The Tension
If you’re a builder, leader, or change-maker, you already know the tension: the push and pull between where you are and where you want to be. It’s the moments when success doesn’t feel like you expected, when growth forces hard decisions, or when challenges test your limits.
Hosted by Travis Penfield, The Tension explores how high-performing leaders navigate these pivotal moments. You won’t find simple solutions here—because the tension isn’t something to be solved. Instead, you’ll hear stories, strategies, and insights to help you manage the tension and turn it into fuel for your personal and professional success.
The Tension
The Tension of Having a Blueprint
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How do you build a different life when the blueprint you were given isn’t the one you want to follow?
In this episode of The Tension Podcast, Travis Penfield sits down with Luke Stanton, President of The Collective, to explore The Tension of Having a Blueprint and what it takes to intentionally build the life, family, and future you want.
Growing up, Luke experienced financial insecurity and a lack of stability that gave him a clear picture of what he didn’t want his own future to look like. But years later, newly married and more than $100,000 in debt, he realized that knowing what you want to avoid isn’t the same as knowing what you want to build.
Luke shares how he and his wife began changing that trajectory and how the lessons they learned extended far beyond finances into their marriage, family, relationships, and careers. Along the way, mentors and leaders exposed Luke to different ways of living and leading, expanding his idea of what was possible.
Luke and Travis talk about how to learn from the people who have gone before you, why writing down what you want matters, and the importance of taking action rather than waiting until you have the entire plan figured out.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
✔ Why knowing what you don’t want isn’t enough to create a different future
✔ How curiosity and learning from others can help you build your own blueprint
✔ Why meaningful change starts with taking action
Whether you’re thinking about your family, career, finances, relationships, or the person you want to become, this conversation is a reminder that the blueprint you started with doesn’t have to determine where you end up.
So Luke, um one of your first jobs, um, you had let's just say what most people have experienced, which is a public speaking snafu, is that right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that would be one way to say it. Yes.
SPEAKER_03What happened?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I you know, I've I'd gone through a few different things, like all this is part of the story and part of the testimony, and so um had you know different backgrounds in doing different things. One of them was in ministry and had had a good amount of success there and was really blessed by all that. Um, and so very felt very confident speaking in front of groups of people, leading groups of people, like totally a comfort zone.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And so I shifted into the business world and uh uh I'm going through what we call business training week at this company, and uh so you know I'm I'm learning things I didn't know, and it was great. And one of the first things you have to do is ex like give a scenario and then kind of get in front of the group and explain. And for mine, it was this like customer engagement piece, and I nailed it. Like I nailed it. Uh I crush it. Yes, I got it. It it went so well that I'm getting all these atta boys, and I'm like, this is easy. Like the business world is great. This is fantastic.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, just what a translation from ministry. You're just crushing the corporate world.
SPEAKER_04All these skills are transferring. I'm feeling so good about myself. I'm telling my wife I had a good first few days. I'm walking down the hall, I'm seeing people, and they're like, hey, I heard that thing, man. This is great. Um, and so like all the stuff you'd expect. And uh, we get to the last day, and you basically have this like time in front of the group. Whole executive team is there, operations team is there, and you're like recapping what you learned and where you're gonna, you know, like what are you gonna do with this information? And so you you got you get a lot of emotion up there, you get a lot of people talking about how the week changed their life. And so uh the first part of this is got all these attaboys, so my ego's doing pretty well. Well, I'm gonna hit it out of the park, right?
SPEAKER_03Like sure, it's obvious the second time will be even better.
SPEAKER_04Yes, and yeah, and uh I just you know, if you're if you ever I call it a word tornado, like where you're you're trying to make a point and you can't quite find the words, you can't quite get there, and so you're like in this circular message, and it's just getting worse and worse. And uh now my message is too long and I've gone longer than everybody else, and um, it's not make like inside I'm like melting because I know what's happening. Yes. Uh in my my panic to shut it down, I close by telling the whole room that um, you know, it was something effective, like, and uh I love you guys. Uh it was just fine in some scenario. People know me, and it wasn't you know properly delivered for the emotional connection. And I just remember like getting this like slow clap as I walked back to my table and like just sat down and put my hands on my desk and looked down and and was like, what just happened? So uh it was an incredibly uh hilarious, humbling moment. Uh and now that I've told people, especially on my previous teams, they uh I get a lot of I love you man's at the at the from the from the people that I work with. So it was good.
SPEAKER_03Hey, well, there there you go, everybody. If you um are scared of public speaking, this is this is the decade plus ago, and he's he's laughing about it out there. Luke, thanks for sharing the story, buddy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Well, that's one of them. So yeah, you bet.
SPEAKER_01Let's be honest. Life's messy, decisions are complex, and it's not all black and white, but these are the decisions that shape our growth. Welcome to the tension. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_03All right, everyone. Welcome to the tension podcast, another amazing episode. Gosh, we've had a lot of good ones lately. Uh, today is around the tension of having a blueprint or a life blueprint. You know, all of us come from somewhere. And whether we realize it or not or whether we want to admit it or not, there's a blueprint of life and decisions that have been made for generations past that are gonna influence the way in which we make decisions, even subconsciously. But then there comes a point in your life where you get to make intentional decisions about that blueprint. And so, what attention, right? Like we've got to have some level of a blueprint, or we're just kind of who knows where we're going. And so we must have that, and at the same token, what attention of where you came from, what you learned, versus what do you intentionally want to be and have learned from different people, and just how do you do that every day? Today we've got Mr. Luke Stanton on. I'm quite excited because Luke is the president of the collective, which is a myriad of different companies that help out in a full wealth management capability to bring a family office experience to any client that's out there. And it's a really interesting business model. And it came from someone, as you'll learn, that's really done this more in the blue-collar space and now bringing all that experience in the white-collar space. So I'm thrilled to have him. But when you hear his background, when you hear how he's gotten where he's gotten, it's gonna be, I think, so interesting for you to learn just some of the frameworks of how he's learned how to manage this whole having a life blueprint. But before I go further, Luke Stanton, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_04Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03So, brother, uh, I think it's it's super fun that we're talking about this, because uh even uh when I was thinking about introducing it today, I couldn't help but go back to, I wonder what are all the things from like my past childhood, my parents' parents' parents that affect this blueprint in which I uh either know or don't know is happening to me that helps to shape how I live my life and what I deem is successful. And so for you, I think it'd just be really helpful if you can like let's start like who are you, Luke? What what are you doing? Uh, tell us about your family, these things. And then I want to jump straight into like your background, uh, and we're just gonna go straight like to the deep stuff first. So quickly, uh just a background on yourself.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so uh appreciate that. Um, my wife and I have been married for uh 18 years.
