[Greatest Hits] Episode #18: Overcoming and Getting Results with Millionaire Peggy Hightower

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell and let's get started. All right, welcome everybody. We've got a super treat right now. We're going to be able to talk to a real coast to coast legend, Peggy Hightower. Peggy is a, this is her first year as for going over the million dollar income in her financial services business, she's become a legend because she became the first African American female to go over the million dollar income. She breaking a barrier. And it's important that you have pioneers to break bar barriers, to take the myth to explode the myth that this thing can be done. But it's hard to be that pioneer because you're the one that's got everyone kind of saying it can't be done and not expecting you to do it and trying to tame down your expectations. So welcome Peggy. Glad to have you on with me this afternoon.

Thank you, Larry. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm honored.

Tell everybody where you're speaking. You're speaking from your home right now, I believe. Where is your home?

Yeah, I'm speaking from my home. I'm in Davidsonville, Maryland.

Okay, and how far is that out of D.C. and all that area for?

I guess I'm probably about 35, 40 minutes from D.C. maybe that same difference. I'm kind of centrally located. I'm 15 minutes from Annapolis.

Okay, there's some, we, we've got our GPS locators on and this is where this information is coming from today. And Peggy, talk about, you know, you've had a rich life, you've you family life, you got the kids, the grandkids. And we're going to get into as much of that as we can. But talk about where you came from. You know, when you started out as a young girl, you're in school and you're thinking about your future. What was going through your head about your future?

Well, Larry, it's just amazing. It's nothing like my life is now. I still sit back in awe about my life originally coming from Georgia. I can still remember picking cotton at 3 years old. I can, you know, remember complaining about the heat in Hepsible outside of Augusta, Georgia. And we moved up here. I was eight years old when we moved to D.C. and I can remember, you know, high school and college, the youngest of five children, the only one that went to college. And so my parents were very, very excited about that and literally I was feeling good about that too. So it gave me a sense of pride to be able to do that for them and for myself. And after coming out, you know, as a registered nurse and getting a position and then daddy's words were, go in earlier, anybody else, and work harder than anybody else and stay longer than anybody else and you'll get promotions. And he did lie about that. I had a title so long they couldn't put it all on the name tag. But after about eight or 10 years of doing that in the traditional industry, I was kind of disgusted about. I didn't live on the side of Indian Head highway, which is a place here in Fort Washington, Maryland. The houses on the right hand side of Indian Head highway have garages and fireplace. Well, the houses on the left hand side had carports and no fireplace. We ended up having to move on the left hand side. So I didn't feel good about that. I didn't feel good about going to the store, seeing something that I like, then looking at the tag and I was like, I don't really like it like that. And so I was just frustrated and I felt I had done all the things that the system said, you know, I got a good education, I worked hard and all of that, but I still didn't have the quality of life that I thought. Keep in mind, the quality of life that I thought was just a matter of going to the store and being able to buy what I want, you know, sirloin instead of Chuck Haynestockings instead of not, you know. And so when this opportunity called Al Williams Primerica came along, and that was in 84, I was $200 a month short. And at the end of the month, and I had really prayed like, lord, if you give me an opportunity to work, Washington Hospital center would allow you to work the weekend and you would be paid for the whole week. So, you know, I did that plan, thought that's what the answer was going to be. But Noah neighbor came over and ended up, you know, like changing my policy, still not seeing this as an opportunity for me. And when he asked me about being recruited, I was very upset and very much into the crusade, but not for me to be able to tell people about it, but not to do it myself. And I told him I wouldn't want to do that. I don't like salespeople and I'm not good at numbers. And you know, he continued to call, invited me to a fast start school. And I think in the. Paul is doing that school over in Virginia. And I went out to that school and I was like, well, you know, what is this?

