Being 100% Coachable with Guy Shashaty

A transcript of a Million Dollar Mastermind episode hosted by Larry Weidel featuring guest Guy Shashaty discussing coachability, resilience, mental toughness, humility, systems for business success, and the habit of continual improvement. Guy relates personal stories — growing up in a large family, early business ups-and-downs (first month $6,000 then $500), shifting from counseling teammates to holding them accountable, and building repeatable systems that produced long-term growth. The episode emphasizes choosing to persist, controlling what you can (your actions and skills), and the opportunities that open after reaching a goal.
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 talking with Guy Shashetti. And Guy not only has learned what it takes to do great things, he's been able to transfer that knowledge to others and have them go out and duplicate his success. You know, was not born like me. Wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Was one of nine people growing up and I house of thousand square feet down in Hialeah, Florida. Let me ask you this. Guy, by the way, Guy, thanks for taking the time to talk today.
Oh, you're welcome, Larry. This is a lot of fun.
How many bathrooms were there in that house?
Two.
Oh, you had.
It was like two bathrooms? No half bath? Well, it depends if you count the bush outside, to be honest with you.
Okay.
Poor oldest is I have four older sisters. And when you got four older sisters and a mom, you don't get much bathroom time. That's just the way it is. You know, you get a few minutes here and there. But I would definitely be outside taking care of business in a bush when.
I had to.
To be honest. And I think most people can probably relate to that if they grew up like we did.
Yeah. Number of bathrooms and number of females in the family. A big factor on the traffic congestion inside the house, no matter how big it is.
Yes, yes, for sure.
Let's talk about.
You hit on this. I mean, you're great at summarizing and making these points, but being 100% coachable, you never get to the point you hit on topics that I hit on all the time. And that's what I brought out. I tried to put all these in an orderly thing in my book serial winner because there's not a million of them, but you got to have them down. And constant improvement is the key to constant bigger success. And you can't have that if you're pigheaded, you're narcissistic, you're looking over your shoulder telling everybody about all the great things you did in your past and trying to get all the attention on yourself. I mean, you know, if you're going to do great things, you're focusing on doing great things and fixing the problems. And if you're the problem, you know, you need a better skill set, you need better friends, you need better support, backup, financing, whatever you're going to solve that, you're going to attack that till you get it. Because again, making the decision, you talk about that so much, but talk about being 100% coachable. When you came in to facing an opportunity that could be yours and you wouldn't have to work inside the corporate world and you wouldn't have to be limited and you could have control over your own promotions and your own income and the doors started to be open for you. How did you activate all of those lessons that you had learned along the way, the mental toughness that you're responding to? One thing is fear of failure. You know, fear holds people in a box. And you know, when you're in sports, no matter you get beat, you can get beat beat like 500 to nothing on one Friday night and guess what, next week you got to play the next game anyway or you could be behind by 500 points of a half and you still got to come out of the, out of the tunnel and play the second half, you know, and so you can't run from problems or disasters or, you know, your star players all get in a car crash and now you got nobody to play. You know, you got to mobilize and answer the bell. And so these are things you learn in sports. How did you, you know, when you started your business? What's the worst thing you remember about starting your business?
Well, like most people who end up being successful, they don't typically get out of the gates quickly. I did not get out of the gates quickly. When I, when I, when I first started in business, it was really designed to get rid of the part time jobs I had in my life. I looked at business as a way to be part time necessarily in business, but it was a way to get ahead financially but not really do that full time. And when that changed and I said, wait a minute, I could do this full time and become very, very successful. When you talk about obstacles, I was coachable, but it was coachable to a point because I was kind of.
I.
Don'T want to say arrogant, but I guess cocky. I don't know if they're identical or not, but I was pretty cocky and confident because I had so much success in pretty much everything that I had done to that point. And then realizing that I was bringing people in around me who had not had that kind of success in life. And I was like, all right, we got work to do on the way that you think. And fortunately for me I had some of that out of the way. But when I went full time in business In June of 91, school year ended. Boom, I'm full time. This is it. I was like, I am going to show the world, you guys have no idea. Now that I have no other distraction. I'm going to just tear this thing up. And I went out and made $6,000 in my first month, June of 1991, business. And I thought, I'm off and running. You guys have no idea. Then month two came around and I made $500. And I was like, oh, no, what just happened? What just happened? And the humility began to happen. Bringing me back to earth began to happen and realizing that I needed to put a system in place. So my first year in business by myself predominantly, didn't have a lot of other people around me yet, other teammates and all that. It was early.
