Episode #661 - Creating Successful Patterns and Finding Purpose with Larry Weidel & Jevon Wooden

Hello, listeners. Thanks for joining us. My name is Javon Wooden. You can typically find me hosting Design youn Life and Business, the podcast for leaders. But today your favorite podcast host, Larry Wydell will be playing the part of guest, so make sure you tune in. This week's edition of Million Dollar Mastermind is going to blow your mind as we do a deep dive into Larry's unique background and give you the chance to gain some insights on winning. Join us on an introspective journ as we explore the transformation that took Larry from being on food stamps to earning millions every year.

Larry, thanks for joining us today.

My pleasure. I'm looking forward to it. And thank you for taking the time to do this.

My pleasure, my pleasure. So on my podcast, I like to start with the same question for every guest.

Who are you? Larry? Who is Larry Wydell? We've been trying to figure that out for so long. I am a child of God and I am trying to fulfill my mission. And then as soon as that's done, I can clock out of this place. I'm trying to do great things. My attitude towards me and you is we were put on here for, you know, there is a God. And as my friend of mine who wrote a book, Chess Brit, said, there is a God and you're not it. I love that. As soon as you realize that and you can say, well, how can I get in line with the way things. You can imagine a planet in orbit around the sun, but it's like this is great gravitational pull and all, but I want to go in my own orbit. How long is that going to last before the planet just explodes? So you better. I think there's a rhyme and a reason to what we're supposed to be doing here. And the quicker we can can get ourselves to where we go along with the flow of what's been designed. And it helps when you realize that we're built for great things. That's why, you know, that's why we got this brain that has so much capacity in there and all, you know, it's just amazing potential. And so obviously we're supposed to accomplish great things. So I'm just somebody who follows my natural instinct. And at different times, I get wired up on different subjects. But, you know, I've got a short attention span, so I go a lot of things. I've been doing art all my life. Art and photography, sports. That's what I've. Those are great foundational type things because art gives you. It's kind of like music Also music. I got all kind of instruments.

And you're a man of many talents, Larry.

Play a bunch of different things, but it gives you an organization and a structured approach kind of programs your mind for success in terms of creating patterns. Successful patterns. A lot of variety inside the patterns. But if you have the fundamentals down, it allows you to build a structure where you can be productive. You can build a. You can turn your activities in kind of like your own personal factory and wind up doing positive things in spite of yourself. And if you have good help, you have good potential. I'll tell you a story. I'm in my studio right now, and on the upper floor, third floor of my studio. And yesterday had some friends in, and the wife wanted to watch the process. You know, I've got my expert assistant up here from Miami and artist in his own right, David Oliveira. We do all of our stuff. She wanted to watch all of that. And so at the end, she was a big help. She helped us name some paintings and things like that. But we had an hour to go, and we had some paint, and we had two big boards. So we got one of them, and I said, you want to see our process? You want to see the process? So for an hour, I just went crazy on this board. Actually, when it was over, it was very unpleasant experience for me, because I don't usually. I get back, look, see what happened, take my time, and make. Get the right colors. I did like the colors, but this is what we had. I didn't like. He couldn't walk around the board. It was a very uncomfortable whole thing. In fact, I didn't even sleep well last night. And I couldn't wait to come in and put some more paint and just cover it all up today. But because of the tools, because of the guidance, because, like, I had David around me to help keep me on track, and kind of I can play off of him, you know, in his eyes. And I've got good fundamentals. I've done a lot of things. I've done hundreds of these things. And so when you move fast, you just let things go to the wind. I thought it was a disaster. I just couldn't wait to come in and create a bonfire and burn it this morning. But we came in and did dry beautifully overnight. And I was just amazed. And that's kind of like in life, if you had the fundamentals down, you could move fast, you could turn yourself loose. You could. You can get into an unpleasant situation, and maybe you feel like. I'm sure you've Been in situations where you put in meetings, you've emceed, you've done podcasts. It's like, what a pile of crap. You know, I wish I'd never gotten that. Why did I get absolutely that? But then it comes out like it's the greatest thing ever. You know, you get letters from people, change my life. So if you have the fundamentals and you have a pattern and structure and you have good ingredients and good staff around you, even when you're flying high and fast and doing things you haven't done before, it has a likelihood high odds of coming out right. You're like, I was blown away with this thing. You know, I'm not even going to touch it, change it. I mean, it is the way it is. And so it's. The name of it is you might never ever see it, but it's going to be something to do with Cleopatra because there's a lot of purple in it. And that was. She was the one who made purple the color of royalty. And so, no, I'm going to call it Cleopatra's freedom. And when you see it, I can explain it to you. But the thing is that when you have the fundamentals down, you can do amazing things if you have the support. And if you have the support in terms of materials and people and staffing and things like that, you've had a.