Well, I want you to know you're talking to a fellow cotton picker. Because, you know, the military, we had 30 days of vacation. My father had 30 days of vacation, like all military people. But of course, they don't give you enough money to be able to actually take a vacation. So we did what everybody in the military does, go live with the relatives for that month and eat their food. And so we'd go down to the farm and we'd eat their food, but then we'd have to work. And so I spent many days in the hot sun picking cotton. It was a waste of time. I'm sure I didn't pick much, but, you know, they had me out there anyway. Yeah, once you have those experiences, you don't forget.

Right.

You know, it's good for motivation, isn't it?

Absolutely. Yeah. You know exactly what you don't want to do.

Maybe that fueled your desire to go to college. What do you think?

I believe it. I believe it.

Yeah. And so when you looked at getting started on your own, in your own, starting a business of your own and something that you were uncomfortable with, you were not familiar with, but you knew there was an opportunity on the table. And, you know, there's so many people out there that are waiting for the perfect opportunity. And perfection doesn't really come along a lot in life. You've got to run with what's in front of you, don't you?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I can remember making that statement about, you know, no, this would definitely not be anything for me. And even when I went to that fast start school, it gave me a little more hope, but I still didn't have the confidence in myself. I drove an hour and a half to my RVP's office, and literally, his training was, young lady, by the end of the week, you need to have four sales done. So I didn't really understand anything about recruiting or building, but I did realize that he had given me a job description in my mind, and that was, you need to have four sales down by this week. And so I figured if I did not fulfill that job description, I would be terminated. But by doing that, I ended up making enough money part time that within 90 days, I quit. And a lot of people ask, you know, like, why did you quit that quick? Or come into the business? Well, that was my story. And I think different people have different stories. And I think you have to, you know, realize it made a believer out of me. I'm a single parent now. I've got two daughters, I've got rent to pay, cardinal to See these kids. So I needed to have money, so that boosts me. But after that happened, then I started looking at the way he was running the office. I would go there, driving an hour and a half to have people in my car for the opportunity meeting. And he didn't come that particular night. And so I've got to make up a story about this. I learned that presentation so much quicker because I knew it was up to me in order to get it done. But after realizing that, then I started thinking about, how do I run my own? What do I need to do to run my own? And so there again, he came with some things that I needed to do in order to get it done. In the process of doing that, Larry, somebody told me about a fast start school. It wasn't my rvp, but someone had mentioned it to me over in Clinton Merrill that Andy was doing it at this time. It was in a library over there. And so I went over there. John Lennon was his guest speaker at that time. And so I went over there and, you know, like, scared to death. And they had the audacity to call my name. And I had to walk across the stage. And I was devastated because I come from a nursing background. So people are glad to see me. You know, like, I'm giving needles, I'm giving back rubs. They were happy about it. So I'm in an arena now. I'm talking about something they don't want to talk about. You know, like being in a crowd to talk to people was something that I never imagined I would ever do in life. But I did that on that stage. I can remember. I think they had just come back from Hawaii. Andy gave me a jar of macadamia nuts. That was the. For the. Whatever I had done that month. I can't even tell you that now, but I was like, what are these? And so I started to see a whole lot of things that I never. Being in an environment that I'd never been in before. But here was the key. I liked it. It was giving me hope. I went to the back of the room and I asked John Lennon. I said, can I talk to you? He said, absolutely. I said, do they really, really allow black people to make as much money as they're saying? And he started to laugh and he said, you don't have to worry about it, girl. When you send that application. And down he said, they'll send you your check back. They don't know what color you are, what sex you are. You can just send it as many times as you Want. When he said that, that was it. And so Sid did contract or whatever. This is what I needed to do to go to regional vice president. And within six months, I did that. And after that time has been when I met Andy, when Andy called and said, I want to talk with you, I was like, oh, my God, I guess I must have gotten in trouble, because this is the big. I still have the whole wrong concept. And when he came, I told him, because I had never done an opportunity meeting on my own before. I knew absolutely nothing about recruiting and building. All I knew is that I was able to make enough money in order for me to stay afloat. I had people that were coming in because they were coming to my opportunity meetings on Thursdays. But when I went in and sat at the kitchen table and I did bank A, bank B, I then took out my calculator and I was like, how long have I been here? They may say an hour and a half. And then I would say I made $720. If you know anybody that's interested in making this kind of money, come down. We're going to be doing some interviews on Thursday, and literally more people were coming. I think about it now, it's like, God, I knew absolutely nothing. Because what I'd say to them is, okay, don't let anymore in. We have enough for the night. They have to come back next week. I was like, oh, my God. But I had no idea about what was going. But after I met Andy and I was exposed to fast art schools, we started coming down to North Carolina. During that time, you had schools going on. You had meetings going on in the mountains. And I just started to, I guess, realize then that if I just continued to go to work, I could change my whole life around. And so I think it's critically important as I look back on my career, that people have got to get in a different environment. You cannot stay in the same environment that you grew up in or around the people that you were around. If you want to go to another level, you've got to expose yourself to the other level in order to see it. And so that's what all of those meetings in Fast Start School did for me. They grew me. I saw people that had.

