Episode 464: Don’t Stop Working When Others Stop Working with Bill Whittle

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Wydell and let's get going. I'm talking with Bill Whittle. Bill, congratulations on your incredible business. You built and legacy there and you become a legend in, in Baton Rouge and impacting tens of thousands of people's lives. But it started with you digging in early in your career because you know, you had to, you had the great example from your mother and your father. And so how about after you went through that thing and you saw that at a young age, you're getting an education in life. Right. How does your dad at 11 years old. I'm trying to remember if my dad ever said anything to me memorable. Ever. Let's see. Really? No. And so but he had the example of hard work and industriousness and this, that the other, you know, but no life lessons. Of course, he grew up an orphan, so I guess he didn't feel like he was an oracle on giving wisdom to the young son. But your dad did do that. How did he die, by the way?

He was driving the forklift. It flipped, broke his neck, crushed him and skull and he died on the spot.

So it was a sudden, sudden thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

And there must have been something in him that, where he knew he needed to pass on a lot of stuff to you early on because that's really unusual.

Yeah, I really think because I mean, anytime you have a lack of formal education, you don't really know the importance a lot of times of what you're passing on. I just think that was who my dad really was. I saw him, he was, he worked, I mean work non stop. Why? To provide for us kids. And I've taken on that same aspect of my life, no matter what it took to provide for my family. I was willing to do that if it meant working hard, staying up at nighttime, work on the weekends, sacrificing, going back. And it didn't matter if that is what it. And that's what served me very well in my athletic career. Whatever it took to be the, to be that I was going to do it. But in my family there were no excuses. Oh my God. You made no excuses whatsoever. Because if you wanted some for a good example, Larry was as right before my father got killed, I was, I wanted this go kart. I was like 10 years old, I remember like yesterday and I really wanted this go kart. And I was talking to him and he knew I Wanted something. But I knew not to ask my dad for something if I wasn't willing to give something for it. And he said, never mistake what you want for the price you're willing to pay. You're not going to be a thief, you're not going to be a gambler. You're going to be a champ. You're going to. You're going to pay the price if you want it. If you don't want it, shut up and don't talk about it. But if you want it, I can show you how to get it. So I want this go cart. And he said. He said, okay, well, here's the deal. He said, you can have the gold card. I thought that meant he was going to give me the money. I should have known that by knowing my dad didn't mean he's going to give him the money, but he was going to give me a way to get the money to get the golf cart. So the money. I didn't have the money, but I wanted to go kart. Okay, so now how can I do that? Said, okay, you can use our lawnmower. You know how to get the grass. I'll pay for the gas. You go knock on the doors, ask people to cut their grass. You'll get some money and you'll get the go kart. And I said, okay, well, what about if I need more? He said, then go rake people's yards. Get the rocks out of the driveway before you cut the grass so you don't bust their windows. So I said, okay, can I use your rake? He said, yeah, here's a rake over. Use my rake. He said, then look at the driveways in front of their driveways. There's dirt and stuff there from the snow had got there, got in the street. Go rake the. Sweep the driveway. I mean the driveways and the. And the streets. Cause everybody had gravel driveways. He said, rake that. You'll get some more money. Well, you know what? The point is, I got enough money. But before I did that, I. I said, dad, the problem is I'm also in a position to make the all star team and the little baseball team I was playing on. And I said, I want to make that baseball team. He said, no problem. Then give up on the fact you want that go card and make the baseball team. I said, dad, I want both. I don't either. Or. He said, you got a problem and I can give you a solution. You got to double down and start working your butt off all day long when you're not Practicing baseball. Get your butt out there, cut the grass, rake the driveways, sweep the streets. And he said, then get your butt out there and practice baseball. At the end of the day, Larry, I got that go kart, but I made that all star team. You can do both. You don't have to do either or. And I learned that principle from my dad without him ever telling me that was the principle of life. But that is the principle of life. T.R. becker, one of the great authors in the world, he teaches that it's neither, either or, it's both. And I learned that from my dad.

