020 Larry Winget––What's Wrong with Damn Near Everything!

What exactly is wrong with damn near everything? That's the topic today with our guest Larry Winget on Walking the Walk.

Welcome to Walking the Walk, the program for people who want to become better leaders and leaders who want to become better people. Start Walking the Walk with your host, renowned leadership speaker and author of The Sensei Leader, Jim Bouchard.

I think it's fair to say that Larry Winget is one of America's most controversial and influential commentators. He's a multiple New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and his latest book is What's Wrong with Damn Near Everything. Larry's also a dear friend and one of my most trusted mentors. So always, Larry, it's a blessing to have you visit with us. So what the hell is wrong with damn near everything?

You know, I rarely get called a blessing, so I appreciate that.

No, seriously, we were just talking about you. You've changed our lives in remarkable ways, and it's, it's really You know, it's a blessing. Let's leave it at that.

All right. So what's wrong with damn near everything? You know, the subtitle to that book is How the Collapse of Core Values Is Destroying Us and How to Fix It. So what's wrong with damn near everything is we've lost our core values.

Not going to get an argument from me.

No, I know I won't.

Right.

We agree on this stuff.

I know it. I know it.

But we get in a lot of trouble for saying that stuff, especially to hell with them.

Who cares? You know, I am so used to death threats and haters and being screamed at and called names and nasty emails and people chasing me through parking lots and saying horrible things to me. To hell with them. The— our country has fallen apart for one reason. We've lost our core values. We don't know how to be nice to each other. We don't have kindness in our hearts. We don't work. Honesty, integrity, all those things are gone. And when those things leave, they manifest themselves in all the ways we're trying to fix right now. And that's what we have to realize. Core values is the key.

Amen. You know, a few years ago we were talking, you told me that at the core of everything that you really talk about is two simple words, right? Personal responsibility. I think you had challenged us to wrap ourselves up in a couple of words. That's the ones that you chose. Personal responsibility. I want to talk for a minute about the mass shooting in Florida, because when I knew we were going to talk this week, Sheriff Scott Israel came up with some brilliant comments the other day. We just blogged on this this morning, actually, and I'll put a link to that. "I gave him a gun." This is talking about the deputy who they're accusing of cowardice, right? Because he didn't run in there. So he said, "I gave him a gun. I gave him a badge. I gave him the training. He didn't have the heart to go in. That's not my responsibility." Go.

You know, here's the deal. I'm going to say I understand some of what he's saying. Yeah, I have been the manager of a business. I've owned the business and I can train the people who work for me to do everything right. Will they always do everything right? Probably not. And so you can do the best job in the world of setting people up for success. And sometimes when under pressure, they simply will not perform. You've done your job, but you're not in the field holding their hand, doing everything all the time now, which makes it not your fault. Not your fault. Maybe that's what I was going to say. It makes it not his fault. However, the responsibility will still come back to him.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Keep going.

Or, you know, when I look at this whole thing, the responsibility always goes back to somebody. Ultimately, it was only the shooter's fault.

Yeah, right.

Okay. It wasn't the gun's fault. It wasn't the NRA's fault. It wasn't the fault of the laws or any of that. It was the guy who walked in with the gun and pulled the trigger. It was his fault. Now, responsibility is a different issue. Responsibility goes back all the way to parents and school systems and the FBI not responding. All of those things. There is responsibility to go around.

Now, again, I knew we were singing the Hallelujah. I always go back, you know, one of my favorite people to quote is General Patton, you know, and one of my favorite quotes of his is, a general officer who will invariably assume the responsibility for failure, whether he deserves it or not, and invariably give the credit for success to others, whether they deserve it or not, will achieve outstanding success, you know. And to me, it's all about The idea that when a leader abdicates that responsibility, there's a lot of problems that come into play. When you accept the responsibility, not necessarily the fault, what you're doing really is then you're going to enable yourself to look at the situation and at least ask yourself, could something have been done differently, if not better, right? And you're going to engage that process. But when you abdicate that responsibility, well, I guess he does because his other quote was, he is the most amazing leader.

You know, that's where he probably, in my opinion, got in the most trouble. When you step back and say, I'm the best, I'm amazing, and yet especially when everything is on fire around you, you end up looking a little silly and stupid and you lose all credibility.

Arrogant. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So and how would we feel about him and how would we talk about him right now? Today, our conversation would be different if he had used the words that we just said. If he had said, you know, I did give him all the training, blah, blah, blah. And what he did, he didn't have the heart to go ahead and do it. It's not the fault of the training. It's the fault of him. He made a mistake. And I will take responsibility for his mistake, even though I didn't do it. He did it. And I'll take the responsibility. We would have a different conversation. The entire country would be having a different conversation about the sheriff right now.

You know, that gets me riled up too, and you know, we could talk all day about all your different books, but that theme of personal responsibility in regard to the mass shootings. Like you said, there's parenting, there's a lot of things that go along the way. We've had some pretty visceral debates about that, face to face with some folks, and I don't know, I'm a little biased because of the work I do with the incarcerated youth. So I work with kids. I work with kids that have been victims of these types of crimes, violence and whatnot, and kids that have committed those types of crimes, which gives a very unique perspective. And what I've been saying to people when they're bitching and moaning and saying something must be done, something must be done, I've been saying, look, you know what, for every one of these incidents, for every time, you know, this type of thing happens, there are 100,000 cases where a kid might have been predisposed to do something like that but didn't do it. And why? Because people step up if the parenting isn't there. And I've been challenging people pretty heavily. I said, look, go down and volunteer as a mentor at your local school. They're begging people to do this. I'm not saying everybody has to do it, but there is something that people can do rather than waiting around for someone else to do it. Is that one of the core ideas behind that message? Is that one of the core values? We just want someone else to frickin' save us all the time?

Well, absolutely, we want someone else to save us, but we also somehow, human nature, I believe we need someone to blame. We need to, to be able to point that finger of responsibility somewhere else other than ourselves, because we have conditioned our society to be uncomfortable with saying I'm sorry and apologizing for their mistakes, admitting their mistakes. We have not taught our kids how to do that. And that's where I really think it really starts. We have this core, and I think responsibility, personal responsibility is a core value. Being able to step up and say, you know, I did this, I'm sorry, let's do what it takes to fix it. Uh, how can I fix it? But that's not what we've been taught, Jim, and you know that.

Well, that's an interesting segue because, uh, you know, some of what's been running through my head is this. Have we created a culture, especially in, in social media and in traditional media too, where People are just rationally, if not rightfully, fearful that every time they speak the truth, someone's gonna, like you said, you get chased through parking lots. And I can remember, I've told you this story, my first encounter with you was in a place in my life where I really needed to hear this. And I walked into a bookstore and there was your book, Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life. And that can piss a guy off. Have somebody like you say it. You're on the COVID looking around. But it went in. I said, you know what, that's what I needed to hear at that time. But not everybody responds that way. I mean, you know, both of us have been under serious attacks, serious attacks and threats because just for speaking truth. How are we going to, how are we going to change that mindset, culture? I don't know, environment. I'm at a loss. That's why we're having you on the show today.

You know, I was having a conversation with Brian Kilmeade on his radio show on Fox and We were talking about the book What's Wrong with Damn Near Everything, and we went through a lot of what you and I are talking about here. And he said, so is it too late?

Yeah.

And I go, you know, it really might be. I wish you hadn't said that. You know, that's what people want to hear, but it really might be too late. What can we do? I'm not sure. I'm kind of at a loss like you. Here's what I know. We can't fix the world.

Right.

And we're not going to fix the fact that people are ultimately going to go in with a gun or with a knife or with a baseball bat or with a car or whatever. If people want to do harm, they will do harm. Bad people do bad things. That's who they are. It's inside of them. And we can't externally legislate any of that. We can't externally legislate the bad out of people. All we can do And this, I'm absolutely convinced. You can't even do it for your kids. You can try to do it for your kids. The only thing you can do is do it for yourself. Every single human being must step up and take responsibility and live by the core values that we've been talking about here. And when we do that, maybe people will see us as some sort of a role model that they would like to be like. Hopefully that's what our kids will do. And if we stop and actually parent our kids and talk about core values, and live those core values in front of them, maybe we can influence them in some way. But the only control we have anywhere in life is over ourselves. That's it. And if we all did that, then the world would change. But we can't change the world.

