[Greatest Hits] Episode #9: Gift vs. Grind - Finding Your Fire & Motivation with Million Dollar E...

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.

I'm excited about the next few minutes. We've got more. My good friend Ian Proctor here and I'll let Ian introduce himself to you. But Ian and I go way back and actually the two of us helped launch one of the most successful new channels on YouTube about not quite two years ago, the Art Williams Best series. And that's taken off and Art was only going to do a few of those and wildly popular and he's somebody who's legendary in people business coast to coast and is responsible for revolutionizing industries and creating really hundreds of thousands of financially independent families. And so it was fun to be a part of that launch and so really looking forward to. You're getting a chance to hear from Ian today. So Ian, why don't you, I don't know where you are today, where you're talking from. Introduce yourself to everybody.

Hey Larry, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be with you. And you are one of my heroes, you know, coming up in business and looking at just the mega organization you built that's been dominating for 30 plus years. And just an honor to call you friend and to be able to work together on different projects. And I'm actually calling in from Siesta Florida today and man, it's super exciting to be with you. Just a little background, you know, 13 years ago, my life was very, very different than it is today. I was a pastor at a local church. It was newly married. My wife and I both worked for the local church. We loved what we did. We didn't really feel like it was a job. It was kind of appalling. And we loved what we were doing and we really felt like we were walking in purpose in our lives. And through a series of events in the Detroit metro area in the middle of 2006, you know, the recession that hit and devastated the big three auto companies and so many of the places around the country, you know, Detroit was kind of the tip of the spear on that, Larry. And so working for a church in metro Detroit, we knew in 2006 something was coming. Charitable giving totally dried up. And this very prosperous church all of a sudden started having different financial issues. We went through several rounds of PA and you know, we've never been in business. We were not business people. We had really no education in business. Or money and finance, none of those things. But through a series of pay cuts and working through the church, we really were forced to start looking to do things on the side to make extra income. And my boss at the church and one of my now mentors were actually good friends. And my boss came to me one day, he says, Ian, are you still trying to make some extra money? And I said, Steve, with all due respect, since you are my boss, that's the worst question you've ever asked me. You see what you pay me here, right? And of course I'm looking to make extra money. He says, there's this guy that goes to the church, he does this thing, that's what he called it. So you'd be good at it, you could do it spare time, part time, keep your job at the church. And so I reached out to the Stella really looking for a change in my life. I was tired of being broken, working like crazy for the honor of being broke. And so I got involved with him a part time basis. And eight months later, there I was making $10,000 a month in the business that he started me in part time. And I'm like, this is crazy, you know, my salary at the church was eighteen hundred and fifty dollars a month, take home after insurance and all that. So making $10,000 a month, I'm like, this is unbelievable. So I resigned my job, opened my first office. Today we have 1,000 representatives across the United States and we've been earning seven figures plus a year now for a number of years. I mean, just an absolutely unbelievable American business success story. If you want to change your life bad enough, if life throws you a curveball and you're willing to take a swing, if that curve's hanging there, man, you can knock that sucker out of the park. And that's all we did. We had the right pitch thrown to us and we were ready to take a swing. And so here we are, Larry, you and I, having a conversation about winning in business, about what it takes to win, not what we pontificate that we think it should take because we've never done it, but having actually done the work and gotten the results and made it happen. So it's again, it's an honor to be on the call with you. I'm super excited to dive into the content with you.

Well, it's interesting.

Your background.

I think most people know that when you go into a ministry situation, they don't start you off with a six figure income.

And generally if you end up with a six figure income In a ministry situation there could be a lot of unhappy people involved in that situation.

That, that's right. A lot of, lot of prayer clause and things like that. A lot of T shirts on the side and things like that.

That.

I'll give you a story today to kind of launch what you and I deal with all the time and talk to people about. And I was up at a medical clinic today getting some stem cell shots in my neck which by the way they worked fantastic. And this is like the follow up treatment and I've got to know the guys real well. This is down in Miami and Robert is the second in command there and he was telling me like I said, Robert, what are you going to do.

For the new year?

And he said oh, I'm getting ready to go. Big smile on his face, I'm going to go get another master's degree. And I said oh really? And he said yeah. I said what's up with that? He said well you know, I want to continue to develop and I want to be able to expand. And you know, I said why are you doing that? He said well I talked to a mentor, I've got this mentor and he was successful in the corporate world. He told me that would be the best option for me now. And I said oh really? And I said well suppose you got two years, right? He's going to take two years. It's one of these self study courses is like every, I guess once, once a month he'll spend a week on it and the rest time he self studying. And I'm saying, I said okay Robert, let's just go fast forward two years from now. You got your degree, what are you going to do? Basically a second master's. Ian, like when is enough on studying? And you know, because this is a question we all ask ourselves, you know, am I good enough? Do I know enough? When is enough enough? When I could, when can I say to myself, you know, now it's time for me to actually go do something. And so I said okay Robert, it's two years fast forward. What are you going to do? You start a business of your own, you're going to go to work for a hospital, you're going to be an administrator. I see you looking ready to leave this clinic. And he said no, no, no, no, he said I want to stay here, I want to help expand this clinic and go big. You know, we've got a lot of great things we do and you know, we want to reach more people and we're over crowded here and I said.

