Episode 72: Preparing Independent, Successful Leaders with Millionaire Andy Young

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell, and let's get started. I'm back again with million dollar earner Andy Young. And we've been privileged to have Andy on several times. Y' all probably have had a chance to hear his story. But one thing about Andy that we did not bring out is his incredible success at developing successful independent leaders. And you're not going to be able to reach your potential with your company, with what you're doing without a team. And without a team who can come through it and take over responsibility, do things the way they need to be done, you know, learn the basics from you, but continue to develop and find their own greatness. And if they can do that under your umbrella, you have opportunities for them to continue to grow and develop. Your company can continue to grow. But Andy and I both seen people that have been in business and they go 20 or 30 years and they haven't developed squat. You know, they have, you know, maybe a handful of people that they've trained in sales and marketing have the same opportunity to make a million dollars a year, but they're making 50, you know, a handful of people making $50,000 a year, just kind of, you know, you know, grinding along, doing the same old stuff for decades. And on the other hand, in the same period of time, you have people who gone out there and built armies of independent leaders who have their own offices, their own teams. They're making hundreds, 200, 300, 400, 500, a million a year and climbing. And like, what is the difference? What does Andy learn about developing people that has worked for him? And sometimes the people you get along with, sometimes they're people that know you might have got get along with in the beginning. And then all of a sudden, they don't get along with you because you still got to be in business with them and you don't have. Just because you have some conflicts along the way doesn't mean you run them off, because that's stupid. Now you got to start all over with someone new. You got to work through conflicts, make some adjustments, make some allowances for people so they can continue to stay in place and, you know, hit a bump in the road without falling out of the car. You know, some leaders are so stupid. You know, they go through. They got 400 people, Andy, and then they have tough times and they say, well, I saw the problem, but I'm down to 40 people. And then things, you know, a year later, they said, well, we had a little blow up and then. But I solved it. Now my 40 people, I'm down to four. They don't realize they're just solving problems by destroying themselves. And you want to solve problems when they come up by keeping people and turning it out to where they're even more excited, they're even better. You're learning from the experience together and continuing to march forward. And so from the beginning of getting them started, keeping them moving, because here's what we know. What goes up will come down. And as people come in and they start to have some success, they're going to start taking things for granted. They're going to head into a slump. They don't realize it, but it's why teams don't win repeat championships. You know, it's hard for people to hold that mentality and hold that work ethic after they have a record paycheck. They get a promotion, they win a contest, go on a trip. And Andy has mastered the ability of keeping people motivated and keeping that momentum going. So Andy is a long winded introduction, but thanks for coming back. I had to get you back one more time to talk about this because you're so dad gum good at it.

