Episode 63: Never Letting Opportunity Pass with Industry Leader Jon Lavin

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell, and let's get started. All right, we got a treat today. You're gonna learn about how to build and why to build a. Not just one location, how to build a distribution army, how to open offices, how to build a distribution network. The impact that can have on your life. And nobody knows how to do that and how to explain it because he's. One of the greatest communicators in the country right now is John Lavin. So, John, welcome to the Call. Thanks for being on.

Well, it's a privilege, Larry, always to be around you for any period of time. And so to be interviewed by you and have a discussion about success and failure and what it's meant to me and what I've been through is a real privilege. So thank you.

Well, you know, you've generated multimillion dollars of income for yourself. You built a business that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in business for the companies you represent. You built a distribution machine over the years. And we want to get into that. But I also want to mention that sooner or later, I want to get Patty on. Patty Lavin, who's your partner in all of this. But she told me, like, when I first got on that she'd already done her interview for the week, and it already had 2000 views on Facebook Facetime. So Facebook somewhere.

Facebook, yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, she's already. She's already up full quota for the week, so we'll. We'll get her back another time. But this is the time, you know, because that gets into the distribution aspect, that you have made a focal point of your life, and now, you know, you had the mindset to take advantage of this particular time and all the communication options, basically necessities that are required to kind of keep your. All your offices and all your sales people and your management team plugged in and not just surviving, but thriving. And so we want to get into all that, John, and talk about how you started and how you. You transformed yourself into somebody that's basically got a distribution army.

Well, it's. I've got quite. Quite the stripes sitting here smiling because my story has not been straight up, that's for sure. And I don't know anybody who's successful, who doesn't go through times where they're just ready to go, wow, how did this all happen to me? And not the good way? And then. And then you fight through it and you follow the fundamentals and the basics of winning and all of A sudden your life is magical. And it's not all of a sudden. We're 40 years at this, but, you know. But I feel like a kid at it. I'm 63. I've been. I'm going on my 40th year this summer. And what's so exciting to me is that what I'm doing right now actually is just an advanced version of what I did when I. When I started, you know, I was 23. I played college golf. I wanted to be a pro golfer. And it was pretty clear to me that if I continued to golf, I'd be working at a golf course for the rest of my life. Not making money, but working for rich people. And I decided I wanted to join a country club, not work at one. But I had no idea how to go do that. I was not a great student. Public relations degree, you know, and so now popped out in the world. And so I got in sales. I started selling cookware and cutlery right out of college and was recruited, literally, by a stranger. He was calling for somebody else on the phone. He got me, and I'll never forget what he said. It was something like, is Mark there? No. Well, who are you? And I said, well, I'm John Live. And he says, well, what do you do there? I said, I'm a salesman. Are you good at it? I said, I'm very good at it. He says, can I ask you an honest, you know, can you be straight with me? Do you really plan to sell cookware for the rest of your life? I mean, was something like that. And I said, no. He says, well, do you keep your options open? Are you the kind of guy that's open to opportunity? And I said, sure. And I went in for an interview. And I'll never forget the magic that I saw was a field training opportunity I had in cookware. It's kind of interesting, Larry, but in cookware, I was cold calling. I was prospecting, man, I hated it. I was out meeting people, was. The market was good. It was young, single, working women. And I was 23, so that was good. Patty didn't like it much, but I liked it. And. But I hated. Hated prospecting. And I got good enough at the presentation. I got good enough where my manager asked me to train a young lady that was from the area. I was from Philly. I was down in Tampa. And I trained this. I went out on appointments with her. And it was the easiest sales I'd ever made. I never experienced anything like it. And I fell in love with this Idea of work in war markets. And so when I saw this company and I heard it was that, you know, it was an opportunity to be. If you got good enough at your craft, if you got good enough at your skills, people would want to introduce you to everybody they know. And that was it. I said, okay, if I'm. If I'm going to get really good at this and I'm going to have people introduced me. I don't like prospecting, but I do like presenting, and I like training and teaching. And I. I got really good, really, really, really good at presenting and closing business and recruiting. But. And. And I learned how to teach people to book my schedule for me. And it didn't. I was one. I could find one person who wanted to learn the business from me. And I was busy. I could be busy for a long time. And I. So I started in Tampa at 23 and soon thereafter had an opportunity to move back to Philadelphia, where I was from. And I was well enough trained that I could move as a district leader, brand new, kind of less than a year in the business, move from Florida to Philadelphia and do it again. And I did it again. And then we hit it big. I was young, I was making a bunch, couple hundred grand a year, and I didn't know what I was doing with my money. Somehow what we were being taught about saving money, I didn't get that message too well. And so I did a lot of the wrong things with my money. Not knowing it. I bought some properties. But the long story short, when things got tight, when the business went bad, when Art Williams left, we didn't have reserves, and I got crushed, and I was around some of the wrong people. I got negative and I actually left the company. I mean, I literally went from superstar to goat, you know, like, I was out there making 300 grand a year, and then a year later, I made 19 grand a year. And it was in. That is where I learned the most. I learned the most about my life, about doing the right things with money, about people, about the fundamentals of business. That's where I learned everything. And I. And I. And so when I came back, I was able to come back into the business. I just went for it with everything I had. And, you know, I was now down in Boca Raton, Florida. So I started in Tampa, moved to Philly. So I started twice from scratch. I moved to Boca, started again from scratch, and then in 2002, moved back to Philadelphia and built it again from scratch. So I built four times. I've built this thing four separate times. And so I would say I'm pretty much an expert now on what to do when you have nothing going on how to start from nothing. So.