Robert.

Why don't you do that now? I said, 35 years old, agree to do that, right?

Just do it.

You're gonna go and learn two more years of stuff. That 98 to 99% of it you won't use. You're gonna meet a lot of people. You know, you got from 35 to 37 years old, precious, formative, high energy time of your life, and you're going to be sitting in there. And I said, robert, think about every time you've been to a school, you look at the curriculum, wow, this is going to be great. Look at this course. I'm going to learn that. I'm going to learn that. And I said, every time you've been in there, just like me, when you actually got in that course, you found it was nothing like they said on the course title. And the guy doing it was dead dull, a disillusion and, and going nowhere. And, you know, it's just super frustrating wasting your time. And you got a ticket when you got out, you know, you got a ticket and then you still had to go find a job at a place to use that ticket, you know, to make it pay off for you. And so what. Why don't you start now, expanding Robert, Why don't you start, take the next step to expand this clinic now? And I think, because all you really need to know, and this is really relates to what you and I deal with on a daily basis, all people, all we really need to know is what's the next step for me to get bigger? You know, either you're going to get bigger, are you going to be bored? You get bigger next year you're going to have. Start some new beachheads in your life, get fired up, get something you can get excited about, go on the attack, learn things you don't know now, do things you haven't done now, meet people you've never met before, have, have new experiences, make new acquaintances, have new. Open the door for new, bigger and better things to happen in your life.

Are you going to be bored?

And you're going to be not so much fun to be around and you're going to be procrastinating. You know, people procrastinate. The people are not fired up about what they're doing. It's like, Robert, why don't you get yourself going and start figured out, if I had that degree, what would the next step be to expand this business is start expanding it now. And I said, you know, the good thing will happen for that. You'll start Realizing the first piece of information that you need to find out now, that's going to be the most valuable to you. And that is, what do I need to know that's going to allow me to make that first step? And I said, then start asking questions, start looking on the Internet, start meeting people in the industry that have done what you want to do. Call them up, get them on the phone and go have a coffee or breakfast or something with them and start asking questions and make those kind of friends, get those kind of information, ask those kind of questions, and spend your time making something happen rather than sitting in a classroom somewhere. And so we're, you know, Ian, I just thought I'd kind of lay that out there. So many of us, rather than moving forward our lives, we're like dogs chasing our tails, going around in circuit circles, thinking, we got to get this in place, that in place, that in place, and then we'll go do it. In the meantime, my life is just going away. You know, it's just like we're just losing time. So the middle game is really where you win this thing. You've got to be able to know how to think on your feet and evaluate situations like this, or you're always going to be held back.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, most people are thinking about what they're thinking about, right? Like your guy Robert, he doesn't really know why he wants to do that. He just knows he thinks he's supposed to do that. And so he's not thinking. And because he's thinking, somebody else is doing the thinking for him. Right? University that'll take $50,000 of his money and give him a piece of paper. I mean, that's a fantastic business model. Give me all this money and here's a piece of paper cost us 12 cents, you know, but nobody's thinking about what they're thinking about. Nobody's looking at, how do I start with the end in mind, which is what you're talking about. What would you do once you have that? Well, I don't know. Okay, well, let's start there. Like, where do you want to end up in your life? Are you in a vehicle that could get you there? Like, if you won, doing what you're doing now, will that win equate to an actual win in your life? You know, Larry, there's so many people, they've done everything, quote, unquote, correctly, right? They followed the path prescribed for them. They're succeeding at a path to nowhere, right? And because they haven't stopped to Think about, well, where is it exactly that I'm trying to go and how will I get there and by what process? What is the mechanism that I will need to take from here to there? Most people are in mechanisms that are designed to get them nowhere near their goals and dreams and desires. And so they end up at 40, 50, 60 years old, the best years of their life past. And they think there's got to be more than this. This isn't what I signed up for. I've lived everything right I. Everything everybody told me to do. I've jumped through the hoops, I've dotted the I's, I've crossed the T's, but I'm still not winning. I'm winning in their standards, but not in mine. I don't have freedom. I don't have control of time. I'm not winning financially. I'm not making the impact that I wanted to make. All because they didn't win the mental game. They never even started the mental game. Many people, by asking, where is it that I want to be? And is this getting me closer to or further away from that stated golden dire or dream? And if the answer is yes, then that's the path. If the answer is no, then get off that path. Because continuing to walk, that isn't going to get you where you want to be.