That's huge. You know, I keep coming back to this expectation of a guarantee, and I like that you— I like that you're using the word maybe a lot, you know, through that last little rant there, because You know, what is the guarantee? What is the guarantee, right? You do the best you can. And of course, that's a huge, huge topic in leadership today, that people's inability to deal with uncertainty. And I think to me, to my mind, that's where we have this dependency, sometimes on a person. I think we have a childish dependent— I won't say I think, I know for damn sure, as a culture, we have a childish dependency on, say, the idea of a president., right? A single person that can do, you know, omnipresent, do everything for us. And we also, I believe, have a dependency, an unhealthy dependency on legislation. That we're going to pass a law and somehow that's going to change people's minds. I mean, again, working with folks, kids and adults that are incarcerated that committed these crimes, that's not at the top of the mind, you know, right? They're not thinking about the punishment. They're not thinking— they're thinking about what they need to do, need or want to do at the time. Right. To satisfy some personal, personal need or interest. And sometimes it's understandable, you know, scary enough.

Well, I've learned while I'm a black and white guy, it's right or wrong. Hello or goodbye. Either in the way or on the way. That kind of thinking appeals to me. I have learned to hedge my words by saying things like maybe because there are no guarantees. I end all my speeches Well, if you did everything that I've talked about and I talk about a lot in my speeches, does that mean that everything will go right? Well, no, that's not how life works. You can do everything in the world right and it all goes wrong. I mean, that's the way life works. And people say that's not fair. I'll tell you what's not fair. Sometimes you can do everything in the world wrong and somehow it all goes right. That's not fair. But again, that's still just the way life works. Here's all we can do in the end. Really, this is all we can do is stack the deck in our favor. And we stack the deck in our favor by going back to core values like responsibility and taking care of yourself and being responsible.

I was going to say, yeah, hit some, hit some of the core values that you're really highlighting in the new book.

Honesty. You know, we all would go to our kids and say, you have to tell the truth all the time. Really? 27% of Americans cheat on their taxes.

People—

people talk about it again than we act.

They're not reading the same stuff we're reading. Dan O'Reilly pretty much proved over at Duke that we all lie, you know, and that we're even wired to do it.

Yeah, exactly. So I believe— and believe me, if honesty were really valued in society, we give it great lip service. We wouldn't have either any of the candidates running. That we had in the 2016 election. We wouldn't have most of the political candidates running every election if honesty was really valued. Now, integrity, you know, and there's a lot of definitions of integrity. I like everything to be simple. So integrity is just doing the right thing when nobody's looking. And I don't see a lot of that. You know, all of our integrity is conditional. I'll do the right thing as long as nobody Finds out. So integrity and honesty is conditional and situational. I'll be honest in this situation, but taxes? The government doesn't deserve my money. I'll cheat there. That's okay. We justified it, rationalized it. So honesty, integrity are huge with me. But I think work ethic is one of those core values that we have to get back to.

Amen.

A full day's work for a full day's pay. Don't take the job and then not do the job or complain about the wages when you agreed to work for those wages.

Mm-hmm.

And don't gripe about your boss. The boss is the boss, by the way. He's still the boss. Even if he's an idiot, he's still your boss. There's respect that comes with that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And which one, right? Whose boss isn't an idiot when you're— when you look at— right, once in a while. Oh my God.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and look at the country right now. Okay. There are times And I don't want to spend a lot of time, and I know you don't either, about Trump. I'm not a fan of him as an individual.

Right.

But I will— I wasn't a fan of Obama for damn sure. However, I will always respect the office of the presidency. And I think that's what people have to do when they go to work. I'm seeing so much personal disrespect right now. And respect is a core value, too. And, and, and that's one of the ones I really see us lacking right now. We would not have violence in school, Jim, if we learn to respect each other. That comes down to a basic lack of respect. If I don't respect you and I don't really care about you, then it doesn't matter what I say to you or do to you.

