Beware of Formulas When You Are in Survival Mode with Successful Businesswoman 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.

Today we're talking with Francis Averitt and. Hello, Francis.

Hello, Larry.

It's exciting to get you on your feet. Hardly ever touch the ground. You move around so much. You have so many places to go in your personal life, but mainly your business. It's exciting to pin you down and life has just gotten more and more exciting for you. And so thanks for being on.

Thank you, Larry. Happy to be with you today. I was excited when you called me.

For people who are not familiar with Frances, it's your loss. She is a phenomena in business. She's one of the most influential female entrepreneurial leaders in the country and has been for decades. And not only in this is all over North America, not only in the United States, but all over Canada. She has offices, organizations. Her team is into the multiple thousands. They well over 5,000. They've got offices all over the country in Canada. Assets under management. They're in financial services, all lines of financial services, but just one of the money management side, approaching 3 billion in assets their team manages. And so you know, I could go through the other numbers would have wouldn't mean anything to you. So just say Frances is big. She's done it big. And she started all by herself and she started as a farmer's wife more or less in San. Was it Sanderson or Sanders Anderson.

Right.

At Georgia. And she had her, you know, they were full on, you know, farm. Farm is full on work. And then had it. How old were your kids? You were telling me Your oldest was 18.

18. The youngest was 3. Then they were 712 and 15.

Wow. 712 and 15. Five kids, farm business, farmer's wife. And all of a sudden something happened. And her husband, you know, life happens. We don't have. We don't have a choice on that. And she was faced. Her husband became disabled and she had to take over now generating income, running the business in addition to being the mom of five children. And when the realization of these things happen, usually you've gone through a tough transition, a disruptive transition. So usually when the reality hits you that you've got to make a change, you've got to take charge, usually things are pretty disrupted by the time that hits Anyway, and so she made a big career change, took over the reins and got into financial services and started expanding and took she got excited about something else she never thought she'd do. And as a result, she wound up building the organization she has today. And as a byproduct, that's probably the smallest thing that she's done as a byproduct. She's raised a phenomenal family. She's been an incredible influence in her community, everywhere she's been. But she's also been an inspirational leader to tens of thousands of people for the last several decades in the voice of reason, responsibility, maturity, accomplishment, things like that. And no telling how many people would point to Francis Averitt as the key person and then being able to make a go of it in business. So, Francis, thanks again for being with us. And talk about when the light finally went on that you had to take charge of the income side of the family, what state was the business in?

It was in the state of Georgia. And when I realized that I had to do that, I knew that we'd always been entrepreneurs and owned our own company. We had a big greenhouse business and farming business, and I was very good at that. But that was not going to cut it with Lee's not being a part of it. And I realized I had to change. I had no idea that it would turn out to be financial services. But, Larry, frankly, I prayed for an answer. And the answer came. And as soon as it did, I recognized it. I jumped on board with the company. I had to learn to travel. I had to learn to drive in cities. I had to expand outside of a little small community in central Georgia where I had grown up my entire life and had raised, you know, at that point, the children were young, some of them were young. One was getting a little older. So I just realized I had to change and I was accepted of the change. I just, you know, as soon as I saw what I what was possible, I jumped on board and started learning. And it was, it's been a great ride. It was worked out for me.

Now, how long of a process did you go through before you found out that Lee was not going to get better? And what was the business?

It was five years before we recognized our business was big. And his illness was one that the doctors didn't quite understand. It took a while to diagnose it. And he, when we realized it, he had been ill for about five years. And when I found out that this was it and he was able, because of what I was able to do he, he was able to be a part of it to some degree, but he just couldn't do the work. He had more bad days, health wise than he had good days. And so after those five years, I was ready. The illness had cost us a lot of money. We had mortgaged what we had. We were having to use up every one of our assets. And it was a pretty desperate time financially because of that long term, that five years. But from then on it started, you know, to change quickly.

