How to Lead with Empathy and Retain Team Loyalty with Lane Houk

Are you feeling the pressure of keeping your team engaged and motivated in today’s fast-paced digital world? In this episode, I have a compelling conversation with Lane Houk, a seasoned expert in digital marketing and managing partner at Quantum Agency. Lane shares his transformative journey and the vital role that empathetic leadership has played in building a loyal, high-performing team.

We discuss how Lane’s approach to servant leadership emphasizes treating every team member as a valuable individual, especially when managing global teams. His insights reveal that fostering a culture of care not only enhances team morale but also drives business success.

Lane also introduces us to Signal Genesis, his innovative platform that helps businesses retain authorship over their content, addressing a critical challenge in the digital PR landscape. By ensuring control over SEO authority, agencies can significantly improve their rankings and visibility.

Join us as we explore actionable strategies to enhance your leadership style, strengthen team loyalty, and navigate the complexities of digital marketing.

Connect with Lane Houk
To connect with Lane Houk and stay updated on his insights and resources, visit his website at lanehouk.com. Additionally, explore the Marketing Center of Excellence, which Lane founded to provide valuable educational resources for the marketing industry.

Books Mentioned: 

1. The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
2. Good to Great by Jim Collins
3. Good to Great and the Social Sectors by Jim Collins
4. The Bible (author traditionally attributed to various authors, depending on the section)

Ready to Finish 2024 Strong?
Don’t wait until December to address your challenges. There's a few months left in 2024, now is the time to plan for a strong finish! Book a free strategy call with Dr. William Attaway to create a plan for impactful results. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Lane Houk
• 9:52 Building a Purposeful Company Culture
• 16:09 Creating a Positive Company Culture
• 18:58 Revolutionizing Digital PR With Signal Genesis
• 28:35 Becoming Bold and Visionary Leaders
• 35:16 The Need for Bold Leadership

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

It is an honor today to have Lane Houk on the podcast. Lane is a veteran and a recognized expert in the marketing agency industry. Lane has specific authority and expertise for multi-location enterprises in the Google ecosystem and is a level seven local guide. He is a frequent speaker at agency events on topics like search engine optimization, local maps, optimization for businesses and how to scale a digital marketing agency. As the managing partner of Quantum Agency, a white-label marketing agency, he leads a cross-functional marketing team which delivers quality white-label marketing solutions for other digital agencies. Lane's also the founder of a proprietary web presence platform called Signal Genesis, a white label marketing platform for agencies. Signal Genesis was acquired by Search Atlas Group through a merger and acquisition transaction in August 2024. That is the month we are recording this. So this is fresh information and, Lane, I'm thrilled you're here, man. Thanks for being on the show.

Lane Houk: 1:03

Thanks so much for having me, Dr Attaway. I really appreciate being on your podcast with you. Thank you for the invite and just look forward to a great short chat here with you today.

Intro / Outro: 1:13

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:31

I want to start with your story. You know, I would love for you to share a little bit about how you got to this point, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader Lane. How did this whole thing get started? Well, if we go back to my development as a leader Lane.

Lane Houk: 1:43

How did this whole thing get started? Well, if we go back to my development as a leader, we have to go back to my teenage years. I jumped out of high school, I graduated one semester early and went into the Army. I did not really know what I wanted to do for a career, so I figured the Army would be a good way to serve my country and maybe figure out what career path I might want to take. So so I I jumped into the army and, honestly, you know, as an 18 year old, I was the youngest person in my basic training class. You know, it was a. It was an eye opener, for sure, you know, and it definitely taught me a lot about leadership and also about how to follow. I think you can't really be a great leader if you're not a great follower, and I think that was probably the beginning of really understanding and appreciating leadership was also appreciating how to be a great follower and not just, you know, not be your own thinker. Right, we got to follow a leader on a mission.

Lane Houk: 2:32

So that was a really good initial first step for me in terms of my development as a leader. I did spend eight years in the full-time ministry between ages of 24 and 32. I got married at the tail end of that time. Well see, I got married when I was 26. So my wife and I spent six years together in the ministry as well. I led everything from teen ministry to campus ministry, to single adult ministry, to married adult ministry, seniors of ministry, and then I also spent almost three years leading a whole church.