Well, let's, let's get into that. But the payoff. What. How is your life changed? You know, your income, when you started, what you're. We're projecting out to make to where the. To describe people, the kind of life you've. You've been able to live and what's. You've been able to do for your family and, and, you know, the, the. The sugar side of success.

Well, the sugar for me, you know, I. For me, success, a lot of my measure, the way I measure my success is the joy that I get from seeing other people successful. And we live a. And I mean, I literally, I really do get to do whatever I want to do. You know, when it's. It's funny when you start making a lot of money, you start hanging around people that make a lot of money, and suddenly you realize you don't make a lot of money. So it's not really about, you know, it's like, I'm broke at a new level now. Broke at the million dollars. Now I'm hanging around 10 mil, you know, people that make 10 million. So. So really, my joy. My joy isn't from the money. It's from the people I've had a chance to meet and the things that my family has gotten to experience and how Patty and I live our lives and how we don't worry. I mean, we get up and we have a blast every day. I mean, I can't believe how fast the days go, but we get a massive joy from the success of our people. Our. I mean, I just love pouring into people and seeing their lives change. And most people, most of the people you pour into, they won't listen. You know, they don't listen. They don't listen to the advice. But on occasion, somebody listens. And so I've spent my effort, my focus and discipline was on transferable techniques, very, very simple things to learn. And as a result of that, we've developed now we've got. I don't know if you want me to get into this now we've got it, but we've got an amazing team.

Talk about numbers. Talk about the numbers. I mean, people need to hear the numbers. And, you know, who is John Lavin? What kind of numbers are generated and you know, and even how many people you're communicating with on a daily, weekly basis now as you go through this, you Know you're influenced, you know, as you get bigger, your voice, you know, in the same. We all got 24 hours of the day. But when you're a salesperson, you make an appointment and your maximum is that one good thing can happen because, you know, you're only talking to one person.

Yeah, yeah.

You build the organization and now you're, you know, you're talking to 10 people, 20 people, 30 or thousands, you know, depending on how so.

