Advantages of Taking a Simple Approach with Patti Schechter

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and Again, go to wydellonwinning.comwebinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode.

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here talking with Patty Schechter. Hello, Patty.

Hi, Larry. Great to see you.

This is going to be fun. And we're both down here in South Florida. You're over on looking out the beautiful view from the Ritz Carlton there in Singer Island. We've got a gorgeous day and fortunately, we're both in town. And so you've really lived the life of the dream life, you know, that people that are starting out want to have and, you know, to be able to build a business, have it succeed and then move on and be able to enjoy life. Your daughter is, what's your daughter doing? She's in Vegas. Is she still headlining or in Vegas?

Headlining at the Wynn Hotel at a fabulous new club, it just opened last July called Delilah. And it's where like the stars go when they go to Vegas. The celebrities go there. The most gorgeous venue you ever saw. And she's the headliner there on, she does private parties there on Monday, and then she's with the public Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturday nights. And it's my joy in life, Larry, to sit in the audience and watch that girl on the stage. No, she's my one and only, my pride and joy. And I'm living vicariously through her. She's got it going on, let me tell you.

And her name, so, so her name.

Is Savannah Schechter, but her stage name is Savannah Lynx. Like the cat. L, Y N Y. So yeah.

And easy to find in Vegas because at the Wynn and the club at the Wynn is what?

Delilah.

Delilah. And so, you know, I remember Savannah when she was, you know, a little toddler type. Seen her grow up and so you never know who these kids are going to turn into. But she always, she always has. She was also always a chip off the old block. So I felt like she was headed for the big time one way or the other stage.

She loves the stage. So she's a little girl. You, you couldn't get her off the stage. So I don't know that, bro.

Isn't that incredible how kids, certain kids will grow up and they just want to be in the spotlight. And if, if they don't have that, you can't put it in there. But, but you know, kids come the way they come, you know, and it's great to allow, you know, be able to support her when she had that drive and allow her to come up through the, the ranks. And that's pretty well near the top of the entertainment business. And so, you know, a regular gig like that in Vegas residency. Yeah. And so as we're talking to Patti, just so you'll know, Patti is the highest paid woman at Primerica. And we're not supposed to say a lot about the financial services company and all of that, but we're talking about a New York stock exchange company, the largest independent marketing organization in the world. The only one that's public and owned by the field force. And I think it's 150, no, 130,000. 130,000 licensed people now. And out of that pile of humanity, you have one lady at the top, the highest earning female, that's Patty Schechter at 2.5 million. So congratulations, Patty.

Thank you so much.

And it's great to see you. You know, you, I was telling when we were warming up was that I always remember how mentally organized you were and how verbally organized. You know, you could, I could tell you were great at training because you could take concepts, distill it down to their essence and put it into a little one, two, three step thing where people could understand. Here's how I get out of that situation, here's how I solve that problem. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you've stayed on track throughout. Quite adventuresome, but at times like we all have tumultuous times, you know, you're in the, in the churn and you're being churned by life, but you have to get your bearings and get going again. And you've been able to do that. And it's because of your, you know, the way you've approached life all along, that's allowed that to happen. So that's what we're going to be tapping, tapping in here today over Agents. You know, you're been over you and your husband went over a million dollars in income along about the 90s, went over 2 million a few years later and now 13th highest earner in the company, but highest paid female. So congratulations on all that. None of that happens by accident. And now you've since gone to a less active role. But talk about how did you, what do you think got you going in the direction of where you would want to position yourself or make decisions that allowed you to get involved in building a business early in your life.

Well, Larry, so I appreciate everything you just said about me and about keeping things simple for people. I'm a simple girl. I cover from Paterson, New Jersey. My father was a welder, never graduated high school. He was born in 1918. He went through the great Depression, the war. My mother was literally a Hungarian coal miner's daughter from Scranton, Pennsylvania. So, you know, I have no degree. I didn't. I went to college and dropped out, much to my father's chagrin, but didn't have, you know, a lot of training, had zero financial training. I ended up. After I dropped out, I went to college for a year and a half. I dropped out of college and I became a court reporter, much by accident. You know, one thing, a thread that'll run through everything I say is I don't believe in happenstance or coincidence or accident. I believe that there's a big plan for everybody and everything happens for a reason. And after I dropped out of college, I'm an only child. My father was devastated. You know, he always thought his one and only daughter would be the first one in the family so to graduate college. And he'd be so proud of me. And when I dropped out, he was pretty devastated. So every night he would come home with, like, he'd brainstorm every night, you know, we'd be sitting at the kitchen table and he'd say, well, how about you be an executive secretary? Work with all the big wigs, you know, maybe you could work in Manhattan. And I would, like, roll my eyes, no, daddy, I don't want to do that. And then the next day, you say, why don't you work for the post office? It's a government job. They'll take care of you your whole life. And I'm like, no, daddy, I don't want to work for the post office. Post office.

