This is a transcript of "8 Fundamentals Of Success Part 6," a YouTube interview (Larry Weidel and Sam Shepard) that focuses on the eighth fundamental: fellowship. Sam defines fellowship as relationship-building outside formal meetings—sharing meals, travel time, and accessibility to team members and partners—to create bonds that reduce attrition, enable two-way communication, and resolve conflicts. He gives anecdotes (long post-meeting conversations, restaurant one-on-ones, talking with leaders' partners) showing how fellowship repairs problems and produces referrals even from former associates. The closing takeaway urges personal growth ("work on being a better you") and perseverance ("don't quit until you're free").
We're at video number six. We're going to wrap up our look at Sam Shepard's fundamentals, and we have covered some great information that I know you're going to be excited about. Let's take a look at the last one. Number eight, Sam, how do we wrap this up?
Well, Larry, we put a bow on it with fellowship. And I just started using this. I used to always teach the seven fundamentals, but lately I've started teaching the eighth one, which I think is very overlooked, is fellowship. And when I started looking at. One thing I've been very strong at, my whole business is a fellowship is where we really take relations to another level. And it's happening outside of the meeting. I don't think just meeting. People say, well, you know, yeah, I go to all the meetings, Sam. I never miss me, and then miss the training. But it's spending time with people after the training, at the restaurants, at the hotels, on the road. You, when you're traveling, doing trips and things like that, going out of town. And when I look at the relationships I built with my best leaders, it's people that we spend a lot more time with, and then they're building relations, not just with me, because if you're on my team and you're directing me, and I want you to meet as many other people as you can on the team, I want you to have a lot of relationships. I'm not a leader. Will get upset if I see Larry. Why is Larry talking to him? Why is Larry talking to her? I want you to build as many relationships as you can because it's going to make it that much harder for you to quit, Larry, because now you got to quit on. You're not quitting on the business. You're quitting on all these people that know you, all these people believe in you, all these friendships that you built. If you walk away, you're walking away from all of that, and it's so much harder for you to do that. And so I just think the times I've spent with people that I haven't trained and. But I trained them at a restaurant. I trained them, you know, sitting in a car, riding to High Point, North Carolina, sitting in the car, riding to Dallas, Texas, wherever it was we decided to go. And so. And even driving around the city of Atlanta, driving an hour each way, sitting at the restaurant, getting to know them, getting to know the partner, you know, getting to make certain that they have a partner, I want to know the partner, too. I want my relationship to be just as Good. So that if I call one, it doesn't matter who answers the phone. I called one of my leaders of the day, and his wife answered, and we talked for about an hour and then answer after about an hour. Said, is your husband Mary? She said, no, he's not here right now. I said, okay, tell him to call you later. What was like? She doesn't think of me as his friend. I'm her friend. I'm both of their friends, and they're like family to me. So it doesn't matter that he wasn't home. She's like, he's not here. I talk to you later. No, you got to develop those kind of relationships or at least strive to develop those kind of relationships with people where I don't care whether they're still in business with me or out of the business with me. I get referrals all the time from people who are no longer in business with me because we still have that relationship. We built that over the years. So I think the fellowship principle because. And it takes a lot of people to meet me is over, man. They've been around a couple hours. I'm tired. Or I've heard people say, well, I'm not going to fellowship because I'm not hungry. And they don't understand it has nothing to do with hunger. I've been in fellowship. When I was fasting, it wasn't because I don't go to fellowship to eat. I might eat when I'm at the fellowship. I go to fellowship to build a relationship, to spend time with people. And I think we've been very, very good at that. When I look at some of my leaders that grow their businesses the best, I find that they're very good at the fellowship principle. And when I find leaders that don't grow as quickly or seem to be struggling a lot more, they're very good in the main fundamentals, the technical stuff, the technical principles that they challenge when it comes to fellowsh. Challenge with being around the people and, you know, just breaking bread with people. And I'd be very inclusive as to who I'm breaking bread with. I mean, you're on the team. Let's. Let's break bread with everybody. Now, I do believe you got to spend that top 20%, those extra meals, those people that are sticking their head up, man, you got to spend even more time with those people. But I just believe in being accessible to people from a fellowship standpoint. Being accessible. Sitting around last night after a meeting for meetings over at 9 and 11:30, I'm getting ready to leave fellowship another two and a half hours, and that's just normal. I do that several times a week. I've been doing that for over 30 years. A lot of people don't understand it because they only understand getting instant gratification. Well, if I do that, what's the pay for that? It's tons of pay. It's just not immediate pay. But you're planting seeds, you're growing relationships, you're establishing bonds that will last forever.
I remember that Art said early on that he solved 90% of your people problems just by spending time with them. And is some of that what you're talking about here?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've had. I had a leader that we weren't on the same page for a long time. And one week, he was never really around, I was never around. We didn't really have time to mend the fence, you know, to get back on one page. And out the blue, I invited him out to a restaurant one time. I found out that even people that don't like you will eat free food with you. Okay? So I came to the restaurant and we sat and told. And maybe I just made it real general. And by the end of the talk, I was like, hey, by the way, I know you upset with me, blah, blah, blah. What was really, what was behind that? What did I do? And he kind of told me what he did, what he thought I had done. When I explained to him the whole, you know, the whole scenario, he's like, oh, that's not. I didn't know that. Yeah, I understand. You know, and he said, well, I don't even have a problem. And I said, yeah, I understand, but. Because there's no communication, because fellowship is about communication, but it's got to be two way communication. And so that's the thing where people can think. Just going to a training or class, that's one way communication. That's somebody with a mic talking to the crowd. There's no interaction. The way we build relationship to Fellowship, it must be two way. So by me and him sitting at the table and breaking bread, we had two way conversation. He told me what he thought, I was able to tell him what I thought. And we put, you know, that was over, you know, and we great relationship since. And so I feel anytime you're challenged with people, what you got to do is find a way to sit down with them. Just one on one. Let's sit down. Let's talk about it. Let's agree to disagree. We can disagree on things, but we don't have to be disagreeable with each other.
Yeah, that's just great stuff, Sam. And what should we say now to wrap all of this, to put a wrapper on the eight fundamentals? What's the takeaway? You've discovered some tremendous material. What would you like to just send people as a takeaway from listening to these videos and, you know, just from you to them?
The people are going to be listening.
To these things weeks and months later.
Well, I just want to let whoever hears these know that if you'll work on yourself, because I think, you know, whatever is wrong with your business, whatever you think might think is wrong with your people, your team, your organization, I'll just challenge you to work on being a better you, because that's my challenge every day, to be a better Sam. If you work on being a better you and just putting time into, you know, mastering different fundamental skills yourself, I promise you, you'll attract more people. You'll get a whole new team and you'll get better relationships with those who are on your team. And I just also just want to encourage you. I don't care how long you've been around or how far away your dreams seem to be, every dream you have is still attainable. You can still achieve it. You can still win. You can still do all the things. Just don't, don't give up, no matter how much you feel like quitting. And you will feel like quitting all the time, but just don't quit. Just do not quit on yourself, no matter how bad it seems. And don't quit till you're free. When you get free, you can quit, but until you get free, don't quit.
Never quit until you are free. Thanks so much, Sam. That is a fantastic set of information for people. It's only taking you 30 plus years to get it together. And I hope people appreciate it. I know they will.
So thanks so much.
Thanks so much.
Thank you. God bless.
If they have questions, they can leave comments. And I know that you're out in the world and easy to find if they want to come up and give you a thank you or ask you a question about some of this. Thanks so much, Sam.