No, it's fundamental, isn't it? I mean, we're talking there, you know, it's pretty clear psychologically. It's a lack of respect for human life itself, right?

Exactly.

We're not even seeing each other as individuals anymore.

No.

And we have so many— and look online, you experience this. I certainly do. Somebody today posted on one of the pages that I run in another business. And they were saying, how do you handle haters? Somebody said something mean to me.

No, I don't know. I never, never like that.

I have more haters in a week than you're going to have in your entire lifetime.

Right.

But when we've got so many keyboard cowards out there who sit behind their keyboard and feel perfectly free to be disrespectful in any way, I think what we have to do in terms of core values And this goes back to my book, Grow a Pair, which we all need to do. Grow a pair is get real clear about who we are, what we stand for, and what our values are, and then uncompromisingly stand up for those and speak up for those. Now, on social media, I encourage disagreement. I wake up every day and say, what can I say that will piss people off and make them think? Because if I make you think and we have a debate, an educated, thoughtful, respectful conversation from opposing views, everyone wins. But the instant it becomes personal and disrespectful, I don't tolerate any of it. No, none of it. And the nice thing about social media, which people don't seem to understand, is every social media site has a block and delete button.

Exactly right. That's your real estate. You don't like what someone's saying, get rid of them. Yeah, no, I couldn't get rid of a bunch of them every day.

It's fun.

It can be. It sure can be. I mean, I had to grow into a little bit thicker skin to, to manage it a little bit better. But no, I do enjoy the debate. And like you said, is if it's respectful, I don't give a damn if someone agrees with me or disagrees with me at all. And I found, you know, through, through my experience that usually we're going to find a solution that transcends what either one of us was trying to put forward, you know what I mean? As long as we're entertaining that conversation. So, but I want to, I want to hit something really deep now because, well, you inspired this thought anyway. There's a big, still a big argument right now as, as to whether we're inherently good or inherently evil. Now I don't like the word evil because I'd rather, I'd rather substitute something a little bit more scientific, if you will. It's pretty well documented that we're self-interested and that our primary motivation is survival. So let's just template that and let's not deal with the extreme of evil right now. We accept that we're mostly self-interested and we're pointed towards survival. My contention lately has been this, see if you want to argue with me or agree with me, and I did take some heat for this at a recent event because I said I don't think we're inherently good. I think it takes a lot of discipline, a lot of discipline to honor some of the core values you're talking about. I mean, it takes work to be honest because, like I said, psychologists have proved it. We're wired otherwise. We're wired to protect ourselves. You know what I mean? So I'm saying it takes discipline to be respectful. It takes discipline to be honest. It takes discipline to practice integrity. Go ahead. You want to argue, or you think I'm way off?

You know, I think you're dead on. And I have said very similar things in the past. And that's why I had to leave all the churches I was ever involved in, because, you know, Christianity is sort of founded in this, that we are born perfect and without sin.

Yeah.

And, and I'm frankly just not buying it.

I'm not seeing evidence of it.

No, I'm not either. I do think that, as you said, that we are not absolutely inherently good. And you and I will both take some crap over that for sure. I do believe be part of that. And I certainly go along with what you said, that it takes a lot of work to be good. It takes discipline to be good. You have to focus on it every day. It has to be a priority. And mainly that's because the world's societal influences are not, I don't think, motivated from a place of good. I think they are motivated from a place of gain. Selfish gain. Now I'm into self. I, I put Larry Wingate ahead of just about anybody in the world. So selfish, I'm a complete supporter of. I've written about that in all of my books. I'm out to make Larry Wingate happy at the end of the day. That's it. However, that idea of everyone else must lose in order for me to win, that's the problem. And that's part of that societal influence of gain. And competition that really we've gone crazy with right now.