Lane Houk: 3:08

So that was probably my greatest years of development as a leader, very humbling time for me. I learned a lot about my failures in my personality and my character and, just as a leader, just how to lead people properly with empathy and, you know, just being a selfless leader I think was really you know, there's a lot of selfishness, you know in all of us and I think that I look back at those years and God really really pruned my heart in the selfishness area Not that I don't deal with it today still, but as a leader you really learn how to be a selfish leader, think about others first, be an empathic leader, and so those were really formative years in my development as a leader for sure. I think I probably learned the most about leadership in those eight years and a lot about just more about my failings and my successes, to be honest. And then, you know, I spent another nine years in the mortgage banking and real estate industry after I exited the ministry. I did not go back into the medical field, which is what I was in when I was in the Army, and so it was.

Lane Houk: 4:18

You know, so much time had passed. I didn't want to go back and get up to speed and all the changes that had happened in nursing and medical field, to go back and get up to speed and all the changes that happened in nursing and medical field. So I decided to just take a completely different career path and went into mortgage banking and spent nine years in mortgage banking. And then, after the 2008 crash, we literally lost everything. My wife and I, we were heavily invested in Florida real estate. I was in the mortgage banking and real estate industry in Florida at the time and my wife was owning and running a title company, and so we were like totally into the real estate world. And when 2007, 2008, hit, we literally lost everything.

Lane Houk: 4:55

I still remember a night where I laid in bed and did not know how we were going to feed the kids the following week because we had literally gone through all of our savings. We had tapped everything. We had to try and keep all the you know, all the things going. After things started going south and we just literally we went through all of our savings, had nothing left, lost all of our real estate holdings, pretty much lost our jobs with the way that the economy just crashed and I was just really left with a bunch of pieces and trying to figure out now how do we move forward. And so those were scary, anxious years. I learned a lot again about myself, but Doug Deep made it through those times and launched my own agency, which brings us kind of into the current chapter, if you will.

Lane Houk: 5:45

I launched my own digital marketing agency in 2010. Self-taught myself everything about digital and web. I knew a fair amount about marketing and business development and relationship building. I had done plenty of that through the previous years and previous different careers that I'd had. But marketing and website development, seo that was all brand new for me and I just literally did self-taught. I just consumed myself reading books. I see a lot of books in your background there. I read a lot of books, um, followed a lot of experts in the industry and just dove in and learned. Um, we started uh, the agency started offering websites and and SEO, kind of out of the gate and and then we just I grew that agency. I spent from 2010 to 2019. I spent in my generalist agency years. So those nine years I built the agency I I tampered with white label, outsourcing fulfillment, had mixed experiences of that, ultimately decided to insource all our fulfillment and develop an offshore team. That took many, many years just to figure out all the pitfalls there, how to do that right, how to avoid a lot of the common mistakes that are made in offshoring and things like that. So that definitely was a learning curve for me, really got that honed in and kind of built it into a well-oiled system.

Lane Houk: 7:11

In 2017, we had scaled the agency to a pretty good amount and SEO was our main monthly recurring revenue driver. It was our main solution that we offered to our clients. It was going very well, but it was very manual a pretty heavy lift every month, and so I got to work on developing a software solution that would solve our problems in SEO. But early on, with my business partner, matt, we decided to just make that and it decided to not only solve our problem in our own agency with SEO, but decided to make that an industry solution. So we engineered it for agencies specifically, not just for direct businesses, and we launched Signal Genesis in 2000,. Well, december 2018, I say 2019. So we launched Signal Genesis in 2019.

Lane Houk: 8:01

Our audience, audience, our clients, our customers in that software venture were in our digital marketing agencies and so I transitioned my generalist agency, which up until that point had focused on direct, providing our solutions directly to businesses, and I transitioned our our generalist agency into a white label fulfillment agency for other agencies so that I could unify you know my approach and my target audience every day to being just agencies. I just make life simple. I needed to do that. So I transitioned into a white label agency with Quantum Agency in 2019. We at Quantum Agency we provide white label websites, website development, seo, ppc and creative design for other agencies. So we do the fulfillment. We're like the back-end fulfillment partner for a number of agencies and they go out and they sell and account manage and we do all the kind of the fulfillment work for them. And then Signal Genesis, as you mentioned, was just acquired a little over two weeks ago by Search Atlas Group, and so I made a successful exit out of my software venture with Signal Genesis.