SPEAKER_03Heck yeah.
SPEAKER_04Which is a huge mile marker uh for us, for me. Um, and we have four kids. And uh so we have a seven-year-old, a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and then a two and a half month old. So a daughter and then three boys. I always joke that my boys are totally feral. Uh and so trying to corral them and like you know, it is always uh I don't know if you really want to corral and and uh guard put guardrails in place for your boys necessarily. They need to be a little wild, right?
SPEAKER_03Um I wouldn't know, Luke. The sorority over here.
SPEAKER_04You know, my daughter's like a little nice, uh wonderful, sweet princess, and my boys are constantly attacking me. So you you want to point that in the right direction, right? But uh my our house is like loud and chaotic, and I love it. Um, we're always on the go with them and they're always into something. So life is so full. Um, life is so full, and I'm so grateful for that. And and especially like sharing a little bit of my story. Um, I had a really good sense of what I did not want out of life, and I'll talk more about that. But um, having some of the things that I have now, I'm looking back and just so very grateful for that. Um, I spent 15 years in franchising and systems and processes, and so loved that. Um, that was an incredible journey. Um, we did that at an incredible organization, one of the largest home services franchising companies in the world. Um, had just a stellar experience there, stellar franchisees. Uh, and this is all connected, but before that, spent six years in aviation doing aviation maintenance, corporate pilot. And so I've had all these interesting like points of exposure where I've gotten to see the ways of um just different points of view for business leaders, executives, CEOs, doing different things. Yeah, run day camps, I've like I've run organizations, I've done I've been in ministry, and uh it's just interesting. All this goes back to this blueprint design idea, and there's this interesting kind of thread with all that, but um, that's a little bit, at least a shorter, shorter version of some of my background and uh where I am today.
SPEAKER_03So good, Luke. Um, and yeah, you know you're going there, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tangent. Sometimes I just tangent too much on this doggone podcast. We're going straight to the heart. Tell us about your upbringing, right? If this is the tension of a blueprint, the blueprint for all of us of life uh is given to us by our upbringing. Tell us about yours.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh, you know, here's what I'll say. Um love my mom and my dad and and bless them. And they did to the degree that they were capable of and knew how to parent and raise kids. I think they did, in their own view, the best job they could have done. And so I've a even as an adult raising kids, try to have as much grace for that as possible. You know, the reality is that um life rest growing up for me, my sister, was actually really, really hard. Um, emotionally insecure, financially insecure, very broken, broken family. Um, you know, we we literally had just no stability ever. If I look back, I was just having this conversation with my sister, um, who's got a just a wonderful family, been married longer than I've been married, um, and just such stability. Um, it's interesting to kind of reflect on some of this. And yeah, you know, while painful, um so much of it has made us who we are today. A lot of that is is your ability to respond to those things. But you know, my my dad, um who I love and have so much respect for, was um always starting a business. Like, you know, I can't I can tell you from like my earliest memories hearing from my dad that just wait, next year I'll be a millionaire and all of our problems will be solved. I have a very interesting relationship with money. And at some point, you know, being on food stamps and you know uh not knowing where any sort of level of stability would come from necessarily, you get to a point where it's like, oh, like your parents and you're certainly your dad, my parents are divorced, and they divorced when I was young, but that's not that's not going to come from them, and I don't think it's ever gonna come from them. And so as a child, you start to go, well, like where am I gonna get this from? And that can lead to a lot of bad outcomes. For me, like I don't think it necessarily did per se, but I started to mentally documenting, maybe even unknowingly, a lot of what I what my life I just it was I was not gonna allow my life to look like that. And so I had a very asked me and a very clear view of what I didn't want. And you know, I didn't want to be 80 and $30,000 in credit card debt. And like I didn't want to live paycheck to paycheck. I didn't know there was another world, but I knew I didn't want that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that that blueprint was the one that you at least knew was a big X.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. And you know, I to say even say a blueprint is too strong of a word at this point in my life because it was just this list of things I didn't want. And so I just resolved that when I was 18, um, again, like still dealing with like identity and who am I and all this stuff. Um, what am I supposed to do with my life? How's my life going to be different? You know, when I turned 18, I moved out, and I didn't, I wasn't trying to run from them necessarily, but I never moved back. I never, you know, all my college roommates, they're going back in the summers, their their parents, their mom's doing their laundry again. Like, I didn't do that. I I when I turned 18, you know, I was working for the next for the next long while I was working at least two jobs. And I was paying my way through school and uh working my rear end off. Um, and uh, and that, you know, just again, trying to much of that was a reaction from versus a response. It was a reaction from my childhood and like just grinding to create for me some sort of level of stability, security, structure. I'm never gonna find myself in the circumstance that I came from. So um it it wasn't my final kind of worldview, and my worldview is still evolving, but at least you know, the early years, the formidable forming years, um, going to Bible college and doing a few other things really began to form a few core nuggets of okay, I'm getting a sense of who I am, what my identity is. And then like that starts to layer on into what I call kind of like this blueprint of life. So that's some of that history at least.
