fair amount of like instructional time, right? We get taught Marine Corps history, we get called weapon taught weapons and survival and all these things. But there’s also a fair amount of instruction on leadership traits and principles, like, in fact, we have to memorize and learn them, the Marine Corps leadership traits and principles. And I remember as a, as a young recruit kind of going, like, I don’t know, if I asked her, someone else asked him like, Hey, why are we learning leadership? We’re just, we’re just recruits. We’re not in charge of anyone? And, and the answer was, you know, whether you’re in charge of anyone else or not, you’re always in charge of yourself. And so these leadership traits and principles, you know, we had to first apply in leading ourselves, as well as leading others. And so I think that’s what leadership is, right? Leadership is, um, you know, short, certainly you can be leading others, right? Meaning that you maybe you’re the visionary, or you have a vision for a business, and you’re employing others and leading them as a team towards that vision. But you can also lead people indirectly, you know, through your influence, I’m one of the as example, one of the really core leadership principles is set the example. And I think, to me, that’s the number one, you know, and because setting the example, provides another form of leadership, which is indirect leadership, aka influence, right, you can set an example and it will influence others. And your example could be bad, you know, leadership is everywhere. Um, I’ve got Keith Griffin, who’s come on lions guide to kind of help me because I’m really passionate about leadership. And he’s a Star Wars geek, and I am to a little bit, but we’re talking like, leadership’s like the force, it’s like, it’s everywhere, right? If you watch Star Wars, and maybe none of your audience does, and this is going to go way over everyone’s head, or they do it in Star Wars, the force is everywhere. And we were joking, I was like, man, you know, leadership’s like the force, it’s like, everywhere. And it’s true, because whether you’re a parent or just a member of the community, or church, or a coach, or, or even just a part of a team, you know, the example you’re setting is influencing those around you, whether you’re in charge or not. So I believe, you know, what the Marine Corps did for me was teach me that to teach me that I at a minimum in charge of myself, and I can lead my own way to wherever I want to go. And it’s just kind of with that learned, it kind of opened my eyes up to my potential.

Brittany Anderson  07:38

You know, you brought up I think, so many good points in that. And one particular thing that sticks out to me is, you know, you look at leadership, and you can control yourself. So I think that really turns, you can turn that outward a little bit too. So think about where we control our minds and the things that we’re putting into our minds right now. So, you know, obviously, this podcast, it’s geared towards the financial advisor audience. So there’s a couple of things I think that happened here. Number one, you have clients coming in, you know, sometimes every single day, and oftentimes people are focused on the news, and what’s going on in the world, and all of that negative energy that’s being put into our heads. So, you know, Dale, I’d love for you to kind of push on, you know, how do you personally stay above the line? Like, how do you maintain a positive mindset? How do you ignore or maybe not ignore, but minimize some of the negative stuff that’s out there, so that you can show up as a leader so that you can be the guiding example and not be the person that’s kind of falling prey to some of the negativity?