And that's what we're trying to do here, or that's what we're doing here with these calls in this podcast is exposing people to things they don't get, you know, in their normal walk of life. They don't get a chance to get exposed to these kind of conversations. And behind the behind the scenes stuff, you know, not the stuff that comes off of a stage or off of a, you know, an official training program, but, you know, when you're in the back room talking about real life and you've kind of dressed it up. But that manager you had, did you even have a car when you started? I heard that you had like catch. Have to catch a bus across D.C. to get to the office.

I had a car and my car. You know, like, we laugh about this now, you know, Donut. Then they say you're supposed to go 60 miles on the Donut.

Yeah.

And I think I went six months on the Donut. And when I would go to see clients, I'd make sure that parked the car so that they on the side of the street where they wouldn't be able to see it as I was selling the dream.

Yeah. Well, I remember that dumbbell Sid that you worked for. He was probably, you're very kind with him. I do not know how, you know, some people just have the luckiest people in the world and how he. The brief period of time he ran an office. He got some really good people in there and the best of them was you. And he had absolutely nothing to do with you being successful. It was all your drive. It was almost like putting you through a torture test to see if we could run her out of the business. It's a good thing your dad had told you that thing about working hard and this, that and the other. Because he didn't know it was going to be where you had to overcome the dumbbell supposed to be training you, you know.

Right.

But, you know, I went to see John Lennon a couple of months ago. We had lunch and he had his assistant drive him over there. And she said, you know, this thing about can black people make this kind of money. It's amazing, this kind of thinking, you know, because John has told me one of the reasons he keeps pushing forward, for those of y' all that don't know, this is a different John Lennon. Not the Beatle, but. But John, one of the reasons he keeps working on and he's over the million dollar income is that he said he wants to keep the message out. And he's very active at the entrepreneur program he started at North Carolina AMT there in Greensboro. And he said he wants to help bust these myths that hold, you know, African American, talented African American kids on the way up that they can't, you know, dream those dreams. They can't have that happen.

Right.

You know, and yeah, I Remember, you know, John himself, after he'd been in the business, it was. He was in the business 15, 20 years. He was making six or $700,000. And he called me one time and he said, larry, do you really, you know, I was asking him, how soon do you think you're going to go over a million, John? And he said. He said, larry, let me just ask you. He said, do you really think I could make a million dollars? I said, john, wow, what are you talking about? I said, yeah, you started at zero. You're up to 6, 700,000 now. I think you can finish the job. You know, I think you got the hard part done. You know, that platform where, you know, the number of people, you got the offices, the experience, the knowledge, the momentum. Yeah, I think you're going to go over the million. And of course he did, but, you know, there is. I said, what? You know, once he went over, and I said, john, why did you have that mentality? He said, well, he said, when you're black and you go to church and you go in your community and you work with your friends and family, they. There is a subtle and overt pressure, like, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to do? What's with you? You're not satisfied, you're better than us. This is not going to happen to you. Why are you even trying? And can you. If you found that. He said, that's what I was. He said that's what I was fighting against. You know, everybody around me was like, trying to pull me back down.