SPEAKER_03Come on, man. Well, before we keep going, so like uh you've seen enough of our episodes to know that loosely we we follow this framework of like, you know, each tension that we explore, uh, one of our jobs as even being stewards of this podcast and the eventual book and all these great things is like teaching people even that they're there, right? Because you you can't do anything with that which you don't even see, right? If you can't even acknowledge or notice it's there and admit that it's there, like um you can't you can't really do anything with it. So, like what it was there like a specific story, Luke? Because that's I mean, from food stamps, like I mean, yeah, I mean, you you've told me this story before, and every time I'm like, wow, it is just so neat to like know you today, and like, wow, what a story! And we'll get to like, how in the world did you manage all this to get to this man today? But like, what was the moment that you first saw it? Was it was it that some of those like really early childhood moments you're like, whoa, this is a tension that I'm gonna have to manage because if not, I'm just gonna fall into this same thing. Like, when's the first time, like as a kid or something you noticed this wasn't the life blueprint that you wanted?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think um, man, there there's like a few like real pivotal moments for me. I think in high school I realized maybe finally, more so finally, that it was on me. And and like there's a a healthy reality to that. Um at the same time, we're not really made to do things alone by ourselves. And so come on, baby. Two better than one. That I mean, honestly, right? Like, you're not gonna get out of this hole all by yourself. And so I'm I'll just tell you a few like radical things that happen in my life. Uh, one, I'm I'm recognizing that there no one's gonna do this for me, and so you know, I'm I'm like looking for ways to index towards like where can my life go? What can I control? How can I control that outcome? And that doesn't necessarily lead to healthy behaviors either, right? But you're just you're young and you're forming, you're trying to figure out what to do. Sure. When I was um 18 and I move out, I'm still a little like I don't know where I'm gonna go. I didn't have a college that I had selected, and so I get enrolled into a Bible college, and uh, and just to like to do something, my sister was going there, so just to create some sort of like foundation for me, I end up getting like radically saved out of that.
SPEAKER_03And so Wow, that was in the Bible college, yeah, yeah. So wait, wait, you got admitted to a Bible college? Yes, and you didn't actually believe in the Bible when you were admitted. No, no, there's something you don't see every day.
SPEAKER_04No, well, let me tell you, like, here's the reality is that there's a lot of people that the the difference between going through the motions, and I was finding myself that a lot of my life was about going through these motions. So these things that looked a particular way, in the case of like becoming a Christian, I went to church, I attended you know the youth retreats, like I did these things. Was I in relationship with Jesus? And the reality is no, I wasn't. And uh, and so I have a professor that you know, his first prayer in the class was, hey, for all the kids here that are, you know, don't have a relationship with the Lord and are just trying to prove them to themselves that things are gonna be fine, um, you know, with the Lord just open your eyes. And I was like, hey, he's he might as well say Luke Stanton. And for the life, um, you know, the gospel made sense to me, that made sense to me. And so I it was foundational, I mean transformational and foundation setting for me in a massive way, and then everything else that happened happened in response to that pivotal moment for me. And you know, getting from Dallas to Waco, uh, going into aviation, all of that started to get connected. And along the journey, you know, I'm I I didn't even know I was looking for this, but I'm having mentors placed in my life, I'm having families get placed in my life that have a healthy relationship and their kids are tight and they're close and they don't scream it at each other. And I'm like, what what what is this world? So all these things start to come together that um you know just had dramatic change in my life. I get married, and uh I'm 24 years old at this point, and um I have no, you know, I have I I while I didn't want to look anything like what I had come from, my parents' financial insecurity. The reality is that when we got married, day one, my wife and I are over $100,000 in debt and we're both still in school. She's going to marry Hard Baylor. I still finish my bachelor's degree. We gotta figure out how to pay for that. I've basically tapped out every available loan I could get.
SPEAKER_03And the premise, sorry, sorry, let me pause you on that for one second. What was that like though? Because now I'm I'm you know I'm hearing nice, so I'm hearing all these different things, but I'm like, this is interesting. First year of marriage, the very thing that you had at least, I think when you were saying before, started to say, like, I don't think I'm gonna be that, the blueprint started to kind of take you over instead of you taking over and creating your own with the debt, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you it's not enough. It just isn't this is the reality for me. It wasn't enough to know what I didn't want my life to look like. It's not enough. And when you're when you're living in reaction to what you don't want, unfortunately, you find yourself almost looking identical to what you didn't want.
SPEAKER_03Boom, baby, boom, and boom, and boom. How many times have you mentored people that literally is a it is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's so hard to watch, especially when they're in their 20s, because that's it, it seems to be the 20s where we all have these things we never wanted to have happen, and they're self-fulfilling prophecies because of what you just said. What a quote.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, it's it's wild. Um, and just this is how good the Lord is. I uh somebody had gotten us total money makeover, and uh, and the we were in this situation. Here's here's the silly thing because we listened to conventional wisdom, you know, student loans are okay. Get a car because you don't you don't want to have vehicle problems, all of our cards are paid for, so we got a new car because we're new newlyweds, right? So we get a new car. You need to like get a few credit cards so you can start earning your credit. So we get a few credit cards, and then before you know it, without any sort of financial discipline, listening to conventional wisdom, we're $100,000 plus in debt, and you know, we're both still in school. And I I got married and I signed up for this. I'm gonna provide for my family. I'm not asking anybody to provide for me. Yeah, by the grace of God, we came across Total Money Makeover, which which again we didn't buy it, but it's our first exposure to Dave Ramsey, and it was the first semblance of like a financial blueprint, so very not a life blueprint, but a financial blueprint. Yeah, totally. Dude, we we just put our hand to the plow. We said this is what we're gonna do. And um, the thing about this is if you knew anything about the Stantons, you knew they were getting out of debt, and uh, not because we were out there like asking for money or anything like that. I'll give you a funny story about that. Um, if you asked us, you ran across us in town, you saw each other at church, and you said, How are you doing, Luke? Or Haley, how are you doing? Which everybody does, right? Whatever we say. I'm good, fine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's going okay.
SPEAKER_04Yes. And we'd like corner them, and we'd be like, You know what I know what I'm doing? I'm getting out of debt. You know what? You have debt, you can get out of debt too.
SPEAKER_03And uh I wonder if that uh did that get you out of some invites to some double dates.
SPEAKER_04It uh, you know, it was interesting. It it um it had a really interesting reaction. Everybody knew our story, and there's probably some John Maxwell uh content for this too, but like the the law of attraction, and you know, there's some things that like build momentum, but it was so funny. We started telling everybody, everybody knew it, everybody started asking us, and so it like became like this self-accountability thing where we had to have interesting, we had we had to make progress, we were all in and we had to deliver on that. Right, and then other people are like, you know what, I think we can get out of debt too. And so her you know, Haley's parents get out of debt, pay their house.
