Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anna Lisa Lukes, JD/MBA. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Anna Lisa, so happy to have you on the platform with us today and excited to chat about your lessons and insights. Our ability to make good decisions can massively impact our lives, careers and relationships and so it would be very helpful to hear about how you built your decision-making skills.
At The Lukes Network, we align our work with our purpose, and our business decisions equally promote the Triple Bottom Line of People, Profit, and Planet. As a family-owned small business, we created TLN for positive impact – on our business partners’ profit bottom line and also on our community and the environment. We are a full-service and vertically integrated strategy, fundraising, marketing, outreach, and government relations firm, and we have been blessed to partner with for-profit, non-profit, and government entities whose values align with ours. Our motto is Do Well + Do Good. We believe in Integrity, Quality, Innovation, and Collaboration, and in doing our best every day. We enjoy partnering with people who have a sense of positive team spirit and who treat others and the community, well. So, we developed our decision-making skills based on our values and vision of the kind of company we wanted to build.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
The most special thing about what we do at The Lukes Network is our commitment to the job done well and having our work make a positive difference on our business partners, the community and the environment.
For our fundraising business line, just in the last quarter of 2023 and through the start of 2024 alone, TLN has helped create a fundraising pipeline of more than $9 million for our business partners. That means we helped them with strategy, created business project plans and submitted them to different funders who are now evaluating and (hopefully will soon award) our collaborative, creative yet data-driven proposals for work that impacts issues such as workforce and economic development, housing, health care and access to food, to name a few. For one of our partners, because we work in government relations, TLN was able to get letters from two members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to show bi-partisan support for one of our proposed projects. Going above and beyond to make a difference is one of our values, and it’s exciting to strategize, create and also be an advocate through our work.
We also started 2024 hearing that through our work and network of TLN, we were able to help secure $2 million in a private investment on behalf of a business partner. Being able to do the work we love at TLN, having strong partnerships and making a difference is special. Our family-owned business continues to grow, and we now work beyond Orange County and have partners throughout southern California.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities, skills or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in our journey are: communication, strategic analysis and discernment. By communication, I mean being keenly aware of one’s surroundings and being conscious of non-verbal cues and not just words. That also means being able to write and speak clearly and persuasively to achieve the intended outcome. But in order to communicate well, it’s important to see the big picture and how the details connect – that would be strategically analyzing a situation and making decisions on how to best move forward while aligning with our values. Discernment comes early for some and with time for others. Fortunately, our co-founder is my life partner and husband, Jay Lukes. He is incredibly intuitive yet logical – and he is a good judge of character. These skills are some of what we use in our company.
One advice we would give is to be open to learning – from people who are already doing what you want to do, from self-study, from academic study if that’s an option and from people who are willing to give you feedback, and whose opinion you respect. All things work for good and in good time.
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
At TLN, we call our clients business partners. The ideal business partner for us is someone who respects people. That means, they are part of a culture where people matter: whether it is a customer’s or team member’s constructive feedback or whether it is a business partner’s time and what they bring to the table. When there is alignment around Values, Purpose and Impact, usually respect is part of the equation. When we start with alignment on these things, then everything else – collaboration, brainstorming, communication, getting things done well, on time and under budget – is meaningful and even fun.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thelukesnetwork.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelukesnetwork/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelukesnetwork
