Episode 504: The Moment You Stop Caring About Who Gets the Credit Your Business Is Empowered to E...

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

I'm here with Gus Gonzalez and we're having fun talking about winning and developing character, which is a often overlooked thought. But now, what have you learned about business that really set you apart? What do you think that you learned? And things you put, you know, things. It's one thing to have the character and everything, but it's demonstrated by what you do. You know, it's like, how do you, what are things that you, you put yourself, ideas and strategies you put yourself behind and you brought into your life and brought into your business thing that allow you to get ahead. And you know, earlier we talked about the leverage, you know, the idea of leveraging yourself. You have great ideas, even what we talked about there. The moment you stop caring about who gets the credit, you got to put yourself in a position to explode because you, you're free to bring in people. You know, some people are afraid to hire super talented people because they're afraid they're going to get more credit. You know? You know, it's amazing what people do to themselves. But what did you, what are things you did and concepts? You read all these books, you had all these things, you know, a successful person does all these kind of things. How did you get more efficient? How did you, you know, when it comes to time management, to scheduling, to decision making, to, you know, squeezing the most out of your day and compounding your growth, what are things, concepts or things that you learn that you install and, and you saw an immediate benefit from.

All right, okay. So you said, you mentioned about reading a lot. That's one thing that I started to do early on. Read a lot. And then I chose to start implementing, right. Which is, it's so easy to read, read, read, read, read, and never really translate that into real life, right. Into your, into your day to day thing. So I took a couple of books, actually, I can tell you three, three books that really impacted me, right? The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Think and Go and Grow Rich and Think Like a winner. Right. So I literally took those books and, and all of them have exercises in them, things that you can, that you literally need to do. Okay. Like saying affirmations, writing a certain thing and just reading it every day or having this, this, you know, visualization things, you know, start with the end in mind and you have to do an exercise of. You're literally writing your obituary and you're imagining your. Yourself. There's. And people are talking about you. They're mourning. How many people are there? What are they saying? Who's speaking? Things of that nature. And I actually started doing those things. I actually started saying, you know, well, the first thing I did was like, okay, you know what? I'm starting this, and if I don't, I will die here. They're going to. I said that for my marriage and for my business, and they will take me out feet first, okay? I am dying here.

Period.

End of story, okay? I don't care how bad it gets, okay? And I told. I told my wife, hey, you know what? You're going to have to have hire somebody like the Gucci people and just have me killed because I'm not leaving, okay? And not only am I staying grumpily, I'm going to stay actively working to try to make this thing better. Okay? So I started.

How did that come to you? I don't keep your train of thought, but how did that come to you?

Because the character issue, I mean, the biggest character issue was running away from things, not dealing with things, right? So I had to, like, stick it. Stick to itiveness, right? And think and grow rich says it, right? You have to plant your flags. You have to stick with one. One thing. If not, you're not going to be successful, right? And then you, you know, you start reading biographies and, you know, you see how other people deal with mental toughness and, you know, how they become mentally tough and how they react to crap and that kind of stuff, right? And you see that nobody wins instantly. It's not. It's never like this, right? I mean, and the few cases that it is, you usually see fallback. You see some issue, right? That takes you down, and then you have to come back. Like, Steve Jobs were freaking. You know, he was taken out of his baby, right? But then he came out stronger for it and took it to a different whole new level, right?

The thing is, you know, I think this is a big point and people need to think about it. That's when you're really committed. But I can remember when I was 27 years old, starting a new business and wife stay at home, wife didn't work outside the home, bring home any income, two young boys in Atlanta, Georgia, and it was like, you know, all of these things, what if this what if, what if, what if we all have the what ifs? And, you know, I was putting. I went for, I don't know how long cash back then, no credit cards and you had to. No ATMs, you had to write checks, write checks for everything. So I would go and write checks for five or ten dollars to put gas in my car because I knew that would clear the bank, you know what I'm saying? I wouldn't. Yeah. If I wrote it too big, then I'd get a 20, $25 check, you know, charge extra. I couldn't afford that, but I knew if I did five or ten dollars, that would get through the bank. But, you know, and so I was that low for that long, you know, and the challenge is to quit or whatever. But I remember, I remember the definite moment where it's like, are you going to quit?