Right.

And you, you've experienced that?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the other thing to Larry is in most black churches, because that's their business. I know that now. I didn't even know, but that's their business. So the thing is, is that I need to keep you here and I need to keep you tithing, if you will. I need to keep you thinking to me. I say, I need to keep you not realizing how strong you really are, not realizing how good, you know, like, God can really be to you if you learn another lesson. When they're preaching on, you know, like, going through. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. When you've heard the ser under the rich man was, you know, like in hell. And, you know, like, the guy comes and says, please tell my brothers and sisters, you know, like, do whatever's right so they don't get, you know, down here. Had nothing to do with his money.

Right.

And you Like I can remember when somebody, we were listening to a sermon is honey and I. And the guy was saying, you know, like the rich man said, you know, Jesus, what do I have to do in order to inherit the kingdom? And Jesus says, sell it all that you have and follow me. And he said, oh my gosh, no, I can't do that. Well, here's the thing. We don't know if he ever did it later or whatever. But what we do know is the riches that he was talking about was not 100,000, was not a million. It was multi billions. It was a Bill Gates, it was people like that. It was Warren Buffett kind of money. We haven't even touched that in the beginning. But the bottom line, I know when I first bought my first Mercedes, but when I went to church, Larry, I would park it all the way in the back so that people would see it when I went in. I would take my hundred thousand dollar ring off because they treat you different. It's a different kind of prejudiceness. If you're talking about coming in communion, a communal community that you love Jesus, but then they're expecting you to. So it takes getting into a different environment. Here's what I think about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here, here's. And it's the craziest thing because like my pastor now, when they need money for everything, if I look at the bulletin and I see that they 2000 short, 3000, 6, 7, whatever. I know that I'm gonna get a call. I know that he's go, Larry, I'm going to get a call, Sister Peggy. And this is what he, this was, you know, years ago when he said, well, you got to be careful because you keep going to these things on weekends, you know, these schools all, but you got to be careful. Don't put anything before the Lord. Don't forget. I say, well, Pastor Pat, let me tell you this. I can be here every weekend and not go to any of those things. But my, my tides and my office gonna be different. He said, oh well, I think you strong enough in your faith that you'd be able to do it. So, you know, like I think for African Americans, you know, like I think the emotional thing, I think with, you know, and especially those that are over 40, it's. I was talking to this young lady, she's an attorney, she's the ex attorney. She's 27 years old. She $300,000 debt to George Washington Law School. She got out of school, she got a partnership up in D.C. but she's been with me for two years. She went to RVP two months ago and. But she, when I was talking to them about Martin Luther King Day, I said, what do you think about that? She said, well, I couldn't relate to that because none of that, the marching, the other things. She said, I don't know anything about that. She said the one thing though, that as I look at this, what you and my parents all are showing me now, I think when he talked about freedom, we, that you got the wrong idea. You taught us the wrong thing. You taught us that education was the key and education is the key if finances, money and ownership is connected to it.

Yeah.

She said, when I went to law school, I thought that was going to be my way out. But right now, without Primerica, she, she said my life would be devastated even though she graduated like in the top five. But that $300,000 would never have been able to get paid back if she didn't have a way.

Absolutely, absolutely. You go from the idea of going get your education, making these loans so you can get a degree so you can have independence in your life, and then you find out you're become enslaved to the banks to pay that thing back, you know. And now.

Correct.

You know, you change one kind of bondage for another kind of bondage, you know.

Correct.

Or you get in a corporation and they've got you under their thumb there too. But you know, this prejudice deal I met, you know, I told you I went to see John in the last couple of months and up in Greensboro and we met and for lunch and he had one of his assistants drive him over there. And she said, who are you meeting? Or who did you, you know, who did you meet? And he said, that guy over there, you know, because she stayed outside while we met. She said, that guy over there, she said, that white man, you had lunch with that white man? He said, he started laughing. He said, yeah, I've been in business with that white man for over 30 years. You know, you're permission.

