Astounding Great Rewards Are the Payoff for Living Thru Obstacles with Frances Avrett

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 Wydell on winning.com webinar 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 with Francis Averitt and Francis is from the great state of Georgia. And you say you have a place in Jefferson and your farm.

I have a home in Jefferson, Georgia, and I also have a 600 acre farm in east central Georgia, down near my last farm, the first farm that we were able, not able to keep. So I have a. I have a beautiful place there, 600 acres of beautiful trees and a 35 acre lake. And I have a big lodge that overlooks the lake. My kids have their own personal playground.

Wow, that's fantastic.

I have 15 grandchildren and several of those are married now with children. So the family has grown to from seven people to now we have 27 people and they love that place.

You are quite the matriarch, aren't you?

I guess that's what you call it. I furnished them. I made the dreams come true, Larry.

Yeah. Amen.

They have a lot of respect for me. I know how I'm a magnet for grandchildren.

And you know, you were talking before.

About.

The shock, and there's just no other way of saying it, the shock of realizing that, you know, you do all the right things, you have kids, you have a business, you're entrepreneurial, you work hard every day. And then bam, disease comes in and accidents come in, knock you out. And now you got to scramble even harder. It's hard enough to scramble running businesses and raising kids, but new doors open for you dramatically and new experiences, new people, new lessons. And the payoff of going through these tragedies, if you fight your way through can be astounding, can't they?

Oh, my goodness, they can be astounding. I remember when I first started traveling outside of the state of Georgia and I had to go on an airplane. I didn't know how to fly. I didn't know how to navigate an airport. And I had a friend who had a son that worked for an airline. So she traveled with me the first year or two. Everywhere I would go, she would go with me to show me how to do that. So I had to learn to do that. I had to learn to drive in the city. I had to make a decision that I could stand up in front of a Group and speak. You know, in the plant business, you work with plants every day and they don't talk back. You just go do what you're supposed to do. They do what they're supposed to do and there's no conversation about it. So when I got here, I had to learn some lot of new things about Francis Avery. And I made up my mind that this would. I would not let those obstacles stand in my way. And I can tell you, Larry, as I look back over that, thank God I had the strength to reach deep down inside and find out I had talents that I didn't know I had and that I had a support system that I could reach out to. And it was not just my family, but the people in business today. My business stretches across North America and I have incredible friendships just like yourself across this whole country and across Canada that I never would have thought possible. People from every walk of life, from every country. We have people in our organization from many of the islands, from, you know, it's just a diverse group of people. But one thing about people is they're all alike. They want to be somebody, they want to do what's right for their family and they want a chance to be successful. So that's. I capitalized on that for myself and it reached out to others.

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up and talk about.

You know, when you live through obstacles at the beginning you just have to do it to survive. But if you do it, there's a way of surviving with just short term solutions. But then there's another way you do it where you deal with things. And I don't know if it's a more responsible thing, but if you don't cut corners, if you don't take advantage of people, if you do have your character, it's like, I'm not going to change who I am. I'm not going to cheat people, I'm not going to take advantage of people. I'm going to not cut corners. And when you do that, that not only, you know, there's different ways of surviving. And some people will approach it. They'll cut any corner, you know, tell any lie, do anything. And they think they're getting away with it. They may get away with it for the day, but sooner or later, there's no foundation there. You've got to do this stuff, but you've got to have, you know, you hear even big corporations talk, like the sales force, you know, they just had a big convention and they're talking, you know, they deal with the Googles and all of the big monster companies and they're talking about values. You know, people, you got to stand for something, you got to have a mission. You got to be there for the long term. And if you don't state that, it comes from the top. You know, I don't know if you have to state that, but you do have to live it and you have to act that way. But the benefit of that is you get a whole lot more than you just survived today's, you know, tragedies and, you know, you got enough income to get through the week of the month. You build a foundation. And when you're in that mode, a lot of times you're not thinking about that. But I've seen people go out there and it seems like everything they do, they just make things worse for themselves.

I've seen that many times.

They're masters at making mountain problems, a little molehill pebble problems. And it's because they take shortcuts. They don't. You know, they're not thinking about integrity. They're not thinking about treating people right. They're not, they're not thinking about the life. They're just thinking about getting that next paycheck or getting that next bill, you know, out of the way or dodging the next bill or something. And you laid a foundation because you, you knew from farming you can't cut corners. You can't put crap seed in the ground and have beautiful plants. You plant rotten corn seed, you're going to get rotten corn that's just going to mold in the ground. But this was in bred, and that's why it was in bread, in your kids and bred in your organization. And so when all of a sudden you had to leap in action into new directions, all of that was ingrained and it paid off. And you probably didn't even think about that.

Yeah, you know, you're right and it's, you're so right about everything you just said. I, I can tell you that one of the things I did early in my. Very early in my career, I made a list of about 12 things. I called it the rules I live by and understand. I was trying to understand the business and how to grow this business, but I had a general idea about what it would take with people. And one of those rules was never make a business decision that only is good for you. If it's not good for the team, if it's not good for the customer, that is not a good decision. So I refuse to make decisions based on what was best for me momentarily. And that was one of the other rules I lived by, was I will not waste time, I won't waste your time, and I will not allow people to waste my time. So I became very, very, very strategic about working with people. That was what was best for them and what fit their timelines. And, you know, it never bothered me that people would say, well, I have to do this with my children. I have my family to think about. And I agree with that. So. But then there were some other rules of business that I followed. And I can tell you, sticking to those principles of treating people right, and if it's not right, don't do it. That's just part of the rules.

And talk about your strategy. You know, how you got to have a method to your madness if you want to get the most out of your time. You know, that's all we've got is our time and effort. And if you don't have a little method to your madness and some principles and concepts to go by, you don't have any strategy. You're just, you know, just popping off at anything that comes along, right? Yeah.

You're just getting up and hoping the day will go good for you. That's not the way it works. But, you know, here was my strategy. It was simple. The business that I was in was that of building other people to helping them become successful. We're in business for ourself, but not by ourselves. We're building independent business leaders. And I applied that. And so I developed six. I think there was six, maybe eight things that were fundamentals. And I would put people into my fundamentals training, and if they wanted to go through it, they could. And if they did, I knew it would work for them. And so I kept my strategy. Very basically, once a person agrees to join you in business, teach them the fundamentals quickly. Because, you know, what I know about adults, Larry, is adults want to know the way to go. They don't like to start a journey or follow anybody unless they kind of know where you're taking them. They have to have an explanation of that. So I gave them that explanation and said, here are the things.

And.

And we're not going to vary from that. That made people want to be in business with me because they knew that if they mastered those few principles, that they could then add their dynamics to it and it would work. And it's done that. I've been very successful with that.

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 and 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.