Lane Houk: 9:07

As you, mentioned was just acquired a little over two weeks ago by Search Atlas Group, and so I made a successful exit out of my software venture with Signal Genesis, helping Search Atlas Group with the transitions and things like that. But now I've turned my focus back 100 percent to building my agency, Quantum Agency, and just doing a great job providing quality white label fulfillment for our agency partners.

Lane Houk: 9:25

So that's a quick synopsis of well geez, I said 2000,. What was it? So I went in the Army in 1990. So I guess that we're talking about a quick 35-year synopsis.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:43

That is a remarkable journey Lane. So many pieces of that I would just love to dive into and talk about. Like me, you have a faith. You're a person of faith and with an experience working in the local church that we both have. I'm curious about this. I often say that I think leading in the church requires a purer form of leadership, because you don't have a paycheck to hold over people's head for them to follow you yeah for sure, and to be part of the community. That's where I learned they can leave any time.

Lane Houk: 10:17

Like I said, in the Army I learned this whole idea about being a great follower. Yeah, in the ministry you had to learn how to be a great leader, because otherwise people won't follow you. You're leading people in a nonprofit. They're all volunteers, right, right. If they don't like you, they just go to another church, right? And so you have an all-volunteer army in that respect, and so you can't command people, you can't lord over them, if you will. Right, you have to be a servant leader. You can say that and know it in your head, but actually putting that into practice on a daily basis was a real chapter of refinement for me, if you will.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:57

For sure. Leading an agency is a whole different ballgame, but you still lead with those same principles.

Lane Houk: 11:09

It sounds like you're still leading, still leading resulted in an amazing culture that we have in our agency. I just actually was able to share a a brief conversation that my operations manager had with me just last week. She reached out to me and just wanted to share some good news that her son had just won a bronze medal in his first international karate championship, and so she was just really excited and, first of all, I was just really humbled and honored that she wanted to reach out to me and share that with me. Like you know, I'm not like her personal friend she's in India, I'm here but I was really touched and it's like, oh, that's awesome, and she wants to just share that good news with me. I congratulated her. That's awesome.

Lane Houk: 11:43

Being a dad myself, I know how proud we are as parents when our kids succeed like that.

Lane Houk: 11:49

But she just then proceeded to just thank me for being able to work with me and us at our company and what a privilege it had been, how, since she decided to come on and work for us at Quantum Agency, how nothing but great things have happened for her and her life and her marriage and her kids, and you know.

Lane Houk: 12:07

So you know it was a really, really awesome moment, like when you, as a company leader, when you get that kind of feedback, without even asking for it from you know one of your team members it's it really is a good stamp of approval that all right, we've got something that we've built here. That is a great culture and people appreciate it. They want to stick around for it and I attribute all of that my abilities to kind of build a culture like that with our team members out of learning how to be an empathic leader in the ministry, like it. You know, I really empathize with my team members. I love them, I care about them, we help them, we want them to be successful and that comes through in multiple ways and you know how that goes when people know that and feel that it creates something special.

Dr. William Attaway: 12:54

I think everybody wants to be known as a person. I think they want to be seen for who they are and and I think that when you, when you communicate to your team, that you, that you know them, that you see them, that you listen to them, you hear them, people lean in and retention goes through the roof. Has that been your experience?

Lane Houk: 13:15

Say that last part again. I lost that last part, William.

Dr. William Attaway: 13:18

Yeah. So when people feel known like you know them as a person and you see them as a person not just for what they do, not just for their role, and when they feel heard like you know them as a person and you see them as a person not just for what they do, not just for their role, and when they feel heard like you actually listen to them, I think retention goes through the roof. Has that been your experience leading teams?

Lane Houk: 13:34

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean just as a point of reference on what you're saying. There I have two offshore teams. I have a fairly large team in the Philippines, a little bit smaller team in India. You know, in our industry most people would refer to those human beings as VAs. Yes, and they hire VAs. Right, we don't hire VAs, we hire people, we employ human beings that are a part of our team, and so I've always cautioned people in the industry saying, hey, don't refer to your people as VAs.