SPEAKER_03You become you become the inspiration because you were actually vulnerable enough to share that which is such a um quiet, don't say it because it makes you look bad things.
SPEAKER_04And we, you know, we just got to a place where we didn't care. We we we find ourselves in Financial Peace University, we've got couples in there with us, and we're just evangelizing what's happening. Um, we lived on a piece of property, like I just we just did the craziest things. We this property we lived on that someone let us live there for free because they knew our story. Come on, and so I had to go kind of take care of it and whatnot. So there's an exchange, but they had hundreds of pecan trees. So I'm I'm picking up like thousands of pounds of pecans in my spare time, and we're turning them in for like 14 cents.
SPEAKER_02Uh I was gonna say, so you just pick up bottles and cans, maybe that's a little bit better ROI.
SPEAKER_04Probably it was on the property, it was convenient and it was spare time, but the return on picking pecans is not great. But it was like every every moment converted on converge on that idea that we were gonna get out of debt. So all of our debt, all of our behaviors were around that. The the last month, uh we were like it's I think it was July, June, July, I can't remember. Yeah. This is it. We have a thousand dollars left. I'm now waiting how many years are we? How many years are we into the marriage? This is our f uh this is our fifth year.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so five years it took you all to get out, or four, I guess. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04We're paying we also just resolved to pay cash for school. Um, so we've got a we've got to pay for school, right? So otherwise we would have been far more in debt. Um, so we're paying cash for school, we're getting out of debt. So, you know, it was it was effectively more than just like $20,000, you know, every single year here or so. But um, we've got this final month and we feel like this is it. We're $1,000 away. We had exhausted everything, like everything that we could sell.
SPEAKER_03This is it. This is the moment.
SPEAKER_04And we're $1,000 short of being you know, free from debt. Now we could have easily been free over the next month, that'd have been fine. Sure. Sure. This is it. And so uh I get on Facebook and I tell the world, I'm like, and I'm not on any social media anymore. But I said, here's our debt story. If you've been following, this is what we're doing. Uh I'll I I don't care what it is, if you have anything that needs to be done. Again, I'm in corporate America, by the way. Like, I I'm on a website somewhere as a you know, as a person that's running teams, and uh, and so there just wasn't any sort of like embarrassment about our story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.
SPEAKER_04We put it out there, and um a uh a classmate from college that I didn't even really know that well, she knows a friend whose parents just moved to Waco and he's a Baylor professor and they're trying to get their house ready. So this guy randomly reaches out to me and he's like, I heard your story through this person, through this person, through this person. He's like, Can I hire you for the next few days? And uh, I'm over there like raking his lawn, uh getting his landscaping ready, I'm cleaning his pool, and uh we paid our final debt payment.
SPEAKER_03Come on, baby.
SPEAKER_04You know, there's you know, like that intensity, that willingness to do whatever it takes to get it done, and all of that had no idea, all of that was foundational in shaping who I am, and then a lot of what I started to do next in the working world and in my career, and um, yeah, it was just absolutely radical.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think it was so interesting. So going back to like outside of just oh wow, what a story! I don't think uh a listener will look at a pecan tree again the same. But um is like, okay, so why is this such attention? Right? Because I I guess it's because the easy path for you would have been, okay, I see that this is like this is how it goes, and my family was in debt, and like this is kind of what I learned. And so then I was trying to follow conventional wisdom, but then I fell into it too. And I guess there was a time in which you had to learn that like it's either fight or flight. Like, I either have to accept that this sucker is attention and put together a plan to manage it, or just let it steamroll me and be another person in the generation. And it sounds like that was kind of, I'm hearing you right, that was your first moment of not just seeing this, this whole like blueprint thing taking over your life, but then you in some ways accepting that in fact it is a fight. It is something that you're gonna have to manage, it is something that you can't just let happen to you through like um you had to be more intentional, right? About about it. Is it is that the is that about right on like that time, or is there other things around there that you'd say are even more so than that story?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think there's a few layers and the and the tensions change. You know, there is to if you're you have a certain momentum and inertia in a particular direction, and for me, it was like I real realizing that I looked exactly like my family, and like a call of all the cascading events in my own life, my own childhood, and going, oh, if this is true now for me and I'm just getting started, yeah, my kids are gonna be in the exact same environment. And so it was a call, and the the tension there was you know, are you gonna fight and do what it takes, or are you gonna what's comfortable and easy and even like common, again, going back to conventional wisdom and how we got there, and uh, or are we gonna do something radically different? And we chose to do, and I have a lovely, incredible wife who's an all-in person. Um, and as much as I was radical about it, she was even more, right? Like she it once we agreed on this, we were both fully aligned, yeah. Mentally, our you know, our marriage aligned around it, and we just both put our hand in the plow and got it done. You know, you get past that, and it's like, well, now I need a new set of behaviors and a new way of thinking. Right. That is so specific. It's like, well, now that's just financial. What about like the same um intentionality with your marriage, with your relationships, with your community, and how like how expansive does this get?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And it's kind of carried over into this, like, you know, you talk, people talk about this a lot, we've we've talked about it, but um, you know, you're kind of cruising along, and like sometimes life is just happening to people and they're just accepting what's given to them, and just going with the flow, whether good or bad, just kind of like meandering on. And I just don't think that's you know, God's best for our life. Like, I think that um we can face that stuff head on, and you think about all the things we do to numb that. I think like you know there's a thing you should do, like you know you should get off the couch and you know you should work out, but it's just very easy to sit there and like continue to doom scroll, like it's just so easy. Yeah, yeah, and you just that so the tension is one, like, what's the major reset that you need? And like how are you gonna become aware to that? And then once you kind of get through that, like what are the new behaviors, the new processes, what what does your new world need to look like so that um it it becomes a framework and it's very clear and very visible, and you're living into that fully. And the great thing about this is the goalposts are gonna constantly change. Your goals become mile markers. It's no longer this life achievement because you're gonna find that once you achieve one goal, your worldview expands. I mean, I remember, I'll give you an example. I'm flying, and uh I just assumed that if you owned your own jet and you ran your own company, that you were you probably went to Harvard, you probably went to Yale, you were some sort of genius. You knew something that no one else knew. Like you had something something was ascribed to you at birth that others could not access naturally. It's in your DNA, maybe it's genetics. And I just assumed that. And the the more stories I heard sitting right seat next to some of these guys for so long, you know, it's more about your appetite for risk. They all had stories of failure, they all had stories of making massive mistakes, and they just they had a high appetite for risk and an unwillingness to give up. And the veil kind of got removed for me on well, that's that's actually accessible to anybody.