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 whiteella winning.com 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 step by step. You know, you don't have time to get a big five year plan when something like that jumps, jumps in all the, they talk about these and there's nothing wrong with it, but being able to project. This is a scramble. And so much of life is diving in a scramble. And you just had to attack everything as they came up and hack your way out of the jungle. Like Mike Tuttle talks about. He said you, he said, in fact, even Warren Buffett talks about it in the stock market. He says beware of geeks bearing formulas for investing. And Mike Tuttle used to talk about people with their game plans. He said, I'll tell you where the game plan is. You're in the jungle, you got to get across the swamp. You got alligators and snakes out there. You got a machete and you look for a rock to, you know, you got get from this side of the swamp to the other side. And so you look for the next rock to jump on and you knock, knock that snake out of the tree with your machete there and you look for the next rock. And he said if you fall in the water, you scramble out. But he said it's just survival, you know, he said, that's been my experience.

I totally agree with that. And that, you know, I had a, I'm a, I always try to narrow things down to the very basic fundamental premise that I can start with and that's always the simple things. And what I knew about business, I knew I understand what you're saying about a business plan that there was no time for business plan. I didn't even know how to build one in this company. I had built business plans for farming. And so when I started, the one principle that stood out in my mind was, start whether you're ready or not and just keep moving. And so I looked at the founder's vision, and I said, okay, if that's his vision, I'll put my vision, attach it to that. And from there, it was just get the job done, Talk to as many people as you could, and get outside of that little town. So very quickly, I was outside of the central part of Georgia and recruiting in several different states. I think I was in about 15 states very quickly, and then within three years, all through Canada. But it was because I started with. I was. I was not ready to start. I learned as I go, and I did that.

And.

You know, that's not a principle you can get away from either. You know, I mean, it's just like every day.

Every day you go whether you're ready or not.

Yeah. And I can remember I've talked about this before, but Jerry Seinfeld comedians talk about, you know, what. What do you do the days that you just don't feel like going on stage? He said, well, that would be every day.

That is exactly right.

You know, he said, what do you do on the days that you don't feel like. Because his formula, you know, is if you want to be a comedian, you got to write jokes and you got to take time. Every day you're going to be writing jokes. And then the guy said, well, what. What about the days you're not inspired? He said, if I wait for that, I know I never write anything. And so you can't really wait for inspiration. How do you, you know, the great inspiration that the go to? The bottom line on inspiration is you got to do it.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you may have to make decisions quick. You can't. You know, I didn't have time to figure out if this was it and how it was going to work out. I had no idea. All I knew was it was a product that people use, people needed. It was good, and I knew that I could develop. I compare my business to my greenhouse business. And, you know, because we grew a lot, I was really in charge of the greenhouses and growing a lot of plants for the springtime. And I knew there was a growing period. I knew there was going to be five or six months where I was going to put in a lot of work. A lot of time and a lot of money, and there would not be a profit till later. But if you didn't do the job during those months leading up to the season, then there would never be a profit. So I had chosen a business that did that, and I compared this to the same thing. If I was going to build offices as I had set out to do, I was going to have to take a lot of no's. I was going to have to do a lot of things that I didn't know how it would work out and put time and money and my energy into it. And then at the end, the results would come. So it's the same thing as the law of the harvest. And I had learned that clearly in farming and greenhouses, and it applied here. So I used that. I was ready to change my direction financially. I knew that, you know, this gave me that possibility. But there were no guarantees. Never was there a guarantee, and nobody ever paid my expenses.

And one thing, you should find out about the people around you when you go through something like that. And how about your, you know, your family and friends and staff in the other business? They had to do a lot of scrambling themselves, but in challenging times, people grow up fast. What do you remember what was a positive that you saw in the lives of the people around you because of this happening?

Well, you know, and that list could be very long as the positives. But, you know, my kids became independent very quickly, even at a young age. They started to realize that what most young kids between 12 and 16, 17, things important. They realized that those things weren't that important. And I was able to show them what the results could be when we lived through it and always delivered on that promise for them. And so my kids grew up understanding that you can overcome obstacles. You can't give up. You can't, you know, you can't play. You can't be a baby. You can't play like you're, you know, crybaby. And so my kids became very independent. And today, all five of them are extremely strong, very independent, raising very independent children and having a success, very successful lives. And it's because of that. And they will tell you that they learned early that just because things are bad now doesn't mean they'll always be bad. But you're going to go through the times of making it happen. It's not going to be fun. That was the lesson for my kids.

Thanks so much, Frances. And it's really great to hear you talk about that, how you sorted through those things.

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.