Episode #748 - Lessons in Talent, Hustle, And Never Giving Up with Kelley Thornton

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

That's one of the principles that I've learned in financial services. You know, we built a fastest growing company of financial services and now we're the largest, you know, in the, the world. But it's like you're always recruiting, you know, and, and most, and the thing is, most great companies grow from within. You know, it's like I know a guy who knows a guy or I know a girl who knows a girl. You know, that, that type thing. And if you're not looking, they'll go right past you.

Yep. Yeah, it's constant. It's constant, you know, and if I, and I might engage with somebody that I really want to hire, but it's not, I can't bring them in right now. A lot of great hires are opportunistic hires. A lot of great hires are opportunistic. I just, you know, there's a guy that's been consulting for me for a couple years and he's a, he's just an A player. Like, gotta have him on board. I couldn't hire him because of the level of financial commitment I needed to make. It was just, it's just way beyond what I could afford to pay him. So I brought him on as a consultant and he's been a consultant for several years. And I met with him to discuss our 2024. I don't want to go in detail, but plans. And I just met with him on a month ago, we're in December, right now is in November. And you know, he decided, I think I'm going to change my job. I'm going to do this. And then, you know, I'm interested in working for you full time and I can, I can move my salary needs around if you can do this and I can do that. And I said a player, he's coming. We're going to make this work. And so now I've got another, I've got another A player. It's just like a sports team. Nobody, nobody wants, and I mean this nicely, I really want to. No elite talent wants to work with subpar talent.

Right?

They don't. They don't. I mean, you don't want to be on a team. You might love your, you know, you're talking about baseball. You know, you might love your second baseman, but if he's not going to help you win. You don't really want them on the team. It's not a personal thing. You love the guy, you go have beers with him, play baseball, but you really don't want him on the team. And you get to a certain level where if you bring in great talent, they only want to surround themselves with great talent.

Well, I think a lot of that, what you're getting at is the reason why there's no easy answers, which again is the advantage of talking to you because it's the. Speaks to what Charlie Munger said about companies and he always had great contempt for people who acted like they were responsible. Their hard work and their genius was responsible for their success. And his thing was, in my experience, he said most super successful people have worked hard, they're reasonably intelligent, but they've had some good fortune along the way. And I think without the good fortune, you know, let's just say. And you make the point so well that without, well, number one, without Charlie Munger hooking up with Warren Buffett, you know, the thing is like, I forget his name. I know his name, I forgot it right now. But like with Nike and their designer, that one designer guy, if he hadn't come along, you know, all the Air Jordans and all of those cool Nikes, you know, and I think they've had one or two designers like that, Nike wouldn't be where they are today. And also with John Ivey, with Apple, you know, designing all those cool products and everything, if you don't have those key people and like you say, you know, it's almost like divine intervention sends you the right person at the right time and you can't control that. But you can't have your eyes open and you can't be looking.

Yep, you always gotta be looking. And the time, you know, you gotta, you gotta set up these opportunities so when the time comes you can, you know, you can, you can do it. Um, so I mean, nothing gets me more excited. This is the craziest thing. I mean, to bring a new, to bring another a player in the business is like the, the kind of like the single best feeling that I have. It makes me feel more, less. It makes me feel less worried about the future.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They. I remember Tom, my brother worked with Tom Petty for 40 years. And I remember Petty saying early on once they got Stan lynch as their drummer. Every time, he said, I looked over my shoulder and I saw Stan lynch out behind me on the drums. He said, I felt like I had a jet engine back There.

There you go. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, it's just like I'm not worried now. You know, I can, you know, it allows you to relax and go forward, maximizing what you're doing, not worrying about, you know, the doubt from your people, you know.

Yeah, well, is, you know, there's never a time that I'm not worried about the success of the business.

Yeah.

There's never ever a time. Right. I mean, I've just had too, too much experience in my life to know that nothing's certain.

Right.

