Episode 130: The Motivation Factor with Brand Owner Adam Weidel

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell and let's get started. Today I'm with my son Adam Wydell, who's one of the wisest people I know. He's been in business with me for at least 25 years, side by side facing all the issues you face in multiple businesses and life. And he's my go to person when I get confused and I need clarity. So I asked Adam to get on and we're going to break down some topics that come up from time to time and see if we can put some insight on it. So welcome Adam. Thanks for helping me out on this.

Of course. Glad to be on the call.

And right now I'm in Aspen, Colorado and Adam is in the triad of North Carolina and High Point, Greensboro, Winston Salem area and I guess more particularly High Point. Right.

I'm actually in Charlotte on the way back from Ohio at the moment. But yeah, typically that's where I am.

Okay, there you go. Make a liar out of your dad.

It's hard to, hard to pin, pin me down like you.

Yeah, you're always in the mood anywhere. Yeah. On the run. So, you know, it's the whole thing. If you want to move your business, you got to move your body, you know, and if you want to have an exciting night, you're probably going to be on the move. So let's get into this thing and let's talk about motivation. And the first thing about motivation, Adam, I want to get on the table is without motivation, you're dead. You know, you gotta, you gotta protect your motivation. You gotta recognize motivation killers because that's when, that's where the outside world, outside world is likely to attack you first.

Don't you agree 100%. Especially with all the visuals out there today with social media in the news and it's just non stop. You can't open your eyes or open your phone without being come at in 100 different directions.

Yeah. And the thing is you like challenge, you know, why would you dare to do this, that and the other look at, you know, because bad news sells and sensationalism sells and there's never, there's never the biggest turnout on the Weather Channel when it's bright and sunny days for two weeks, you know, when it's a nice 72 sunny day, you're not going to get across the country. You're not going to get a whole lot of people turning into that Weather Channel. And the thing about motivation and so, you know, bad news sells and so that's what they emphasize. But you got to. Can't let yourself get tricked by that. And that's why we want to talk about protecting your motivation and recognizing motivation killers. Because it's not just the media, it's personally, it's everywhere. And the reason this is such a big deal, so we're talking about it because it's a big deal. Because when you don't have motivation, your energy is sucked out of you. Day in and day out, you do the same thing over and over again. You settle into a boring routine and you're not doing the extras and you don't make any progress. And then you feel stuck, you feel bored, and it's like a downward spiral. And then you feel guilty, and yet something's off. You don't know what it is. And not only are you bored, you're boring to be around. And you, you wind up, whether you know it or not, you suck the life out of everyone you come in contact with. It's. It is a real thing that needs to be recognized. And Adam, I think we both know people that we just don't want to be around because they, I mean, they're.

Not motivated to do anything 100%.

And you're up there in North Carolina, you grew up there in that area. And there's. You got to know people. You know, I moved down to Florida and out here in Aspen, meeting lots of different people, new people, people excited about their lives, doing things. And there's those kind of people up in North Carolina. But also because you've lived there, so there's. I'm sure there's tons of people you've seen that they seem to be stuck. They're in the same place they were 10, 15 years ago.

100%. That's true. If not even in worse places, unfortunately.

Yeah, because it does lead to a downward spiral. And then you look for easy answers, and then the only people that tolerate you are other people that have got nothing going on. And let's be honest, it's a stage everybody can go through, and we all go through from time to time. And that's why I want to emphasize, you got to snap yourself out of it. It's not a great feeling. There's no rewards. You can't hide it. And so you got, you got to get out of this stage where things are not that. Not that exciting for you anymore. You got to do something about it because essentially your mind is not working right. And humans are problem solvers, innovators, and our minds weren't designed to coast. And that's why we have goals and dreams. And that's why when you got no motivation, you're dead. You become restless, you become frustrated, and, you know, you're just. You're just not going anywhere. You're like a car. You could be a Ferrari, but until your Ferrari gets cranked up, you can't really tell what's in there. It looks like it's performing the same as a jalopy or a piece. A piece of junk down at the junkyard. And so, Adam, what have. What are things that. Where you have got in that kind of situation in life and you've realized, I just got to change things. I got to get a different place I live. I got to get some different people. I got. I know, like, you were. One time you were out in school, out in Colorado, and things just got stale, and all of a sudden, you're moving back from North Carolina. You got things on a trailer, and bang, zoom. I didn't even realize what was happening. And was that kind of what happened there.