SPEAKER_03Come on, dude.
SPEAKER_04And and it's actually a matter of choice. Is that for you? Do you want to make the choice? Is that the life you want? And like that constant tension of comfort versus discomfort, yeah, to get the things you want out of life. And look, like having a successful marriage, look at the rates. Having a successful marriage means that you better be it is not common on being a good husband, and yeah, that's hard, you know, raising your kids, look at the world around us. Like you just can't be casual about any of these things, and so everything for us is this state of discomfort. It's just, you know, what are you willing to handle to get through that discomfort for the things you want?
SPEAKER_03Come on, man. Well, and you're hitting, I mean, um, on exactly where you know, I was really hoping we'd go today, which is the idea of like insert whatever your life blueprint is. It it can actually be, I mean, I think the most freeing thing I hear from you is it doesn't matter where you came from. Like it can, it can be, don't have assumptions that someone has something for any other reason than to your point, you got the blessing, just ask them. And what you'll find is whatever the blueprint is that you want for your life, it's all relative, right? There's no right or wrong answer. But I think how do you manage this tension? You have to start by actually acknowledging what I heard. Yeah, it's often higher risk. And I always hear high risk, high reward. And I often I often think about that. Everyone I know says something in the middle of that, which is high risk, higher workload, higher reward. Like, like everyone always seems to miss out on the I've never seen anyone just like higher risk and I got a higher reward. Like, uh, not in building things. Maybe you put your money in some random lucky thing and it made a bunch of money because you you risk it all. Maybe. But if you're looking at the true way of building things, I mean that's how it goes. And I think what you're saying, if I have it right, is sometimes the greatest risk. Yes, I get what you meant for the guys that you were flying, right? I get I get that level of risk. But is it in this case like some of the greatest risk is actually going against the status quo, is telling your friends and your community you're in debt, is being vulnerable about these things, is saying I want to be a good husband, but knowing now that you said it, oh man, are you in for a lot of work to do that you've said it? So isn't the risk just getting out of the flow?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. The risk is, you know, how hard is that gonna be for you? What are people gonna think about you? And, you know, the there's a class that I I used to teach on this, and that if I could go over again, I would just write these things down ahead of time because they're all gonna happen. But like, write down who when you start to say this stuff out loud, what your family's gonna think about you. Go ahead and just write down what people's what are the what are the things that are gonna try to be said about you, done to you to sideline you. And uh instead of being surprised by those things, just look at them as mile markers. And it's like, oh, I actually thought I wrote this thing down that someone was gonna try to be discouraging or tell me that I'll never be successful, or you know, you know, whatever, think of whatever it is, right? The family member who constantly has an opinion about this stuff. And it's like the risk is you don't do that, and you get what everybody else gets. And everybody else, and everybody is in debt. You know, many people have broken lives, broken marriages. Like, I just if that if that is the normal world that everybody's getting, I just don't want to look like that. And uh, I'm not to say that I'm superior or that I'm better than anybody else, but everybody has a choice to make about the kind of person they want to be and the life they want to lead. Yeah, uh, it it starts with you making the mental choice on what that's gonna be for you. And I like another interesting example. We're my wife and I still do this today. We write these things down. What is it that we went out of life? It's not more complex than that.
SPEAKER_03It's not, you know, I was gonna say, I was about to ask you, like, teach us uh for the listener out there, like practical tips. So you're going exactly that place because my guess is these are not really complex.
SPEAKER_04They're not. They're they're they're totally not. I'll tell you like the first thing we did, we just made up our own framework, which was we we got a whiteboard. Yeah, if you came to our house while we're getting out of debt, just saw that number on the whiteboard. Everybody saw that we were 100,000 when it started, $100,000 plus in debt. So every there was ultra transparency around that. I'm not saying you have to do that for every area of your life. Get comfortable with what that transparency needs to look like. But for us, it was literally just a whiteboard. And uh this whiteboard had our short-term goals on there. We had been in this for just a little bit, and so we actually had things in there that we wanted long term as well.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And um, and some things that we wanted to be true about our life. So, like, what is it that what are the things we want to stand for? So, call that like uh overarching ambition for the Stantons. You know, people would say like this can get as complicated as you want. So I'd say err on the side of simplicity, but what are just the few things that are that you need to resolve in your life? Forgiveness, getting out of debt, whatever it might be, like start writing that stuff down, and it's gonna change, right? Like you're gonna encounter that, you're gonna get done with it, you're gonna achieve those things. Keep writing those things down. Um, putting it in a place that's visible where everybody can see it is really key. We did this on a whiteboard, we moved, that whiteboard got put away. We found this whiteboard a year ago, and I was we we we had our room, we're we were going through it, and almost everything that we had written down, we achieved or exceeded. Come on, and that that whiteboard had been packed away for a while, and yeah, yeah, sure. So think about the power of just writing some things down and going through the mental energy of articulating how you think and feel about something. So, in its simplest form, start just writing a few things down and then couple that with like extreme action. And like let me give an example.