Ton of guests who've done the same thing. They've had the fundamentals down. I'm sure you have some memorable moments from your time as a podcast host that significantly impacted you. So do you have like any particular lessons that you've learned so far, your podcast host journey?

The main thing, Devin, is the lessons that I've learned that I've kept and used myself with other leaders on the way up to hear those things reinforced in other environments, with other people talking to me about those same things I've talked about, but it's like reinforced. And so it's great to see how transferable winning strategies are. And I heard something early in my career was that great ideas don't care who use them. There's nobody who owns. There's no patent on owning an idea. And so if you're in a free country and you have decent health and you have minimum of type resources, you can go out and make some amazing things happen. If you get into winning patterns about how you use your starting with your thought process and also that leads into using your time and you can start moving forward, you can start elevating yourself, much like you've done with your podcast and other areas. So it's fun to see those principles reinforced. And we all need to be reminded of these things. Absolutely. A lot of things that come in and flood our mind and can cause you, you know, stuff, but you're not really thinking about it as much as would benefit you. So that's the thing. The first thing that comes back to me is these principles and that they're so transferable. And so that's the good news about what you and I do, is that we can simplify these things, clarify these things, and serve them on a plate to those that are looking for good information to use going forward and say, here's something you can use, you know, here's how it can impact you, you know, and. Absolutely.

So what's one of the things? Like, you've spoken to a ton of really excellent experts and thought leaders, and you're one yourself. So there's so many things for the audience to take away.

What would be one thing you want.

The listeners to take away from your podcast?

Focus on winning, focus on results, Focus on what's important to you and what gets you excited. I mean, you can't get excited about watching a Arnold Schwarzenegger movie on bodybuilding if you don't want to go to the gym. If you're more interested in feeding the poor in poor neighborhoods of town, you're more motivated by something like that. Or if you're more motivated by swimming, you know, I love swimming. You've got to pursue the things that turn your butt on. Because the one thing I've told people my entire career is I don't know if you can be great at this. Whatever business we were in, financial services or we're in a sport or what. I don't know if you can be great, but I know that you can't be great if you piddle with it. You're not good enough. I'm not good enough. Tiger woods is not good enough to be great at golf if he piddled around with it. Absolutely. You know, so if you're going to be great at something, it's got to be something that you have an interest, which some people use the word passion, you know, some people word. The. It can goes beyond interest to passion to obsession, where you can let yourself go and just follow that where it leads. And because of that, you spend so much time, you ask so many questions, you have so many efforts and tries, you know, swings of the ball, that you're at the plate because you're trying to get where you can hit the ball, is it. You develop some skills and you get pretty good. And in 90 days and just about anything, Devin, you can get. You can move into the elite in the world in pretty much any arena within 90 days, you can get better than 90% of the people doing whatever it is in most arenas if you pour yourself into it. So it doesn't take that long. You know, like you say, with this whole 10,000 things.

10,000 hours.

Yeah, whatever. Yeah. That's really not that much, is all I'm going to say to you. You know what I'm saying? Because in most things I do that I would feel like I'm pretty mediocre at is that I probably got a hundred thousand hours or several hundred thousand hours. So 10,000 hours, it doesn't take long to get 10,000 hours in there. So a focused activity and everything. So that's what I would tell people. Focus on what gets your butt excited, because that was planted in you.

And how did you find what got you excited?

I follow my natural curiosity. I've always done that instinctively. And that idea was reinforced to me by my oldest cousin, Edward. Edward is H. Edward Roberts. He's the inventor of the personal computer. That's where Microsoft came from. Bill Gates and Paul Allen and New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, way back in the 70s. He was, according to them, they told him in a phone call when he was on his deathbed, and this was when they had had all of their success and met everybody in the world. They said, we just want you to know how much we appreciate, you know, boom, boom, boom. And which is kind of surprising because Gates was always a hard ball, hard to get along with. Headstrong. And he and my cousin batted heads skinny at 19 years old. He was the only one who had the courage to go up against my cousin, who was like 6, 5, 350 pounds and a. I guess he knew.

What he wanted, right? So he didn't care. He was in the way of it.