Well, it's pretty simple when you're from a team standpoint. There's two kinds of coaches in the NFL. Coaches who've been fired and coaches who haven't been fired yet. Don Shula, you know, he's gone now, but I mean, winningest coach in NFL history. And even Belichick, none of them are even close to him right now. Andy Reid, they're not close. They have to coach another eight, 10 years to catch him. But the winningest coach in NFL history, Tom Landry, legendary coach, Dallas Cowboys, both of those guys fired, both of them replaced by Jimmie Johnson, legendary coach, also fired. I mean, you either win, you know, Nick Saban, Alabama, they'd lose a game, miss a step, don't win a national championship. Like, ah, you think he's lost it, he's too old, whatever. And so in the coaching world, you have layers of players or you're going to get fired. Now, in business, you're not going to get fired. You're just going to be broke or on your way to broke. And so then your business is not going to flourish. You're not going to have the players you need. So you got to think about layers of players. A couple ways to look at that is like the Pareto principle. P A R E T O. The Pareto principle came out of Italy years and 100 years ago, 200 years ago, whatever. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. So if you got a church dinner, 20% volunteer to set up the hall, cook the food, serve the food, and clean up the mess. And 80% of the people between them figure out a way to complain about something. Why do we always have chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans? Why do they set the table up this way? Why don't they do this? And so. But the bottom line with that is, if you want 20 to 20 percenters, because an old, you know, football coach said one time, winners win and losers lose. And we live in a world today where everybody gets a juice, juice box, a snack, a trophy, participation, and everybody gets a big hug and all that crap. Well, part of the issue is they got rid of dodgeball years ago. Like when Larry and I grew up, you go out on a cold playground in the wintertime and they play dodgeball, and it might be an older sibling. You get hit in the face with the ball so that back in the day, the balls were void Voit. The Voight company made the rubber balls. You might have the Voight logo and just indented into your cheek at 30 degrees. You know, because at third grade, eight years old, they got rid of dodgeball. So now what happens? All these kids get coddled. Coming up. They come out, and then all of a sudden, they go back to big, bad world and go out in the real world, and they get hit in the face, knowing what's all that about? Bottom line is, winners win and losers lose, and losers can win when they choose to win. But if you're running a business, you got to find people right now who can run it. I had my sister who was an educator, and from all the way from teacher to principal to the school system and superintendent, and she saw all of it, and she said that winners win and losers lose and 20% and 80%. You know, the Jack Welch I mean, get rid of 10% of your people and you run a better company. The guy from General Electric, bottom line on that, I asked her, I said, if you're a principal of a high school and you got 200 employees, from the custodian, the lunch people, to the teachers, your administrators, if you have 200 people in the school and they tell you in May or June, you can get rid of 10%, so you can get rid of 20 people by September, are you telling me you don't know which 20 are leaving now? We don't necessarily do that in our business. What you got to do is keep that the water flowing, still water, stagnant, water stinks. So you got to keep people coming and going. You got it? So as a football coach, you. You got to find more players. As a business person, the best way to motivate people, like right now, you know, recently when Tom Brady, when they brought in Garoppolo, you know, Brady was like, what the crap? Well, Brady did his best work after the kid came in. Because it's like, well, if you don't do it, this guy can do it. You know, Aaron Rodgers, they bring in another quarterback. I mean, the best way to motivate people is have other people looking at them. You know, raise your level, raise your game to another level. Don't get complacent. And that's critical. But you do that by bringing new people in. And then also understand that. Don't ever expect gratitude from any human being, including the ones you're related to. You want gratitude from a human being, you've lost your mind. I don't care if you buy them food when they're starving, as the food's going down their throat, you can see it go down there, you know, in their neck. They forgot where the food came from. If you want gratitude, go get a dog. They'll be happy to see you. Anytime you yell at the dog, dog will always be hopeful something's going to hit the ground. Matter of fact, if you real need to go get two dogs, don't ever think that everybody's going to be grateful, especially some of your top players. I remember Joe Gibbs, legendary coach of the Redskins, and he won three Super Bowls in 10 years. Different kinds of players. He always made sure he had the players. He made three different quarterbacks, three different systems, but he had the players. But I never forget, you know, he's a. He's a Christian guy who gives his testimony, never swears, all that kind of stuff. But he got named John Riggins on his team, and Rigo's the guy that, you know, kept a 12 pack of beer in his locker. He kind of like, you know, show up at places not. Not during football, because on the field he did it. He got the job done. But on 4th and 1, they're giving the ball to John Riggins. Bob Turley, legendary baseball pitcher for the Yankees. He was at the Orioles, and the Orioles weren't that good. And he's in Baltimore, 1954. He gets traded at the end of the year, he goes to New York, and they go to spring training down in Florida for his first. You know, now I'm a Yankee winning his team in, in major league baseball history. He gets out there and he said he goes to training camp and he's like kind of dogging it on the warm ups out as they're going around the track. He said, Mickey Mantle comes up. You could clearly smell alcohol in his breath at nine in the morning. So I don't know if Vicki Mantle went out partying, went and got breakfast and just came to practice, but Mickey Mantle's, you know, gutting it out, getting it done because it was on the field. And Bob said, he looked at Mickey, look at him and said, what are you doing dogging it out here? And Turley goes, well, I'm a pitcher. I'm only going to play like every five days. I mean, I don't really go through these drills. And Mantle said, listen, I don't care what you do in your life, I don't care how you party, whatever, whatever you do, I don't care. But on this field and we get in that stadium, part of our income is winning the World Series. Now that was back before they had like eight or 10 teams in the playoffs. You either won the American League or you were out. You won the National League. The two teams that won, that was it. And he says, Mickey Mantle with alcohol in his breath says, hey dude, when we're out here, part of what we get paid is winning the World Series. We do it different here. And so the mindset, so do you need a Mickey Mantle? Do you need a John Riggins? Well, they might not fit your pattern, but as long as they do what you ask them to do on the field of play to get the job done, you're gonna have all kinds of characters out there. I tell people I played college football in the 70s. We had people who sit there and kind of meditate and look at the locker. We had some people jumping up and down. We had some people listen. I called it head banging music like what the crap is that racket jumping up and down. We had some people, you know, act like, you know, act like they're on drugs. And it was the 70s, I'm sure someone were on drugs, you know, all I know is when it came to getting on that field, dude, it was go time. And so in a business, all I'm saying to you is if you want gratitude for people, forget it. Just run the play and get the people going to run the play. If they don't run the play and, and people say to me, what do you think I can do to motivate my Guys, I always tell them, when I see most of those people, I go in a group, it's even better. What's the best way for me to motivate my guys? I always go, I see dead people. I see dead people. Like Bruce Willis was dead the whole movie. I didn't know he was dead. You ain't got no people. You think. See, the worst thing about that is if you think you got the players you need on your team to get the job done, you. If you think you got the players, that's. That's a major problem. The good. When you ain't got no players, I say, I see dead people. The good news is you ain't got no players. The better news is, you know, you don't have any players. You better find some more players. So the great news is going to be when you figure it out and keep replacing people. And I don't tell them, don't have a press conference, hey, I'm going to replace your butt. Just bring some people in. And I tell you that that motion, the candle to the rear end, the pressure of people kind of coming in and taking the place of the next person. You know, Wally Pip wanted to take a day off, and a guy named Lou Gehrig came in and played 2,131 games in a row for the Yankees. Ironman. Yeah, he wanted to take a day off. Maybe it was a bad day to take a day off. And that happens all the time with people. And you got to find people to continually keep that motivation. But it comes from underneath with the new growth, the grassroots, the fresh air, the people coming in. And in one of my business, large business meetings, we had a group of people that they were going to a seminar in one place. They were a bunch of young guys, Hispanic. They brought drums and stuff. And they said, we got kicked out of the seminar because they said, too many young people. And there's a lot of older people because the longer you go get older people around you, I don't care where it is, okay? It's a fact. But anyway, got kicked out and they don't want them to come back. And they want to know if they can come to Miami. I thought we had about 800, a thousand people at a time, and it's getting a little stale and a little soft. I said, sure, come in and bring your drums, too. Knock over a couple chairs, and I guarantee you that was the beginning of people either moving to the sides or making a decision to compete. And that's what happens. So if you don't keep it. If you don't keep a team fresh by having new players. Lawyer Malloy, this week they won the super bowl. Bill Belichick's first Super bowl with the Patriots was 2002. He said the lawyer Malloy, because they always did a big Halloween party. That's the Patriots thing. They all get together and that's their camaraderie time. And Bill Belichick said, I used to ride with one of my players, Lawyer Malloy. We'd ride to the party every year together. And when we won the super bowl that first time, Lawyer Malloy was, he's the first guy that came up and hugged me and then I, you know, cut him right after that. He said it was the hardest thing I ever did was cutting Lawyer Malloy. And it was this. It's like 20 years later. Lawyer Malloy came in, I saw an article this week, said I was really disgusted, upset with Bill Belichick. He said, but I completely understand now. Well, if you want to, you've got to have that fresh living water coming in. You get stagnant, water starts to smell. That's when people get bitter. You got to find the people to get the job done. If don't get the job done, keep bringing people in, keep that pressure coming from underneath. And that's what's going to move your business more than anything else.