Are you going to get.

And I said to myself, it was like Esther in the Bible before she was going to go into the King. And when you walked into the King and unannounced.

Yeah.

He didn't call for you, you know, she had an urgent thing she wanted to bring to just go with him. And before she went in, she said, if, you know, if he doesn't smile. Yeah, she's gonna die. I'm done. Yeah, they could take your head off. Yeah. If he just, if he, you know, unless he smiled. And so of course he, you know, so before she went in, she said, if I perish, I perish, I'm going in. You know, if I perish, I perish. So that's what I said myself. And of course the King smiled and he actually wound up chopping the head off of somebody else, the guy she was going in there to complain about. But somebody did get their head.

Somebody got it.

Got it. But it wasn't her. And so the thing is, you know, I said, and what a great relief to yourself, you know, if I perish, I perish. And when I went to North Carolina, equally stupid move financially, you know, up there with no money, dumber than crap, put my, you know, to put my family at that kind of risk, you know, what an idiot. But, you know, I sit up there, I'm going to attack the best way I know how. And if I fail, I said this right from the beginning. I said, if I fail, it will be with a bang, not a whipper, and it will be a belly flop heard round the world. Everybody will know that I failed because if I go out, I'm going to go out big, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

So you have to, you have to be willing to come to those things. You might not do it exactly like that. But it is a tremendous, freeing thing, 100%. And I found out, Gus, that situation kind of comes. I've started using that approach. You know, we're always planning, am I going to go here, I'm going to go there. If I go there, you know, it's going to put a time thing. I'm going to be worn out and to get up and to go there and do that, you know, there's all these trips. You can't move your business without moving your body, right? And you can't, you know, you can't enjoy the exciting things you want to in life without going through some stress points on travel and tired and not getting the sleep. And I was thinking about this thing of this summer. It's like this one deal, and it was like, well, if I go in there, I'll be exhausted when I get in, and I have to get up the next day, and I'll be on my feet the whole day, but I really want to do it. And then I've got to drive somewhere else the next day. It's going around my head, should I cancel this? And the other. But finally, how I dealt with. I said, well, if I'm tired, I'm tired.

That's it. You want the result and you're willing to pay the price.

Walking around on my feet during the day, I'll sit down, I'll get something to drink, put my feet up for 15 minutes, then I'll go again. And, you know, at some point you got to say, well, if it does, it does, but I'm going. You know, it's like, you know, to squeeze in vacations. I mean, just little things like a family vacation. It's like, well, the business will go here, but I'm going. And you have to make, you know, what you'll tolerate in your life. Somehow I'm going to. You reach these things and you say, somehow, we'll figure it out. You know, there's always an adjustment, and as you're moving forward. So I can really relate to going through the thing. What are some other things that you went through that were big transition things or that added power or you saw big results from.

All right, so I started implementing, like I said, right? So I got these books, read them, started implementing things. Right? And then again, this is a personal thing, and this is. This is going out to a lot of people. So we're not trying to push any, you know, idea or anything like that or religion or anything like that. But in my personal experience, this. I came to Christ under This trial, circumstances, right? But then in O3, I remember October of 03, I almost had like an epiphany also there too, where I said, man, I cannot be one person in one area of my life, a different person, another area of my life, a different person at home, a different person in my business, a different person spiritually. You know, I just need to be one person, right? And kind of bringing those things together. So another thing that I, that really for me was important, that changed. We're dealing in a, in a business of people, right? I made a decision, man, if I can help some, if somebody comes to my business and I have a choice, literally a choice of helping them go to the next level spiritually and in terms of character, or helping them move to the next level in business and help them become, in our terms, original vice president have their own office. I said the first one, the person first. And then that commitment made me free to do what I needed to do, to really. There's this thing that says people say that they don't care how much you know until you know, until they know how much you care. And that kind of thing, right? So it really became a real thing about, okay, what is the best thing for this person, right? So I started dealing with things, okay, I want to make this concept where if you, if you and I had an interaction, I want you to walk away feeling better about yourself than when done before. And I think that was one of the things that had the biggest impact in our business. And sure enough, sure enough, you, you get everything else added to it.

