Pascal Wagner, CEO of Walkthrough, built a five-figure monthly business by narrowing his focus to Facebook advertising for physical-product companies. He credits the 80/20 principle and deliberate specialization over perfection, and defines happiness as loving work that pays the bills.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I have a very special guest. He is not my brother, but he has the same last name. His name is Pascal Wagner and he's the CEO at Walkthrough. So welcome to the show, Pascal.
Thank you, Tyler.
Of course, brother. Thanks for coming on. And he is technically not my brother, but we still call each other brothers. So just putting that out there. We will dive in.
We are brothers.
We are brothers from far, far. So the first question I have for you, man, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Whoa.
This is deep.
Underlying valuable message. God, I think there's a lot of different ones. It depends, it depends what we want to go into here. I've learned that when I— focus has been a big theme for me lately. And I feel that when I, you know, in high school, and I was in college, When you first go through high school, you want to have the best resume, and it has to be stacked with all these different extracurricular activities. The more that you do, the more awesome you look on paper when it comes to applying for colleges. Then, when you're in college, you're doing all of these different activities as well, and it's been kind of, at least in my life, ingrained in me to do the a lot of different things. And maybe that was very appropriate for that stage of my life to learn more about what's out there in the world. But I found that it really hurt me once I got into trying to run and start my own company where you're trying to do everything for every client. You're trying to try different customer acquisition channels or you're, you know, I'm playing soccer, I'm doing business, I'm hanging out with friends, I'm going on trips. Like all of that, like I struggled a lot in the beginning. And as I began to focus in on things and put, say no to others, I became more and more successful in terms of the amount of money I made, the deeper relationships I had, the family time that I committed to. It's just been really interesting how when I started my online advertising company, I did Facebook advertising for everyone. Now, I walked into helping physical product companies sell their products online with Facebook. That was the niche that I ended up in, and that's how I became successful. I was earning 5 figures a month and, um, by specializing. And I'm realizing now the same thing in my next venture and everything else in my life is, um, I'm constantly trying to strip away things in order to maintain more focus.
Yeah. And, uh, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry? Ooh, I know you got a lot of expertises, but you want to pick one?
Um, yeah, so I think something that's been really on— I'm just going to share what's most recent, uh, for me is I've learned quite a bit about this concept of being good enough in certain areas. And following the 80/20 rule has been absolutely amazing for anything that I've done, where it's like you just need to have— you do the 20% of effort to get 80% of the results, and everything from there is marginal. Unless you're really trying to build a premium product. In a couple of businesses that I started, being a perfectionist didn't help at all and it was just very marginal versus being good enough and doing the 20% of things that got 80% of the results were the most valuable. I feel like I've just been studying a lot of strategy, And I feel like that was most pertinent to that question.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
How you gonna— I feel like that focus thing, deeper relationships, deeper focus in things. I think it was healthy to go through a lot of these different programs. I played soccer, I did ROTC, I played tennis, I did, you know, everything under the sun. And I think it was helpful to understand what I didn't like and that the more I found out what I didn't like, just stop doing it as quickly as possible.
And so kind of going down is a little different path or different type of question, but I think it's important in business still. So in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Fulfillment. So I've gotten into— I ran like— I don't follow that blind advice of do what you think will make you happy, like the money will follow. I definitely think that you have to understand how the world works. If you were really happy raking hay and you wanted to rake hay all day, you're not going to be able to earn enough money in order to have your basic needs met by doing that. I guess I just have a more pragmatic way of looking at— I think you should be doing what you want to be doing. I've fallen in love with work. I love the work. Uh, and I didn't enjoy working on the client work. I want to be building something, um, that would have lasting impact. Uh, and so that's why I made the transition from the online advertising consulting firm to what I'm doing now. Uh, and now I, like before, I wanted The 4-Hour Workweek because I didn't enjoy the work that I did. And now I feel like I'm not working enough and I want to be able to work more because I thoroughly enjoy everything that I'm doing.
Yeah. And I know this might be tough for you, but what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?
The one that always comes to mind is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. People do business, people do have friendships, people get elected, you name it. People do favors for people they know, like, and trust. That book, I feel like this is just a reminder I need to dig into reading that book again.
I feel like I read it every 6 months. Yeah, it's awesome.
Totally.
Um, and what is your favorite quote and why? It doesn't have to be word for word. It could be like a mantra.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man, I think I had one on top of my head. Spark my memory. You give me your favorite quote and I'll think of mine.
Oh man, you flipped the script on me.
I'm flipping it on you.
Oh, that's good. So that's a great question for me. I should know after having done like 300 of these interviews. But I feel like I was at this conference in San Diego like 4 or 5 years ago and this guy basically just said, he's like, just be. And that really stuck with me in my life, even currently now, in meaning like, just like be in what you are doing in that moment. And that's how, like relating back to what you said earlier, like falling in love with your work. Like at first when I started on my like entrepreneurship journey, like first I never knew I could work corporate. Like I can't like take freaking like orders from somebody else. I just can't do it. So I knew that wouldn't work. Then I started an entrepreneurship and at first Like I was just banging my head against the wall trying to figure this all out. Then I started to see some success. And what I realized is as I did more and more, I started to realize what I didn't like, what I did like, focus more on what I did like. Hence this podcast. I love talking to people and meeting new people as much as possible. And when I'm here on these interviews with them, I'm just being like, I'm not thinking about what I'm doing tonight or anything of that type of nature. I'm just here with my brother Pascal. And that is why my favorite quote is "Just be." I dig that.
I dig that. That definitely helped spur the quote for me. So I like the pain is temporary. It's a quote by Lance Armstrong. It goes like, the pain is temporary. It may last a minute, an hour, a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside. And something else which gets placed, but if I quit, it lasts forever. And so, yeah, I even remember having this quote on my arm when I ran my first marathon that said something like, there are those who do and do not. Who will you be? And I feel like that's a life mantra I have of just like, there's one People may have better circumstances or money in their family or grew up in better places, but everyone has— you are the person who controls everything and anything is possible. I feel like that's just happened over and over in my life where I've realized that the pain I was feeling was just temporary. And when I looked back at the situation, I'm like super happy that I went and continued. And now it's just become this recurring— like anytime I feel pain or things suck, I realize that something great is just ahead. So that's been amazing for like just even my mental health.
Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?
Find out about me? It's pascalwagner.com. P-A-S-C-A-L-W-A-G-N-E-R dot com. That's where you can find me.
Perfect, brother. Thanks again for coming on. We appreciate it.
Awesome. Talk to you soon, Tyler. The podcast you just heard was recorded with Anchor. If you want to make your own, download the Android or iOS app and completely free from anchor.fm/podcast. That's anchor.fm/podcast.