Keep people coming and going. If your business is starting to stagnate, or it will stagnate if you don't keep new people coming in. And so don't be surprised and don't think the answer is for you to tweak your system or to have some program to get the existing group to work harder. Because if they do arbitrarily jack it up for a brief contest or something, they'll immediately go back and down, which is nothing wrong with contest. But the thing is, if you think the permanent solution to lack of growth is to get your people to work harder with a carrot or stick type thing or a better system, you know, you're deluding yourself. And Andy, you'll find this humorous. I subscribe. I don't, you know, I don't know why I do this, but I, I asked myself why, But I know why. I subscribe to McKinsey Research on email just so I could see the pablum and the nonsense they're sending out to, to the corporate level, big time Fortune 500 global leader corporations. And you have, you know, that's, that's the pipeline of phony information and half baked information from professors and egghead fake experts into the corporate world so they can get in and get a job as a consultant. You know, they have their consultants and they have their books and they programs and certifications for leadership that they put people through. So you know, they're, they're fishing for business. They always come up with these things. Get a load of this. My head started spinning on my shoulders when I read this last week. During the quarantine years ahead. During the quarantine time, CEO, you have to. Corporate leaders need to address and think about ways to deal with the emotional health of their C level leaders and not just assume that they're okay because they've been going through traumatic times at home. And you need to think about how to deal with them. It's almost like somebody died and you got the grief counselors for your C level people, you know. And my first thought for that, my first thought, if I'm a CEO of a corporation, the last thing I'm going to worry about is the emotional health of my leaders coming through. And my first thing, Andy, was go ahead and fire two, three, four of their asses and see how that sparks up motivation at the top level of leadership inside your company. We don't have to have you here, baby. And there's something about totally right, the reality check. It's like these dumbasses. Any CEO that would waste time, you know, it's kind of like I'm CEO of Fortune 500 company, you know, I was at a table with a bunch of million dollar earners the last weekend before they shut down the quarantine here in Aspen on a Friday night, Saturday night. And it was like elbow to elbow in there. You could barely hear each other. And some of the guys had read my book and they were all had organizations and companies of hundreds of people, you know, and one of them crossed the table, I could barely, barely hear him. And he said, what's the main thing in running your company? What do you, you know, what do you point to? And I thought for a minute, I'm at dinner and I'm getting asked this question and I just hollered across. I, I said results.