Yeah, yeah. So it. So this week's been a great week. So we did, we did your. We did the big hitter call Monday with the team, and that was a, you know, nerve wrack. And I get nervous still to do all these things, and I don't. I toss and turn and I just want to make sure I'm doing a good job. You know, I have those same insecurities everybody's got. And we, I felt like Monday went great. We got to highlight some superstars that are working so hard, have their dreams come true. And then, then later in the week, we did another interview with a. With a group that we're plugged into and had two fat interviewed us because. Gave us a chance to talk about our business and our success and our people. And there's over 2,000, I think people have watched that video so far on Facebook. That's through a group called Next Level. That's emotional intelligence training stuff that I, I do extra things to learn and grow and just to expand my ability to communicate with all different kinds of people. I'm always trying to learn. I'm always doing whatever I can do to learn and grow. And then now this is just a total honor, but we're busy. I've never worked so hard and had so much fun. I'm working from home. I've not been in the office. I have no distractions. No one's bugging me. I'm able to spend all my time with who I want to right now on the phone. And through Zoom, I become a Zoom master so I can get on that thing. And I've been doing. We have a full schedule. I mean, I've got a full blown program going right now, like, bigger, bigger than we've ever had. We. We have our Monday, then Monday morning we do a breakfast club. We've got 200 people now that are on our meeting and we do breakouts. Larry, you'll love this. We break out into 20 different rooms, 25 rooms with six or eight people in each. And they're accountable. They're. They're giving their account after read, they have to read off their numbers, you know, and they read their numbers, what they did last, last, you know, what they've done so far for the month, what they're going to do, what their appointment count is. I mean, we're big time on accountability and that's working in a great way. And as a matter of fact, Glenn Walden is now, and his whole team are on our call. So I know he's. You're close to Glenn. What a great contribution they've made. And. But we've got that going and we've got our. We've got our. Monday night, I do a meeting, an opportunity meeting. I've got. I've done some videos now where we just send a video out of my meeting. So people are using that. We've got. Tuesday night, I do my training for two hours with. With our base. And then, you know, Friday morning I do my RVP call. Thursday morning I do an investment training. Saturday morning I do an orientation. Wednesday at noon, I do an orientation for new people. Saturday. Saturday morning from 11 to 1, we do our basic training drill for skill, where we have the guys in there practicing. And so I don't know, I must have about 10 or 15 hours of planned meetings. That gets me in front of, you know, set a thousand people throughout. Throughout the week. And maybe, maybe more like big hitter. I think we had probably there were. I don't know, there's 1500 locations on. I mean, it's just amazing. And so now we're influencing people. People are listening. We've got a track record. We've got people that are succeeding. So it seems like all of a sudden what I say matters, you know? And forever I just fought for someone to listen to me, you know? And so now I've got this stage and it's really a privilege. It's just a privilege. We've got 1800 agents. We've got. We've got 24 that make over 100 grand a year. Three of them make a half a million. One makes a million. And we're very. And I have a guy right now skyrocketing to a million. I'm sure Anthony Hines will skyrocket to a million now. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if by March of next year he's at a million, if not sooner. And this is a young man who grew up in the projects of North Philadelphia and his mom was on food stamps. And to see this is just. Is just amazing. So, I mean, I'm just living a dream because we're Able to contribute. And I love more than anything that I contribute. And they send me more money, you know, the more I do, the more they pay. The more people succeed, the more we get paid. And we're at our highest income, we're at our highest recruiting. We recruited almost over a thousand people last month. That's by far the most recruits we've ever had. I'm sure we'll do it again this month. So through this pandemic, we've actually discovered how much time we were wasting. Spending time with a lot of the wrong people. You know, I was in an office, Larry. It's kind of interesting. I was laughing the other day with the guy says, you know, in the office, the people that hang around the office don't do anything usually. And so I was in the office, you know, babysitting a bunch of people. So I haven't been in the office in two months. So I'm only talking to the winners right now. I don't have to babysit anybody. And I'm working, doing productive activity and growing my base, growing my first, and work with the RVP's, but doing it all. I mean, having a ball, working with clients. I mean, I actually still love working with my clients and helping them. I don't do it as much anymore. I've delegated a lot of that out. But my big clients, I love working with them. Just got off the phone with a guy who makes a million bucks a year and has. He's 55 years old and his goal is to build a $10 million by age 74. And so we've got, you know, we've got that all set up. He'll be saving 14, 15 grand a month at that goal. And I'm just blown away by the influence that we now can have with people because we've just followed a basic, simple system that Art Williams developed years ago and learned the basic principles of money and personal finance and learn how to, how to really work, what focus, discipline, work looks like.