Dale Walls  08:46

Yeah, I think probably the way that maybe it’ll relate to your audience, the way I try to explain this to people is like, you know, so if you’re the CEO, or president or founder of your business, right. So you have a vision for your business, you probably have sat down and done your mission statement, and all those things. And when you come to work, that’s your target, right? That’s your mission, your goals for the year, the quarter, whatever the case may be, and everything you do kind of will revolve around obtaining that ends. And so I say like, our lives are no different, like we are, if our lives were a business, we are the CEO. So likewise, you’ve got to have that vision for yourself, you’ve got to have those objectives. You’ve got to have that goal that that main thing that you’re after, so that you can properly put in perspective these other things right, you know, it’s so easy to get caught up in all this noise when you don’t have a main thing that deserves your focus right you know, if you’re just lollygaggin you know, yeah, I’ve got a I’ve got my thing and this is what I do every day and you know, you don’t really have like a push goals or things that you’re pushing yourself to get right not just making it through another year and you know, but But putting yourself challenging yourself. It’s easy to get caught up in the stuff because there’s so much slack in a line so to speak, right? There’s, there’s so much room to get caught up in this stuff. But, you know, the more more you have better priority set, you can minimize that, you know, I just use a crazy example like the the pygmies in South Africa, they, you know, whatever, whatever, like the vice of debate of the week, he especially here in the states, like, you can judge whether it was a big thing, and it seemed like, you know, we’re back in the Olympics, there was like, all this stuff going on with what these different Olympians were doing or not doing or whatever. And that was one of the things I did catch myself. One, like, kind of jokingly going, Hey, what so what’s the divisive debate this week in America? What are we supposed to be mad at each other about? And it because I tried to, like, you know, level set that to go, Hey, guys, like, let’s bring this down to earth. Like, we’re arguing, you know, what this Olympian is or isn’t doing with their own career in their lives, which has absolutely zero to do with my goals, zero. In fact, if I didn’t hear you say that I’d know nothing about it, and it would still have no impact on my life. But I had the ability to do that, because I’ve got the things that I’m working on or whatever. And I can kind of put those things in perspective. So I think that’s, that’s the best thing you can do. If you find yourself caught up, in, you know, all these crazy things, I would challenge to challenge my own thinking to say, What am I avoiding? Or what could I be doing better for myself or those that are near to me?

Brittany Anderson  11:32

I love that comment about what am I avoiding? Because I think sometimes when we do go down the rabbit hole, or, you know, we’re paying attention to things that maybe we shouldn’t be paying attention to your that just don’t serve us, right, they don’t serve, like you said, like the whole thing with the Olympics. It’s like, Does this really directly impact my life? And why am I expending energy on it? I mean, those are the questions, I think we need to ask ourselves to make sure we stay focused. So, you know, Dale, I think there’s one thing with with what you do and how you help people, obviously, goal setting is a big deal. And, you know, I think about our audience listening to this, and you’ve got a lot of high achievers, you’ve got a lot of people who are absolutely driven. But it’s amazing to me, and how many really smart, really intelligent, really successful people struggle with setting quality goals. So if you’re helping somebody to set goals for their future, and to make them tangible to make them something that they can get excited about. How would you advise somebody to set really impactful goals?

Dale Walls  12:36

That’s a lot in there’s, there’s kind of two ways I like to approach this, um, one, you know, it starts with clarity of yourself, like what’s important to you, because we want to make sure that we’re, we’re living in congruence with like, who we are, right, how we see ourselves like in, and again, not just status quo. But like, the better version of ourselves, like the best version of ourselves, like, what does that person look like? How does that person interact with other people? What are the things that makes that person successful? I want to get like real clear about the person first, like, who do they want to look like? Now? As that person, what can that person get accomplished? Right? What is that best version of self? What’s the best version of life look like for that person and start literally mapping it out, right? Like, what’s, what’s the income looks like? What’s the what’s the business goals, whatever, how long does it take to get there? And that’s the, that’s the stuff we want to go after. And then the other, I feel equally important, a part of that is say, Hey, okay, well, what happens if we don’t do that? Right? If we don’t start working towards that, what does life look like? Because I feel that not only do we need goals to go run towards, but we need the opposite. We need something to run from, which is, if we don’t start, let’s keep it simple, right? Cuz everyone’s got different goals. But let’s say maintaining our health, like, if we don’t start getting healthy, right? We don’t start doing that what happens? Right, you know, get to see your daughter graduate, right? You know, you know, like, you start drawing some real things that put some necessity in going after those goals, because we need that I feel like you need both, um, you know, we’ve talked about before, right? As example, like, even if you’re not sure what your goals are, like, start right now, what you don’t want, like, what’s the opposite, then what do you know, you might not know that you don’t want right like, well, I don’t want to struggle to pay my bills. Okay, well, what does it look like to not have that problem, right? Or whatever the case may be? Um, so I think it’s like, to me, it starts with clarity. Like everything starts with clarity, clarity of who you are, clarity of your vision, and again, you know, visionary of the business, the CEO, same thing in life. You got to have that clarity of vision. So you know what, you’re what you’re going after. You know,

