Watch: Rick Lochner of RPC Leadership on Purpose-Driven Coaching

In this Living in Naperville episode, host Dan Firks talks with Rick Lochner, founder of RPC Leadership Associates, about his path from a 12-year-old Boy Scout to West Point to founding his coaching practice, what separates a coach from a consultant, and how he helps clients see past the cost of doing nothing.

Read the full guide to RPC Leadership in Naperville →

Video Transcript

Dan Firks: Whoa, it’s that time again, another episode of Living in Naperville. Rick, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to meet with us today, I’m excited to show our audience what RPC is all about.

Rick Lochner: Well, thanks Dan, absolutely a pleasure.

Dan Firks: So Rick, tell me, what brought you to this point of leadership and coaching?

Rick Lochner: Well, the journey actually started back when I was a 12-year-old, a brand new Boy Scout. Scouting teaches you a lot of leadership skills, it’s built on leadership principles, purpose-driven leadership, and that carried me through high school, carried me into four years at the military academy at West Point, and then of course a career in the military, then in corporate America. And as I went through all my different experiences, I saw that really what’s missing, if you will, is leadership done the right way.

Dan Firks: Gotcha.

Rick Lochner: So I guess at this point, when we started the practice 16 years ago, I’m on a personal crusade to fix leadership one leader at a time.

Dan Firks: Gotcha, and coaching is the best way to do it. I’d like you to elaborate a little bit more on purpose-driven, I think that’s a pretty powerful statement.

Rick Lochner: Well, it is, and believe it or not, I had an opportunity to exercise that as a 14-year-old. I was a senior patrol leader, which is the senior boy leader in the Boy Scout troop, and we were getting ready to go on a campout, and I saw the scoutmaster put a chainsaw in the trunk of his car.

Dan Firks: What’s he doing with that?

Rick Lochner: Well, he was going to cut firewood with it, and one of the purposes and principles of scouting is how to properly use a knife and an axe. So I went up to him, as a 14-year-old, by the way he was an Army full colonel, and I went up to him and said, we don’t need the chainsaw, and I explained why, and he took it out of the trunk of his car.

Dan Firks: Wow.

Rick Lochner: I mean, the principles of scouting were all around woodsmanship, and so what kind of an example are you setting as a leader if you don’t set the right example?

Dan Firks: So you already started leadership at 12 years old, that’s pretty remarkable.

Rick Lochner: You know, it’s those opportunities that you have. I’m also the oldest of seven kids, I’ve had 37 addresses by the time I was 40, so I’ve had many an opportunity to practice leadership on a lot of different levels.

Dan Firks: Tell me, why is coaching so important to all business owners?

Rick Lochner: Well, you know, business owners have a lot of choices, business leaders have a lot of choices. A lot of times we hear about consultants, people are always hiring consultants, that’s all you hear about. And consultants have a very distinct purpose, they come in, they’re the expert, they tell you what to do, but the engagement by the client is minimal because they’re telling you what to do. Coaching is actually on the opposite end of the spectrum, where in coaching, just like in sports, I never get on the playing field, I’m the guide on the side, as it were. And so we use coaching when the business owner has the skills, has the wherewithal, but just almost can’t get out of their own way. And so a good coach’s superpowers are their objectivity, their ability to hold the business owner accountable to what’s going on, because a consultant typically doesn’t do that, a consultant doesn’t say, here’s what you need to do, and then stick around to make sure that you actually apply it. Whereas a coach actually does more hands-on. I’m a partner for that business owner, so that when they’re trying new things, invariably some of it’s going to work, some of it’s not, and I’m there to help them thought-partner through how to make the necessary adjustments, hold them accountable to things that they’ve committed to do. It’s not my business, so my job is to help you commit to yourself what you’re going to do to grow your business.

Dan Firks: Tell the audience, how often do you typically meet with somebody?

Rick Lochner: Yeah, in the initial stages it’s usually every other week, because that first phase we want to make sure that we’ve closed any blind spots or gaps in knowledge, and then we come out of that with a goal or two to look forward, how do we develop into a better version of ourselves. And then we expand it to every three weeks, and then ultimately we get to every month, and I have clients I only meet a couple times a year, when they need it. My job is to create a strategic partnership, but not create a dependency.

Dan Firks: So tell me, what’s unique about RPC Leadership?

Rick Lochner: Well, you know, what’s interesting is when I go to networking events, people ask me what I do, standard question, and my response is always, I’m in the attitude adjustment business, because fundamentally our business model is based on the fact that when you think different, you do different.

Dan Firks: I would agree.

Rick Lochner: And so the whole premise of our coaching process is based on helping our clients think differently, because literally, Psychology 101, you think different, you do different. And so when we look at how we approach our clients’ issues, it’s always about what they have in front of them. Somebody once asked me, whose model, whose coaching model do I use, and I said, I’ve read them all, I don’t use any of them in total, I use a little bit of each, because the thought process is, once you get locked into one singular business model, it’s like the hammer always looking for nails, and problems are more complex than that. I work with nonprofit leaders, I work with corporate leaders, I work with small business owners and individual professionals, I even work with students, so every situation is going to be unique, so I need to have a broad menu of capabilities to help them address that. In my 45 years of experience and counting, in a variety of industries, military, academia, nonprofit, corporate, and entrepreneurial, I’ve successfully led in all of those situations, and so our model is unique in those aspects, because there’s a business coach on every street corner in Chicago, and it’s an unregulated industry, which means the barrier to entry is very minimal, so I have to be able to establish value and trust with our clients, and that’s how we do it, that’s what makes our model unique.

Dan Firks: And I would think they have to trust you first, before they’re going to move forward, like anything else in sales, they trust you first before they buy your product or your company. What would be your biggest challenge, do you think, with a new customer, a new client?

Rick Lochner: Apathy.

Dan Firks: Okay, and how do you get through that?

Rick Lochner: Well, that’s part of the challenge, one of the loaded questions I ask clients who aren’t quite sure is, what’s the cost of doing nothing? More often than not, the answer is, I don’t know. So to me, that’s an opportunity. Let’s walk through, before you even sign on the dotted line, I’m coaching them on how to figure out the cost of apathy, the cost of doing nothing. And then once they see that, well, if we could save you X, and it would only cost you 10% of X as a coaching investment to do that, is that something you would be interested in?

Dan Firks: I would say yes.

Rick Lochner: Most people do.

Dan Firks: I mean, who’s not going to take a 10-to-1 return on investment, I think we all would take that.

Rick Lochner: Most smart people would, right.

Dan Firks: Excellent, well thank you so much for sharing RPC with our audience today, I really appreciate your time.

Rick Lochner: Thanks Dan, it’s a pleasure.

Dan Firks: Be sure to like and subscribe to get updates on our next episode, and for all your real estate needs, please visit Naperville.com.

Read the full guide to RPC Leadership in Naperville →