That particular situation? I would say so. It's. I was in college out there. I was pretty much done with college. All my friends that I hung out with, around there were kind of falling off, not much energy. And at the time, there was a lot of energy in North Carolina, and I had just that situation. It was obvious to me, had just kind of run its course, and it was time to move on, and no reason to sit around for six months or a year to see what was going to happen. Things were happening in North Carolina. So that was. It was the obvious move I made. No hesitation about it. That's when I actually moved back and started studying for my life insurance exam for Primerica originally. So I knew that college life had run its course. You know, I did the college thing. I did that stuff, went. Had fun. And then it was. I realized to, you know, get to a better place. It was time to make a move, and it wasn't going to happen out there. So I wasted no time in. Yeah. Packing up and heading back.

Yeah. Otherwise, if you didn't, you know, you're living in denial. And living in denial never ends well. And you were only five years old. But that was the same situation I was when I was in Atlanta. And, you know, I never thought I was going to leave Atlanta. In fact, I used to tell Bob Turley and Art Williams, you know, you'll never get me to move. You know, because my father, we moved 27 times. By the time I was 21 years old. And the one thing I wanted was to get in a situation where nobody could tell me to move like my father, you know, at any day a letter could come in the mail, and we had to move to some other place that we didn't choose, and probably not an exciting place either. So, you know, I was sent to Atlanta. I loved Atlanta, you know. But then all of a sudden, things dried up. Friends in the neighborhood moved, got jobs and moved away. You know, young kids, families. There were big friends of ours that had kids of their own, you know, the Alexanders. Jennifer Alexander is your big friend. You know, they moved out to San Antonio. We tried to get some houses, tried to move to a bigger house, you know, okay, we'll get in a different house, you know, and move to another street. Well, those things all went belly up. And so I started getting restless, which is what happens. And I said, you know, the company had a moratorium on promotions up to the regional vice president level. And so I said, well, you know, if I'm going to get promoted, I got to get out of Atlanta, and there's no reason to stay. You know, even at church, things kind of got stale and a little staticky developed with some old biddies at the church, and little jealousies came up. And it's like, what? You know, this is not why we're going to church. And the neighborhood, the job was frustrated. It's like, okay, let's regroup. Unfortunately, fortunately, I was too dumb to realize I didn't financial. I couldn't financially afford to do it, so we wound up doing it anyway. But it. I did know that I wasn't happy. And to get happy, I had to get to a place in a situation I could get excited. Otherwise I was just going to be going around in circles. And so.

Well, I was five years old at the time that happened. For anybody listening, I was not five years old when I moved back from Colorado from college, in case anyone thought I was a genius learner at a young age. But I was five years when we moved from Atlanta. But I also don't want this to be left out because I really do take a lot of pride in this with all that other stuff was going along. I would probably proudly like to announce that at that time, in addition to everything else, I was not suspended, but expelled and permanently kicked out of the preschool I was in. Is that correct?

Yeah. In Atlanta. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Nobody, nobody had taken a mouthful of water from the water cooler. None of the other kids, and then turned around seeing the principal and spit it all out all over her. It just seemed like, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess.

I'll tell you the actual story from that was this was there's a little stool you stepped up on. And I don't know why I remember this at such a young age, but one of my little friends was on the water fountain at the time. And I don't know what I said to him, but whatever I said to him was getting water. He laughed so hysterically that he spit the water out of his mouth. And it was to me that was so fascinating and hilarious and amusing that I said to him at 5 years old, hey, I'm gonna get up there and drink some water and you say something funny. And then I'm going. Of course mine wasn't, you know, mine was planned. His was totally not planned, but sponsor. So I got up there. Yeah, hence spontaneous. So I got up there, he'd said something funny, and when he did, I turned my mouth with the water, ready to go forward with the plan. And she was there, much to my surprise. But I thought to myself, the plan is already in motion. I'm just going to go ahead and go through with it. So she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't intentionally there, but she just got in the way of, of my plan at the moment. So.

Yeah, yeah. And I think you're the first five year old in that school to get into the hall of fame for being expelled at five years old.

So, yeah, I take a lot of pride in that actually.

Yeah, that was great. Yeah, so we had that going for us too. And so, you know, when I wrote the blog, you know, I put in six causes, why people lack motivation, but there's probably 600. But you know, some of the ones that we talked about in the blog is dwelling on the past. You know, it didn't work in the past and so, you know, we somehow didn't sort it out somehow. You're looking over your shoulder because if things didn't work out with really, who cares, you know, rejection. Oh, not everybody likes me. Not everything I did was a big success. And so I'm just afraid to try it again. And these are people. I mean, if you're that weak, you're never going to amount to anything anyway. So it doesn't matter what you do. But, you know, you got to get where you look at one thing about rejection, and I think you've been through this, is once you get to where you start looking at rejection as an opportunity to Learn, adjust and improve. It kind of changes everything. And what do you think about that?