Lane Houk: 14:13

They're not, they're people, they're human beings. They have families, they have kids, they have desires, dreams, challenges, and you're right when you recognize that and when you treat them like that. You know it's a game changer in terms of just the culture that you can build and in retention, like we retain really, really well in our team, and the vast majority of all of our new hires over the last two years have been referred in by our existing team members, so we haven't had even to go out and hit job boards and things like that nearly as much, because we have team members who want to refer their friends, their peers, their colleagues, you know, into the team as well, because they thoroughly enjoy working for a quantum agency. And so that culture, you know it, obviously transforms our team members' lives. We've taken care of them. You know the Philippines are known for having typhoons. We've had several typhoons hit family members or our team members and or their family, and we've provided financial assistance several times.

Lane Houk: 15:20

Just to help not to help them repair their own home but repair mom and dad's home that was destroyed by a typhoon. So we've taken care of extended family, not just our direct team members, family and I you know I still get goosebumps when I talk about it because I know if I were a team member of somebody and they weren't just taking care of me but they wanted to take care of my family because my family had a crisis, yeah, yeah, who does that right? Like that's very, very rare in corporate culture, and so it has. And I just attribute all that to again my leadership development and a lot of my failures in the past and learning how to do things right, especially when you see your failures and the effect that it has on people like the real world effect that it has on people. It motivates you to be different. I mean at least it motivates me to be different. I mean it doesn't motivate everybody, but it certainly does me 100% you to be different. I mean at least it motivates me to be different.

Dr. William Attaway: 16:11

I mean, it doesn't motivate everybody, but it certainly does me A hundred percent. I'm with you, you know. I think that every business has a culture. You either have one you created on purpose, intentionally, or you have one that you didn't mean to have, and it sounds like.

Lane Houk: 16:26

You've been very intentional about the culture that you have created. I have, and it's right on our website. I have, and it's right on our website and these are not platitudes like character, integrity, excellence, like. If you go to our website and you read about our culture, there's a paragraph around daily life in team life, daily life as a leader in our company, you know they're not just words on a Web page, they really mean something and we actually really introduce that culture and these values to all of our new team members as they're onboarding with us. To make sure. Well, obviously, in part of the interview process, we want to make sure there are really good culture, values, fit, but we also want to know this is our culture, this is our, these are our values and we really embrace them, not not as platitudes, but as real world implementation, behaviors and and actions that we have towards each other in our daily workings as a team.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:57

You know I love that you. You talked about how you created signal Genesis and how you created this, not just to solve your problem, but also to begin to help other people solve their problems right. The the problems around SEO, the problems around and hearing you at a recent conference talk about this in terms of Google's EAT right and how signal Genesis really addresses the problem people have with wanting to build that whole expertise, the authority, the things that the search engines are looking for. You built this product that has become so well-known in the space as a game changer. Would you share just a little bit about what that does and why it matters so much?

Lane Houk: 19:40

Sure, yeah, thanks for asking. So, going back to the genesis, if I can use that term of the software platform, we so, you know, trying to figure out how to best explain this. So you know, trying to figure out how to best explain this. So, ranking a website or any digital asset in a search engine result page, ranking it on page one, is a process of building authority around that asset. Whether it's a web page, a Google listing, a blog article, a LinkedIn profile, whatever it might be, in order for it to rank on page one for certain keywords, it has to have authority. And so building authority to these assets is the main overarching process that we conduct in SEO, and obviously there's several ways that that happens and is carried out, but that's the big thing that we have to do, right. And so, in terms of building authority, what we did with Signal Genesis was we number one. We tapped and leveraged the authority of live news media radio station sites around the country. Google's algorithm, the search algorithms, love news and they are constantly scanning news sites because that gives them the algorithm a very good idea of what's trending. Like all these news sites have news around all sorts of topics, right? So news and media, radio sites like these. These have a high authority, high perceived authority with the customer or the web visitor, and they also have a high authority with the algorithm. And so we tapped that strategy, but in a completely unique and different way.

Lane Houk: 21:28

And so the entire traditional PR or wire industry that allows for either a business or an agency to send out a press release digitally through these networks of news sites, they actually steal all of the authority that comes from that content. I call it the dirty little secret of the PR industry, or the dirty little secret of the wire industry. All of the wire services PR Newswire, accesswire, ein, press wire, press advantage amplifier all of them, all of them are in one bucket where they execute this process of digital PR in a very methodical or in a very unique or very specific process. That's the best way to put it. In a very unique or very specific process, that's the best way to put it. They take the press release from the business or the agency and they publish that unique content, that press release, to their newsroom first, and when they do that, that unique content then becomes authored by the wire service instead of being authored by the target company. That is the target or subject of the press release and from an online or digital search engine standpoint. The moment that a unique piece of content that's original, that has never been published online before, as soon as it gets published to the first, wherever it gets published first, that becomes the author right. They get the authorship credit. That site becomes the author.