I pretty much replaced the income that I left. Now when I. When I went full time, I did not anticipate because, you know, in business, you have other people around you who are very successful and you look at them and you go, man, if that guy's making 250 grand, I know I can make 250 grand. And you think it's going to happen year one. So year one, I replaced my $40,000 a year job by making $41,000. And I did it pretty much on my own personal efforts. And then what happened was, year two, I made 79,000, still nowhere near in my own head where I should be. And then we went on this run of 21 consecutive years, 21 consecutive years of growth and income. And the reason it happened was because I had this revelation one day. It really wasn't a revelation. It wasn't something I thought of myself. It was something that I had listened to a million times but never wanted.
To actually do it.
And that was make sure you make enough income on what you personally do every month so that all your bills could be paid. And no matter what happens with the people that you bring in around you.
Or your team, and whatever they do.
They do, but you can't really control that, but you can control you. When that happened, amazing things began to happen because I was no longer.
See, early on, Larry, I was Dr. Phil to my team. I had people on my team and I would bring them in and I wouldn't like, lay them down on the couch, but it felt like it. I felt like I was laying them down on a couch and I am counseling them through their life. And it was like exhausting I would.
Come home and my wife would look.
At me and she would be like, why are you so tired? I'm like, I don't even know. But if I have to listen to one more person complain about their life, I swear I'm going to probably have to kill somebody. It's just driving me nuts listening to these people. And I woke up and I said, that's it. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm going to find people who want to win. And when people came into my office, instead of sitting there talking them through and counseling them through, which, by the way, I didn't get paid for, Larry.
And it was.
It was really good counseling, too. And most of them didn't listen to me anyway. Right. So.
Right. Yeah.
What I did was I said, they come in and they'd start complaining, and I'd say, stop for a second. I looked at them, I said, are you going to quit or not? And they go, oh, no, I'm not going to quit. I said, great that we don't have anything else to talk about, because whatever you're going through, whatever it is, I've probably been through it. People around us have been through it, and guess what? They went through the same exact thing.
Made it through, and they won anyway.
So you have a decision to make. You're either going to win anyway, or.
We'Re going to sit here and complain.
And talk about it forever. The bottom line is winning is about getting up. No matter what's going on, you got to keep getting up and keep fighting. And keep fighting. We have the tools. We have the system in place. Because I'm a systems guy there. I'm a teacher, a coach. I'm one of those really organized guys. So I'm one of the guys that had a complete training manual for my team. Like, early on, like, 30 classes on how to do, like, it was crazy. The stuff that I do now, I have it all, like, on my website. So every single thing in business that you had to do to become successful, there it is. It's all there. The problem is what's going on in your head is what's got to be fixed. And if you don't commit to what it takes to get that out and put the good stuff in, you're always going to struggle. And what I found out, Larry, and I know you know the same thing. This. There's a large segment of the population who says they want to win until it's time to do what's necessary to win, okay? Which take the time the effort, the energy to listen and to read and to figure out how successful people think so they can begin to be successful themselves. And most will not do it. And they blame it on everything that's going on in their life and they think they're the only ones going through it. And the truth is, every successful person has tremendous amounts of adversity throughout their entire life and they just keep going anyway. And when you understand that success is just waiting for you, it's not that hard, really. The recipe, the formula for success isn't difficult. The carrying it out. Yeah, of course it's difficult.
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.