Brittany Anderson  14:56

I think I think it’s so brilliant because that whole thing of stripping away who you’re not right that process, it can be tough, it can be a little bit of a gut punch. And this is the thing too, that I think is so important for people to embrace. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re leading a team, and you are, you know, building possibility for your future, you’re building wealth for your future for your clients, futures, all of those different things, you know, it can be, it can be really tough to take a true look at yourself on the inside and decide, am I leaning into my values? Am I truly leaning into my full potential? How am I showing up not only as a boss, as a leader, as a, you know, serving my clients as an advisor? But how am I showing up as a parent? How am I showing up as a spouse? How am I showing up as a friend? So, Dale, you’re all those things. I mean, I gave that in the intro, but you’ve got all those things going on. So how do you make sure that you are showing up as your best self in all aspects of your life?

Dale Walls  16:00

And, um, you know, I guess simply it goes to that, right? Like, you can’t pour from an empty cup, right? So you’ve, you’ve got to be taking care of yourself. And I’ll stick with the same analogy, right? Like, if you’re the CEO of your life, right? Just like a CEO of organization, there’s different departments, there’s, you know, in business, there’s finance, their service, their sales, there’s marketing, right? There’s, there’s these different departments. And if you’re running an organization, you can’t ignore any one of them. Right? You know, you can focus solely on sales and forget about service, or forget about HR, because those holes in the boat are going to sink the ship, right. Like you’re, you’re, you know, you’re focusing only on sales and not on service, the clients are going to fall off the back door just as fast as they’re coming to the front door. And I would say like, the same thing applies in our lives, like, we have to understand our departments like health, our health, our wellness, our relationships, as well as our career, right, it’s so, so easy to get hyper focused on like the career only. And you know, you got you got folks that are burning at 60 plus hours a week now, but I don’t know, why am I got all this money on why my wife and kids are leaving me, it’s like, you don’t know. Like, you’re never around, like you don’t do vacations. And when you do, you’re on your laptop your whole time, right? Like you would, you’re not surprised that she’s upset with you like that, you know, that you’re having problems. So, you know, you really have to take that leadership role over all of those elements of our lives that are important. And it starts with you like you can’t, unless you’re taking care of yourself. And these are hard things. These are things that people don’t want to hear, like when I talk, talk about leadership and leading yourself. You know, here’s, here’s the thing to note here, what I’m talking about is discipline. I’m talking about self discipline, like self leadership, is self discipline. But see now now we got scary right now everyone’s like, Oh, no discipline, like too hard. That means I’ve got to go suffer and all that stuff. But, you know, think about like self discipline, setting goals, keeping yourself accountable, right? What are we saying it’s all the same things that we’re doing in leadership, and thus, there it is that self discipline is self leadership. So you have to you have to take charge. And I feel like I’m leadership’s The other key aspect of it, like we’ve talked about the whole way through, but tending to these areas, taking care of myself so that I can show up, be a good leader, have the clarity and, and just work out it takes work every day. Like it does. It just it just takes the work, and you got to put in the work.

Brittany Anderson  18:42

And, man and you know, it’s one of those things where if you think about it, like what you just talked about you it’s so simple, right? It’s you’re truly saying it’s discipline, it’s staying true to what you want. It’s defining what you want, and just staying that streamline path, right, like making sure you’re saying yes to the things that serve you and no to the things that don’t. It’s so simple, but it’s not easy, right? Like it’s one of those things where you have to commit and I think to one thing we see with successful advisors, and I don’t think this just applies to the adviser world, it applies to any, again, driven that type A personality that highly high achieving entrepreneurial nature, is we often neglect ourselves, and we don’t do you know what we need to do to keep our cup full, exactly what you talked about. So, you know, I just think that’s so important. I’m so glad you brought that up. Because I think, you know, what’s the saying there’s like a credo out there that says, the man who has his health has 1000 wishes, and the man who does not have has one. And I think that’s so darn true. When we look at how we take care of ourselves, what we instill in our team. You know, the other thing I want to bring up here and I wasn’t planning on going this direction, but I think it’s important. So you know, a lot of times we see again for that high achiever who’s built their base to scrape from the bottom who has, you know, gone after all of it who’s gone like this, like the entrepreneurial rollercoaster, if you’re listening and you can’t see my hands, I’m literally doing like a roller coaster motion. So you’ve gone through those ups and downs, those peaks and valleys. Sometimes we forget that our teams need the same rest, they need the same ability to disconnect. So I think there’s there’s this misconception in today’s standard, I think it’s getting better or more awareness, but people associate dedication and success and a player’s, with how much time they spend at their desk. So, you know, Dale, I don’t know if you have any comments on that, but but I think that’s something that as employers, we need to be mindful of that time does not equate that high achiever results do.

