Episode 17: The Truth About Success - Larry's Daily Reflections on Winning

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell, and let's get started. This episode is another idea I'm sharing with you from my own personal daily reflections on winning. Okay, I've got something I want to share with you. I'm just kind of debating this out in my mind. I was listening to a podcast and they had this expert on Ramani Durvasula, and she's got a lot of YouTubes, a lot of books, and she's like the world's greatest expert on narcissists, psychopaths, you know, all of the psychos. And you know, the thing came out that, you know, we all deal with these kind of people. They're everywhere. They'll ruin your life if you let them because they're, they become very agreeable to you. Very nice. You just love them. They mirror all your behavior to get you to like them. And then once they've got you, they're snaring you, then they turn on you and they start taking control of your life and you start behaving very weirdly and thinking you're the problem. But they've like turned, turn you inside out and so they could like ruin your life if you let them. Unfortunately, some of us have parents that are like this. Unfortunately, some of us have discovered after getting married that we were married to one. And you know, the thing is that it's a tough situation, but what came out of this, and I'm not going to go on the record laying down the law on the narcissistic behavior and how to deal with narcissists on this, because, you know, I'm not an expert, but I am going to tell you one aspect of it. Like, she's got this 267 point question test. She said, like, if you're looking for a mate, she said, the ideal thing is you put them, if you could get them to do it, is you'd put them through this 267 question questionnaire thing to find out if they're likely to be a narcissist or somebody who's nice to be around. And she said, essentially comes down, are they agreeable or not? And if they're agreeable, you know, I've heard a long time ago that long term success of marriages depend on how equally open to compromise both parties are. And the point of that is that if you're open to compromise in the relationship, you value the relationship more than you do whatever point of conflict or dispute that's on the table at the moment. So you're willing to compromise. And if you get a thing where one party compromises all the time, then you've got an abusive relationship, a narcissistic relationship and one that is not going to last and so equally ability to compromise. So she's going on about you're looking for somebody agreeable. She said, here's what she said. And of course she's been married a time or two herself. And she said it's an interesting field of study. The only way I can stay in it because I deal with all of these weird people is I have to go to therapy. She said, I've gone to therapy my entire life, every week. It's the only way I can deal with all kind of, these kind of weird people. Because it does, there's a lot of stress there. But she said that, you know, if you want to look for a mate or you know, somebody to be in business with or whatever, that's not going to be creating problems. You go in and you know, you look for the agreeable side of it. But she said the problem with the agreeable side, especially as a mate and she's, you know, she's a, she talking about looking for a male as a husband. She said, unfortunately the agreeable ones don't make much money. And you know, had a big laugh with the host there. And so she said, I've got an agreeable one now, but unfortunately he doesn't make as much money as my other ones did or my first one did. And so, you know, a big laugh of that. The point. So she put the point on the table. And this, I took this personally because here I'm talking to people about counseling on making, you know, a million dollars a year, which is the idea behind A Million Dollar Mastermind is to maximize your potential and to be a high achiever in whatever arena of life that you're most passionate about. That's the reason behind the Million Dollar Mastermind idea. And I know I wouldn't say hundreds, but probably between, you know, at least close to a couple hundred million dollar earners, not millionaires. That's somebody who's got, you know, you could be a millionaire because you had your real estate property go up and luck up on some stock. No Million dollar earners. That's the arena that I live and breathe in. And these are some of the greatest people in the world. You know, even when I, when I went to North Carolina, we moved up there and we first got on one side of town and a little inexpensive three bedroom rental and then once we started, had some success in income rolling in, we started looking at other neighborhoods to buy a house. And there was one thing. New Irving Park. And they said, don't go to New Irving Park. Oh, the people are so nasty over there. They're stuck up. Oh, you don't want to go there. They're wealthy and they're, you know, they're all full of themselves. We went over to New Irving park and found they were some of the nicest people in the world. Friendly. You know, the people who didn't live there, they had all this misconceptions. And so, of course, we moved to New Irving Park. And so the thing is, it's like that in the world, it's like people have this misconception that you have to sell your soul to the devil to be successful. And, you know, when people come up this thing like, hey, you know, you're either narcissistic or you're agreeable. It's like, wait