Yeah, the thing is, you can whine about it, you can make excuse about it. It doesn't matter what you say. What matters is, like you said before, you ask them, are you going to quit or not? Now, while you're not quitting and you're trying to get yourself back in gear, you might whine and groan and complain and blame the world and everything. All of that doesn't really matter once you start moving forward again. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you need to go through that phase, this whole thing that winners don't ever whine or complain. You should know, some of the billionaires I know, you know, the biggest whiner, complainer, worriers of the world, you know, and then, but you know, and even, you know, million dollar earners, I've, in my life, I've fallen for it so many times, Guy. You know, I'm around somebody and something new, like, you know, the computer era comes in, you know, something new comes in and they're just not going to take in and put up this, that and the other, and the temper tantrum. And then the next week, you know, you feel like, okay, they're going to quit business, they're going to be gone. And then the next week you find out they've got new hardware, software, they're working on their laptop, they built presentations. It is just like, wait a minute, you were suicidal over this same issue seven days ago. You know, what's the deal? But winners, it's not that winners don't have the same emotions, you know, want to quit, blame every. The world's against me. Why is this happening? Yeah. But in spite of that, they override that. Their desire to win, like you said, you got to have that hunger. Their desire to win and to overcome is greater than the obstacle. And so they might. You know, it's just like going over a bump on the road. They finally have paved the right lane on South Dixie here. And we might tell everybody we're. We're in South. We're enjoying a lovely December in South Florida. And I'm in West Palm beach right now. And you are. Tell them where you are.
I am in Fort Lauderdale area in a city called Plantation. It is as beautiful as anywhere in the world right now in South Florida.
What a day it's been. What a day it's been today, isn't it? Yep, it's been incredible.
It's this time of year, too, right?
Yeah. Right. And so. And the thing is, you know, but it could be a bad day, but we're still going to do what we need to do, you know what I'm saying? And winners get things done, but, you know, you have to. You know, winners go through personal processing, too. It's important for people to know that, about being coachable and being cocky to your own detriment. You and I, if I call this guy's name, you would know him as well as I do. And 25 years ago, I remember hearing him speak to a group of senior leaders, hundreds. And he got up there because he was a big dog at the time, and he said, you guys talk about being cocky. I remember he actually said, you guys disgust me. These guys were making probably averaging close to a million dollars. You guys disgust me. You know, you make excuses, you don't work. You're really not tough and everything. Now, I just talked about. I had an extensive talk with him about in the last month, and one of the most humble, gentle spirits you ever want to talk to.
Life will do that to you, won't it?
Yeah. So you just know he's got several sledgehammers right in his face in the intervening years. You know, it's like, you really don't have to bring it up to people. And, you know, because life is going to do the processing. Life will either kill you or knock the rough edges off. It'll either kill you, which means you stop moving, or if you Keep moving, it's going to knock those rough edges off. And that's what the polishing and the processing. So when you see successful people, you see like, or listen to Guy talk, you're listening to somebody who's just had a million blows to knock off and teach him things about what works and what doesn't work. And he's like the rest of us. Unfortunately, if we keep growing, that process is going to continue on this afternoon, tomorrow, next week. Only way to avoid that is just to stop. But the advantage of continuing on is all the great new opportunities that come to you if you keep on going. And that's what I talk again in the book. The whole thing about when you're racing to a finish line, all you can see is the tape. I'm going to get that promotion. I'm going to break that record. I'm going to get my business. I'm going to get this new sales record or whatever, but. Or open that new office. But what you don't think about is because you can't. But what you need to force yourself to realize is once you get through that finish line, all kind of new, incredible opportunities open up.
That's for sure.
On the other side, it's like climbing to a top of a mountain. Until you get up there, you can't see what's on the other side. But once you're up there, you see all kind of other possibilities. And the thing is, most people don't finish and most people give up before they get to the summit. But once you get up there, opportunities are available to you now because you have made yourself a unique person and created a unique position in life through your effort and achievement and faith and holding the fort. And you're crazy to not raise your sights and evaluate those things and keep on going, because if you keep improving, you know, one, the great thing about finishing a project is you get experience. You get, you know, you learn new support, you meet new people, you find new resources and you learn new secrets. And then if you keep on going, you can use all of that priceless stuff that's just kind of things you picked up along the way to go out and do even big things. And so, Guy, I appreciate you going through all this with us and I'd like to bring you back and talk to you about the kind of opportunities that open up, have opened up for you once you got your business through the initial huge success of the business. So thanks, Guy.
You got it. Love to do that.
If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works. And 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.
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