Right. I mean. And so. But this guy was, they said, was the smartest person they ever met in all their lives. And they wanted to thank him and. Which was a very generous, nice thing for them to do, but that's the level of intelligence, this guy. So I would go. I was. I'm not stupid. I would go when I got the chance, I'd go down to South Georgia and talk with Edward and ask him questions, you know. But he told me early on when I was going to Georgia Tech to follow your natural curiosity, because he said, what happens? Which I Pretty much done that all along anyway. But it was good for those few thoughts that you can have as instincts for it's great to have them reinforced by people that are successful. And so what his point was, he said so many people get their natural curiosity beat out of them by going to school, getting in a job, getting the routine of survival kind of kills her chance to be special. And so his thing was follow the bouncing ball, whatever you know, there's a reason, something you know, you have a conversation, the subject comes out and that's the part of the conversation you remember, or you ask a question about, or you go back and follow up and check on. So pay attention to your natural curiosity because that was planted in you for you to do something to grow in a certain direction. And so that's what I would say.

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I love that, I love that follow you, your curiosity. And then when it comes to that, though, you know, oftentimes as creatives, especially as entrepreneurs, we kind of get go.

All over the place.

So how did you define success and as you achieve different levels of success, you grew financially and personally, how did it change?

Well, again, that's like you follow your natural curiosity. You follow, you know, and that directs you into certain activities and when it comes into, let's just say from a business standpoint, you got to find something to do that makes money. You know what I'm saying? I grew up and my mother used to say to me, all you do is gripe about people you see and what they do. You got to find something you like to do because sooner or later you're going to have to do something.

I'm picturing a young Larry griping, yes.

It'S just like, well, look what that idiot does. I mean, can you imagine doing that for a living? What a pile of crap that is. I guess she heard that one time too many. But I was always attracted to sales because I like people who get ahead. I like doing. I like results. Don't you like results? Absolutely, I like results. And so it's like, how can I get the biggest bang in the shortest period of time? I'm not attracted to the Pareto principle, you know, the 8020 rule. I'm attracted to this whole thing that I think Jim Collins said. I don't know what he called the wheel thing, but basically the 20% of the 20%, the 4% that drives the whole empire, what is the sweet spot of activity, of skills, of doing, of people to spend time with that you can get the biggest payoff? Because I like results. Don't you like results? Absolutely.

Well, you've definitely gotten results.

I mean, you are up there, right? I played sports. I was never fast enough to go on, thank goodness to college or the pros because, you know, I was not good enough to get out there where you could really get hurt. And so I got the experience of it in high school, but that was just far. But you know, one thing I learned, winning is better than losing. And some people never recognize winning is better than losing. Everything tastes better, Everything is easier in your mind. You know, you've still got to do sweat, blood, this and that. But if you lose, the negative impact of everything is so much bigger on you. But when you win, it's just like it rolls. All the pain you had to go through, all the aching joints, all of the wind sprints, all the stuff you hours you put in, it just seems like nothing. And it's like winning is this like. Because we all are. Nutrition, eat right and vitamins and everything. But you know the best balm cream you could rub on yourself. Winning. Oh, yes, baby, you know, Winning, winning, winning. Ah, that feel. Oh, oh, my face. Every, ah, More winning, please give me.

So let me ask you something, Larry. How do I get some of that winning bomb? How does the listeners get some of that. What are some habits and routines that you've developed that you could share with the listeners?

Number one, you got to work hard, but you don't have to work like a lunatic. Now when you find what you're supposed to be doing and you get in it and you start having results, then when you're gonna have to dial yourself back because you're just going to be like a maniac following that road. But in the beginning, as you're watching off in it, just work hard. If you work, this is the greatest. You know, I never went into any situation where I said to myself, oh, I'm going to be a big success. This will be nothing for me. I never felt like, oh, a piece of cake. No, I never had that feeling either. And I never had the feeling like, oh, just give me a little time. I know that, you know, you hear people who say, like, sooner or later I'm going to be there. You know, I never had that attitude, but I wish I had, I wish I thought of that like, oh, sooner or later, you know, people will say like, I'm just going to keep on. And then sooner or later a break will come my way. I never felt like a break was going to come my way. But I did know that most people are lazy. And so I did hear this earlier thing. If you work hard, you're going to beat 50% of the people. Because most people don't work hard. They say they work hard, they don't work hard. Or they might work hard when you're watching, but when you, you go behind.

The scenes, they're doing nothing as soon.