Well, not only crazy, haven't we slipped so far that it's not even competition, that almost anything you do that profits you is going to somehow destroy me? Where did that— and that's deeply embedded, especially in younger generations, right? Yeah, it's hard to convince people that most of what we're talking about is not a zero-sum game at all.

I know that's part of the challenge. And you're like me, you're in the same world as I am. And, and I go on and look at what some of the speakers and the motivational folks post, and my God, I'm just embarrassed. So embarrassed. And I just shake my head. And, and I used to comment and kind of mix it up with them. And now I just shake my head and say, go ahead in your own little world. But When we have all of these speakers out there that are promoting either the hold hands, circle up, sing Kumbaya, we're all perfect, that group. And on the other side, and there's, you know, there's extremists on both sides. We have those who say you got to crush, dominate, and destroy in order to get ahead. Those are the people with the biggest followings that are making the most money right now because they are selling crush, dominate, and destroy. And very few people are talking about how can I add value?

Yeah.

How can I give? How can I give, add value, serve? And because simply it doesn't sell as well.

Well, again, you just hit something that's such a concern in the leadership space though too. Sure. You, there are people that at least materially can appear successful, right? By dominating, by, being the dictator, right? My question is, how sustainable is it if you don't bring value? And especially as a leader, if you're not bringing value to the people you serve, if you're not committed to their benefit as well, you know, how long is that sustainable? I mean, we see what happens. We see what happens when companies try, you know, allow themselves to decay into that culture if they haven't started with it.

I don't think it is sustainable. I had a conversation recently with the Speakers Bureau about a few of the hot new speakers in that their theme is the crush, dominate, destroy sort of approach. And I said, well, here's the difference between them and me. They won't be around in 30 years. I'm still here, 30 years in the business, and I'm still here. When you look at me and my buddies and, you know, all my buddies, Callaway and Sanborn, McCain and Pennington and all that group who've all been in the business for 30 years, there's a reason that we are still here. And it's because our message endures. And our— and if you just want to talk about what it takes to be successful in business, our product has endured because of excellence. You know, we're good at what we do. But the message of service and value and responsibility, those messages are not going to go out of style. And I do believe that those other messages— and we're seeing it in the marketing space, the leadership space, as you just mentioned, I don't think those are going to last.

No, you know, if you, if you spend all your time crushing people, if you're the dictator, guaranteed someone's going to come after your head, right? It's just the way it is. So I don't know, I don't want to, I don't want to live that way. I don't want to live there. So you know what, I'm remiss in this. Is the book out and available right now?

It is out and available right now. I didn't get a copy.

I did not get a copy, damn it.

Oh no, yes you did. We mailed you one, even verified your address. Don't you lie to me. You've got that book.

I'd never lie to you. I've had a bunch of concussions, you know. If it's here, I don't know where the hell it is. It's not on the Larry shelf.

Well, I tell you what, it's a good looking little book. It's black and it has a wonderful picture of me with a cigar. Can you imagine? I took a lot of heat over that.

Even Jim, I can't imagine.

They said, how dare you smoke a cigar on the COVID of your book?

There it is. So all the normal outlets, Amazon, all that stuff, or you want them to come to your website?

I don't care where they go, just buy it.

Well, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell people to go to your website, LarryWinget.com. Yeah, because there's lots more good stuff there too.

Yeah, you can get a whole library, a whole library of Larry stuff.

Yeah, and I'm going to say this, and from the heart, you want to do something to mitigate the— and I'm not talking about in the extreme, uh, teen violence. Youth violence is a huge issue. Sometimes it manifests itself in a mass shooting we pay a lot of attention to, but it's happening every single day and it's killing children every single day. If you want to do something about that, Larry, you wrote a book about parenting. Your Kids Are Your— I keep saying Your Kids Are Your Own Damn Fault, but you didn't swear. It's Your Kids Are Your Own Fault, right?

Yep, Your Kids Are Your Own Fault. You know, I have written all these books, and I will say that that's my most important book. I really do believe that we can trace the problems that we're seeing in society right now back to bad parenting.

Amen.