And as you came up in life, I mean, you were pretty much equipped to deal what, you know, you got the education that was. You know, people talk about, parents talk about educating their kids and how important it is, and they fight over this and fight over that, all the intellectual things, which is important. But then they'll go out there and they'll raise like, you know, no offense, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, but you got a bunch. You know, even Alan Dershowitz says, he wrote a book. He said they're like herds of sheep, right? They don't know their identity. He said, totally weak. He said, oceans of kids hit those universities with beyond straight A's. You have to have straight A's to. Before they'll even take the application. Then you have to have the extras to get in. But he said, no backbone, no spine, no life experience, you know, no overcoming type thing. Life experiences totally unequipped. And all they're equipped is to accumulate more knowledge. And the thing is that much less the spiritual side, you know, there's one thing about dealing with normal life problems, but it's another thing to have a spiritual foundation. You know, they'll say like, okay, we'll solve that. We'll teach an ethics class. We'll put ethics. An ethics class every year for four years. So that'll make them not cut corners and cheat and steal when they get into business. No, it won't. No. An ethics course. It's not that they don't know what's right. They just don't have. Understand how life works and rewards people with character and that people can see through phonies and that if you're going to have a solid foundation, it just the that one parable in the New Testament about the man that built the house on shifting sand. You know, the storm came and it blew down. I mean, something like that, Never, never done on them. And so this, you got an education, your parents, you know, people are out there saying, you know, I want to send my kids to the private school and this, that the other, I can't afford it and everything. And I understand it. I mean, you know, every one of my nieces, nephews and great nieces and nephews are dealing with that and stressing and that's great, that's important. But these lessons, you can teach them yourself, but you got to know, you got to learn them from somewhere. And I think with my own father, Bill, he learned industriousness from watching his father work and everything. But he was, in essence, he was more or less an orphan, you know, and he grew up living at different relatives place. You know, the original family got a divorce. The new wife didn't like, didn't like the first son because he wasn't his. And so he had to like live it in any relative. He was like a vagabond and he didn't, you know, the one thing he was food, shelter, clothing, you know, he was a hard worker. But these kind of lessons were totally, you know, totally beyond him in terms of being able to pass them on to me. So some of us, like yourself, are fortunate to get that from the parents. Some of us don't. But you're going to need them in life. And that's why we're doing this, you know, call right here. You know, we're not, we're just going to take, we're taking some time out to say these are simple things, but you'll use them every day in every situation because life is going to hit you from all sides and it's how you respond. And so the importance of what you're passing on to your kids and those around you and those in your business, you know, the principles that you're passing on to them make all the difference in the world because none of us are going to be around forever. And the other thing is, none of us, like you said when I, we started talking, I said, so you're, you're in the office today, you're every day, you know, in the office. But the thing is, that's not true. You know, you travel, you know, you go here, you go there, there's company conventions, meetings, you know, and.

There'S always.

Going to be times where we're not around. And the success of our families, our companies, our kids, all have to do with how people behave when we're not there. So what you pass on is absolutely a key. And how did you get take this thing when you're, you moved up through the ranks beyond, you know, you're taking on responsibility. You're getting more independent. You're moving up into your full teenage years. Obviously, sports was a vehicle for you. You were pretty. You were pretty. You said you got a nine year old right now that's probably taller than me. Grandson. What? How tall were you? How quick did it became obvious to you you're probably going to be a ball player?