SPEAKER_03A key word I believe is going to be extreme.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it all is. It because you you have all of this is hard, and like the biology of how your brain works and and um like the neuroplasticity end of things where your your brain is really efficient on creating well-worn paths why habits are really hard to break. There's a biology to this where if you're gonna if you're gonna change behavior, bad behavior for sure, everything has to be extreme, and that's hard. And and that's the thing that people have to rectify is just truly how hard these things will be. So get you gotta make the mental decision to do that. Write them down, and then what can you take extreme action to? If if you I've got plenty of examples of friends who are like, I'm gonna get in shape, and then they go and they buy the shoes and they buy the outfit and then they buy a few workout things, and next thing you know, they're two weeks in, they've got all the gear, they've got all the stuff, and they're like, I'm about to start working out, and they just never work out. And you can apply that to anything. We do everybody does that, so don't buy any of that. If you said I want to go work out, and I wrote it down, I don't care for in your work clothes, go do 10 push-ups, go do five push-ups, but like get your your mind and your body in the rhythm of I said I was gonna do this, I wrote it down the next 30 seconds. How can I take action against that thing? Again, all hard, because this is the discomfort area, right? But get get in the motion of trying to attack everything in your life that way. You don't have to boil the ocean and do everything, so just pick a few, and then like, how can you take immediate action to that? You can buy the clothes later, you can buy the running shoes later, just take some immediate action, and then as you're maturing into that and growing into that, you can easily go to the store and get what you need. Like you can you can expand on that stuff, but don't let those things be the hurdle that prevent you from taking immediate action. So write it down, take immediate action, and then I'd say like find the there's a few other things you can do if you want to get more detailed, but like who are the few people that you would be willing to be vulnerable with? Yeah, create some transparency around that for them personally. So you know, and and that you gotta be selective here. If you're going to say, you know, I'm gonna get out of debt, can you tell somebody who is just abundantly for you? And like they're the kind of person that when you say, I'm gonna do this thing, they go, you know what? I have I think you have what it takes. Like you're actually talking to this, you're you're sharing this with me a year too late because I've already been thinking about this for you.
SPEAKER_03Come on.
SPEAKER_04And and some people don't have that network of friends, right? So I know that that can be hard, but who's a who's an advocate for you? And uh and and find that person. And then like don't tell people, they're just people you don't need to know, like other than your spouse, there it may be your mom, your dad, even they don't necessarily need to know, like, because there are just people in your life, unfortunately, that the second you tell them that you're gonna do something great, they go, Oh, yeah, I know somebody that tried the very same thing and they failed.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, oh yeah, and what's funny is most of the time that they do that it's out of their own insecurity, because what would it be like if you actually achieve it? Yeah, when you're younger, you actually think it's it's well meaning and wisdom, and then you later learn just how self-absorbed humans are, and it all comes down to their own protection of their own self in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, a thousand percent. That advice is more so rooted in insecurity than it is uh good counsel, right? It's not you know, you see you gotta find some advocates for you, and uh and if I'm ever like talking to somebody about this who I don't have a relationship, I'm always saying, look, you you don't have somebody on that list, here's my name and number. And so here's the thing about it you you start to achieve these things. Here's a real transformational component of this. Yeah, you start to become that for others. Come on, baby. And if you're if you're talking about this and you're sharing it, if there's somebody who doesn't have that person in their life, look, it's just it just comes with the territory now. You're telling them the life they should have and what they should do, you're sharing that with them. You know, be willing to go that extra mile and say, you don't have that person, I'll be this person for you for six weeks. And you don't have to put it, make it indefinite, but I'm I I can at least give you six weeks of my time to be your advocate. I don't have to do it for 12 months, and like those are points that you can step into as a mentor, but you go from like modeling this, changing your behaviors, to actually being the one that is now um seeing it through in the lives of others, and I'd say like been very blessed to live that out with others as well. And I'd say that's probably been one of the most rewarding pieces of this is being able to share this story, see others start to adopt it and have their own story to tell, and then get to like live some of that through with them. And it's like it's a it's a really powerful thing. I'm not saying I'm perfect, like there are still things I need to hold in, and uh, you know, even segments of this blueprint idea that I need to get better and better at, but man, my life looks dramatically different than what it should have looked like if you knew where yeah, it's so funny, man.
SPEAKER_03I was um sitting uh at this at this luncheon type thing, and I had maybe 10, 15 minutes with uh you mentioned John Maxwell earlier, and I remember just talking about like where he is and those things. And he said, Travis, I really appreciate uh the way you asked your questions today. Like as we talked, I said, Oh, why? He goes, you know what? I can't tell you how many people say, John, I want to be you. I want to be the greatest leadership book author of all time. I want those things. And he asked them, like, what are they doing today? Like, and he realizes and and gets them to realize so many people want to have the back to this whole blueprint idea. They want to be somebody. That's my blueprint of life. I'm gonna be that person, be that person, whatever it may be. And yet, very few times do people have any idea how that person got where they are. Right. And if they knew that, no, they don't.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_03And so it's very easy to want all of the, I mean, to your workout example, six-pack and all the different things. But the question, truly, I think, and I think that's what you're saying, as far as like teaching us how to manage this tension, if you look up to someone and that's your blueprint, or you try to run away from a blueprint of your past, or you're, you know, insert all the different ways a blueprint can be in life. Like, don't just look at it and say, I don't want this. That's kind of what you're saying, your upbringing, or I do want that. Ask the question, well, what am I going to do to not make that occur? What am I going to do to become that? And I think what I'm learning from you is like, you have to educate yourself to even know what to write on the whiteboard. Like it's almost a precursor before the whiteboard, if we're like practically talking here, which is you actually have to know what you're talking about. And that means you have to be curious and humble to get time with people and ask the questions. Because it sounds like a lot of even how you got that was whether it's Ramsey stuff that, you know, I've always said, man, there Ramsey up to a certain level of net worth is one of the best you can get, right? And then you get to a certain level of net worth that's not quite as helpful, but still some truth. But like, man, if it's depth stuff, I still think he's the best there is. And like, okay, great. So you were able to take that, mix it with, went on an airplane with that guy that was just blue collar and just made millions of dollars. Mix that with, and so I can you like uh walk us through a little bit because I'm really loving this idea, and I'm even thinking of my own life right now, and like uh just some of the areas that I can maybe shatter through blueprints because I can actually stop making assumptions. Like, give us a little bit more of how you created that that leads to the whiteboard moment.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, um, so you mentioned the word curiosity, and that's a big piece of this. Like, if you're hearing this and you're thinking, well, where the heck do I start? It's it's in simplicity. And your diligence to that simplicity means that you can handle more complex pieces of this. Like you can't do everything all at once, and so I want to pick the small thing, right? But then it's like To get to this like life blueprint where you're starting to segment your life and you're getting like your ambition is growing and your vision for your world and your vision for your family is bigger. Like that should be growing every single year because as you're reaching these targets, you're getting a little bit further on. Yeah. And as I've read a book, or I've been to a conference, or uh this role like full circle moment where I met Dave Ramsey in person, and he's like, I'm like, I'm sitting there and I'm like trying not to like have a fangirl moment, and uh and I'm shaking his hand, I'm like, this guy just doesn't even know. Like he has no idea my story or anything or how impactful it's been. And so, you know, you've you've gotta being curious and asking questions and being willing to ask those questions. So I give you like a very like important tactic here is um I this is my this is my experience. I don't know if it's everyone's experience. What I find is that people who are highly successful actually don't have people coming to them with really sincere, authentic, and even bold questions.
