How to Lighten the Leadership Load with Richard Walsh

As an owner, founder, CEO or executive director, the amount that rests on your shoulders can seem overwhelming. Richard Walsh owned a contracting company and was experiencing this same burden so he did something about it. After investigating the best ways to lighten his load in order to concentrate on the five percent he alone could do, he developed Escape the Owner Prison. In this episode, he explores some of the concepts you can enact today.

Transcript

Richard Walsh:
The old adage, "If I want it done right, I got to do it myself," which is a terrible thing to think. It's the worst thing to ever put in your brain, but we do it because you know you're the most motivated, you're the most get it done, you'll work all night, you'll do whatever it takes to get it done because it's yours. And what you have to really realize is alone you can go faster, but together you can go further.

Mathieu Yuill:
Hey and welcome to the Leading With Nice interview series. My name is Mathieu Yuill and we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Now, if you listen to the show regularly, you know I like to share with you why I'm having this guest on. And today we have Richard Walsh. And I was just talking to Richard before we began recording, I am a sucker for just really clear, actionable advice. And when I was looking at Richard's stuff, if you've read any Patrick Lencioni material, Richard's on par with that level of clarity.

Mathieu Yuill:
If you're not familiar, Patrick Lencioni writes business books, but when he writes them in fable format. So not exactly the same, but it's just he does it in a really simple way. Now, a bit about Richard. We are not talking to a spring chicken. Richard has over 30 years experience as a business owner. He's also the bestselling author of Escape the Owner Prison and it talks about how contractors specifically can scale and regain control, and get a fast track lane of growth while loving life. And to be honest, a lot of the tips and things Richard talks about in there are actually applicable outside of just the contractor life. He has helped over 10,000 business owners free themselves from their self-imposed shackles to their business and create freedom in their lives to do what they want, when they want, and still be massively successful. So if that sounds like something you want, then keep listening. Richard, man, welcome to the show.

Richard Walsh:
Hey, thanks, Mathieu, I really appreciate you having me, I'm looking forward to this.

Mathieu Yuill:
Also, I just find this interesting because I think you're our first guest from Wisconsin.

Richard Walsh:
Hey, that's huge.

Mathieu Yuill:
That's where you're located. And so for those who aren't familiar with if they're going to make a business trip in the near future, traveling, what is some must do Wisconsin things? What should they check out for sure?

Richard Walsh:
Well, you got to get some cheese because that's Wisconsin. So you got to try some cheese curds and some regular good old Wisconsin cheese. Things to check out, Madison's a great city. There's so much to do there, our state capital, but it's the fitness center of the Midwest actually. It's a leader there, so if you're an outdoors person, it's a great place to go do things. So that could be a good place to start.

Mathieu Yuill:
And we've recently had Collective Arts Brewing on our show, they're a brewery here in Canada. I remember Laverne and Shirley back in the day, they worked in a brewery. Is craft beer and brewing a big thing still in Wisconsin?

Richard Walsh:
Yeah, there's quite a bit of that. Of course, you've got everything from Miller Lite, Budweiser, all that stuff, all the way to the craft beer stuff. There's quite a lot of microbreweries, matter of fact, I have one probably four miles from my house and I live in the country, so maybe it's five miles. But yeah, it's still big and strong here for sure.

Mathieu Yuill:
That's great. Okay. Well listen, I've already gotten us off topic. Let me get to some of the questions. So you have this passion to help business owners that really shines through your work, it's palpable. Can you explain a bit of where this passion came from and how you ended up dedicating so much of your career to helping other business owners succeed?

Richard Walsh:
Absolutely, Mathieu. So again, 30 years in business. So my first 20 years I created a business, I got out of the Marine Corps, really wasn't good at working with others. That's why I didn't make a life in the Marine Corps, because I wasn't good at taking direction. So I wanted to go from there and I created the business and I created this business moving forward. And things were going great, it was a custom water feature business, what it was. Was almost a steel sculptor became a steel sculptor, became world-class, building just world-class exhibits, doing stuff all over the world, over a thousand different water features. And it was really awesome and things were cranking, I was top of my field making a lot of money. I thought everything was just humming along, I was doing everything myself for the most part, so I'd sell, I'd build, I had crews, things like that, finally got some office people and things too, but really it was me. Everything was on my shoulders and I kind of liked it.

Richard Walsh:
I thought that's the way you do business. And about in 2009, '08, '09, when we had our big economic collapse here, my business basically evaporated overnight. So it was a big hit, had a wife, six small children, six kids under the age of four. And just literally one day I got phone calls, I had a lot of work lined up, over half a million dollars already for the spring. So I was on par for a really good year. And they all just bailed because the economy's just going that way. And not that they were wrong, they were probably very correct in doing that, but that put me in a pretty big lurch looking for work. So I lived through that part of '09, and it just wasn't happening. So everything collapsed around me, lost everything. So everything that I thought I was doing so great at seemed to just go away, like I said, evaporated. Lost the house, lost everything, I just had to restart. Okay? So that's what I did.

