Episode #662 - Winners Have Lots of Goals - Adversity Builds Character with Larry Weidel & Jevon ...

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.

So how do you approach failure and mistakes? And what do successful people do differently from when others face failure?

Do not believe that. Successful people don't gripe and complain like everybody else, okay? Because successful people care about what they're doing. They act intentionally. They do it with thought and they do it with energy. So as a result, they get more pissed than most people when things go bad or things go wrong, you know what I'm saying? Because they got more invested in it, but they learn the lesson. So no matter what's coming out of your mouth, that the anger, the this, that if you're around a successful person and they're griping and groaning and this and the other, don't get too upset because those suckers are going to probably be over that in about 15, 20 minutes and they're going to come back with a vengeance of like, okay, here's what I'm going to check. Here's what I'm going to do now, because that's what you got. You learn that when things go wrong, you can do something about it. You know what I'm saying? And maybe, maybe something was wrong because you did something stupid. Maybe it was because someone let you down. Maybe it was because it doesn't matter. The thing is, if something went wrong, the first thing you got to say is maybe it was not supposed to go right. And maybe that's the greatest thing for me, that I make some kind of adjustment. I don't move to that town, don't move to that house. I don't go into business with that person. I don't take that job. I don't get accepted to that school. I don't, I don't marry that person or that relationship doesn't. It's like ask. You get to the point when you're in a pattern of winning. Devin, to answer this, it's like goals, first of all, your goals. Winners have lots of goals. Goals are like flowers to a winner. And they don't have like one goal. You know, I'm a business, I want a business. No, in their life. They want great things in all of their life. So they've got all kind of great, a bouquet of goals. And so they're working in all these different areas with this approach, putting the effort in, following the right patterns. And we had this couple over here last night looking at, watching. What happened was they brought lunch over and then the wife stayed and watched us work for a couple of three hours. And the husband took off for a walk because he likes to walk. And when he came back, he came back with flowers for, you know what I'm saying? It's just like these. And you look at people have successful marriages and you say, I can learn from that. But so, you know, he's got success going in his marriage now on the health side. He's got some health problems he's having to deal with. And so when you have disappointments in certain areas, it's easier to get over the anger, the frustration of it because you have success has happened in so many other areas. As a result, it allows you a cushion to re center yourself. Because when, no matter when you have something terrible going on, when you have good things happening in your life because everything doesn't go off, sometimes it does, but usually everything does not go. I've had that happen one time. To me it's like 75 things went wrong all at once over a period of time, a year. And you're not going to survive that. But right in the moment you're not going to survive it. But that's just, you know, that doesn't happen at all. So usually you have 74 things happening. Good. And one thing just really pisses you off. And so it makes it easier for you to keep a perspective because you're not a one trick pony, right. And you learn how it's easier for you to be what I would say to laugh things off or to let them roll off of you. Like if you're worth a billion dollars, you have a billion dollars in A S&P 500 fund and whatever that no matter what happens, you're solid. You got a billion dollars in a fund. When you have a financial, you invest in the stock market on your own or some company or whatever, and you lose your money or they don't do that. Well, somehow you're very philosophical. That was the word. It's easy to be philosophical. Oh, it's just money. Yeah. Because you got a billion dollars when you're having Successes in other areas of your life. It's easier to be philosophical about one or two areas of your life when you have a blow up because you've got these other things to encourage you and support you and to really hold you on track. And so I would say that the experience of going through, you never get to the top without tons of failures. That's how you learn. That's what you say to people when they say, oh, you're a genius. You're look at Jevin, he's a podcasting genius. And whatever you're doing, he's a genius. Yeah. When they used to say that to me in the past, I would say if I was a genius, I sure wish I told myself that 20 years earlier because I'd say whole lot of pain, you know what I'm saying?

Absolutely, yeah. And that's what they don't see, is that behind the scenes, all the failures, but always say success is insulated by failure. That's how you know you truly reach success, is when you can overcome those things. And it also shows you if you.

Want it or not. Right.

How bad do you want it? Are you willing to go through the fire to get there? And once you get it, man, it can be taken away. It's something different.

And that builds that.

They always say adversity builds character. And that's so true.