So. So how old were you at this point in your life?

19. 20. I dropped. I went to college. 18, dropped out when I was 19. So now I'm working as a sales girl at the mall, you know, and my father, like, panicked. And then by coincidence, he gets called to jury duty and jury duty, and he talks to the court reporter, who was an older gentleman, and he said, this. This is back in. Now I'm talking 1970. And he said, this is a great field for women, young women. They make great money, great benefits. He worked for the state of New Jersey in the capacity. In the judiciary department. And she'll be in the courtroom every day. She'll probably marry a Rich lawyer. So my father was like, ah, Cha Ching, this is it. And he came home and he pitched it to me. I had no idea what it was. I'm thinking a reporter, like a newspaper reporter. I'm like, eh. And then he told me what it was. And really, just to make daddy happy, I opened up the Yellow Pages because that's what we did back then, right? Yeah, right. And I looked up court reporting school in Hackensack, New Jersey, which was 10 minutes from my house, 20 minutes from my house. I went and checked it out, and I liked it. I've always been math adverse and math adverse and English, very, very good in English and words and stuff like that. And I thought, this is great. I could sit in the courtroom and listen to a different soap opera every day and get paid well, have great benefits, and sit in the front of the courtroom on the stage. So I like that idea. I went through the school in record time, not bragging, just reporting, and walked into the courtroom on June 19, 1978, and guess who was standing there in a navy blue pinstripe suit, power suit, looking all studly. And that's how I met Dennis.

Oh, really? So it didn't take you a long time to make the second stage of that game plan right now.

I saw it and I went for it wholeheartedly. I kind of liked the whole thing. And like you said before, I'm always pretty organized and I'm always pretty simple. Like, you know, I'm having my 50th high school reunion coming up. Dear God. Thank you, God. Dear God. And it's a shocking at the same time. Right, right. It's funny because when I talk to my high school friends, they see me on Facebook and they see my life and everything, and they all. None of them are surprised. None of them are surprised. They all say, we knew you were going to make it. Because that is one thing I didn't know quite how, but I was pretty driven when I was young. I wanted things and I wanted my life to be a certain way. And I. I knew I had to go out and get. It was going to fall in my lap. So I put myself, my father. You talk about simple things, like my three questions that I asked people that you were talking about before. My father always had, you know, these. We called them. His name was Gus August. We called them Gus Isms. Just one line. They sound so stupid and simplistic, but, man, they made sense. He used to say to me, hey, if you want to get hit by the train, you stand on the track.

Yeah.

You want success? Put yourself where it's happening, you know, so that's what I kind of did. I put myself in a position. I learned a skill. I honed it. I got really, really good at it. I was the girl, you know, the court reporter they asked for in the complicated cases. So I liked that. I liked that I was, you know, respected in my field. I was at the top in my field, and I like that. And I liked. I made. I made good money, relatively speaking, as a court reporter, as a girl without a, you know, college degree. And I liked the people I was associating with. You know, show me your friends. Show me the people you associate with. And here I was with judges and lawyers and learning something new every day. You don't sit in court. You get an education if you sit in court every day. And I didn't.

Let's just. Let's just stop for the younger ones out there to get them to not miss the lesson here. And that is that even early on, you had it in you that you wanted something big to happen. Would that be a fair statement?

That's absolutely correct.

And you were driven. You were. You had your eyes on moving up. It wasn't like you didn't want to be a ballerina. You didn't have this one particular thing, but the one thing you did have was up better things in life better be around better people. And, you know, you look. When you have that in you, Patti. You look for people, you look for situations, you evaluate things on. Is this going to allow me to, you know, make. Allow that to happen to me, or is this going to just be a waste of my time?

Very simple. Is this going to help or is this going to hurt me? You know, you don't have to read 9,000 books on how to. To figure it out. You really don't.

