CHS Architects
As a young boy so many years ago, the highlight of Lucas Sawyer’s week was an early-morning wakeup call on Saturdays.
It had nothing to do with pancakes and Wile E. Coyote.
It had everything to do with work. His family owned a meat market. There was always work to be done at the meat market at most hours of the day.
“We thought, my brother and I, it was so cool to go in to the meat market on Saturday morning at 4 a.m. to sling meat,” Sawyer says. “We thought it was so fun. In order to prove ourselves when we were little, my dad would throw random math questions at us. We had to know how to count change. How to count it back. We had to become very proficient with math at a young age, so we could go work on the weekends and have fun.”
Today, Sawyer is still very much about small business.
Via LinkedIn
Lucas Sawyer
He’s the market president for Worthington Bank’s Clearfork/Edwards Ranch Road location in southwest Fort Worth. Sawyer has been in the role since this summer.
“The team’s goal is to help better equip clients for what 2023 might look like for their businesses,” he says. “We often gauge our success by how well our clients are doing in their businesses and, in any way we can, we want to help position them for continued success into 2023 and beyond.”
Entrepreneurism and small business are in Sawyer’s blood, he says. Perhaps that’s no figure of speech. The meat market founded by his great-grandfather was sold right at its 100th birthday in 2018. His father and brother have a fireplace and stone business. Both are based in Indiana, Sawyer’s native home.
A graduate of Indiana University, where basketball is religion, and with a bachelor’s degree in business management and administration, Sawyer was lured to Fort Worth by Bank of America and a wealth management job in 2005.
It was good fortune, he says, that “God led me to Fort Worth, Texas.”
He joined Worthington in 2008. The bank this year recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Sawyer was elevated to market president from the position of executive vice president of commercial lending.
“Lucas is an effective and exemplary leader who’s grown immensely throughout his tenure at the bank,” says Greg Morse, Worthington’s founder and CEO.
Sawyer is also active outside of the office. He’s a graduate of Leadership Fort Worth, which led him to a six-year stint on the board of the Fort Worth Business Center. He is also affiliated with the Cowtown Executive Association, a co-founder of the Tarrant County Professionals Group, Troup Family Missions, his church, and many other nonprofits.
Though he’s no longer on the board, Sawyer remains committed to the work of the Fort Worth Business Center. His main initiative there was awareness. “It doesn’t matter how good you are at anything, if the guy next to you doesn’t know about you, it’s worthless.”
“We’ve helped many, many entrepreneurs,” Sawyer says of the Fort Worth Business Center, “whether they’re just starting, or they’re stuck at $5 million and can’t grow, and everybody in between.
“That has been fun and rewarding from a personal part of my history.”
That’s been a rewarding experience, he says, simply because that’s who he is, not only a friend to entrepreneurs and small business, but a family member.
“Everyone who came into the market, they could have gone to the grocery store and saved a little money and perhaps get a different variety,” he says. “But they came to the market to talk to my grandfather, tell stories, and laugh and joke about Notre Dame football.”
Relationships.
“There are 6,000 banks in Fort Worth, but it’s who your banker is that makes the difference,” he says. “The relationship with that person is what makes the difference. Not the name on the building, but that person. That’s why little Worthington has existed and thrived because we don’t do it like anybody else does.”