And John, if you would, if I would give you a final word for this, basically get, you know, introduction type episode to people. What is your takeaway that you would want people to take away? You know, you got friends all over the country, you've done, traveled the world, made the vacations, you've been every resort there is, every advantage for your kids. And you're still, you know, working like crazy because you love winning. What, what would you say you would, you know, as a final thing that you'd want people to take away about your Success and apply to their, to apply to their own selves, you know, just know. Well, you know, the real world thing.

You know, well, the real world thing is you got, if you, if you love what you do, it's never work. And I think that we've got to learn to eliminate the distractors from the distractions and the things that bring us down. We've got to find a way to love the work. And I think that's in the fundamentals. You know, I'm a golfer. I love golf. I've been played college golf, played at a pretty high level. Never got good enough to make any money at it, thank goodness, or I'd be doing that and I wouldn't be doing this or teaching golf at some driving range or golf club somewhere. But golf taught me a lot about fundamentals. You know, golf is all about the basics. You got to go back to the basics and business is about the basics. There's fundamentals of your business and if you, if you're, if you're slacker on those, you're going to get beat. And you've got to pay attention not only to the basics of business, but the basics of many domains in life. And that is, you know, we could talk about this a little more, but I, you know, I think life has many things, from business to finance, to relationships to charity and giving, to spirituality, to health and fitness. Fitness. These are the kind of things that are really, really important, that you're well rounded and well balanced and you're working on different areas of your life, not just one thing. So I think basics and fundamentals are number one, and then number two is that for periods of time that you get so laser focused on what you're going to do that nothing distracts you, that nothing gets in your way. I mean, the mission, the goal, the vision, the purpose, what wakes you up, gets you out of bed and that you work on that all day. I mean, it's like, you know, it's a love affair with the basics and the fundamentals and the work ethic. Put in the time in to have the magic happen. You know, in our business, the magic happens when you've got credible people who have strong ability who decide to follow you, people who have a work ethic and people who have credibility and you know, they're hardworking and they follow you, they'll listen to you, and you're their coach, you're their mentor, and you have a chance to teach them to do exactly what you've done and not ask them to do anything. You haven't done and that, that could actually pay off. You could actually pour into somebody else and have them become ultra successful and that your success is measured based on, on others. Success is a dream come true. So to me, this whole system we're in is magical. And I just think work ethic, focus, discipline and making a decision and then going for it with everything you got and not letting all the little things get in the way. You know, so many people let the little things bog them down. They get off track, they don't even know they're off track. They don't have a mentor, they don't have a coach, they don't have anybody that'll call them out on their crap and give them real honest feedback. And I like to put myself in environments and I like to have relationships with people where they tell me the real deal. Right. No one's sugarcoating it. I know exactly what it's going to take and I know exactly where my relationships stand with people. So that would be kind of my takeaway for now.

Fantastic. I think we had 1550 listening to your presentation was spectacular on Monday. And since that time, I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of times it's been listened to and downloaded off of our White Ellen winning website. But you certainly made a major impact there and you're making a major impact every time you get people together to listen to you. So thanks so much, John. I appreciate having you on.

Thank you, Larry. It's been a privilege to say the least.

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 Wydell Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widel on winning d. Com. I'm the Million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go go.