One aspect to that of why that's true is that when you go through a disaster or failure, whatever, you don't go through it without learning something. And so when you're thinking about the rest of your life, you go, how I move forward now, I'm aware of that. I know to watch out for that, whereas before I didn't know to watch out for that. Every failure you go through allows you to increase your odds of success the next time. And the great thing that I try and pull out in the podcast is that these lessons are transferable. You might fail in one area of your life because you ignored something, didn't pay enough attention to it. But that same lesson, you might be headed for a failure in another area of your life where you got that same pattern of neglect, let's say. And all you say, oh, I'm going to have the same thing happen over here unless I fix this. And so it allows you to make constant corrections because things are going bad, things are going good, and it allows you to make those adjustments because you're living a successful life. It's constant adjustments. Yeah.

And earlier you mentioned something, you mentioned about emulating those who are successful so that brings to mind mentorship and learning from others and how that's valuable in this journey of success that we're talking about here. So I gotta ask you, have you had any role models or mentors along the way who guided you on your journey?

Yeah. And part of you growing up and maturing is when you can get to the. You know, you have some success, but then you reach the point where you realize, oh, if I hadn't had so and so in my life, I wouldn't have known to do this, and I wouldn't have done that, and it could have been a disaster. And the ideal is if you grow up with these role models. But I don't think any of us grow up with enough mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and people in the community and friends of the family that are all great loving, that are looking out for us, that are teachers at school that take our interest in art and say the encouraging thing. If you're fortunate enough, you'll get one or two or three or four of those along the way. I was more fortunate because first of all, I had my cousin Edward. And then when I got into. Of course, when I was younger, he was eight years older than me. So when we grew up, family reunions, he was trying because he was so smart and restless. He would look at the younger cousins as beings to be tortured and then killed. And so he would. Oh, yeah, yeah. He would take you out and say, you know, be the target. I've got a new bow and arrow. He said, hold this apple out there. You know, I'm going to see if I can hit it. But as we got. He got older, I got older. I could go to him, and I got great advice from him. And before I went to Georgia Tech, he's somebody who got like 6 or 8 degrees and never got anything but an 8. So I went to Edward and said, before I go to first class, what should I do? How can I maximize my odds of success? Now, truthfully, I never used any of his advice, very little of it when it came to school. I just did not have the interest, but at least I knew how to do it. He told me exactly what to do. But I did get the degree, but I didn't get the straight A's. And so the thing is that you. So cousin Edward, then at college there was through. I got into a thing called Campus Crusade for Christ. And I met a lot of solid leaders there that had all kind of wisdom. But even at Georgia Tech, the first week on campus, I met Two graduating fifth year seniors who gave me great mentorship advice as a young. You know what they told me? Don't they say about your grades? I said, what? You know, because I grew up having to study hard for everything I got, you know, and I get good grades and all that. And I figured I'm going to study. And this is one of the reasons I didn't use any of Edwards advice he gave me. He said, don't worry about your grades, just get through it. And I said, what are you talking about? Repeat that please. And I said, how about when you go to a job interview and try to get a job, they don't care what your grades are. He said, unless you're going to be a research scientist and you're too dumb for that. So it's like, you know, don't sweat it. Can you get along with people? Are you fun to be around? You know, things like that. And so that's why, you know, that was great advice. But when I got out and got in the job market, I eventually after, pretty soon I ran into, I think everybody you work with is a mentor to some degree or you work for. Is a mentor to some degree, good or bad. Because when you work with them, they're trying to get you to do things the way they want you to do it. And you got, you're going to learn just by observation whether this, you can see how they managed, you see how you responded, the way they treat you and you're learning there is this good or this not good? I'm not going to do it like him or I am going to do it like him. And then you. So I think everybody you spend lots of time with in a superior that are over, you know, management type position is going to be a mentor one way or the other. And so that's why when you're in negative environments, get out of there as quickly as possible because you want to have a positive impact, because you pick up that negativity, negativity or positivity is like a virus, you know, you're going to pick up.