And if we would just teach our kids, you know, I posted a meme just today that said, parents are the first line of defense against problem kids. We've got to stop thinking my kid would never. And because your kid just might. So you have to become involved. We have to interact. We have to communicate. We have to ask questions, demand answers. We have to know their friends and check their social media. We have to be parents. And the book Your Kids Are Your Own Fault is all about how to raise responsible, productive adults. And somehow we've just lost our way as parents. We've decided friendship is more important than parenting. And, uh, and that's a huge mistake when it comes to, to your kids.

Or people are just cowardly. They don't want— they don't want the fight, you know what I mean? And that's, that's horrible. And I, I'm going to reinforce what you say. I'm going to say that, you know, it's the only thing we can do because the through line— and here I got myself in some trouble for this one. I was arguing with an opponent of the Second Amendment rights, and, uh, I said, listen, by your own logic If you want to really get to the core of it, right, the core of the issue, the through line in all of these events is absent, deficient, or abusive parenting. So instead of licensing guns, why don't we license parenting? Why don't you have to take a test before you can produce a kid? You can imagine what the feedback was on that one.

You know, Jim, I really saw this as such a huge problem. I started another podcast. You know, I got my own Grow a Pair podcast, but I started one called How to Be a Real Man. And it's the How to Be a Real Man podcast. If people want to go, just go to realmanpodcast.com. You'll find out all about it. But here was the thing. I was sitting around and saying, what's really the problem going on in society right now? And I do believe it's the parenting issue, but I focused in on the man side of it because we have such a problem with absentee fathers right now. And they're not— kids are not getting the right. And I will just go ahead and really, you know, we'll piss a lot of people off while they're— while we're doing this.

They're coming. Go ahead.

Yeah. They need a stronger male influence. Kids need a stronger male influence. I especially believe that father— men need a stronger male influence in their life. They need a mentor. They need a role model. They need a guide. Through things that while there are strong mothers who raise great men, and I will applaud them and pat them on the back completely, I think that over— those are the exceptions, that overall a lack of fathers in the home has really hurt us. And I looked at society and said, you know, we really are going to have to speak to men about what it takes to be a man. And, you know, when I said I was going to post about that, some idiot said, well, How can you even do a podcast about that? You don't look like you even know how to fight. I went, man, if you think that's what being a man is about, you're so mistaken. So I do talk about core values. We've got to teach. And here's what's amazing. I started a podcast called How to Be a Real Man, and we have more women listeners than we do men because they value those, those values that we talk about, you know, honesty, integrity. They want to see it in their kids. They want to see it in their own husband and their brothers and their own father sometimes.

I was just going to say that we, we tend to celebrate women who embrace traditionally— I'm going to say traditionally positive masculine characteristics, right? And yet we vilify men who try to, who try to maintain those characteristics, you know, even the, the role of chivalry Right. Being a gentleman.

Yeah.

Being the protector. Right. Yeah. Those things have been vilified yet we celebrate women that embrace those things. That's kind of an upside down attitude. I don't know.

It is. You know, I, we took a little heat for, for doing this thing because, you know, it, there's not a problem with saying here's a women's entrepreneur organization.

Right.

Or here's a women's networking group, or here's a women's whatever. But you start saying, here's something exclusively for men.

Yeah.

Woo! Drop the hammer. That'll fire folks up.

You sexist, racist bastard.

I know, I know.

Well, that's—

Somebody said, why don't you just change it to be How to Be a Person? Okay.

Go ahead.

Yeah, change it in your own mind. I'm sticking with How to Be a Real Man.

Larry, it can't be too— it can't be as long between visits. Okay.

I agree. This has been fun. Always good to talk to you.

Oh, you as well. Thanks for sharing all these great ideas. And like I said, go look up LarryWingate.com. We'll put the links up. And as always, and I really mean this from the heart, it's just such a blessing to— I know we don't get to spend a whole lot of time together, but such a blessing to have you in our lives.

Well, you should come out here where it would be more of a blessing, where the weather is always warm.

We, we keep planning on it. All right, there we go. Thank you, Larry.

Talk to you later, my friends.

All right.

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