Totally. That's exactly right.

Results, you know, that's how you manage it. That's how you keep people on track. That's how you keep them fresh. You keep results. If you don't get results, your butt's going to be out on the street. And even if you own the company, like you said, you're not going to get fired, but you're Going to run it into the ground and your income is going to go nowhere. And so let's talk about one aspect of running, you know, working with people and that, you know, the lesson to draw from this is so far is you got to get enough of the right kind of people where you can be constantly, you have a positive environment. You know, you set the tone, you give them simple direction, but then you let peer pressure take over to bring the best out of. Because like you said, winners will win when they want to. And the one thing a winner doesn't like is getting beat. And I'll never forget Jeff Castellin who said one time, he said, because he had spent 20 years as a high school and junior high principal before he got into business, and he said, even a little girl in junior high school, if you put her on a track running against another little girl, he said, she's going to run her best time ever if there's somebody else in the other lane, you know, rather than just timing her in a 40 yard dash or something like that, everybody from the pros to kids are going to run better if they've got somebody else in the other lane. And it's the thing like, how long can you hold your breath? Well, we can get in where we just time you by yourself, or we can put somebody else next to you and you both go under the water at the same time and see who gives up first. You know, you're going to stay down there a whole lot longer if you're going against somebody else. So that peer pressure and you keep new people coming in because there's nothing more exasperating to a winner than getting beat by a new person. But beyond that, Andy, it's a matter of stretching their vision. Going back to winners will win when they choose to win. There's something about, you know, they say the one thing you can't do for yourself is stretch your own vision. And you need to be around a situation, an environment, other people. You need to hear conversations that kind of take you beyond your frame of reference that you're dealing with now. And, you know, we did some things over the years. Art Williams did things with us. It was always his idea to take us to the, you know, biggest and best places in the world because he wanted us to get the idea that we were, you know, gonna be the biggest and best company of financial services there is out there. And of course, that's what happened. And so you have to do things to lay the foundation mentally for people to realize things for themselves that's why I had all the conventions in Aspen over the years. And that's why, you know, you shifted over to Keystone, among other things. That's why you've taken. This is the first of at least a decade, I don't know how many years of bringing a group down to Mar A Lago on Mother's Day when they close it, you know, you're bringing, you know, your elite people down there, and you have all kind of things you've always done to get your people behind closed doors up into New York to when Citigroup was the number one company in the world. You took advantage of your friendship with, with Sandy to get people into that, the guest house, you know, his private corporate elite, inner circle, inner sanctum, retreat center. And, you know, we took people up to New York, you know, you know, hundreds of people on busloads every month up to Wall street to expand them. But, you know, you've made that a priority for yourself over the years. And talk about the impact of that.