And so no matter how good you feel about the business or what you think the outcome might be, you just don't know. So I'm always worried. And when I bring. The only thing that helps relieve my worry is when I bring in. And it just makes me feel a little bit better, you know.

Well, and, you know, I just think that's a great attitude to have. Like Jeff Bezos says, he said, I can very clearly see a world where there's no Amazon, you know, and, you know, he said, he said, I'm not operating under the assumption that Amazon is going to be here.

Yeah. You know, and there's, you know, I can see a couple of the Amazon killers out there in the world. It's going to be hard, but there's people that are gunning for them. So, you know, it's. Yeah, it's out there.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's a competitive world and it makes us all better. But, you know, like my friend Art Williams says, competition isn't nice, but it's necessary.

Absolutely.

And keeps it from getting, you know, because success without competition, you're going to get arrogant and you're going to start to slide, you know, and so talk about this thing. You went to the 9 million, but, you know, how did you start breaking into the other countries?

That, that was slightly accidental because we, because of the channels that we advertise on.

Now, is that what you talk about when you say you diversify your channels of distribution? You're talking about international? Pretty much, yeah.

Well, so we, we communicate to, and, you know, our customers through different digital channels. For instance, YouTube is a, you know, is a, is a, is a, is a digital channel where people go to learn things and to absorb content. Right. You go to YouTube. I mean, I go to. Our dishwasher wasn't working the other day. I was trying to figure out why the button doesn't work. I go to YouTube. You know, I'm looking up why the Samsung dishwasher doesn't work. You know, and et cetera, et cetera. So we go there to learn things and, and we put our products in front of people that are interested in learning things that we know that are important to guys that are considering skin care. So that is a channel, right? That is, that is a, that is a channel. And there's different subcategories within YouTube. There's long form content, short form content, there's pre roll content. And we, we play in all of those different channels within that YouTube. And there's Meta, right, which is Facebook. And meta has, you know, and so we, we, we. And then there's marketplaces like Amazon and walmart.com and we play in those, those different areas. So it's, it's a diversified portfolio of, of, of channel mix.

And now do you have, you say it was accidental that you got into.

R. I'm sorry, I didn't answer that. But the reason why I said that is because the channels that we're on are, you know, don't. As long as you understand English, you're going to see us somewhere. If you're searching for a specific topic.

Yeah.

So if you're, if you're, if you're looking at, you know, exercise, we play heavy in that space, right. And you're looking at a certain genre of exercise or bodybuilding or fitness, you're likely to see us. And so it doesn't matter if you live in France or you live in Taipei, if you're looking for a topic and you speak English, you know, the chances are that we'll be in front of you. And so the channels that we play in allow us to be international.

Well, how would you say being in this business, I mean, has it been a good thing or has it been a brutal thing for your poor family for you to be in this business and have this life? Has that been a good thing for them?

You know, so I think the number one role in business, the number one rule. This is my hot take for you. I know you already know it, but we can share it to other people. This is my hot take for you. My hot take, Larry, is the number one thing if you want to be successful in business is to not marry crazy. And I'm being funny when I say that, but find a spouse that you know is on. You wrote that down. You're writing that down.

I'm writing that down.

Don't marry crazy. I agree. It's that good. It's that good. Some people don't think it's as funny as I do, but don't Marry crazy. If you want to have a good. If you want to have a successful career in business, no matter if you're an entrepreneur, you work for Unilever or you work for Larry or the university teaches at, you better. You sure as hell better get yourself the right spouse that you're connected to that shares your vision for life and how to have a family and how important money is and finances and everything else. That's step one. So if you get that straight, then the chances of you reaching your goals is exponentially better. So my. To answer your question, my wife is my biggest supporter. She is, you know, she's. She. She is awesome. She allows me to be who I am.

What kind of life have you, you know, for your hard work and your success and everything? It's like, you know, it's kind of like this. It's not how much money you make, it's how much you keep, you know, and it's like, it's not the success you have in your business. Like, what does that translate into the life that you're living, you know?