Now say that one more time so I can understand what you're saying that with.

Well, one of the things that I listed in the blog.

Yeah.

Was a cause of. Cause of losing motivation is you get rejected. And that just can kind of send you into a direwood spiral. But not with everybody, because everybody's going to get rejected. I mean, you can't go through life with every suggestion, every idea that pops into your head as everyone is. Yes, wonderful. You know, you know, if you're around real people, you come up with a dumb idea, they're going to tell you, you know, and none of us like rejection, but some people just, it, you know, it just hurts them to the bone. But the people. Go ahead.

A buddy of mine in college who at the time, in the bodybuilding world, young guy coming up, he was in Colorado, he was the golden boy. He was Mr. Colorado, Mr. Fort Collins, Mr. Collegiate Colorado. He won everything he did in Colorado and he was my roommate at the time. We both competed, but he was really the golden boy in Colorado, had won everything he had done. And he went on to the national level, which is a much bigger competition. People all over the country. At his first show, he went up there and been used to winning everything. And he got, you know, there's several guys in the class, but he went up there to that national level show and got a bad beating as far as the competition goes. And he never, ever recovered from that. That one beating. He was so used to winning that one beating, he never competed again. He just could not handle not winning. Where there's two types of people, there's ones that they, they get beat and they decide that's not going to happen again or I'm not going to keep, I'm not going to lay down, I'm not going to stop until I overcome this or win it or there's people like him that they get beat one good time and then just, it's too devastating, mentally, emotionally for them to handle it, so they don't even risk it anymore after that. But I'll never forget, you know, he just, his, his emotional, his whole world revolved around that. And he got beat one time and he just, he, he just really never got over it as far as competing again. I always found that it's interesting and unbelievable. Really.

Yeah. And while you were talking, I remembered being up in Pittsburgh and watching you compete in one of those contests and a guy sitting next to him. I struck up a conversation with him. And it turned out, he told me, you know, he had. He was a pro. And these were shows when you won. You had to win this kind of show to go pro. And there weren't many of them in the country, not many opportunities. But he said. And he lived in Pittsburgh, he said he went up and finished second nine years in a row and won it on the 10th time. But what he did was he took the attitude, I'm just not good enough. I'm missing something regardless what the judges. And so I'm going to keep improving because, you know, obviously he didn't get worse, so he wouldn't have stayed up in second place all the time. Obviously had to be madder than fire every time that happened, and super frustrated, but he bounced back. No one likes rejection, but you got to. You got to control your mind. And, you know, other reasons we came up feeling overwhelmed, procrastinating, not taking care of yourself, fear of failure. All of these things have to do with you not letting yourself be controlled by just, you know, taking your foot off the accelerator and just letting your life drift. You know, you got to be decisive. You got to be focused. And again, you've got to keep your motivation if you're going to bounce back from something like rejection, failure, and any other kind of problem that happens to you. So, Adam, I think we've covered this, that motivation's a big deal. Learn to recognize things that come into your life. Things, people, events, situations that kind of take the fun out of things for you. Kind of put a smell on the situation. And because you got to take charge, it's just like if you got a nasty smell in your house and you find, well, there's some garbage that had some old food in there, you got to get that out of your house or it's going to stink forever. And, you know, spray some Lysol or something in there to kind of get things back to normal, open the doors. You got to take charge of your mind the same way you take and keep your mind with a positive smell and attitude and energy, which is what we're talking about with motivation, just like you would, unless. Just like you do in your house. So, Adam, you think we've covered it and you have any last word on the importance of motivation?

Yeah, I'll just say this. As far as that goes, also, as far as getting beat and things like that, but anything you truly want to be better at, you need to surround yourself with people that are constantly beating you at whatever you're doing or are better than you or both, I guess the same better than you beating you non stop. Because until you're playing with people that are playing at a different level, whether it's business or sports or whatever it is you're trying to get better at, you'll be like my friend, thinking you're this great, you're great at whatever you're doing, when the fact of the matter is you're just not around the top level players. And once you're around the top level players and see what they're doing, see how they're doing things and learn from them, at that point, the motivation comes to get on their level, be on their level and beat them to become better. But you have to constantly surround yourself with people that are better than you. And whatever you're doing or it's almost impossible to up your game or business or whatever.

Okay, Adam, thank you very much. Fantastic. And folks, take charge of your mindset and get motivated and stay motivated. The next time we talk, we're probably going to lock in on how you go about getting yourself super motivated and hopefully I'll get Adam to join in with me on that. Thank you, Adam.

All right, have a great one. Thanks for having me on.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell. If I've helped you in any way, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind episodes and check out my wide L Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widelawnwinning. Com. I'm the Million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go go.