Richard Walsh:
I moved from Illinois to Wisconsin, left Chicago, went to Wisconsin and stuff and started over. And I had to figure out, Mathieu, what I did wrong. I wanted to get into business again, I had to start from scratch, which I could do, but I really wanted to discover what I did wrong. And what I realized was there's lot of little things that I ignored and didn't do, or didn't put in place that caused this collapse to happen. I always thought I could just make more money. And I always did, whenever I needed money, I made more money. So what happened with that, and then created some new businesses with the new philosophy in mind, and said, "You know what? I'm really good at it," so I started helping people with their business. So they asked me, "Well, what'd you go through and how'd you do this?" And I said, "I really enjoy helping people, saving them from that misery." So I wanted them not to have to put 10, 15, 20 years into a business and have it all disappear like it did to me.

Richard Walsh:
So I found all the keys out there that were missing from, from my journey, and now I help other businesses do that. And I love it because I compress at least 10 years of time in their business building aspect. So I take them from I want to do everything and got a death grip on it... because a lot of guys in my industry, trades and service industry, were technicians who became business owners. So they know how to work, they know how to do their craft, but they really don't know how to build a business. And that's when I discovered I can show them how, I can show them the steps. I can take them from zero to a million, a million to five, five to 10 and so on. And then that's really why I got into it.

Mathieu Yuill:
Now you said something that I had to quickly do some math. So you had six kids under four.

Richard Walsh:
Yeah, do those numbers, huh?

Mathieu Yuill:
Yeah.

Richard Walsh:
It was crazy.

Mathieu Yuill:
Did you get one in pairs? What do you have [inaudible 00:07:26]?

Richard Walsh:
Yeah. I'll give you the quick long story. Okay, I'll make it brief. So I have biological twin boys and I have a biological daughter and we have three adopted siblings.

Mathieu Yuill:
Amazing.

Richard Walsh:
So one of the adopted is three weeks apart from my biological daughter and we have our oldest and then we have our youngest who they're all siblings. So that's how that worked out.

Mathieu Yuill:
Dude, awesome.

Richard Walsh:
So boom. In three years we have six kids.

Mathieu Yuill:
Very cool. Okay. So the title of your book, Escape the Owner Prison, why do you think so many business owners fall into this mindset of doing everything themselves, in your words, the death grip? Because that is such a great way, as a business owner myself, of describing this difficulty in letting go. I often say to [Naomi 00:08:16], who is our executive assistant, I often have to say to her, "Hey Naomi, can you please remind me of your accountability so that I stop trying to do your job?" So why do we get in this mindset?

Richard Walsh:
Well, again, my experience, I'm really great at what I do. So there's an ego involved, there's some pride there. You can do it best the old adage, "IF I want it done right, I got to do it myself," which is a terrible thing to think. It's the worst thing to ever put in your brain. Okay? You need to let go of that first. If that's something you've ever uttered to yourself, you got some work to do. But we do it because one is going to be as passionate you is as an owner. You're the most motivated, you're the most get it done, you'll work all night, you'll do whatever it takes to get it done because it's yours. So that's the first key in which you have to really realize is yes, it's yours. And here's a great saying that I heard, it's a Chinese proverb. It says, "Alone you can go faster, but together you can go further." So you have to realize, you really need people to work with you to go further. But the reason why you're stuck in that is because you want to make money.

Richard Walsh:
Let's take it from the beginning. You start a business, "Okay, I have to earn income. I have a family to feed," or whatever the case. So you start doing everything, you start making some money. "Okay, I'll hire someone when I make a little more money," and you end up staying on this cycle, like, "I'll just get an account and I'll just drop off a box receipts. Oh, I'll do this." So you do everything on the minimal level, just enough to keep functioning so you can be out doing your craft and selling, things like that. And you never really get time to realize what you're actually doing. You never get to work on it as they say, you don't get to go up to the 10,000 foot view and say, "Oh wow, look where I could go if I had X, Y, and Z working with me." So we get mired down in the day-to-day tasks and it becomes so burdensome 12, 14 hours a day, 16 hours a day, that we can't release it because we don't know how, and we have to keep going to maintain any momentum.

