Narrator Larry Weidel recounts a turning-point meeting at a Big Canoe retreat during a severe personal cash-flow crisis. While expanding his recruiting operations away from Atlanta (up to ~30 recruits/month), his income remained roughly $3–4k/month and expenses left him nearly bankrupt. Manager Bob Turley invited him to a surprise session at his Big Canoe home where Art Williams (and Angela) agreed to speak and attempt to re-motivate Larry and help him recover his business. The meeting focused on leadership and the type of motivation required to succeed; Larry says this event ‘‘really changed my business’’ and promises to cover specific lessons in part two.
I'm going to talk about art at Big Canoe. This is one of the biggest in life. You have breakthrough moments when the light bulb goes on and you learn lessons. Usually there's a lot of preparation goes into it before, but this was one of the big moments for me. So here's the story. I was up in North Carolina. I had been up there with my little family for about 16 months. I got up at the end of not months, but months. And I got up to the end of 78, did all the 79. And this was like April of. So I'm up in North Carolina. I had expanded out of Atlanta, and we had a lot of recruiting going on. We had finally got a recruiting going up, but the income had not kicked in because I really didn't know what to do with all the recruits. I was just trying to get. Get something going on. And so we had gone from two to three recruits. We had gone up to. We wound up in that April, I think we did 7, 13, 18 in March, we were up to 30 recruits. But the one thing you'll notice if you go through a growth explosion with people is adding more people increases more expenses. Now my income still the same, three to $4,000 per month, but now we're recruiting 30 people a month. Expenses were going up, and I was happy about this, but I was about bankrupt. So Bob Turley's down in Atlanta. He's my manager, and he says, hey, Larry, I need you now. Bob had a vacation home up outside of Atlanta, where he pretty much lives now at Big Canoe. Now, for Bob, it was maybe 40 minutes to get up there. He lived in the north side of Atlanta. For me, this is going to, you know, I had to come down, I85, break out through the mountains. This is going to take about three and a half hours. No, no, no, no, no. It's going to take about six hours for me to get there. And he said, larry, come on down. We've got. Said, I want you to drive down, make your way around. He said, we've got a retreat at Big Canoe and a lot of great things we're going to cover. And I said, hey, Bob, I'm busted. I'm broke, Bob. Here's what's going on. I'm broke, busted, disgusted, excited about growth, but no money coming in. I don't see it turning around. And I don't have any money to drive now. I have no money. I was clear as I could be. You know how when you talk to people and they don't understand, I Said, zero. Zero money, dinero. Zero. He said, well, look, I tell you what to do. You get down here and I will give you $50 for gas to get back home. Obviously, gas was a lot less expensive back then. He said, you come down here, obviously ignoring the fact that I said, bob, I have no money. But he said, you get down here and I'll give you the money to get back home. I'll give you 50 bucks. You got to come. Because he said, I've arranged. Don't tell anybody. Like I was talking to people all over the country. He said, art Williams. Now, Art lives outside of Atlanta, about an hour in a town called Monroe. That's actually where I have my administrative office today. And Art is going to take his Sunday, and he's going to drive all the way over and ruin a Sunday. He and Angela, they're going to go over there. He said, I'm going to go and we're going to have a big convergence here, and he's going to try and save your miserable career, is in essence what he said. Maybe he didn't say that, but that's what I heard. He said, he's going to make one last chance. Now, at this point, I had been in the business about four to five years again. I'd done well enough to barely scrape and scrimp and expand. It's like the first northward expansion out of Atlanta in the company. Of course, I financed it out of my own pocket. Bob gave me a little money, but six months later, he wanted it all back. I'm funding myself here on fumes, this three to $4,000 a month. Bill Arinder had expanded into Dallas, but I was only the lonely. You know, I was like the astronaut out in space. As far as the company concerned, tried to pioneer outer space. I'm up here in North Carolina about to go down for the count, but. But for some reason, Bob said, don't tell anybody because it's going to be a surprise. We don't want the cat out of the bag. Art and Angela is going to come over here and talk on Sunday, primarily for you to see if they say something to kind of get you over the hump. So I said, all right, I'll come down. So that was the day. That was the meeting that really changed my business. And a couple of things came out of it. Art talked about what it was that made a good leader, and he talked about the kind of motivation that you have to have if you're going to be a great leader. These were the two things I needed to hear. It could be things you need to hear as well. If you're interested, we'll talk about that. I'm going to cover that in part two.