a minute. I know hundreds of people that are super duper successful, and a lot of them making a million dollars a year that are very agreeable, very cooperative, you know, very humble, very interested in their givers, not takers. And in my experience, not everybody's super successful. But the deal is to be successful, you have to have a team. And if you're a pain in the butt, you're running people off all the time. And I used to have an assistant, a personal assistant. Excellent. And she grew up working for her father. And she said, the trouble my father is he runs everybody off all the time. And, you know, he's super successful, he's super successful, but he goes up and down, up and down because he's always exploding and running people off all the time. And you know the thing about that, you blow your momentum, and it's hard to start from scratch all over the time. So most of the people I found in my experience that have success and stay, you know, serial winning, which is what my book's about, which is my theme, you have to be able to get along with people. You have to be agreeable. You have to compromise. You have to have a long term. You got to let people be people. You got to let them be themselves and pull out the good and let them grow. You know, the thing is, they might what they might not be good at this year, they'll be good out next year. So it's just like, let the relationship develop. Find a way. If you got a compromise, compromise, you're probably not so perfect. Your own darn self, you know, and what I found is that successful people, most of the successful people I'm around are agreeable and cooperative because they want to have a team and then they want to keep their people with them. It's. I took this personally, started thinking about it and I went back, you know, like, how to be a high achiever but not a narcissist. Because not all narcissists are high achievers either. You know, there's a lot of broke, you know, pretty much the reason a lot of people are homeless. Not, I won't say a lot, but there's a lot of people that become withdraw from society, let's say, because the world doesn't treat them the way they want to be treated and they just withdraw and go into hibernation. But not all high achievers are narcissists either. So you can't just put people in these boxes. And I felt like, you know, I just needed to take a stand for this. And I'll tell you this, not everyone who occasionally acts like a narcissist is a narcissist either. Because who among us, you know, a narcissist is basically someone stuck at the toddler stage of development. You know, you're a 2 year old, you're 18 months to 2 years old in your mental development and you want the whole world, you want everything you, everything you see, you want. And then you want everybody to, you know, to the world to revolve around you and that's all you care about. And so not. And who among us doesn't occasionally act like that? So the point is to recognize occasional narcissistic behavior, perpetual permanent narcissistic behavior and not let it invade and damage your life and relationships. And if you see it in your own behavior, get your act together, apologize for your own stupid self and improve, you know, get better. But the point, because you're going to run people off otherwise. And the point is, when you recognize people with narcissistic behavior, realize they will try control and try to control and manipulate you. And they will in it in spite of themselves, they'll try and disrupt your life. And you'll either have to distance yourself from them or find other coping mechanisms. If you can't distance yourself and you might just. Otherwise they're going to ruin your life. And if you let them ruin your life, it's your darn fault. It's your fault. And it doesn't matter if they're aware of what they're doing because most of them don't See it most true narcissists and all these psycho type things, they're looking at the life through their lens and they're not aware of how they're impacting it. So you can't wait for them to wake up. You cannot reason with them. Someone said, when you're talking to a narcissist, you're talking to their face and you see their eyes and everything and you've got to realize there's nothing behind the face. They're not understanding you, they're looking at you, waiting for you to shut up so they can get on and tell you then what they want again. But you're not connecting when you talk to a narcissist, unfortunately. And so if you run into someone, a permanent narcissistic behavior, you got to get away from them or they'll drag you down. And super. You know, the thing about narcissistic people is they're super insecure and they cover it up with all this behavior. And they're entitled and self absorbed and more worried about themselves than anyone else or what's going on in the world. And you know, they're pretty fragile. Anytime you challenge them, they blow up. You got to get away from them. But the point is this, how can you get in the world, you know? And you know, how is it that some people are able to be high achievers, make things, the right things happen, you know, take charge of their life, stay in charge of life. I see this all the time in business. People that, you know, they just don't know how to assert themselves. You know, they just don't know. In interactions with other people, they don't know how far to go. But you know, the deal is this, think of it this way. I went, you know, I think the answer to this is very simple. It's like a coin that has two sides. And