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Notes. In fact, I'll tell you a story about negativity the 10th of the month. The guy I was Mr. Outsider when I got graduated from Georgia to check. I had a degree in building construction. And so we built houses north side of Atlanta. I was Mr. Outside. I'm the one who actually built, got construction superintendent, worked with the subcontractors, got the houses built. And the guy worked for was Mr. Inside. He did all the numbers and he was terrible at it. And we always wound up losing money and we'd sell houses. Oh man, we sell the houses as soon as they came out of the ground, sold. But it was like we lost 20 grand. And I said, how did we lose 20 grand? Well, all I know is you wasted a bunch of nails or something and so it was always my fault. So the 10th of the month was when he realized, he never admitted it, but he realized how bad a money manager he was because we always be out out of money. And he would come out with a swollen neck and he would jump down my throat, you know, because it's like the only way he could get this tension out of his neck was drive around, find me and then just unload on me. And then, you know, all of a sudden he felt healthy, refreshed, and like he had solved the problem because he had dumped the blame on me. Well, by this time I would have a neck, I'm like a swollen toe. And I would go home to my wife and I would la la la la la la la. I found that she didn't take the neck. And so I thought that's not a transferable technique to all the negative.

She said, hold on, you better get that neck out of there before you get home.

Right? And so you want to get a situation where they're not giving you the neck. But I got with a guy when I got. I changed industry from construction to financial services. And I had God's grace and good fortune to be trained by Bullet Bob Turley, who was a pitcher with the Yankees. And in the 58 World Series, he actually won three out of the four games. And so he's a Cy Young winner, Hickok belt winner, but he was a player rep for the Yankees. So he played in there and went to eight World Series. And so he was very successful in business and a great mentor for like three years. We would, you know, he Bought me lunch for three years and he stayed on my case for three years. But then after that, or from that association, the president of our company, Art Williams, was a second type mentor. And so I've just had. And you know, we've revolutionized the whole life insurance industry. When we started, there were 635,000 life underwriters and 4,000 companies and they were all, and they were pretty much whole life companies. And we were the term buy term and investor difference group. We were the enemy as far as they were concerned. But it took a lot of effort to kind of revolutionize that industry and get the term insurance story out there. But we had a strong leader and that was Art Williams. And so he became a close personal friend over the years. So I realized that I did have some great mentors, but at the time I probably wasn't paying as much. I didn't realize that from a mentor standpoint. But I would say to people like, well, that's one of the reasons I felt obligated to write the book, to get these principles out to people. Because it doesn't matter how you learn the principle, if someone clues you in personally, pat you on the shoulder and explains it to you, or if you get it out of a book or a tape, it just matters that you get it. And so when I figured I felt like I could help people compress about 10 years of picking up odds and ends on winning, but put it into a book form. And then when I've got the course, the serial winner course off my website, that's what that's all about. Help compressing time frames of getting that information in your head. And so I also was listening to courses, reading books, listening tapes. Most people are successful. You'll find the bulk of them are listening to tapes, are reading books on YouTube, are going to courses. And now the mastermind group aspect has expanded and there's mastermind groups pretty much everywhere, you know, at different levels. But also there are entrepreneur basically clubs or associations in most decent sized areas where you can go in with people that are entrepreneurs and kind of like the old Rotary Club used to be and exchange ideas, network and pick up insights from people who are going through the same thing. And so there's a lot of things available for you even if you don't have that wise old Warren Buffett as your uncle. Yeah.

Do you have any like specific resources or books that you like to share with the listeners that have influenced your thinking?

Jevin, we're definitely off base if we don't mention the Bible that's probably number one. And especially for business principles, Proverbs, one of the most successful guys I ever knew, made it his. I think there's 31 chapters in Proverbs. He made it his mission to read Proverbs once a month because it just kind of reprogrammed his brain. But there's all the standards. Win friends and influence people and think and grow rich and things like that. I don't think that I know. If we start naming books, everybody, what you'll have is. You probably have one. I've been in it so long, I've read so many. They all kind of roll together. But what you usually find. This is kind of like learning golf or learning to ski. The book that comes in, it gives you the last piece of your puzzle, usually becomes the most important. This is the greatest book. It might not have had that impact if you hadn't read. Listen. You know, read all the books you read before that.

4.