SPEAKER_03So true.
SPEAKER_04Here's what happens they go, they don't have time for the peon. They don't have time to hear from me. And so you you, you know, we call this limiting beliefs, right? Like you have a limiting belief that that can't be true, so you disqualify yourself before it can even happen.
SPEAKER_03Come on. Come on.
SPEAKER_04So we don't ask you, I think your access to people like that is actually incredible, but we we're not willing to step in. So get past that fear and just start asking the question and identify who need to ask that question too. And what happens is because those individuals are, I think I often find actually eager to share their story and get interesting questions and bold questions, which is like, hey, like, like what is your like you could be general, you're like, what is your story? Like you you are really successful. This obviously didn't happen overnight. Like, anything you'd be willing to share me, share with me on like how you got here, and they may talk to you for the next two hours. Let me talk to you. But often they're they're and they're willing and excited, uh, even though they may deny that to share these little tidbits. And there's just a there's just gold out there, like everything that you could ever want has already been tried or experienced and failed and learned. Ecclesiastes, baby. Just go ask. That's right. That's exactly it. Just go ask. And so part of that blueprint is you know, identifying who those people are and then start forming your own worldview about what needs to be true for you. Someone used to tell me, um, I can't remember who this was, they'd say, you know, the way that you need in that curiosity vein and learning things, you're gonna you're gonna get some bad information in there. And it doesn't all have to be true for you. So here's your philosophy, Luke. Eat the meat and spit out the bones. And you're just constantly looking for the things that matter for you. That's gotta turn out. That was really good. 80% of that was good, 20% of that, you know, not good. Um, it's not acceptable for me to sacrifice my marriage for success, you know. Like some people like with that, it's just part of the story. So you have to distill that stuff out and find out what's true for you. Um, and then that's gonna kind of continue to form more and more what you want that to be. Um, but find those people, identify who you think has already gone there before you. So if it's somebody that's in fitness, and that's a good one because it's so practical, um, is there any person that you could go get access to that has the life that you want physically?
SPEAKER_03Yes, they may not have the they have the blueprint for that. For that, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yes, exactly. And like again, approaching those people, asking them questions, and being curious, and then maybe there's a place where they're willing to help you. But that that level of curiosity and boldness, I have just found to lead to extraordinary outcomes. Very powerful.
SPEAKER_03Curiosity plus boldness may be the unlock for I mean, honestly, as I'm thinking about even this podcast, like what have I not seen that hasn't been so out of the flow? Like we talked about like one of the greatest risks that's going to lead to no rewards is just like staying the flow, because it's a huge risk to get out of it. But I do think this curiosity, because the curiosity, what comes from that is you're not focused on yourself anymore. So, yes, we're talking about learning from someone else's blueprint, but goodness gracious, when it's me, me, me, me, me, you can't expand because you don't even know where to expand to, because you need other ideas to do that. But then to your point, you need both boldness to ask the questions to learn more, but then the boldness after that, chew the meat to put out the bones, but then put something on the whiteboard. And once you put that sucker on the whiteboard and you tell some trust and confidence, and I love what you said because uh it's it goes back to the book Unaffendable, you already have written down what all the haters are gonna say, and you're like, ah, I'm good. I already wrote it down. I'm unoffendable, like that doesn't matter. So you've already taken the power out of those people, right? Now it's just the the one that none of us want to talk about, which is hard work, hard work, hard work, 100,000, gets the 99,800, and you have to consider that success, even if you wanted it to get down to 50, and you have to just be boom, boom, boom. And so, I mean, I'm loving this, dude. Uh, I'm I'm loving where it's going. So um I have I have two more questions. The first is you've now achieved it. You're a humble guy, but you know, we talk about this debt, we talk about these different things. I mean, that's so many years ago. Uh, you you then became a pretty powerful executive of effectively one of the bigger stories I know of, especially in the home services space, maybe the biggest one, of scaling. And you were there pretty much since day one when that thing took off as a rocket ship, and won't won't probably give yourself the credit as to how much you did to make that thing turn into this multi-billion dollar revenue machine. And that's amazing, dude. I mean, that that that's awesome. But like, would you say that now that you're on this side, you know, so many years, you know, multi-decades in from that experience of like, I don't want to be this way. Like, what does it feel like for the person that's like, all right, I might do what this Luke guy's saying? Like, what does it feel like today? Because it can't all be perfect, but it also has to have some pretty neat rewards.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, man, gosh, that's a good question. Uh there are moments in that whole journey. First of all, thank you for that compliment. Um, very grateful for my experience at uh in the home services space and our franchisees. Um it's it's a bit surreal, right? And you put this in words that I would struggle to put them in. Um, but grateful to be a part of the team and everyone that I mean, honestly, the last 15 years, that organization is such a leadership machine, so much of my worldview, and I had the foundation kind of going into it. There are a few people there that like were real pivotal in getting some of that, some of the things I'm talking about here really, really dialed in. And uh, and so I don't know, I'm trying, I'm trying to, you know, my I'm at the stage now where I'm thinking about like what does that look like for the next 20 years of my life?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04How am I gonna become you know more of that in terms of what they were to me to carry me along? And you know, I haven't probably done a good job of even expressing to them, you know, that time you spent with me was actually really life-changing. So it's just interesting. You know, I I think it I would say that um there are points where I'm like when we got out of debt, we should have celebrated that moment more than we did because we just instantly re-rolled all that momentum in work.