Dale Walls  20:50

Yeah, you just took the words out by Ross, right. It’s it’s difference of time does not equal outcome, right. And that’s where being clear about your goals are and disassociate it with the time it takes, and not saying, like, ignore how long something takes, but be clear about your goals. And now dial that into reason, right? Because you may say, Hey, by the end of this year, we need to be double our revenue. Oh, now as you start reverse engineering that go, Well, do I have the staff to do that? What does that mean? And that has a little bit to do to time, but more to do with, like, your processes, your automation, your ability to scale? You know, it’s it’s like the, what you establish the vision now, what’s the how and right. Um, and I think, like, to the point of people, you know, you need to talk to your people, right, and this point, that we haven’t talked about yet, but like, You got to check your ego, like, you’ve got to recognize what you know, and give credit to the things you know, but always be willing to learn, right? Like, always, you know, went back to Marine Corps principles, one of them is know yourself and in seek self improvement, right? Like, know, know what, you know, know, what you don’t know, and always be out there to learn. Um, and so you can learn from your team, right? You should learn, like when you have these problems, like something like, Hey, we want to double revenue this year. So tell your team ago, we want to double revenue this year? How would we do that hypothetically, right, and just loosey goosey spit ball around, see what they come up with, they might hit you with things that you didn’t even think of. Now, one thing I used to say, as a CEO, though, is that I’m a business’s in a democracy, right? Like, everything’s not a vote, someone’s in charge, and someone’s responsible. So these decisions, such as that they’re still yours to make as the leader. And they’re your responsibility, right? You can’t go have a meeting go, Hey, guys, how do we double revenue? Alright, that sounds great. Let’s go do it. And it fails. You can’t go guys, you screwed this up. Let’s not it’s not on them. Because ultimately, it was your decision, your responsibility. So, um, I think you should go seek the counsel of your team and get more awareness. But as that does not defer you from making the hard choices and own right, and they still may be against the team. But that’s because it’s your decision to make and it’s your responsibility. Because if it’s wrong, like you’re, you’re the one that’s responsible for it, right? So that’s why it’s not a democracy, you still have to make you still have to make these decisions, and make them no, no. And if you make the best decision that you can make, and you’ll learn that it’s wrong. That’s what happened, you learned that it was wrong, and you own it, and you regroup and you do it again. It’s a it’s a land of a million mistakes, just go make them go make the mistakes and learn from them.

Brittany Anderson  23:47

No, I think that there’s a couple things there. So number one, the whole land of mistakes is so true. And I think if there’s one thing that that I can say is, throughout my journey, like the biggest, the biggest catalyst towards success or towards that next level of achievement has been not fearing failure. Right. And I think that’s something that more people need to embrace. Like, there’s this exercise. And this is so crazy, because it’s so simple. And it’s one of those things that you think I should have thought of this, but I didn’t. So there’s that. But literally, anytime you’re faced with a massive decision for your business, one way that you can help avoid decision fatigue, is if you literally take a piece of paper and just draw a line down the center and say, worst case scenario, best case scenario, think there’s so much pain that we put ourselves through as decision makers in our business, when we can really simplify it. So if you sit down and most of the time, maybe not all the time, but most of the time, the worst case scenario is still better than somebody else’s best day if that makes sense. Right? Like especially in the entrepreneurial journey. So I think that that that not fearing the unknown and not fearing making decisions is so, so important. I mean that’s that’s huge.