Mathieu Yuill:
We have this client that we're big fans of, and [Cindy 00:10:31] is the client at this particular organization. And she often will say, "My job is to work on the business, not in the business." And so a lot of what you've said reminded me of her saying that. So my next question is around that. And when I think about myself personally, I'm putting my perspective out there and I know a lot of others probably have this as well. And I know you encourage this, I know it's the right thing is to encourage my employees to take more initiative. But this starts with having the right employees. It's having the pieces in place to encourage. So can you just tell me a bit about your take on the hiring process and how a business owner can spot traits like initiative during that hiring process? What are you looking for? Like, "Here are the actionable tips that Richard really excels in giving you the clarity." So take it away Richard, what are some of these things we can do or look for to find these types of employees?

Richard Walsh:
Well, I'll tell you, I'd say one of the first things, a lot of people are always looking for skill, and that's not what you need to look for. You do not need to look for a particular skills, especially in an administrative or really anywhere. Granted, if you're an installer or a contractor, you need some craftsmen things, that's one thing, but you're really looking for a character. That's where you want to start. skills can be trained. You can always train and you should have a great training program in place and everything else from there, we can talk about that also. But you really need to start with character. You really need to look at who these people are. And you can look at their past, resumes are good, they're not super useful because they're fluff and people aren't always overly honest on a resume. So the face-to-face, the phone conversations, things like that.

Richard Walsh:
You really want to find out who the person is, get their values. Because as a company, you should have a company culture, you should have values, you should have a mission, you have all this. And they have the fit that, they don't have to fit the skills yet. They need to be able to fit within the company culture. And that's very, very important. So if you haven't defined what your company culture is, that's a must. You really need to understand what your values are, what's your true mission? Are you there to serve your customers? Are you there just to make money? As hard as that is, some people are about the money and they leave off the customer experience, service, et cetera, et cetera, which then everything trickles down from the top, Mathieu. So you want to make sure that you are solid in your integrity, your ethics, your value driven aspects. And then you want to find people, you're going to talk to them and see where they stand on those positions.

Mathieu Yuill:
And are there any questions or things you look for? If somebody is going to be interviewing somebody tomorrow, what advice would you give them? How would they spot that?

Richard Walsh:
Two things. First, you're going to want to talk to them about previous work in positions. You can ask them things like, "Did you ever have a challenging situation, you were presented with a problem that seemed almost unsolvable to you? And were you able to solve that problem? And what did that process look like for you?" Because you want to get in their mind and how they think. You can present them with a literal problem. You can give them something. If they're coming in, whether it's if they're going to be a carpenter for you or they're going to work up, they're going to be an IT person for you or whatever the case, have some real world problems that you can present to them and get their response on how they would solve it.

Richard Walsh:
And there's no right or wrong answer in that, you can tell them that you're just looking for their point of view on this and how would you address this. So you want to get their thought process, how they actually address a problem and solve a problem because some people are truly not problem solvers, and they're not going to be a benefit to you most likely, depending on the positions, if they don't have the initiative and the problem solving skills that you need. Their mindset should be, "I attack a problem, I solve a problem, I move on to the next one."

Mathieu Yuill:
Right. You talk about this philosophy of only doing 5% of the work. And that sounds amazing. Can you tell me a bit about that philosophy and what that looks like and flesh out what's behind that idea?

Richard Walsh:
You bet. So when I tell people you want to focus on your 5%, what the 5% means is the 5% of things only you can do, only you as the owner. You're the vision guy or girl, you're the growth person. Maybe you're looking for the new market spaces, maybe there's one part of your business that you do so exceptionally well that you will not turn that over. You're great. Maybe it's a meeting with a client, something like that, or just a certain level of client, things like that, that you handle that kind of stuff. Because here's the reason: you need to delegate or eliminate the rest. So as you look for your business, to create freedom in your business, obviously you can't do everything. That's the owner person, that's what we want to get out of. We want to free ourselves from those shackles.

Richard Walsh:
So as we learn to delegate, "Okay, what position, who can do this?" And believe me at first, the do everything yourself person like I was thinks that no one's going to be able to, or maybe they can, but it's not going to be good enough. What I tell people, if you get someone who can do it 90 or 95% as well as you can, that's really good. Because the customer, the homeowner, or whoever else you're dealing with is not going to know the difference for one. And you can always continue to train them to bring them up to the a hundred percent level. So it's really important to understand the delegation aspect, "Who can do this?"

Mathieu Yuill:
Everything you said makes so much sense to me right now. I'm looking forward to when this gets edited to going back and listening again and taking my own notes because this is the kind of stuff that can only be taught by somebody who's been there and done that, which I think is so valuable. So anyhow, nonetheless, you speak about the importance of giving back as a powerful business building strategy. And I understand that as an ethos and agree with it, but I'm hoping that you could explain it from your perspective of why it's important to give back at the end of the day and how it actually helps grow a business, because there's not too many business owners I know that when you say about giving away stuff, they're like, "Oh yeah, that'll increase my bottom line." But tell us a bit about that.