As you walk in the other room. And I don't know if you've ever been in a training situation with high level people, but I mean, regional vice presidents would come in and they're like, oh, Larry, you know, I just dying that I'm not jumping 100,000 a year in my income and doubling and triple my volume and, you know, having the growth and go to contests and conventions and win the big awards, you know, with a big. It just kills me that I'm not on the stage. And you know, and I said, really? I said, you really want to do that? I said, okay, well, what we'll do is call me tomorrow and we're going to get a plan. I'm going to help you do that because you can't expand your own vision. And so you need somebody who's been there, who can help show you the way. And so I'm going to go and I'm going to think about how you could get on a track and turn in. You could turn your business around. Okay, now what will happen on that? And eventually the light bulb went on. What happens after those conversations? Devin is. I have a sleepless night trying to get a game plan together to help this guy out because I'm really. I fell for it. Now what he did was go home, cook spaghetti for his family, and then watch television the rest of the night. He forgot we even had the conversation. So if I call him the next day and say, you know, let's get together, have that plan, he said, what? Oh, yeah, we were going to do that, weren't we? So you know, people just talk a good game, but they don't work. So you're going to get be work. Just make up your mind, work hard, you're going to be 50%. Then to get in the top 10%, all you got to do is find, pay attention to who are the best in that arena. Watch them, copy their patterns. Look for things that appeal to you in their schedule and how they express things, how they say things, how they set themselves up for success. You know, the equipment, the way they dress, the, the offices they have, the staffing they have, the cars they drive. Look at every presentations they use, look at all of that stuff. Don't copy everything, but copy the parts that appeal to you. And start to mold this hard work you're doing into a winning pattern with people. Because everybody's got an idea. I don't know if you play golf, but if you go out there at the driving range, everybody can tell you how to, how to hit 250 yard drive. But the thing is they can't do it right. Okay, that sounds great. Now you light up and show me how. No, no, no, no, no. And so everybody's got an opinion, but I want the opinion of the people that have got the results, because you don't. I want results and I just know how to do it. I want to know how you do it to get results. And the way you do that and the way you elevate you without results, you're not going to elevate yourself. And, and the way you do that is by copying, working hard and then copying the leaders and the highest. Find the best people you possibly can and start learning from them. And then a process, maybe you can find people above them. But now you mold yourself into a person doing the things where you're setting up the odds of your success. And we learn if we do stupid things or we do smart things, and you can learn how to be average or you can learn how to be great in the same period of time. It's a matter of what you got in your mind and who your role models are. And so get yourself some great role models and don't worry about it happening overnight, but just start to move in that direction. Then you could find yourself in a relatively short period of time in the top 10%. And that's where it becomes fine, because that's when you can start competition with the elite people kicks in. And there's something that takes over us, Gavin, when we get in, when we proved getting to the 90%. You kind of proved you learn things. You've proven to yourself you can do it. But now you give yourself permission because you got results. Somehow inside, subconsciously, your mind allows you permission to think in terms of, I wonder if we could beat them. I wonder if we could be number one. Now when you're just trying to survive, you don't have those thoughts, but you work your way up to the top 10%. Now the competition kicks in. You know, Schwarzenegger, I got that in my mind because I watched that show last night.

You must have watched it.

Yeah, he said on Netflix, by the way. Yeah, but he said that I wouldn't have. He said, in the 80s I would have not done as many action movies. I wouldn't have pushed myself that hard, except for that stupid Sylvester Stallone. He said, I just couldn't rest. And so competition brings out the best of us. But that doesn't get activated until you get the basics down, you get the patterns down. And you've had enough success to kind of convince yourself, I can play at the highest level.

And there has to be this concept, you know, in order to get to that level, you have to be willing to take some risk.

Right.

So you got to be willing to step out of that comfort zone. Can you describe us any situation or circumstances where you or a client had to take a significant risk to reach that next level?

I tell you, it doesn't seem. It is. You do take risks. Insane risk. Okay. And like what looks back at the. You look back up your shoes. I was out of your mind. When I moved to North Carolina to open up an expansion office in 1970, the end of 78, with my family, I was on commission. It was the first expansion out of Atlanta North. We'd had one guy go to Dallas, Texas, and that was pretty much it. And so plus he was at a higher level than I was. He was a regional vice president. I was like a district leader, you know, and so our division leader. And so I wouldn't even have the big title and the authority and everything. But I had to get out of Atlanta. So I went up there, had two yard sales, raised 750 bucks, selling off the garbage in our basement, got a rental truck and moved to North Carolina to launch a financial services empire. Wow. Probably a lot of risk. Lots of. I had no savings. My wife did not work outside of the home. I had a three year old and a five year old boy. And I woke, this was like early around Thanksgiving of 78. And we got in the groove but it was about March where I actually woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and I realized. I sat up in bed and was like, what have you done?