But Larry, we laugh about that, but I'm telling you, over 50. And according from the people that I meet over 50, God help if they're over 60 years old. It's a, it's a whole nother mentality. Yeah, that's why I think it's critically important that we get the youth whenever a war is started, they don't recruit from 30, 40, 50 year old people. They start with 18, 20 years old to come into the army. So I think it's critically important as we start to show the difference. I know it was for me. I don't know. I don't know. I guess I just really feel. I really feel blessed that I was able to stay in an environment and see it and then get to the point of God. This can happen to me.

Yeah. Well, Peggy, let me ask you a personal question. You don't have to. We'll cut this out if you don't want it to be in here, but I was curious. Would you rather be known for just being a female who broke through to the million, built a million dollar business, and, you know, all over the country and all of these different people involved in it, all the stability of it? Are you. Do you, like. Do you mind being categorized as the first African American woman to do that, or does that pigeonhole in you.

Larry? I guess I'm. I think I'm a different kind of duck in. I believe race, I believe sex. I believe all of that is a trap. And I think that when we identify ourselves that way, that we put ourselves in a very small box. And a lot of people look at me different about that. But I don't believe. I don't believe that's God's best for us. I believe. I don't think that he says you can't win because you're African American. I don't think he says you can't win because you're Latino. You can't win because you're white. You can't win because you're, you know, Indian. I think that has everything to do with, like, getting to know yourself. I'm still blown when people say, peggy, I need you to come and talk to my women. And I look around and I look at some of their men's numbers, and I was like, well, God, dog, really, no problem. But they could use a couple of words or two. So, you know.

Yeah, yeah, bring the men, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's get the men working as well, so.

Because winning is winning is winning.

Yeah. Winning is winning is winning.

Well, thanks, Harriet Tubman, who's a hero of mine. As a matter of fact, the same day that they called to tell me that I had gone over was the same day that they released her movie. She's always been a shero of mine, but literally when I looked back, I didn't realize that she had left slavery by herself. The first time that she went to Philly, she was alone. She went back several times to get people. A lot of people didn't want to come. So, you know, all of that, people that helped along the way. There were some black people that helped her, there were some white people that helped her. So it's so many things if we stop and look in life and we don't characterize glory rise ourselves. I needed to get that straight. But in but put us in a, you know, a little kind of box, you know. I think you missed out a lot on doing that. I really do.

Absolutely.

I'm telling you. But Larry, Andy Young's family blew my mind for his mom to say, you know, like, can I take the girls with me down to Florida this summer? Can they come to stay for a week? I'm like, you know, like, what's up with them? But literally was realizing I don't think people are people are people. And we've got good and bad in everything, male, female, all of that. So all I know is that I want Peggy's name to be a legacy for her family. I want God to say well done with whatever he's put in me. And I want my grand, great grands that I probably won't see, but I want to leave shade for them. And I see moving as I thought that once I went to a million, I said, okay, now I'll be able to take some time, sit back, rest, you know, do some whatever retirement people do. But I'm like burning now more than ever.

Yeah, well, you've got a lot to share and you may, you know, that first time they called you up on stage to go across there with Andy might have been intimidating and everything, but somehow you've gotten the hang of it. Probably nobody can get people motivated across the country at conventions, at training sessions like Peggy Hightower. And so, you know, the way we start is not the way we finish or how we're going to, you know, we can always develop, can't we?

That's it.

All right. Thank you very much, Peggy for being on and I can't wait to get you back and let's go through some more things. Thank you very much, Peggy.

All right. Thank you so much, Larry. Appreciate you.

All right, goodbye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell. If I've helped you in any way, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind episodes and check out my Wydell Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widelonwinning.com I'm the million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go, go, go.