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Now, when you're at this stage in your life, once you started having success, you know, of course you enjoy, you know, you move. You've had a chance to move and reposition yourself. How important is it to stay engaged and keep having new frontiers, new projects, new things to get involved in? Have you found that that's a big part of staying energized.

Absolutely. I think that retirement is not a biblical thing, not a biblical concept. And I want to.

By the way. By the way, I want to. Before you go there, I didn't want to interrupt you before, but we're not going to apologize if someone feels like we're pushing the savior of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not going to apologize for promoting the Lord Jesus Christ. However, I'm also not going to stomp on someone else's beliefs. I'm not going to apologize or hide what I Or what you believe because it's been core to our success. And if somebody else has a different experience, they're entitled to that. I'm not going to. I regularly touch base with people I'm in business with around the country that are Muslim or Jewish or whatever and say, you know, are we offending you? Are we on the same page? Do you feel like, you know, because, you know, there's no reason to be apologize on something that's part of your core.

Right.

And so we believe Jesus Christ the savior of the world, and unapologetically. And we're not going to step on your. It's not my job. It's not my job to tell anybody else they're wrong.

Exactly.

That's not my. But I can tell you what makes me right, you know, and so I wanted to correct that there. All right. I wanted to make that adjustment, you.

Know, perfect and great. I just didn't know, you know, where to take that. But it's such an important thing of my own experience that I cannot leave it out. You know what I'm saying? So, okay, so we're. What was the. Where were we talking about?

Continue? You know, new. New challenges, you know, is it a problem?

Yeah.

Is it a problem to think about? You know, the thing about being a serial winner is when you have successes, new opportunities open up, bigger opportunities open up, you develop skill. I mean, you got skills now you never had before.

Yeah, 100%.

You also have friendships and relationships and insights and you know how to get things done and you know, you like situation. You know how to make things happen like you never did before. So. But that's useless unless you actually make something happen, man.

It's incredible. This is a great conversation, by the way. Thank you for having me because it's been really awesome. And so I was saying that retirement is not a biblical concept for sure. Clearly you can see that in the Bible, but it is not. It's a concept straight out of industrial socialism's response to the industrial revolution, right? So it's kind of like, weird. So I don't. I thought that's what I wanted because you're kind of. You're trained to think that way. And then I found it. I'm like, say, no, this is not good. So you need to keep yourself active and always have a new challenge, a new goal, something you're going for. That's where growth comes from. You're either growing or you're dying. You say this all the time about the business side of things, right? When it comes to recruiting, but it's also true of you personally as a. As an individual. So, yeah, I keep myself challenged. I'm looking for new things. I mean, small things, because sometimes doesn't have to be a huge project, right? But. But as long as it is a project. For example, something small. I'm going to Italy in September, right. I have a little base knowledge of Italian. And you know what I did? I got an app, this pin slurp thing, whatever. I pay 14 bucks a month and I take one class every day on my own. Nobody tells me, right? Because you use what you have learned, the sticking to things, the starting and finishing, growing, all that. So I'm doing that, and I'm getting better. My goal. I have a very specific goal when I get there in September, to have fluid conversations with people. Okay. That's a small thing, but it's a project, right? So we have projects. I have a project with my wife where we are investing. She got her real estate license, and we're investing here in the Panhandle area, which is a great. There's a huge boom here, like many other parts of the country, and we're participating in that and so on and so forth, Right? So always keep ourselves thinking of, okay, what's next? Always participate in some project, large or small. And I keep myself active in our business as much as I can from a mentorship perspective. You know, what's the most exciting thing?

What's the most exciting thing you've done in business that you're proudest of?