Yeah.

And, you know, if it turns into a neurotic nightmare, that's not really success. So what. How has this paid off for you and your family and, you know, the spiritual rewards, the personal rewards, the satisfaction when, you know, the lights go out at night, you know, how you. How you together feel about things. How. How is that rewarded? You know, you know, what's the rewards you. That you would say, you know, the payoff.

There's two. So I'll answer what I think you're asking directly. The one is, it's about the journey. I really. I'm really super satisfied by the journey. I'm really, really satisfied. So it's the competition, it's the hiring, the people that I work with every day, you know, the things I do, the opportunity. I have to speak with you. So from when I lay my head down at night, you know, I. I'm very fulfilled. Right. From the journey. Right. It's not. It can't be about the finish line. It's about what's happening today. And so I think that is very rewarding. On the other side, you know, I've been financially successful. Again, how do you measure that? Right. You know, what you may think is financially successful, you know, I may think a third of it is financially successful. Right. I mean, it's a relative thing, but compared to, you know, most Americans and general salaries out there, et cetera, et cetera, I do very. I do very well. However. However, I am all in on my business. So, you know, if I. If I'm able to have the back third. Plan B for the back third. The back third is right. 40, 60, you know, 20, 40, 60, 80. Right. So 60 to 80, if I have that, if I have an opportunity to have that go as planned, I need a certain amount of capital. And. And so, you know, I'm all in on my business, and I'm really hopeful that at some point, you know, I'll have. I'll have a successful outcome and I'll be able to do the things that I want to do from 60 to 80.

Yeah. Unbelievable. And that's what it's everybody's idea of success. That's yours. And that's why you work, so you can achieve what's important to you. And that's what I call winning. And I really appreciate you spending the time. We've had a great talk. We've covered the battlefield and a lot of meat for people that are wanting to do the same thing, put some more pieces together in their life. And I always like to give the guests the final word. Kelly, so what would you say is a parting shot? We've already got the hot take.

You've already got the hot take. You know, hang in there. Continue doing what you're doing. I would say if there's a. If there's a parting shot for 2024, we're sitting at the end of 2023 right now as we're talking. Larry, if there's a hot take for 2024, my hot take for that or my parting shot is to be a good listener. Be a good listener. Next year is going to be total mayhem in America. For those of you that are. Are in America, you know what's going to go on in 2024. We've got politics galore next year, and it's going to be, you know, starting in a month or two, every day, every night, every weekend, every. Everything is going to be politics. And I think we need to be good listeners. And, and so if you say, well, you've got to be a good listener, what about the truth? And I'm going to tell you that I believe if we want to be good listeners, there is truth in everything. There is some level of truth in everything we hear. We just need to be accepting of what other people are saying. And look, look for that truth. And it may be just a shred of truth, but we need to be good at listening and accepting and trying to find some level of common ground and truth amongst our conversations with Each other. That's my hot take for 2024. Let's go get it.

Fantastic, Kelly. Now, I keep wanting to ask this, how do people, they want to get the product, they want to get on board with you and they want to follow up. Where do they go? What do they look for?

I mean, go to teach.com we have. We do. My guys give me something all the time and we've got teach.com backslash, million.

Dollar T. It's T I G. What is it?

T I G I e g e.comt I e g.com black backslash, million dollar mastermind. We have like incredible discount there. Look, start a healthy skincare routine. Doesn't matter how old you are, you will see results. I'd love for you to buy our products and let you know you can look me up on LinkedIn. Kelly Thornton, on LinkedIn, I respond to pretty much everybody there. Let us know what you think of the product or, you know, buy some other product and try some other products and then you'll come and try our products and know that we're different. So teja.com and I would love to talk to you on LinkedIn if you need me.

Fantastic, Kelly. I still feel like we only scratched the surface, but we got a lot done and so have a great holiday and wish the best for your company in 2024. Thanks so much, man.

Thanks, Larry. Have a good day.

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