Richard Walsh:
Think about it this way. So you're in business and what are you doing in business? You're serving a customer, you're providing a product or service, you're providing value. And that's what you want to give. And I'm saying that you're giving that for profit, you have an exchange. I give you this, you give me money, or whatever the case. That's all good. The giving back aspect, how I feel, and there's a lot of ways to do it and I'm not going to say there's a right or wrong way. I have my way, other people have their way. You can be the big company that brags to everyone, "I give $50 million a year away to charities," and blah, blah, blah and pat yourself on the back. I'm not that guy. I'm about doing real help on a local level with people who truly need it. Now I'm a big believer of the right hand should know what the left hand is doing when it comes to giving. But what I want to do is I want to set a giving program within my business.

Richard Walsh:
And this can include my team members, all the people on my payroll who are in my business. I actually go to them and I say, "Hey, I'm really looking to help. Do you guys have any particular charities, any outreaches that you do that might be interesting or great for us to give to? We have an opportunity to give to." So that serves two purposes. First, you're involving your team in the charitable aspect, because a lot of times the business employee team member relationships seems to be a take. The employee thinks that, "Oh, he's just the owner. He's taking, all he wants to do is make money." When you start to involve them, especially on this level, you should be involving them on almost all levels in the business. But from a charitable aspect, they really get keyed up because a lot of people have real passions that they may be working on, on the side, through their church, in the community, whatever the case. So bring them into it and let them give the suggestions. "Oh, we could give to that."

Richard Walsh:
And sometimes it's not money, it's time. That's more way more valuable than money, maybe some guys go to an outreach. Maybe you go help renovate a community center, maybe you go help some with their house, you paint the house. Whatever little things like that you want to do, maybe there a monthly giving program you have that you're going to give to a certain organization that's doing real good in your community. All right. So you got that established and this is how it pays you back. There may not be a monetary return immediately, but it's the law of reciprocation. You give, you tend to get. And the more you give, the more you'll actually get. And if you've done any amount of giving in your life, you'll know that this is true. And again, it's not always a monetary reward, but it's a referral.

Richard Walsh:
"Oh, I know this company." You get elevated in the eyes of the community where you're working. And there's a lot of little webs that go off of that, from referrals for your business, being known more for your business, and not just known for your service, but for your generosity, for your contributing, for helping others. So there's a lot of reciprocation that comes back from that. All right. And in a lot of ways, it may even be difficult to measure, but it's there. So for me, that's a big part of my belief system, because if I'm just taking all the time and I take my profits and I put them in. Which I have places for my money to go, I build passive income, I do all that, that's part of my plan. But if I don't have that charitable aspect, that giving back, that helping aspect, I'm still just a taker. So I really want to balance the scale to a point where I'm able to do that.

Mathieu Yuill:
Two of the values of the nice leader is a generosity and service driven. So you're preaching to the choir here. Quite literally because I'm going to become a member in the church of Richard, for sure. So if you're a listener of this podcast, you want more of this because he is definitely speaking your language. You might be saying, "Well, I'm not a trades person." No, you need to check out more of Richard's stuff. Richard, tell us where we can go to get more. Is there a course? Where do they find it? Tell us all that information.

Richard Walsh:
Yeah. So of course I've got Escape the Owner Prison, the book, [inaudible 00:21:01] to scale, regain control and fast track growth while living life. Again, these are business principles. So regardless if you're a trades guy, a service guy, whatever your business is, it's going to work for you. Escapetheownerprison.com, you can pretty much get everything. My ETOP podcast. I have webinars, I've got free eBooks, I've got all kinds of different trainings and stuff for you there. So again, love helping businesses, it's what I do. I love startups, we work a lot with that too. So escapetheownerprison.com is probably your best avenue to go.

Mathieu Yuill:
For sure. We will put that in the show notes as well. Richard, thanks so much for coming on. I got to thank a few people that make this happen. I mentioned already, Naomi's our executive assistant, she helps create the questions and make sure I know what I'm talking about. Cindy Craig books and coordinates and schedules everything. Jamie is the content manager. If you're listening to this, if you discovered us, it's thanks to Jamie. He writes the blog posts, gets the podcast uploaded to the platforms, makes sure it's distributed. [Austin Pomeroy 00:22:02] is our audio editor, so he made this sound great. You probably heard notifications going off behind me on my computer, that's because [Carrie 00:22:11], our account manager, she's doing work while I get to sit here and chat with leaders from around the world. So thank you Carrie. Richard though, dude, this would be a very boring podcast it was just me. So thanks for taking time today. And man, if there's anything we can ever do for you, please let us know.

Richard Walsh:
Oh, I love it, man. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate you just giving me a little bit of time to share the message.

Mathieu Yuill:
All right, well everybody, thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time.