Yep. And listen to all the tapes you'd listen to. But then when you get that one last book that kind of pulls it all together, puts the missing piece in there, then that becomes your favorite book. And when people you get on a podcast, this is the one you want to go to. But that's what I would say is that they're all important. Anything that has you thinking about results, taking charge of your life. And I think read as many of these books out there that you can, but read them fast because read them for ideas that can impact you. If you've got to read, struggle to get through a book. It's just. It probably doesn't have any magic in there. You know, you read books for magic. We listen to people for magic. Because what you want. We need magic in our lives. You know, we need things that gets us on fire. We can get ideas and phrases and stories that get us on fire, and then we can use that to get other people on fire. And so that's some, like, thoughts about. But a constant stream. I don't think a book. I think you need to go find. Build a pipeline of this stuff into your veins until you get so successful where your schedule is just covered up, accomplishing things and passing on what you know to other people that you really don't have time to read a whole lot of books yourself. And everything you're. You become a dispenser of. Of this information yourself because you've got it soaked into your body and you're not like, soaking it up like a sponge. But I think the quicker you can Let yourself be a sponge and get super saturated and then turn to where you're now using this information the better.

Well, I would say you're at that point, Larry. I believe that you're at that point where now you are the dispenser because you have given so much value. So what impact do you hope to leave behind through your success?

I would say, of course, it's going to be in people and people that can do things. And when Art Williams had this great phrase and I kind of used it as a reason to write my book, he said, the world is full of people who almost do things. Just about everybody, you know, they want to do something, they want to do something, and then they might even try it. But the world, you know, you got all kind of people that almost pull theirself. Almost did. Even in investing, you know, if I bought that farm, you know, I could have got it for a thousand dollars an acre. They just went for 40,000 an acre, and it just turned around. If I bought that shopping center or whatever, I had a chance. And. But the thing is, that doesn't matter. The thing is, he said, the world is full of people who almost do things. We need more people who do things. And so one of the greatest, I guess, the legacy that I can hope for is people who I've helped transform, develop skills, mindset, or whatever, to where they can become people who do things and make a positive impact on the world. Because make no mistake, the world is going to have unlimited numbers of negative new stuff happening all the time. And we are in desperate need of as many people as possible who know how to make positive new things happen in every area of life so we can have a country and a world worth living in and a great place for the kids to grow up in. And so that's what I would say. But also, if I could be useful in directing people to the Lord Jesus Christ, that would be the highest aim.

Well, I think you're doing a fantastic job through everything that you're doing, Larry, of doing both directing people to Jesus Christ and just making doers. Right? Really planting those seeds as you talked about with, through your books, through your teachings, through your podcast. So just continue to do it.

Larry.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to be on the other side and put you on the other side of that chair for where you are a guest. Do you have any parting thoughts that you'd like to leave with your listeners?

I would say, well, let me just return the compliments. Say you have been a very pleasant Surprise in how well you've conducted this. So congratulations and thank you. Look forward to talking again and again down the road. Yes, sir. And feel free to call me anytime anything comes up. But I would say that to pass, you know, because I give people the same thing. A last word. I would say, press on, keep your foot on the pedal. Your car. I don't care if you got a jalopy or Ferrari, it ain't going to go anywhere if you don't hit the accelerator. And of course, you know you're going to tap the brakes from time to time. You got to steer where you go, but not. It doesn't matter if you're. You're tapping on the brakes or you're steering and your foot is not on the accelerator. So in all areas of our life, we've got to say to ourselves, good things happen to us. Bad things happen to us. Terrible things, nightmare things happen. Whatever happens, it's like, keep your foot down, press on, move forward. Because the thing is, no matter how lost your cause may be, at any point you take one step forward. I have no idea what to do. No idea what to do. I just lost. I'm confused. And I always tell them, wrong. That's wrong. You know, one thing you can do, you know, there's one thing left before you blow your brains out. I can do this. Before you give up all hope, you know, there's one thing you could do now, if you take that one step, everything can change. You know, it's just amazing how, you know, our viewpoint we have of the world is where we are right now, but you can take one step over to the side and like, oh, the light comes in a different angle. Or I stood up. You know, it's just amazing how things can change. And like Bill Arenda, my good friend Bill Arinder says people are wondering, am I good enough to do it? He said, you may not be good enough to do it today, but you may be good enough to do it tomorrow. And so just keep stepping forward, folks, and step into that positive future that is really waiting for you and that the rest of us in the world need for you to go make happen, because you'll make things better for all of us. Absolutely. Beautifully said, Larry. It has been an honor and a pleasure.

Thank you for those last words. Really appreciate you having me. And remember, everyone, keep ascending.

Keep going for it. Believe. Believe in God, but also believe in you.

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