Dale Walls  25:05

Yeah. And that’s another big part of you know with lions guy my three big tenets are established clarity, have courage and lead the way. And what we haven’t talked about yet is that the courage aspect of it. And you know, the when it comes to courage I kind of have this thing that called like the clarity, courage loop where what you just described the exercise is sitting down worst case, best case, you’re bringing clarity to it, right? You’re you’re facing the unknown. So what do you do in face of the unknown? Like, start shining a light on it? Well, what what don’t you know, right? Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Okay, well, hey, here’s some here’s a fun exercise, play it out on paper, what could happen, you know, and start bringing clarity to it. And it’s just like, starts start taking action with each step you take, you’re gonna get more clarity, more clarity comes more confidence, more confidence comes more courage, more court, Courage comes more action. And that’s what we’re after. Right? We’re after the actions. Right, wrong or indifferent. As mentioned, we’re going to learn and yeah, learn, regroup and nothing, you know, again, that part of the field fear of failure is a bit of ego to like, we’re, oh, yeah, I don’t want anyone to see me mess up, like, man, go mess up, and like, be evil, people are gonna admire you for it, and the people that are saying anything different. And again, courage is a virtue, right? So having courage to take action means you’re having courage to do the right thing, right? The right thing for my business is to make this move, the next move whatever it is, that’s courage. To not have courage, that fear to do anything, that’s the wrong move, right. I mean, most people would agree that’s the case. So if you think about it, if you’re having courage to make a move for your business, and that’s the right thing to boot to do. Anyone talking that down or the wrong people in your circle, right? Amen, shuck them aside and move on. Because so long as you’re doing the right thing, and you’re learning from it, and you’re owning it, and you’re moving on, you’re moving in the right direction.

Brittany Anderson  27:08

You know, and that makes me think, too, I was listening to a talk the other day, and the gentleman was talking about how everything in your life, like everything is your fault, right, the good, the bad, and everything in between. And I think there’s something to be said about that, you know, when you truly step into how we talked about leadership at the beginning of this, you know, when you truly step into owning your own being as a leader, part of that is owning your whole life. So again, I mean, you bring up the CEO of your business, the CEO of your life, and making those decisions and, and knowing that if it’s good, it’s on you, if it’s bad, it’s on you like the choices that you personally make. Once you get past the point of blame, or the point of any sort of finger pointing, I think that’s where we also have these massive breakthroughs in our lives, knowing that we’re truly in control of our destiny, right? Like we are in control of our own actions. And if you’re stuck somewhere and you don’t like it, then make a change, make a decision. You know, I want to pivot a little bit, because there’s a couple things I want to make sure we touch on. Number one, I want you to talk a little bit more about lions guide, but number two, in conjunction with that, and you call them something else a minute ago, and I missed writing it down. But it’s basically the founding values of your company. So talk a little bit about Lyons guide, what is it? What inspired it? What are you doing now, but then also share how values have really helped you set a foundation?

Dale Walls  28:36

Yeah, so as you mentioned in the bio, so from the Marine Corps, I did my time service. I was in 9802 in my career was IT guy at a time where the IT guy had to know everything. So I went on to start an IT company, my background, knowledge and abilities, everything from pulling fiber to building websites and everything in between. So very fortunate in that regard. So I started it companies serving small businesses, you know, had a tight we were serving, you know, 40,000 systems out there across the US. And so sold that business in retired from that business stop saying I’m retired because now working harder than ever, it seems. So I can’t say that anymore. I learned real quick to stop saying that actually. So, but yeah, I was just dabbling. What I was gonna do, I helped my wife start a Coffee Company. Got that little entrepreneurial bug and I was going to just make like a brand of T shirts with this very logo Alliance guy and I was just gonna make a cool brand that of stuff. I want it right, because you see the stuff out there, you know, like grunt style, and all these kind of cool shirts and stuff. So I was like, hey, no, I want that. I got some ideas. And I was working with a marketing strategist about the brand and he challenged me he’s like, do you know after hearing my story and all that, he’s like, Yo, like, You did all this and you gotta you’ve had the success seems like you really think the best thing You got to offer this world is to make T shirts, man, like, what are you doing? And I was like, What do you mean? And he’s like, Well, you know, there’s business owners and entrepreneurs out there that would value like your advisory and consulting or whatever. And I was like, Yeah, and I guess got it took it as a compliment. And hey, thanks, man, I appreciate it back to work. And I slept on it. And I realized, especially in the last years of CEO of Corsica, what got me out of bed each day was working with my team, right? Because my team at that point was 200 people. So I went from zero and Yellow Pages to 200 people in those days, I was leading the leaders, right. I was, you know, so I look forward to the team leadership team meeting. up that Lucia?