I gotta ask you, Larry, what does your wife say when you told her you were gonna do that?

At that time, she was as dumb as me. It's just like, you know. You know what? It's easier to do those things if, in your opinion, what I've got and what I'm gonna get if I stay here is totally unacceptable. It just. I don't want that anymore. It's easier to make the leap when you're leaping to something that is so exciting and you had enough success to know I could pull this off. You know, it can't be a wild, impossible dream that you've never even tried before. But if you've done some warmups and you, you know, you've got some strategy in here that. A year before I made the move to North Carolina, every day I woke up and said, okay, I'm in North Carolina today. What am I going to do? Because I pretty much do that in anything I do. Like, if I'm going to change, move, sell this house and move to another part of town, I'll go over there and the first thing I do is I'll get a chair and I'll sit outside that house or on that sidewalk and say, okay, I'm home for the evening. What's the traffic look like around here? What do you think? You know, I just kind of experience, you know, and then most of the time I don't move, you know, you put yourself there. I did that in. It's why I've got a home in Palm Beach, But I've got a half the year I'm in Aspen. But I checked out all the other Colorado towns, you know, the main ones. And I love Beaver Creek and Vail and. But, you know, if I got a similar house out there, you know, where would I go? I went to the realtors and we went and looked at the houses, and I made some special trips over there and just did the same routine, you know, like, okay, I live here, I want to go skiing. I'm waking up, it's time to go skiing. What I have to do, oh, I got to drive all the way, you know, from here, and I go there and then I got to park and I'm going to get here rather than live slope side, you know, I said, I'm not coming over here. I'm gonna live slope side. Then when you get up there, it's like in the off season, slope side is a wasteland. Nobody's there. It's like, I don't want to live here in the off season. And so it's like you work your way through it, but in Aspen, it's like a town town. I hate to say anything more about Aspen because everybody's.

You don't want everybody moving there.

I don't want everybody moving there. But, you know, it's the same thing, you know, you check it out for yourself and just say again, I was tapping into what you asked earlier on what turns me on, what do I feel right about? And so when it comes into making a jump, you gotta follow your instinct. Because the thing is, it's not going to be as big a risk to you as it would be to somebody else. And it won't be as big a risk to you as it would look like on paper. Because, you know, in your mind, because all of these factors and bullet points, pro and con on these decisions, they're not all equal. They all carry weight. It's like, well, I got all these bullet points against doing it, but I got one bullet point in favor of it. And that bullet point is I want to do it. That's it? Yeah, that's it. I got more potential. I can have more fun. That's where my excitement button goes off the charts over there in this place. I want to go, you know, like where you live. You can't live in a place you don't like. You gotta live in a part of the country that you're excited about for you to be at your best, you know, and it's just like every. Like if you go into business with other people, you've got to go into, you know, there's mergers and partnerships and this and the other. You've got to say, how does my gut feel about this person? You've got to learn what your guts are. Because I won't say how I learned all this. But the thing is in your gut, your gut, gut stomach is like your second brain. It's the second largest concentration of nerves in your body. And so when you say gut instinct, there's a reason for that. There's a lot of sensors in there sensing everything right in the center of your being. And it's in there for you to pay attention to. It's in there for your benefit, not in there to be ignored. So you still make this smart decision. You do it as quick as you possibly can, but the timing matters and all. But pay attention to what's going on inside your body, how you're reacting to people, and how you're reacting to situations when you hear it. And if you have something sticks in your mind, ask the question, don't bury it. Get it on the table. Because you so much of the time we are dead wrong about everything. You know what I'm saying? Our first instinct, and it's like, boom. Like, well, that's terrible. Blah blah blah. And they go, yeah, might seem that to you, but did you know this? And I go, oh, okay, I stand corrected. And so. But if you just bury that down and keep it to yourself, you're never going to find out. So there you go.

Million Dollar Mastermind is brought to you by Larry Whitelist. To find out more about winning strategies and how his valuable webinar has helped others break into the million dollar per year barrier, visit widelonwinning.com and then make sure to search for Million Dollar Mastermind with Larry Wydell in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts, or anywhere else podcasts are found. And if you can do me a special favor, please check out my podcast by searching Design, Life and Business, the Podcast for Leaders. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. If you have any feedback on the show, please go to Apple Podcast and leave a rating review and Larry will give you a shout out on the show in a future episode. On behalf of the team here, thanks very much for listening.