Well, one of the things that happened with me, 1985, you know, you took me, you ran a contest, took me out to Colorado. There's only six, eight, 10 people. It was a small group, but I'd never seen Colorado. I'd never seen snow like that, never seen mountains like that, and fell in love with Colorado, you know, and basically, I tell people, you get around people, expand your vision. You find a hole in the fence, you drive a bus through it. I mean, I saw it. I was like, crap, I'm gonna come back. And basically, I've. I've had thousands of people go back because of. Between your meetings, my meetings, everything we've done, we've had thousands of people experience that. We, over 500 people stay two nights and three days at Mar a Lago. I probably spent 60 nights at Mar A Lago and I don't. I don't even know of any president of any country or, you know, hardly anybody spent 60 nights there. But over the time, even once we got in, we stayed in and took care of the people. People say, well, how do you, how do you handle the staff? And at Mar A Lago? I said, well, if you can't handle the staff at Waffle House, you can't handle Mar A Lago. People are people. Be nice to them, tip them, thank them. Do what you're supposed to do. Leave it cleaner than when you came. You know, we use. Bob, we saw this big condo, one of the largest condos in Colorado, and we bring, Shoot, we probably have 5, 6800 people go through it. I mean, you could put about 300 in there at once. It's massive. But that place is cleaner. When we leave, we pay for all the food. I mean, he doesn't have to lift a finger to have to worry about anything getting broken or stolen. Any place you get in, whether it was Sandy Weil and his guest house in Greenwich, Connecticut, we go up there and it was Sandy Weil and Jamie Dimon would come. We'd have Jamie Dimon, you know, the great CEO at JPMorgan Chase. I mean, he'd do our tours for us. You know, I mean, you find a way and then you make them feel special. I remember Sandy Weil, the billionaire at a big meeting one time, he goes, I just love Andy. He's telling like 40,000 people this. I love Andy. You know, he gives us those great jackets every year. I mean, the jacket was a forty dollar jacket. But you make people feel special, understand that people have a flashing sign around their chest, make me feel special. And some of them have a flashing light. They got flashing lights like Christmas lights blinking. Make me feel real special. We'll find a way to do that. And then your top performers. So any place I ever got in that was great, I always took hundreds of people back because you can't expand your own vision. But if you bring them back, then what happens is the winners choose to win. And that's, you know, if you put them in an environment, any environment. So winners win and they're going to win. Winners going to find a way to win. The losers are people who aren't winning now because everybody likes to make excuses. Well, they, you know, they're good people. I got all that. When they choose to win, then they're going to. In the meantime, I got to keep them coming and going. I got to keep an environment where you're going to fight to go to a higher level. You know, if you want to play at the higher level, you play at the high level. Quit. Quit worrying about whether everybody fits your personality. They're not going to, you know, going back to the Turley story, General Grant and we're in the Civil War. You know, Meade had kind of blown it coming back from Gettysburg. And friend Lincoln's about to lose the country and Grant shows up and he starts winning everywhere and they go. But he smokes these nasty cigars and drinks too much liquor. And Lincoln's like, well, what kind of liquors he drink? What kind of cigars he smoke? I'm getting to a case each. The man Wins. Not everybody's going to necessarily suit your personalities. As long as they do everything moral, they fulfill their obligations, they run your system, they do what they're supposed to. Quit trying to cookie cutter like the old IBM days. That's one of the reasons, you know, early in my career when we were involved with a big corporation, they came, want everybody in a coat and tie and the same color ties and French cuff shirts for the cufflinks. And I'm like, I'm an old offensive tackle. I had to call three people to find out what a French cuff shirt was. French cuff, they go, tell me that's the kind you put cufflinks in. It's like, well, I don't, I don't wear that crap. You know, they don't, they don't make those in 18 and a half by 37 sleeve. Yeah, they finally did. I look for them but, but you got to find people that are hungry, want to win, get the job done. You got to keep them coming and going.