I was alerted to this early in my career by Art Williams when he looked at me and he said, and this was when I was super agreeable because I was raised as a Christian. I am a Christian. And you know, I had the attitude that if you go through life and you do good things and you treat people right, surely goodness and mercy will follow you and the heavens eventually will open up and money will rain down from heaven. If you behave this way in business, and guess what? It won't. You know, you might occasionally get a, you know, luck into something, but your life is not. You have to make positive things happen. You have to take charge. You have to be definite. You can't be Wishy washy. You have to take responsibility. And the way it was explained to me that all that clicked immediately. I've never forgotten what Art said. To be a good leader, to be a good entrepreneur, to be someone who people look up to and a person of responsibility and achievement and stature, you have to do two things. First of all, you got to be a good person. And a good person is something, somebody who has good beliefs, you know, good character, reliable. But the ultimate test of that, how people, in how people can tell if you're a good person or not, is how you behave and primarily how you behave towards them and relationship to. If you make a commitment, you say you're going to do something, do you do it? Whether it's convenient or not. You know, that's, that's the thing of being a good, you know, being a good person. Be a good person. If you make a commitment, follow through. So that's a good person. But on the other hand, see, most people will be a good person. I was being a good person. I was being a good boy, you know, I grew up, I ate all my vegetables, you know, I cleared my plate, you know, I was a good boy, you know, I did my homework, I went to school, I got good grades. Yeah, great. But when you get out in the real world, the thing about the real world that makes the real world, the real world is I don't care if you are on a salary or you're on a commission or you're running a business, you must produce if you're a common laborer. You know, when I was in high school, I carried bricks up ladders, you know, when, you know, on the beach up there in the Hamptons when we were in the summer building houses on the beach. I did all kind of things, worked at Tasty Freeze, I worked at restaurants, I bust tables, I did all kind of labor. I had to produce. I was low income, starter, minimum wage, I had to produce. We all have to produce. And so the thing is, if you're going to be a responsible person in the world, you got to be a good producer. You have to get things done within time frames. You can't be la dee da, la dee da, it'll work out. No, you got to be a good person. And that's what Art Williams is trying to thump me in the head and get me to wake up. And by the way, I was making three to four thousand dollars a month in my career for like four years leading up to that conversation. I got money motivated. He said, you're not Money motivated, Larry, you know, you're not producing the things that would turn into money in business. And you're the leader. People are looking to you for leadership. You got to produce, you got to get, you know, so I got in the numbers business because I was going to. He said, until you put points in the board, until you produce, there's no way to tell you that you're different from all the people that just talk a good game. So you got to be a good person, but you got to be a good producer. Now, most of us find it easier to be a good person than it is to be a good producer. But there are some monomaniacs out there that are almost impossible to live with, that are good producers, but they've got to learn how to be a good person. Otherwise they're going to be running people off all the time, you know, so we, you know, the thing is, if you're going to last and you're going to be someone of stature, goes to the top, stays at the top, you got to be both. Good person, good producer. And so what happened to me after I got that little adjustment in my thinking? I went in and I went into the numbers business. And I won't tell you the changes I made, but I'll tell you that my income doubled the next three months in a row. It went from three to $4,000 a month in April. That was the end of april in, I don't, 1980, I guess. And the next month it went from. Went to 6,000. The next month it went to 11,000. The next month it Went to 22,000. And then I think it only ever went under 20,000 three times in a December or something ever again, you know, just barely 18, nine or something like that. And then it went up from there. But the thing was, I was, I was producing and I kept my mind on it. And so the idea with you, you know, don't be apologetic about being successful or going for success, but just make sure as you produce, you're agreeable, you're a good person, you keep your commitments, you know, you're, you're giving to other people. You're mate, you're, you know, you're enjoyable to be around. So anyway, don't let people scare you from being successful by telling you that if you are successful, you're going to turn into a monster. You're not going to turn into a monster. So anyway, I wanted to get that off my chest. All right. Looking forward to next time. I knew I was going long, but 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 Widel Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widel on winning.com I'm the million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, Go, go go.