Brittany Anderson  30:48

Oh, there you are. Okay, well, just, uh,

Dale Walls  30:51

we’re still a lot,

Brittany Anderson  30:52

we’ll pause for a minute, they can cut this. I don’t know what’s going on.

Dale Walls  31:01

Okay. So what I realized was that what really got me out of bed each day, was coming into my one on one meetings coming into my leadership team meeting and, and helping my team accomplish their department’s mission each day, like, I love that, Oh, I loved working with the leaders. And so after that comment was made, and I woke up the next day, I’m like, Man, I did love that I would love to get up and help people in the same capacity with them struggle, because, you know, I know, right, from entrepreneur, all the way up through CEO man, it’s a lonely place to be, like, we’ve talked a lot about self discipline on stuff. Like, when you’re in charge, you’ve, you have no one telling you what the next move is, right? You know, it’s nice to go to work for someone in a way, where you say, Hey, boss, will you want me to do today and they go, I want to do XY and Z, i Sir, you go do XYZ, today’s a good day? Well, you’re in charge, and you don’t have like someone telling you what to do. And you have to come up with your own your own, or there’s a lot of things that happen. And so, um, I wish I had that I wish I had someone I could turn to go, Hey, I’m thinking this, I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, you know, whatever. So, and there’s not a better word for I’m a coach, I’ve tried to think for the last two years to think of a better word, like advisor or whatever, like, I coach. And the reason being is, you know, I don’t want to tell people what to do, like, in their field of play. I want to help them like find their own answers. Like there’s all this stuff like the six this and a seven that and these these, like prescribed formulas. They’re all right there. Yes, they’re all out there. But the truth of the matter is, you got to find your own formula, right? Because in and very early, like I had someone I brought on as a business coach advise, like coaching them in their business, I learned at ground zero in Lyons guide, that I wanted to work on the person, I could give you a business playbook. But if you are not a high performer, and you’re not willing to execute, and to the hard things, and have the discipline, the productivity, the energy, the influence skills, all those things that make us high performers, you’ve got to be that first, before you’re going in, I know like, if I can get you performing better, your business will be better. You don’t need me to tell you crap about your business. If I can help you reach your potential, your business will get better. And we don’t even need to talk about it yet. Because you’re going to start doing the right things, you’re gonna start finding that clarity we talked about, you’re going to be more productive, you’re going to have more energy, you’re going to have more clarity, so you’re going to be more happy with the things that you’re doing. And the magic starts to happen. You know, there’s so many people just kind of alone in their own heads, that are entrepreneurs, business owners, or even organizational leaders, you know, you could be running department in a company and you’re not an owner. But if you’re struggling with something, sometimes you’re you’re not sure how to handle it. Maybe you don’t have a good leader in charge. Right? There’s plenty of bad leadership out there. I know that’s for sure. So, but I know being in these roles are really tough and they they are very demanding. But they are surmountable. You just got to be a high performer. And so I love it. I love getting up and helping people kind of knock down their limiting beliefs, find that clarity and watch them take off.