Yes. Not you, you know, it's them. It's not all about you, it's all about them and it's all about the results. It's not like you're selling your soul for success, but you're letting people be people. And if you want to have influence in people's lives, first of all you have to have a relationship with them. You've got to respect them, you've got to accept them as they are. And any faults they might have that are glaring to everybody else in the world, well, they're more likely to come around and round off the rough edges if they're in a good environment, if they've got good support and they've got, you know, they can see another, see their way on their own to making those adjustments. But like Lincoln never served anything in the White House but water. But here he's out, got Grant, who's a drunk, who's. And you know, Lincoln wasn't smoking cigars and so you know, he was basically a monk. But you know, he was sick and tired of the weak lily livered generals that wouldn't attack. And he's on their attack, attack, attack. And he, and you know, they said, well, we need to wait a week and this. And then, then the rebel armies would, you know, they, they'd lose the timing. And you know, now the war is extended, you know, but he had with Grant somebody who would attack and was going to cut through the musters. Grant understood we got to get results, we got to get it now, you know, we or Grant understood we could get beat. You know, you got to have a leader understand. The reason Lincoln did that was he understood, hey, we could get beat. You need to realize you can get beat. And you need to be glad that you got somebody around you when you get them around you that can help you keep from getting your butt beat. And then worry about the small stuff later and talking about, you know, an example of finding a hole and running through it, you know, drive a bus through it. What that is, is like Art Williams set that principle. Well. We'd go to big meetings of any kind. We go to big resorts, or we'd go on big trips. He would always say, whatever you see me doing for the company, you start thinking about some point in the future you doing that yourself with your organization. In other words, be thinking about getting that big to where you can be doing these kind of things on your own. You know, that's one of those simple little principles he planted in our mind that drove all kind of. So when I looked around and I saw anybody in the company doing anything, it's like, why can't I do that? You know, the reason I went to Colorado and did meetings out there was I heard that, you know, there was a guy in the company who was doing that and it was like Keystone. Well, what am I, a second class citizen? I can take my people out to Colorado and then I'll go beyond that. We'll go to Aspen. That's the number one spot. And so you start thinking like when we were in Boca Raton at the convention the first time, you know, it's like a thousand people, the convention center and Art, you know, the thing is, one day, you know, it's kind of mind blowing. One day. Think about having your team here. Well, we did that a few times. And then, you know, I said the same thing there and then, believe it or not, John Lennon brought a thousand people down there one time, you know, and so, you know, you set these, you know, it's important to plant the right seeds in your people's minds. But as an example of finding a hole and then driving a bus through it is when how you like people say, well, I wish I knew Sandy Weil the way Andy does it. Well, you know, we had that senior leadership or the senior national sales director meeting up there with Sandy one time. You can only have 24 people. And something happened to Bill Arinder where he couldn't go at the last minute. And I don't know how it worked out, but we were able to get Invitation for you to take Bill's place. And so, you know, the first lunch, we're there in the morning. And the first lunch you went out and, you know, it came time to eat. It was like you and Sandy Weil were like the first ones through the line. And he comes in, you're already sitting there, he sits next to you. You know, you seize the opportunity. You make friends with him. It's not long before you're bringing up your own group of 24 to. I think you're the only one who ever brought his own group up to the guest house. But you saw that opening, you took advantage of it, and you turned that into a huge friendship and got all kind of advantages about that. You might describe that real quick. Because people say, you know, there's opportunities out there if you look for them and jump on them, you know, so go ahead.