Lane Houk: 23:00

And so when you send out a digital press release through any of these other wire services, they literally, by virtue of their process, steal 100% of the authorship of that press release and therefore all of the authority that comes from the authorship or the EAT signals all go to the wire service, and I recognized this and knew this with my research between 2015 and 2018 and using other digital PR wire services. So we flipped that whole dirty little secret on its head. We developed a cutting edge media room technology that was CMS or website agnostic, meaning our media room technology code could be installed on any website, whether it's a WordPress website, a Shopify website, a high level website, whatever, and that media room basically became like a blog, but for the press releases. And so when an agency publishes a press release for Joe the Plumber on the Signal Genesis platform, the press release gets published to the media room or newsroom for Joe the Plumber on Joe the Plumber's website first, and then strategic distribution and publication process begins to happen by our platform, and so the authorship credit for the content now goes to Joe the Plumber's website, because that's where the content appears and is published first. And then the strategic publication process was engineered with lots of intellectual property, seo knowledge in terms of how to best achieve the most amount of ranking signals that we can get or squeeze out of that digital publication process on all these different news sites, and it includes multiple Google API integrations. We have a Google Maps API integration.

Lane Houk: 24:56

So the purpose of the Signalesis platform is not traditional vanity pr like we're, not we're, and that was part of the whole process that I realized that everything had gone and shifted online.

Lane Houk: 25:08

You know, many, many, many years ago, and so if you were going to do a press release, it didn't really matter if it happened, if it appeared in a newspaper or a magazine, because almost no one reads them anymore.

Lane Houk: 25:19

But what happens is is what, what it means to translate into online authority, and that was the big shift in the digital pr industry basically just shifted from traditional pr, you know, in in written publications into digital pr, but they never had an seo strategy that was under underlying that entire digital pr process.

Lane Houk: 25:39

And so we transformed the digital PR industry with Signal Genesis, flipped it on its head and the results immediately started demonstrating themselves. And so we had well over a thousand agencies using Signal Genesis on a daily, weekly, monthly basis as part of their own fulfillment, because the results that we started getting with this process was transformative as compared to the results that we really weren't getting anymore out of traditional digital PR or wire services. And so that's the overarching strategy was we built it to be a signal generation engine to generate real ranking signals in multiple ranking categories through the process of simply uploading and publishing one piece of content, one press release. But then it got amplified to, you know, 50, 70, 80, 100 plus websites that all had really good authority and good footprints that we knew Google was looking at.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:42

You know as I, as I heard you describing this for the first time and then again just now, the same image appeared in my head.

Lane Houk: 26:50

And that is a leader.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:51

Yeah, the same. The same image appeared in my head as I heard you describe this. It's of it's you, but with your hands out and open. And I think about that because you exemplify a principle that we often talk about on the show, and that is to to lead, not just with what you know, that you hold back just for you, instead of being a reservoir of all of the experiences and knowledge and expertise that you have. Instead of that, as a servant leader, as a catalytic leader, learn to be a conduit of that, so that you understand that every bit of expertise and experience, everything in your life, has not just been for you, it's also for the benefit of those around you. And what you've done with Signal Genesis is you've put that into play in a very unique way. 15 years ago, you did not know what you know now, and you have leveraged all of this expertise and experience now in such a way that it benefits so many other people because you have held your hands out and open.

Lane Houk: 27:55

Have you heard of the book the Go-Giver? I'm sure?

Dr. William Attaway: 27:58

you have.

Lane Houk: 27:58

Oh yeah, great book.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:59

I do.

Lane Houk: 28:00

I've read that book many times and it really was. It challenged me. I recognize the selfish motivation that I have to want to be successful and want to do things for my benefit. And I say it took many years for me to try and really really grasp this and get it at the heart level, which is to be that servant leader to try and do things to make an impact on other people's lives.