Oh, my God. Obviously, in the. In our financial services business, that everything's related to that, right? Because everything else comes from that. To me, I mean, that this is. That business helped me. That process. Right. Turn me.

Right.

Turn me into a different person. So having. Having had the chance to reach the highest levels of success in our field, that is definitely my biggest accomplishment.

And what was your expectation of that happening when you came in at the beginning?

Very naively. Without just the dream side of me thought huge things and it was going to happen very quickly. It didn't happen that way.

I thought it was, you know what.

But I tell people it's funny because when it happens, it usually happens way slower than you think, but it's. Right. But it turns out to be way bigger than you thought.

Yeah.

So it's kind of interesting that way.

Yeah. And the worst thing can happen to you, we talk about this all the time, is to have some kind of significant success early because then you then, like you said, you expect. Well, I'm just more special than other people. You know, they have a hard time. But me, people are dumb.

I don't know how you know, how, how come you've been an RVP for 100 years and you still don't have, you know, so. Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that you mentioned briefly, but I think it's, it's. We want to go back there in this process of having new challenges and you, you've been surrounded with a different kind of person. We intentionally. And I need to, I want to credit my wife with this because I, I turn to be. I could be a hermit probably. I, I can be by myself a lot, you know, reading and doing a bunch. Like I'm doing this Italian class by myself. I'm not going to a school meeting people, you know, and we, we made a decision based on things that you hear, that we needed to change our circle of friends, that we, that we needed to surround ourselves with people that would challenge us and that we're at different levels. Okay. At least at our level, not just financially, but mentally. Right. We avoid negativity like the plague. Right?

Yeah.

And we, so we seek out, we start to seek out these relationships and sure enough, Larry, today all of our friends are million dollar earner, SNSD types, even people that are not in Primerica.

Yeah.

It's crazy. It's crazy, crazy that way. So. And most of them are most more successful than we are, which is fine because you can always learn from people and all that kind of stuff. But I remember a lot of things you say. There's a bunch of wisdom there. But you said like you were dealing with our teams. Like for example, for this conversation, you never spoke to me, I never spoke to you. Somehow, magically, we're here at this, at 12 sharp today. Right. And you said one day, you know, I, you know, I sent these things out and 500 people should be here. But I know for sure, the one thing I know for sure is that all the SNSDs will be here, right? And all the SNSDs will respond, send their thing on time and be here. And it's. And my. Most people would think, oh, that's because they are snsd. No, because they started doing those things. They became snsd. So I believe that one of the hardest things to do sometimes is intentionally you putting yourself in those environments that will stretch you, and doors open up tremendously. I mean, things happen because you start learning things, you start seeing other people doing, oh, my God, this person just built this home and just made $1.5 million in freaking 10 months. You know, took me, I don't know how long it took me to make $1.5 million in one year, right? And then when I. It's in a year, and there's a lot that goes into that, right? And then I see this person just do it. Like, come on. There's a lot happening, a lot going on that you may not know or even you're not exposed to it in that you don't understand it. And I think we need to put ourselves in those environments, with those environments.

And talk, you know, talk to the people, and you find out what those missing things are, and it makes sense. And you figure out how to get those things in place for yourself. Because the growth can domino if it's set up right. And learning those things you don't know because you've never been there before are priceless. The sooner you learn them, the sooner you can implement them in your life. Thanks so much, Gus. Great afternoon. And any one last comment for the up and coming generation that you want to add.

Well, absolutely, man. Keep on doing things like what you're doing right now. You're listening to this podcast. It tells me that you want to get better, you want to go to the next level. You're doing things, but not learning. Learning is not enough. If you don't apply at some point, choose one or two things of the things that we spoke about here today and just get. Go to the application phase, right? Start. Make, you know, make those decisions. You know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna die here. And choose your lane and stay there until you win. And apply, apply, apply massively. Okay. Decide to really 10x your activity in all levels or whatever it is. Learning Italian or doing it. Massive application for a sustained period of time.

Absolutely. Right on point. Thanks so much, Gus.

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