Yeah, but. But the thing is, you don't just drift. You know, it's just like you're. You're not just goofing off. You're not just going through. You're looking. You've got your eyes open. You're evaluating situations. And I believe you would probably agree that you got out of. You could. You know, you look for a career path. You know, you look for a way to get where you want to go, and when you don't see that, you pack up and you go somewhere else to look, you know, And I think you got in college and you quick. I think you came to the decision where I changed majors and my second year from architecture over to construction, because I could see architecture that was going to be forever and nothing and probably mediocrity. And so let's not waste my life on that. Let's move. And I sprinted to the office where you change majors. And I get the sense that you were in college and you're saying, this is going nowhere.

I'm going to learn about biology major. I was always real, you know, interested in the ocean and I wanted to be a marine biologist. And then I got into college and, well, I got into a chemistry class and I thought, well, that's not going to be too good for Patty. Patty's not good with chemistry and physics and that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Also I thought, what am I going to do with a biology degree? Really? Maybe not, you know, and where would I be with that? And how long would it take me to get where I wanted to go with that? And is there really, like my father said, am I standing on the train? It's going to deliver a lot of a big bang for the buck, you know, like, when I get this degree, what can I really do with it? How can I advance myself with it? How much money can I really make in that field? You know, what, what would I be doing? So after I thought about that for a while, I kind of, just like you said, I packed up and I didn't change majors because I didn't know what else I wanted to do. So I thought, I don't want to jump to something else and then fail at that and disappoint my father and spend more of his hard earned money, which he didn't have lots of. So I just took the break, went and got a job while I just kind of thought about stuff, I really wasn't sure where I was going. And then, like I said, coincidentally, he came home with this proposal, this idea, and it just worked out. Boy, it really worked out. Thank you, daddy.

Well, and you knew how to evaluate things. And again, when Dennis showed up, you knew how to quickly sort through what you saw and pounce.

Ding, ding, ding, ding. Immediately. Okay, he's for me.

Yeah.

One day. And I thought, this is it. He's the one. I did. I really did. It was love at first sight. And also, you know, Dennis was a lot older than I, as we know, he was 16 years older than I was. So I was 24. He was 39 when we met. He was already established, you know, had a great career blowing and going. So I thought, you know, my career paired with his, together we made a good team. Although separately, you know, he wasn't doing anything that I was interested in doing, but I thought, that's fine. I'll do my thing and he'll do his thing. And I thought we'd have a great life together. And we had even a greater life than I anticipated because of the way things worked out.

Well, how did you get integrated into his business? And was that. Was that an easy thing, or was it. Did you have to work through some issues in your own mind there?

So that's actually a really interesting story. So. So he got involved in this other financial services company, and he was. This was after maybe three years of us being together, and he was really excited about it. I saw something different in him that I hadn't seen before. So I was happy that he was happy and doing his thing and happier in a new venture, but I didn't really have any idea, really. I just knew it was financial services. That's all I knew. What I knew about financial services at this point was zero. I'm telling you, zero, not even point one percent. I had no idea. I loved that he was involved in stuff like that, because my attitude was, you take care of it, okay? Here, here's my. You take care of it, you know? And so when he got involved and found out that there was this thing called a partners organization in this company, and it encouraged spouses, partners, and back in those days, it was mostly female partners, wives, to get involved, to learn about the business and to actually even like, give meetings and seminars and encourage other spouses. He wanted me to do that. And the story I would tell, and it's 100% truth is he found out about this and he came home one day and he said, okay, this is what I want you to do. We're going to have a big meeting called the Fast Start School, and you're going to run the partner section of it and you're going to talk to partners and tell them about what we do and get them involved. And I rolled my eyes and I said, okay. And I put that idea off. And like a week later, he called me up at my office and he said, have you been thinking about that? Don't forget, the meeting's coming up and what are you doing to prepare? And I was like, no, I've been busy, but okay, okay, okay. And had zero intention of doing it. And then finally, probably like a week or 10 days before the actual meeting, I walked in the house one night and he was standing there and he looked at me and he said, have you done anything about to Prepare for this meeting that I'm telling you about. Do you even know what it's about? Have you called? He had given me one of the top partners, names in the company to call and get ideas from, and I hadn't called. And I said, no, Dennis, I didn't do any of that, and I'm not going to do any of that. What don't you understand? I have no interest in your business. It's nothing that I want to be involved in. I don't understand it. All I know is when you mentioned the word, like life insurance or insurance, and you're at a party, all of a sudden, you know, you're all of a sudden with your cocktail weenie in the middle of the room. Nobody wants to talk about that. And I have no idea what it's about. And you want me to, like, stand on a stage and, like, public speak to people about financial services? Are you out of your mind? I'm not doing that. Absolutely no. And one more thing. No, I'm not doing that.