Lane Houk: 28:35

And the concept of the Go-Gover is your compensation is directly tied to the amount of people that you have a positive impact on. I'm paraphrasing, but that's one of the immutable laws of leadership. Or in the book, the Go-Giver. And I just remember really soaking on that principle and going I need to have a greater impact, I need to do something that's going to have more impact on more numbers of people. Right, and yes, it'll impact my compensation in a positive way, but I'm also going to have that butterfly effect of having a greater impact on not just some clients here, but now maybe on an entire industry. And that was the goal and that was the vision that we set out with was to have an impact on the industry and not just, you know, using it for our own purposes and our own agency and thankfully, you know, we've been able to accomplish that and succeed in that endeavor.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:34

In a very big way. Let me look at you for just a second and think about this. Your agency, your team, needs you to lead at a higher level today than they did five years ago, and five years from now they're going to need you to lead at a higher level still. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new skills that your team and your business are going to need you to have in a year, three years, five years from now?

Lane Houk: 30:21

books, staying on the bleeding edge of my industry and what's happening and, you know, researching and digging deep into those things, um, improving myself, like you know. I mean that's a constant process, I think you know if you get comfortable, you know you I'm a big believer like sports, I love sports, I'm a big believer in the sports analogies and there's great sports analogies in business and life, and I'm a big believer that the sports analogies and there's great sports analogies in business and in life, and I'm a big believer that you're either you're either advancing the ball or it's coming back at you. Like there's no neutral ground in hockey I'm a big hockey fan Like you're either attacking or you're defending. There's no neutral ground per se. And I think in business.

Lane Houk: 30:53

it's the same thing In leadership. It's the same way, Either we we're advancing the ball.

Lane Houk: 30:57

We're constantly getting better or we're getting worse. We I don't think I find that very hard to say I'm kind of the same way I was a year ago. I'm just kind of treading water, doing the same things, like that. It probably indicates if you really feel that way, you probably actually have digressed a little bit in one way shape or form. And so how I do it is just by being proactive and having, I think, that conviction that you either are advancing the ball or you're defending, either on offense or on defense. And so I'm always on offense in terms of trying to improve as a leader improve our processes, improve our profitability, just improve, improve across all areas that we can so good across all areas that we can, so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:39

I ask all of my guests and probably because of what you see behind me, my love for learning and growing and reading is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening? Hey, if you haven't read this, you need to check this out.

Lane Houk: 31:55

A business book.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:56

Yeah.

Lane Houk: 31:57

A book, I mean. So I mean I will always preface and say the Bible has had the biggest impact on my life and it's still a manual for living, for sure. So I'm going to say that you know, heart standpoint as a leader, as a company owner, like I really believe, like everyone should really read that book and soak it in and try to embrace it at the heart level, not just understanding it up here, but really getting it here. The other big, the other book that's had a really big impact on me is Good to Great by Jim Collins. Yes, so good is Good to Great by Jim Collins? Yes, so good.

Lane Houk: 32:42

I also, I actually got to. I was awarded a community leadership award by the Community Leadership Association back in I think it was 2006. And I got to meet Jim Collins because he was also presented with the award as well for his work with Good to Great and we had this. The meeting was in Colorado Springs and I got to meet Jim Collins in a private suite, you know, over that weekend at that event and he actually sent me, I think, like 30 copies of his Good to Great and the Social Sectors, the smaller, thin book that he has.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:17

Yeah, so good. It's like the whole book.

Lane Houk: 33:19

It's like the Cliff Notes version of the whole book, but in a really impactful, like short version, and he autographed all 30 copies for me and then sent those to me and so I was able to give those out as gifts. But, yeah, good to great, along with good to great and the social sectors, which was kind of like a follow up and application of all the good to great principles that were applied in the nonprofit world, that were applied in the nonprofit world, and I think if more business owners that were in the for-profit business actually operated their company, built their company culture, like it was more like a nonprofit, and understood those values or those principles, would do even better. Because I think, like I told you, when I had to lead people who were all volunteers and could basically tell you hey, buzz off I don't like you.

Lane Houk: 34:11

I'm going somewhere else. Right there's nothing I can do about that.