Brittany Anderson  34:28

I love it. You know you are absolutely so hitting the head on the nail that you know the entrepreneurial journey and even just if you don’t if you’re listening to this and you’re like I’m a business owner, I’m not an entrepreneur because there is a difference right there is a difference. But when you are in a position that requires massive decision making, when you’re in a position that requires you to be on per se at all times like you’re being watched a leader you are being watched you know this from from your kid From your teams from whatever, it can be a really lonely journey. And that’s, that’s part of the reason that we created a mastermind for advisors is because people think they have to go head down and do it alone. And I think that’s just there’s, there’s such a shorter path to success, when you put yourself around people who never one, want to help you get even better, who truly want to share their best ideas. I think every person, every business professional, especially in the entrepreneur, the visionary, that advisor, key person role should have a coach, I mean, huge believer and that, you know, myself and, Brian, we both have multiple coaching, different things that we’re involved with Dre does as well. He’s our other business partner, and this, we’re all huge proponents of it. So I can’t I can’t say enough to what you’re saying. And you’re absolutely dead on and, and it’s about creating community and connection and helping people feel like they’re not in this journey, like out on an island by themselves, faring it alone, because it doesn’t have to be that way. Right? So, Dale, if you were to give one piece of advice, like if I if I brought you on this podcast and said, Dale, you can say one thing to the successful driven person listening out there, what would that one thing be?

Dale Walls  36:20

Have courage. Just I sum that up in this my basic philosophy, because lions guide dog brand was just an Instagram page years ago, just me putting like quotes, I found the books and stuff up, whatever. But I always had at the top of that, which said, you know, the success in my life has come when I’ve had courage, failures, I can tie right back to falling to fear. So have courage. Remember, courage is a virtue, meaning that you’re having the courage to overcome your fears to do the right thing. And you’ll find your success.

Brittany Anderson  36:57

So good. Dale, what what did I ask you that I should have? I’m sure there’s a ton.

Dale Walls  37:05

And yeah, no, I don’t I don’t think we missed too much. But today, that’s what I do. You know, I coach people one on one or in workshop settings. In either or is great. I love again, I love working with people and you know, I partner with their potential, right? You know, I come in there and I help people, like say, challenge them, you know, I help push them, because they want it and they need it, they know it and they’re stuck and they want to go so come in there and just kind of go through and help them do that. So, you know, one on one, work groups, you know, whatever the case might be.

Brittany Anderson  37:40

And I think I think different ways work for different people, right? Some people really thrive in the group setting. Some people thrive in the one on one and again, it’s like you said you kind of have to find your own magic find, find what works for you and then just go all in on it. So Dale, if our listeners want to get a hold of you, how would they go about reaching you

Dale Walls  37:59

they can go to lions guide.com For starters, and join the free members area I’ve got a ton of free online training I’ve done I’ve had a number of guest lecturers come on and teach in different on different topics as well whether it’s grit or mindfulness or whatever. Again, it’s so it’s it’s all in the high performance side of things you know, the mindfulness you know, being a high performer rather. So I’ve got a ton of free training out there free content comm check it out on there, certainly you could book a call with me if you want to talk about possibly doing some work together, whatever. But yeah, Alliance guide.com also on LinkedIn and all the socials and so on.

Brittany Anderson  38:37

Awesome. And they need to download your podcast. Come on, man. It’s awesome.

Dale Walls  38:42

It sounds good podcasts out there on all the podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube.

Brittany Anderson  38:47

Yeah. Yeah, highly recommend that. I mean, he has wonderful conversations with so many great people. Dale, I’m excited to see what you continue to do and how you level up yourself. Because I can see, just in the brief time that I’ve known you, there’s just so much ahead of you and so much that you’re going to accomplish and and you’re going to help a heck of a lot of people along the way, which I think is really what’s most meaningful.

Dale Walls  39:09

I hope to Yeah, that’s the goal. So I really appreciate that.

Brittany Anderson  39:12

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your genius sharing your time. We sincerely sincerely appreciate

Dale Walls  39:19

1. Thanks for having me, Brittany. Awesome. Well, that

Brittany Anderson  39:22

wraps up today’s episode of The Ultimate advisor podcast. We will catch you right back here for the next episode.