Yeah.

He looked at me with this look that he used to get. And you knew him, Larry, so you know this look I'm talking about. And he said, it's okay, honey. I'll find someone else's wife to help me build my business. That's the day Patty got involved. I was like, okay. I didn't seem to have a choice, and I really didn't. Dennis was a big. A very forceful person and a forceful person in my life. Dominating individual. And I liked that. You know, for women who think, you know, I'm not a feminist or something like that. I'm all about female empowerment and all that. But I do also believe that if you are a married couple, there's one. There's one head of the train, you know, there's one. There's one leader of the pack. You can't be 50, 50, because then if you have an impasse, you'll never solve the problem. I truly believe that. That's just my personal opinion. Nobody should get up in arms. My opinion. For me, it worked best that he was the head of the family. And Maybe we were 51, 49, but he was going to have a last vote, and he wanted me to do this. And it was obviously important to him. And so kicking and screaming, I did not want to do this. I went and got licensed. Insurance license. I went and got securities licensed. But here's Larry, what happened? I started to go to meetings, and instead of just sitting there smiling and thinking about what I was wearing, that Day I started to listen and I started to listen to all the different people talking about it, and I started to realize what we really did. And when that all kicked in, and it happened pretty quickly, let's say in a six month period, then I became a crusader. Then I realized what we were doing. Then I realized what Dennis wanted me to help him build. Once I realized that you could not freaking stop me, I got on fire and I went at it balls to the wall, a million percent in. You could not stop me. I did. And I still worked my job as a court reporter. I didn't quit yet because I was doing well. I was making a lot of money. It was still my identity. I was still hanging on to that. But man alive, I did training sessions, I did weekend meetings, I did fast art schools, I spoke at fast art schools. People at the house, entertain. You know, what it it took to build a business. I did that all. And. And when I look back on it now, I'm like, how the hell did I do it all? You know? But it's because I was on fire and impassioned and a crusader. And I got to tell you, I still am. I. You know, once you're. Once that's in you, once that's innately in your personality and you believe something, it doesn't just go away. You know, we'll be at Palm Beach. You know, here we are in Palm beach at a restaurant, and I start talking to the waitress. You know, I'm recruiting her, and my husband's like, what the heck? And I'm like, I can't. You know, everybody needs to hear about it. So that's how I got involved. That's the long answer to your question.

Absolutely. And as things develop in your life, you had, you know, you went through the normal things that we all do, developing the business. But for you, you face something that Dennis did not last. He did not last the whole ride here. He had some health problems. And the first I heard about it was when he started eating real lean. And oh, by the way, you'll love this story. Dennis was such a genius. I mean, it is a curse being a genius, but he was a genius. And if he ever called you, me, or he called the home office or anybody, and there was an issue, you did not argue with Dennis.

Right?

He was going to be right. And here's the. It's a curse being that smart. But when we went over for an expansion scouting trip to Japan, there was four of us, and me and Dennis were two. I forget who the others Were. But we went and ate lunch at a Japanese restaurant.

I can't wait to hear this before it was over.

I forget the kind of fish. But before it was over, Dennis was in the kitchen instructing the chef on how to cut this particular fish the correct way.

True. That's Dennis. I have no.

Very dogmatic. Now, of course, he was oblivious to the fact that this chef had cut that fish a million times. Cuts it all day long. But he had another angle. And the guy probably learned something, you know.

There. The highway, basically. And I used to tell him, always, well, you're going to win the battle, but you're going to lose the war, you know. But unfortunately, yeah, he started. He started having heart issues, and then he got diabetes. And we all know what a bad combo that is because unfortunately of his personality and just the way he was, he didn't really take care of you. You would think he would have taken care of himself. I mean, like, that is. He was. He was so. So always, like, so frantic and constantly blowing and going and in a turmoil. If his sugar got too high instead of stopping like a normal person with diabetes and taking their blood and reading the sugar, and then based on that, looking at the chart and saying, okay, I need this much insulin. Oh, no, oh, no, that would take too long. Of course, nowadays they have tools that do it quicker. But he would just go, oh, I think my sugar's high. I better take 30 units of insulin without really checking. Then he'd take. Then it would go too low because that was too much. And then he had the M&Ms. And he went back and forth on this for years. And it eventually killed him. I mean, this is what eventually happened. So unfortunately, I saw him going downhill, but then. And then at the end, some other. We. To this day, we really don't know what happened to him. He went to have what was supposed to be an out outpatient procedure. It went terribly awry, and that was kind of the beginning of the end. And then seven, eight.