Lane Houk: 34:14

When you lead an all-volunteer army, you have to change your approach to leadership, and I think if you employ those same principles in a for-profit company, well, the results are amazing. So, anyway, good to Great has been another transformative book for me. I read that for the first time, I think, back in like 2004 or maybe even 2002. I don't remember exactly, but I just, and I've read it several times since, along with the social sectors, and, yeah, that book still today guides me in leadership decisions and strategic decisions that I have as a company owner.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:53

So good, Lane. You've been so generous with your time, Tom, as we, as we tie a bow on today. If, if people walk away from this conversation with one big idea and you got to define what you wanted that one big idea to be, what do you want them to walk away with?

Lane Houk: 35:11

We're as a, as a world, but especially as a country, here in the United States, we're starving for leadership. We are literally starving for leadership. Um, yes, pressure has been put on people, um to silence them, and that is a. It is an attempt to silence the leaders in our country, in our, in our, in our midst, in our communities, um, through, you know, woke policies, pressure that your job might be at risk if you speak out. There's been a massive censorship campaign that we've been subjected to over the last several years and it's really stifled leadership.

Lane Houk: 35:58

I believe that a lot of leaders have shrunk back because they're afraid to lose their jobs. They're afraid of their reputations, they don't want to be perceived as controversial. And I don't know about you, but when I read my Bible, jesus was a very controversial leader. Jesus was a very controversial leader. He evoked lots of emotion from people. A lot of it was hate and anger and divisiveness, and so I think leaders today have been largely there's been a vast attempt to push them into a box and say you can only operate a leader inside this box and you better be careful what you say, what you do, because there's lots of consequences that come if you step out of line, and that is not leadership right.

Lane Houk: 36:53

Leadership is bold, leadership is visionary, leadership means taking risks. Leadership means I accept the consequences of my decisions, even though they may be difficult. This is what leaders do. We lead even with difficult consequences at hand, and so I think the big idea is leaders need to step out and be bold again and be willing to take the risks of being a visionary, bold leader.

Lane Houk: 37:22

And that may mean people don't like you, that may mean people lash out at you, that may mean people question your values, and that's okay, and if we look at all great leaders, I don't care if we look at Jesus, if we look at Gandhi, if we look at Churchill, if we look at RFK, whoever, whatever, any kind of leader that we've ever looked at we respect today, that has lasted through, that has a legacy that we really admire and are inspired by. All of those leaders took bold risks, and even to their own detriment, and I think that's the call today, in every aspect of leadership, whether it's spiritual leadership today, in every aspect of leadership, whether it's spiritual leadership, community leadership, company leadership, industry leadership, all aspects of leadership we need bold leaders to step out and be unafraid.

Dr. William Attaway: 38:17

Well said, Lane. I know people are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you. What is the best way for them to do that?

Lane Houk: 38:28

or just Google search my name. You'll find plenty of ways to connect with me. Lanehouk. com has all the different ways to connect with me, via email, phone and all my social profiles. And then I also operate the Marketing Center of Excellence, which I started back in 2021. And that was just another way for me to give back to the marketing industry by developing classes, podcasts, interviews and other just educational resources for our industry, and so that's a great way to follow me. If you just like to kind of know what I'm thinking about, what I'm working on, that usually meets itself out in the Marketing Center of Excellence and that's another great way to connect with me there. If there's any way I can add value to you in that respect. So two great ways to connect with me. I would love to connect with anybody who would like to do that with me.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:30

Well, I know there's a lot of agency owners who are listening to this, who are going to take advantage of that, because to find a thought leader who is willing to share as generously as you have, not just today in this conversation, but in all of these different venues that's somebody you want to listen to. So thank you for your generosity. We really appreciate you.

Lane Houk: 39:51

I appreciate it. And there's other people you know in the industry who've impacted me and so you know, again, if we all focus on giving back, it just makes it amazing. And you know, we do have an industry where there's some amazing people who give back and, like you and just you know, put out all these amazing resources, and then there's, we know we have an industry of quite full of people that are takers and are users and so, yeah, I just I enjoy being a go-giver. I enjoy it. Yeah, I love it.

Dr. William Attaway: 40:21

Yeah, I love it. Well, we all benefit. Lane. Thank you so much for your time.

Lane Houk: 40:26

Thank you so much for having me, Dr Attaway. I really appreciate the time with you and look forward to connecting with anybody in your audience that sees fit. So thanks again for having me on and really appreciate you. It's been great meeting you over the last year and a half or so. I look forward to seeing you again, I think in Tampa in a few weeks.

Dr. William Attaway: 40:41

That's it. Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 41:20

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.