Yeah. And one of the tricks about that is. So we were there, and it was the small group, and I went over to you, and there was all kinds of things happening. The company was changing. You said, you need to kind of make some friends around here. And I wasn't even part of that group. I got in, like you said, through the fence, because they had somebody. Bill, a render couldn't make it. I get up there, so it's time for lunch. I go right to lunch. I don't. I don't know anybody, really, to have friends, all that kind of stuff. Any friends there? So, I mean, I do. They're all my heroes, but I wasn't in their category. So I go get my food, sit down. Sandy Wild comes over and goes, hey, Bruce, you mind if I sit by you? Well, my name's not Bruce, and I didn't tell him my name is not Bruce. I just said, yeah, sure, sit down. We sat there and we talked a while. And he figured out, finally I was Andy. And I figured, crap, that must be where he sits. There were four big tables in that room. So at dinner, I went over to the furthest seat from that one to get away, not the grandstand. And then he comes over that. That part, and he goes, hey, Andy, you mind if I sit with you? And I'm like, yeah, come on, sit down. And we talk and talk and. But what happened is everybody was over there, like during the cocktail hour and all the free time, talking to Sandy Weil, the billionaire. You know, Carnegie hall, the Weill Recital Hall, Sloan Kettering Weill Memorial Cancer center over there, kissing Sandy's ring and butt and everything else. I go over in the Corner. And Joan Weil, his wife, is there. And I talked to Joan, and I said, this is really, you know, tough stuff. So if you're taking notes, listening to this, make sure you get this down. I asked two questions. How are the kids? And how are the grandkids? And then wait for answer. Okay, I don't know if you can handle that. That's tough stuff. And 30 minutes later, she came up for air. And when I asked him the next day about taking my group there to do the same thing we had done with that spectacular estate, he started laughing, goes, well, we don't do that and everything. But he said, what have you been doing with my wife? And I said, what do you mean, what have I been doing your wife? He goes, well, she thinks you're the greatest guy here. And I said, I don't know. We just chatted for a while. She thought I was the greatest guy there because I'm, A, the only person that talked to her, and, B, I just asked her a couple questions and listened. And she's pulling out pictures, and she thinks I'm a great guy. I mean, that. That wasn't really that hard. And then ultimately said, yeah, we took our group there four different times. And once we got there, I realized, well, cocktail hour. You could probably double the number there. You can only have 26 for the dinner and stay there, but we could probably have 52 with Jamie Dimon, Sandy Wild, and all those people in there. Bob, lift. So we doubled that for the cocktails. It's like, well, they got a baseball field. It's a big old state. I said, how about if I get Bob Turley, the former Yankee, and if you win a contest, we bring 200 people for a picnic, send them out, keep the 56 for the cocktails, then 26 of them get to do the whole thing. And so Bob Turley, Cy Young Award winner, he pitched to you. It was so funny because we had 200 people there for the picnic on the estate. And he struck out all the guys and let all the girls hit. He was throwing knuckle balls, curveballs with the softball. So funny. He's laughing. But the hot dogs and hamburgers for that picnic that I had to pay for, because you pay the freight. It was like $40 a person back in the day. And so everything, once again, is like the Colorado condo. It's like Mar a Lago. You treat people right. Like Mabel, the person who ran the house. She lived in the house, you know, I gave her tips and her flowers. And for the cocktail thing she said. Mr. Weil said, it's okay if we keep all the liquor. So I was a guy, had my own cabinet down in the basement. And I always sent Mabel stuff. Well, everybody's like, well, who's Mabel? The old lady in the corner. She's the one that runs the house. So you gotta leave it cleaner. And that was a big thing for them. Anybody used it, always screwed it up. Don't do that. I mean, I don't care if you go into the kitchen and make sure the little shiny part underneath the stove burners cleaner than when you got there. Those little things add up. Giving them a jacket adds up. Making them feel special. I don't care if they're a billionaire. I don't care who they are. Make everybody feel special. And then you find that hole in the fence and they get in. And my thing I tell about guys is, get in the room and stay in the room. The way you stay in the room is you do it right. You treat people right. I don't care who they are. Treat them all right.

Thank you, Andy. That was priceless. I'm so glad we've gotten this on tape. For the current and future generations, I know it's going to have a powerful impact. So thanks so much, Andy. I mean, this has just been great. I appreciate you taking the extra time to do this with me. So anything you want to leave people with as kind of a last word. Because we've done four of these so far. Any last word you want to wrap this up with and send them to any kind of websites, books, or anything.

That.

You have going on, or you. You. You know, you're excited about that. You would like to get people's attention on.

Well, first, I just said before I finish up, I just appreciate you over the years, Larry. You've been a great mentor, great friend, and that makes all the difference. If you're in a business, it matters who you're in business with. You got to get the right system, got to get the right vehicle, but the right people. And, Larry, you've just been a great guy there, and I appreciate that. But my last point is. And I didn't. I didn't come in and join and start a business because I never owned a business. I never took a business course. But I didn't come into business to buy the choir robes for the church. I didn't come into business to make the down payment for the church in the church school. I didn't come in here to, you know, save the world. That kind of Stuff. And I didn't come in to raise thousands of dollars for John Walsh and missing children. I didn't come in to send tens of thousands of dollars in supplies and clothes for people from Hurricane Katrina, five truckloads. I didn't come in to deliver over a million dollars worth of goods to the earthquake, earthquake Relief Fund in Haiti. Deliver over a million dollars worth of goods of that. I didn't come into business to send tens of thousand dollars to all kinds of terrible project products, projects, excuse me. But because I built a big business, I was able to do every single one of those things and more. And the main thing I would say is because I grew up in that family where, you know, the root, you know, money and all that kind of stuff. And it's bad. Everybody has money's going to hell. It takes money to do great things. And I built a business where as a byproduct, I was able to deliver millions of dollars of goods to charitable needy folks who were in a bad situation indirectly and directly. And so if you go build a business, do it the right way, get around the right people, you can make a huge difference as well.

All right, Andy, thanks for getting that in. That needed to be said. And say hello to the family, say hello to the team, and looking forward to talking to you right after Memorial Day. And so thanks so much.

Sounds good. Appreciate it, Larry.

All right, this is great. Thank you. 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 Dooll Mastermind episodes and check out my WDell Academy YouTube channel and visit us on WDL on winning.com I'm the million Dooll Mastermind. And until next time, go, go, go.