How was he.

How was he 62 when he died?

Really?

Yeah. And my daughter, our only daughter. Our child was. She was seven when he got sick and eight when he died.

Wow. Wow, that is a shock. And I want to.

Larry, there's more. Go ahead. I'm an only child, like I told you.

Right.

So Dennis died in May. My parents, we had built a house on our property for my mom and dad so that they didn't live in with us. They had their own house, so they had self respect, but they were right there. So I could check up on them. My mom had full blown Alzheimer's for about 10 years before she died. I had a housekeeper, you know, she didn't have to go to a nursing home.

Right.

Situation we were in. So I had a housekeeper and a lady who took care of her 24, 7. And I could just walk across the yard and go visit her. But Dennis died in May of 2022. My father died in August, my mother died the following April. And then I ran my dog over in the driveway and killed him. This was about an 18 month period of hell. And my little girl, you know, eight years old at the time, saw everybody who we lived with die, including her dog. And so, yeah, so that was a turbulent and we got a little derailed, to say the least.

What does that do for you personally? You have responsibilities, you were involved in the business. There's business obligations that go on. You were running cycles of meetings, contests, awards, monthly reports, training. I mean, you had offices that people showed up for. All of that kept on going, you know, and people can fill in the gaps and everything, but still the, the, you know, when you have a business, you need to think about the transition.

Absolutely.

Because things happen in life, right?

Absolutely. I say, you know, no, no person goes through life unscathed. I don't care, you know, who you are, what you are. Everybody goes through their, you know, their problems and their, you know, crap show whatever else you want to call it. And that was my time. And fortunately for me, I had, we had surrounded ourselves with really great people. My office staff was amazing. My office manager, who is still my office manager, is, you know, one of my closest people in my inner circle and basically, you know, ran it for, she just took over and ran it for, for us also. Dennis knew he was dying. I always say, you know, we're positive people and we like to see the glass half full, but we're also realists. And there came a point where it was pretty obvious he was, he was going to die. And we had, we had a conversation that, you know, you dread ever having to have. But by the same token, I thank God that we were able to have the conversation that we had because most married couples not in the position we were in would have to have a conversation about, you know, well, you're going to have to sell the house and we're not going to have enough money and you won't be able to send Susie to private school and forget about Johnny's baseball lessons and forget about helping your mother and father. Forget about help tithing to the church. We didn't have to have that kind of conversation because we had prepared, because of the situation we had put ourselves in. And also because I want to make sure I mention this because I really think this is probably the most important part. And I tell people this all the time when I talk around the country and speak to people. I think the most important thing you need to do is you got to focus on what you want. And then, Larry, you got to condense your time frame. It makes me crazy when I meet people in our business and I ask them, oh, how long are you in the business? Oh, 12 years, 14 years. 10 years. Great. What level are you at? Oh, district, division. You know, tomorrow is promised to no man. Get the job done, get in there, decide what you want to do, and then go balls to the wall and get it done. And that's what Dennis did. And, you know, he was already 47 years old when he joined this company. Unlike a lot of people come in, they're in their 20s, 30s, they think they have a lot of time to waste. He knew he didn't have time to waste, but thank God, because he condensed his timeframes because he got the job done quickly, because he went, like, stratospheric early on and was one of most rapidly climbing people in the history of the company at that point. Because he did all that. We got to the point we only had 18 years in the business, but we were already so financially well off and stable, and we had built such a foundation, a strong foundation and a wide foundation of leadership under us that we didn't have to really worry about stuff like that. So we had. We got to have a conversation about, yeah, money, but not, oh, my God, what are we going to do? We have no money. It was more like, okay, you're gonna have all this money. Make sure you spend it wisely on our daughter and yourself. That was the conversation, thank God. And also, because he had foreseen what was gonna happen, he went to, as you know, Bill Whittle, who was his best friend, and talked to Bill about helping me run the company. And we worked out a deal with Bill, and which is in place to this day. Dennis will be dead, Larry. This will blow you away. 20 years on May 6th. This. No, no, no. So we went to Bill, and that exact agreement that they made is still in place, is still going on. Even Bill, you know, with his own problems a couple years ago, got really sick, and he kind of out of the box for about a year, but everything just keeps on running and keeps on chugging because it was put in place and it was so well thought out and Dennis had the presence of mind to to get things done when he saw what was happening and put things in place, you know.

Unbelievable. Unbelievably valuable insights. Patty, thanks much.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years, put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, Go Go.