SPEAKER_03Next fight, next next whiteboard.
SPEAKER_04Next whiteboard. Exactly. And so I'd say the bad thing from that is you want to leverage that momentum, and that's good. A discipline, this is a philosophy that I think is true that we kind of live by, but like you develop a discipline in one area, it will influence discipline in other areas.
SPEAKER_03You've got true, every time.
SPEAKER_04That's right, right? It it just kind of cascades, it connects.
SPEAKER_03And uh, by the way, so does the opposite.
SPEAKER_04Totally, yes, yeah. Um uh so you I would say I wish we had celebrated some of these these mile markers a bit better than we did. And we're trying to do that, you know. I've been married for 18 years, but we're trying, we're still trying to do that better. I can tell you some things we're doing with our children, but um doing a better job of that. It feels less like here's like the other interesting thing, it feels less like it feels like we climbed what I thought was Mount Everest, yeah, and then we got to the top of it, and I was like, oh shoot, no, that's Mount Everest, and then you go to the next hill.
SPEAKER_03Every time you're on a higher mountain, you can see the higher mountain now. You can see further, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And all that comes with its next set of adventures and benefits, yeah. But the so it feels less like we got on the other side of something, and now our eyes are open to more opportunity, more ways to serve, right? More ways to live into a full life. And I just think there's just some in the short period that we have, because life is so unbelievably short, and we just we have there's just an abundance of opportunity all around us. And I'm not saying it's all easy by any means. Hopefully, I've not said that at all. It's all hard, it's a worthwhile, and it's a rich, and I mean like relationally rich, emotionally rich. It can be financially rich, but that's not the the only outcome. It's a very rich journey. And so, again, to like to answer your question, it's less like we got on the other side of it. It's like, oh, look where we are, and it's more like well, now we have additional skills and additional foundation and more stewardship. Our territory has expanded, our our world has has expanded, and now we actually have more stewardship and more responsibility, but I will take that all day long versus the alternative, which is you know what generally generationally had looked like for the Stantons debt, you know, fragmented life, brokenness, and yeah, that's just not our story, and it won't be our story, right? And so if you look at, if you kind of compare, you know, I'll take this all day long. I uh the the work is worth it.
SPEAKER_03The work is worth it. That's like, oh man, if that if there's not a better quote, I mean, you know, I'm like obsessed with this idea of make a count. You know, we have a video on it of my like life story, all these things. I talk about these marbles, and every week taking one to the other, like, how did you make a count this week? All this stuff. But I think what you just said, it's so funny. Like, how do you how do you really make a count? How do you really get that tension of the like like the blueprint? Well, the tension is just that. Yeah, you can't have all those things that you want without the hard work, without the tough days, without even achieving them. And even right now, I love what you said, and thanks for the vulnerability for everyone here. Even if you get into this kind of, I'm getting it done, and I'm I'm winning the blueprint, you still have opportunities to say, well, yeah, we didn't celebrate much there. We should have done that. So you're still even learning when you achieve. And I think that that's just like such a um, I think it's such an important thing. And that's why I really, really, really like this because um it is not a problem we'll ever solve. You will never win the game of the blueprint. You'll actually never arrive where you thought, because then it's another mile market, it's another mountain, right? It's all these different things. And yet, if you actually live by this mindset, you're fulfilled. I love that word. So we got to close, Luke. Um uh same question I asked to close this sucker every time. Like, what are the action items? What are the things people can do to manage this tension that is these different blueprints of life? Hit them with some truth.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so I'll throw a few things out. Um, take action is the most important thing. Uh, if I was teaching this and I was in front of an audience, I would say that you know, the likelihood is that you hear a message like this and you categorize it into the things that you're you should do, want to do, will eventually get around to. The hang time in terms of how you feel coming out of that message is pretty short-lived. Meaning, go from it, it lasts basically from the front of the room to the back of the room. Wow. Exit the doors. And so everybody's energized by this, they get excited by this. It the momentum is that distance. You get outside those doors, where am I gonna eat? What else do I need to do? And so the thing here is that there's a really small percentage of people that are just gonna sit in their chair wherever they're at right now and just sit there for the next two minutes and go, no, what it, what am I going to do? Like, actually take this seriously. And and again, that goes back to that like inertia thing. You've got a certain amount of momentum in a particular direction. If there's any element at all that's resonating with you in this message, find a way to go take action immediately. And I've had people raise their hand and I'll go jump on the floor and we'll go knock out 50 push-ups together. Like, um, they'll give me their information and we're texting immediately on an accountability plan. And so I'm even maybe before the whiteboard, it's like, I just heard this. I'm gonna can I pick up the phone and call somebody and tell them what I'm about to do? Like, how quickly can you move to action? And I'd say that is a massive unlock. And here it is, just do something. I don't care what it is, it doesn't matter, just pick the thing, it doesn't matter how small it is, it it would, it's gonna be insignificant. 50 push-ups on your journey to losing 200 pounds is insignificant. Just do something. Just do something to interrupt the current flow that you're on. That small thing will be transformational for you. And then, you know, secondarily, is um just resolve to go and immediately start writing some of these things down. It's it's hard to say one, two, but go write some of these things down immediately, as quickly as you can. Get that into a place that's visible, start grabbing that accountability, and um, and while those things are happening, continue to look for ways to take action. And I'll put this out there too. And I always say this uh anytime I'm having this conversation in groups or individually, find me on LinkedIn. I don't care. I I will I will do something, I'll commit to something if someone actually takes me up on that in terms of seeing them through on getting started. And uh, and every time I put that out there, and I've I've done this with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of groups of people at this point, maybe even over a thousand now, and uh the percentage of people that are willing to take me up on any of that, you know, is probably less than five people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And if you just look at like the the group of people that are willing to do the hard thing, and that's just a story. Like, so don't let what I'm just saying feel like you need to be disqualified, just don't be what everyone else is in that regard, right? Choose to be something different, and again, that just goes back to action be action oriented in every possible thing that you can do.
SPEAKER_03Come on, Luke Stan, thank you, sir. That was so good. The summary team, if you want to manage this tension, when in doubt, take action. I hope this helped you, Luke. Thanks for being on the podcast. You bet.
