Episode 3: Winners are Students with CEO, Glenn Williams

Hey, it's Larry Whitel. And welcome. This is our next edition of Million Dollar Mastermind. Get ready to hear some exciting information. All right. We're here with the CEO of Primerica, my longtime good friend and important in hundreds of thousands of people's lives across the country. But he started with humble beginnings and he knows the life of starting the bottom and moving up to the top. And he also knows what it is to keep working and that you don't get a free ride in life. And we were just talking a minute ago, and I told Glenn, I said, you know, you've had the privilege of living a life in the last 365 days that few people ever live, getting those exposures, meeting those people, traveling the country, picking up insights and experience and knowledge that you're going to carry yourself into the new year. And so it would sure be great if you could just off the top of your head, think, what am I going to carry into the new year that is going to be a difference maker that might be a difference maker for other people? And so with that kind of idea, Lynn, what would you think about passing on? Well, thanks, Larry.

I appreciate the opportunity. And boy, what an important question. As we head into a brand new year, I'm even more excited about a brand new decade. I love a fresh start and an opportunity to do it again and do it bigger and better. And we got a huge one on the horizon. But I think, Larry, as I think about the important traits and characteristics and habits that I've learned, I've been very blessed to be around a lot of great leaders in my. And one of the things that I think has truly helped me, that I do think is transferable to others is I say pretty frequently, I'm not that smart, but I'm a really good student. I will study both the successes and failures that I see around me and take from that and say, what can I learn? What can I reproduce about the success that I see and what can I avoid in the failure that I see? And you know, Larry, I study that in others, but I also study it myself when I wake up and go, well, wow, that went pretty good. I think that succeeded. I try to step back and say, what made that happen? What were the ingredients that caused that to happen? And boy, when I fall hard and fail, I also like to step back and say, that hurts. There's probably some things I shouldn't do again. So naturally I do that with my own experience. But I can tell you, being around other leaders that I have and many you and I have been around a lot of the same men and women in our time at Primerica, and being able to watch them and see the ones that succeed overall, but watch what they did to succeed and even watch where they, you know, tripped up once in a while along the way and avoid their failures. But I would. I'm encouraging myself. One of my resolutions for the new year and the new decade is to be an even better student, to be situationally aware, to look around me and see what's going on and see what I can learn from those experiences, to reproduce the positives and avoid the negatives.

And you've done that all along, and that gives you the ability to improve, particularly in the areas you want to have improved performance in. Isn't that right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, like anything else in life, when you first start something, you feel uncomfortable, you feel like it's unnatural, you feel like you have to force yourself to do it. And then you do it for a while, and before you know it, you're going, wow, that's easy. That's a natural part of my day. It's a natural part of my week. I'm just doing that real time. I'm watching things happen real time, and I'm evaluating and studying and saying what's in there that I need to reproduce and avoid. And before you know it, Larry, it just becomes a part of the way you act. It's not like you have to make a special effort to do that. It's like any other habit or any other good trait. It becomes very familiar and very comfortable. And then you just call on it and you use it all the time to help you.

And then all of a sudden, people look at you as the expert.

They think you've done something amazing. And really, it's just a small step at a time. It's just one small victory and dodging a defeat. And before you know it, you got a string that looks way more impressive than it actually is and looks way more unique than it actually is, because I think anybody can do that.

Yeah. And you learn these lessons, become a permanent part of the fabric of your life, and you wind up saving yourself a lot of disasters along the way because you learn from the ones that came along. When it comes along the first time, you solve the problem, but you also learn how to make the adjustments so it doesn't continue to come and keep beating you over the head in the future. Am I right?

You're exactly right. And it's amazing. The more surprising the victory or the defeat was, the more you need to take notice of it. If something happened and it was really good and you said, wow, that was awesome. Let's stop and study that for just a minute. And then if there was a huge disaster you encountered and said, don't want to repeat that at any point in the future. So the more extreme it is, either positively extreme or negatively extreme the occurrence is, the more you want to stop and study it and say, let's evaluate and see why that happened and what we can learn from it.

Yeah. When people say, you know, Glenn, about meditation and, you know, you need to meditate, you know, my thing is, of course, you probably need to pray and get yourself in touch with the creator of the universe. But while you're praying, you pray about things are important to you and you think about specifics. You know, it's the old specific. Got to be specific to be dynamic. And so when you're meditating, you're praying, you've got your time alone. Think about your thinking life and what you're happy about. And then the things that didn't go right, like, how can I make that better for myself next time? And who do I know that doesn't seem to be creating these problems for themselves or what are they doing that I can learn from? And it's just a matter of challenging yourself to think a little bit. And that's what's exciting to know that everything about becoming a winner, be successful in life, is something you can learn. It's not. You don't fall out of the crib knowing this stuff. You, you know, over time. You know, I don't believe in a lot of the evolutionary theories, but I believe in evolution as a. It comes to business and improving yourself, you know, growing up, maturing and being able to do this because you do this. Glenn, don't you find this is the source of your excitement about moving forward in the next day, week, month?

Well, yeah, I think that's exactly right, Larry. If, you know, you've got a game plan where you can get better, you can improve and have more success and fewer defeats, then that's, that's motivating in and of itself. I mean, you got a system to be able, able to deal with life, you got a way to move from where you are to the better state. And like we just said, it's completely a learned skill. So that means anybody can do it. Anybody can improve in 2020 over 2019 just by studying the successes and studying the failures.

And it's almost a bottomless pit of excitement that comes from being knowing you have a game plan where you can constantly look forward to doing things that matter to you quicker, faster, better, and bigger. And that's that's moving through life and being your most productive. So thanks, Glenn, for sharing. This means everything. I wish the best for you and your family going into the new year.

Thanks, Larry. I appreciate it. Have a great holiday and happy New Year and happy new decade.

All right. Thank you, Glenn. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind episodes on itunes. Also, check out my Wydell Academy YouTube channel and visit wydellawinning.com I'm the Million Dollar Mastermind, Larry Wydell. And I'm looking forward to to our next time together. Go, go.