Well, I was probably what I call a late bloomer. Not probably. I definitely was. But, you know, one thing you just said there about being in the office every day. We know the Bible also says pray without ceasing. That doesn't mean you're praying 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every second. That is not the case. It just means you make that as habitual as you possibly can. So it's a consistent thing. Like my people around my office here. I got a beautiful office complex and all that kind of stuff. And my people know this door is open all the time. Yet when the cleanup people in the office complex comes in there, they lock that door. So it's not open all the time. The concept is it's an open door policy. There's no pecking order. You don't have to worry about, well, I'm one and Bill's business, but I'm way down here. He's way up there. No, there's. Yeah, I'm open. I'm there. Same thing with the office. You know, I'm here every day. I'm making the consistent thing. And you also brought up a thing a while ago about the sheep. You're right. People are like sheep. But that's where they're looking for leaders. Like a shepherd. And, and the problem is nobody wants to be a shepherd because you have to. You have to work with the sheep and you get sheep dung on your feet all the time. Well, then that's what, that's what leadership is. You got to walk among the people if you're going to be a leader of the people, in my personal opinion. Now, going back to what you said, you know, when I look at, you know, hard work, okay, I learned that from sports. I learned in a lot of things. Whether I was out hunting, my dad would say, when all these other guys. Because once again, him dying when I was. He was. My dad was 33 when he died. I was 11. But before then, I started hunting out in the fields with my dad with his rabbit hunting, squirrel hunting, pheasant, whatever it is. And I remember, I know my dad loved me. But I'm thinking sometime, wait a minute now. He'd be out there smoking cigarettes, drinking wine. We'd be out hunting with a full loaded shotgun. I'm thinking, I'm not sure if he did and all these other men, but I remember him telling me, now, bill, son. He never called me Bill, son. You go stand over here. And when you hear that dog start barking, you go start kicking the bushes and start trying to kick up the bushes, kick up the, the fence rows because a rabbit's gonna be there. And he said, but you keep listening for that rabbit dog. When you hear the rabbit, the dog's voice getting less loud, less loud, that means they're chasing the rabbit. When you hear it started getting louder, they're circling that rabbit right back to the same spot where they jumped it up. You get your butt back over there, get ready to shoot, and you're going to get that rabbit. Then I realized that he was teaching me a very simple principle, that if don't stop working when everybody else stops working. And I developed that mindset through hunting, through the discipline. My father, I don't really think he was knowing what he was teaching me, but that's how I brought into those same concepts. When everybody else was just doing the easy thing, waiting for the dog to bring the rabbit back around, I was out there kicking the bush. What that means. I was actively involved. I was improving my skills, but I was in motion. And a body in motion tends to stay in motion. By the time that rabbit came back, I probably already shot two or three different attempts. And then all of a sudden I killed that rabbit too. Well, the same thing in sports. So I, early on, I wasn't that good. I wasn't that tall, I wasn't that talented. But as I started getting in the fifth grade and then the sixth grade, I started growing. That's the time my dad died. I developed those habits. But that's also the other, the time that other coaches came into my life. Basketball coaches, baseball coach, football, this, that other. And I, because I was coachable because of my father, and I was very, very coachable. So the coaches knew, here's a guy that was going to have some size. State of Indiana is a big basketball state. The school I went to was a big basketball school. So it was like, this guy's going to have some size. And they saw I had a tremendous work ethic. Well, all great coaches can identify physical talent, but they want to know, do you have mental talent? Are you mentally tough? Can you take the depth? Can you take the hard work? Can you take a hit? Can you take the Late hours and come back because that is. Vincent Bar, the greatest football coach ever said the one thing he looked for in players, are they mentally tough. Well, you're not born mentally tough, you got to develop mental toughness. The founder of a company that been with all my life said, if you've never gone through tough things in your life, when tough times come, you're going to flake out. I never have been a flaker and I think coaches saw that in me. So when I started growing physically and I started getting taller than everybody and then I started developing my physical skills because of my work ethic and my mental toughness to stay with something, not quit, quit, never quit, never quit, never quit. I brought that into sports. By the time I did a seventh grade, then the eighth grade, by the time I was in ninth grade, played on an undefeated team. Nobody ever beat the team we beat in the city of Indianapolis. By the time I got in high school I was a pretty good athlete. And by the time I finished high school I was an excellent basketball player and is able to choose anywhere in the United States I wanted to play basketball. And so I think all these things served me well. And I brought the same thing in my coaching career when I coached for eight or nine years. And I just brought that same concept into the business world which requires the same mental toughness, the same work ethic and the same coachability that it takes to be successful in anything. That coachability concept is critical. Matter of fact, I've just written a book finalizes at the publishers right now. It's a nonprofit book. I'll never do anything of itself my business to make my money. But it's going to be out there and I'm pretty excited about it. The editors and publishers are excited about it. But once again it's a total non profitable. It's just totally all the money is going for church and charities around the world. So I'm pretty excited about it.

Yeah, I can't wait to to get in and talk about that thing. That's what you just went through, right? There is a perfect nugget capsule of two or three minutes that people need to listen to over and over and over to get it in their head. If there's anything about that they didn't understand, they need to go and replay that. And by the way, that person you were talking about, I won't get into the names and his wife, he just turned 80 right on Tuesday and I had lunch with him on Tuesday and he's had surgery in his back recently. I mean, he's had like 15 surgeries, you know, at 17 and normal health problems. You know, you have success in life and business and this, that and the other. You still have have to go through the health things. But Bill, here's the thing. That sucker had walked. He must have walked that morning. We had lunch at 1 o'. Clock. He must have walked. He showed me where he walked. I don't know how far is it? Probably 10 miles. Yeah, his wife was saying, you got to stop that you're going to destroy your body. But he said they tell me walking is the best thing for your, you know, senior citizens. And he, he just had back surgery. He's out there walking 10 miles in the morning. But that toughness, you know, because he knows and we learn from gets in your blood, in your bones and it can give you benefits all your life in every area. And so. Thanks so much, Bill. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my back best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it@whitelownwinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening and do it big.