Well, you know, let's just talk about you. When you started this business that you're in today, that somehow you knew how to process information and set yourself up on course for a direction, a payoff that would give you the maximum success that meant the most to you. And in the beginning, you chosen a career of ministry. And I'm sure you could have gone into business and got a job, but you chose that as a way to make an impact in your, you know, in your life and to, you know, throw your energy behind things that. That meant the most to you. And then when that dried up, you saying. I was thinking about. It's funny how God will use things, Ian, to our advantage. You know, he used that. He uses that. That slowdown in the economy to drive you into business to where you could have, you know, probably a hundred thousand times more impact and more lives than you would working in that one church, no matter how successful you would have been, you know? Yeah. And it was kind of like the after. After Jesus died and after Pentecost, it was like all the. All the apostles were in Jerusalem having their little, you know, their little meetings, and they're all happy. And then God brought in all the persecution all the Romans came in and drove them up all over, all over the Mediterranean. And of course that launched the spread of the gospel. You know, it's just like he'll use things to drive us out of one spot to go into what he really wants for us. And the thing is, keep your antenna up, folks. Or when you're getting driven from the spot you're at now, maybe you're supposed to raise your sights and start thinking of a place that you could make a bigger impact. And so when you got into this, you were already thinking in the end in mind, I want to make a big impact wherever I am. You know, you were thinking right that way, I don't know if you even knew you were, but you had that programmed into yourself. And what we want people to do is you got to start at the beginning on programming yourself. And one thing is programming yourself, like, what do I really want? What's going to keep me fired up? Get me fired up, keep me fired up. Because that's the only that that taps you into your internal motivation. That's where your big fire and consistent fuel will come from. And you, you had that built in you, right, right from the start. You operated from internal drive and motivation when you got into this business, Ian. And so talk about that. Can you think about that, express that a little bit?

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Absolutely. You know, so let's kind of preface this conversation, this part of the conversation really by understanding a couple of things like this internal motivation. The truth is most people who will listen to this at this point, they're going to think, well, I just don't really have that internal motivation or I haven't found something that motivates me that I'm passionate about, that I want to put my whole life into, that I just want to go at night and day, day and night until the job gets done and then push it even further. How do you find that. So, Larry, there's kind of two schools of people that exist out here. I just kind of want to paint a picture because I think when everybody understands that I'm about to share with you, I think they're going to find a lot of hope and a lot of conviction in what I'm going to share, that they can do anything that they want to do and do it big and have massive success, even if they haven't met with success before. Because prior to being in the ministry, the only thing I was good at was quitting. I was a professional quitter. I quit everything I did. I quit every workout program, every band I was in. I was a great quitter. Right. Okay. But here's the deal. There's two sorts of people out there. There's gifts and grinds. Gifts like somebody giving you a gift. And grinds. Gifts are people that operate immediately in alignment. What do you mean by that? They know what they want. They know how to get there. And there's a conscious and a subconscious alignment with that Success to them, seems easy. They're still doing the work. But to them, it doesn't feel like work. It doesn't feel hard. Even though they have to do hard things, make tough commitments, make those tough decisions, you delay gratification, self discipline, all those things. To them, it never really feels that way because what they want is burning so brightly on the inside of them. It just beckons them. It's like a tractor beam or sucking them towards this goal, and they'll do whatever they need to do to get there. And so if you're one of those people, God bless you, just kind of have that natural motivation. But I don't think most people are like that. I think most people are. Grinds are grinds. What do you mean by that? They have something they want in their life. They want their life to mean something. They want to make an impact. They want to win financially. They want to deliver for the family, just like the gifts do. But for some reason, there's just not an alignment there for them. Maybe it's programming from what they grew up in or how they think the world is supposed to work. Any number of things. But to them, it's effort. It's a grind to do the things consistently long enough to get the job done. But here's the deal, Larry. Here's the good news. There's not a right or a wrong. It's not like only those who have that gift can win the grind or the gift can win. Because ultimately you got to do the same thing. You got to do the same thing, right? So there's not a right and wrong. It's an I'm a grind or I'm a gift. Either one's okay. But you better know it. Because, guys, Larry, how many times have you seen people with gifts, but they don't develop that gift, and eventually they get beat by people who are not as smart as them, didn't come from the same background, but who discipline themselves to take action consistently, and they surpass it. Like that old quote, right? Like, hard work beats talent. When talent doesn't work hard, it's possible for both of those groups of people to win and have the exact same results. But most of the guys that I meet, Larry, and I know you feel this way, too, that are more on that grind sort of mentality where it doesn't come naturally to them. They think like, well, something wrong with me? Is it supposed to be this hard? Is this really what God wants for me to do, right? Because I'm uncomfortable. I don't feel like this all the time. And I think it's so important to know, right, that if you're feeling those things, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. Because that's the process of the grind that's making you into the person that you need to be to go to where you're going. You know, you need to be strong enough to bear the weight of leadership and influence, right? And so we get there through doing these sorts of things that need to be done that nobody wants to do but the winners, right? And the gift, the gifts, they just. They naturally are drawn to that everybody else. It's a disciplined process. And I'll share that with you guys in a second. Because, you know, Larry's worked with people for 40 years now, as I've worked with people for well over a decade. You know, you've got to learn how people work so you can learn how you work and get yourself to do what you need to do, right? Like, Larry, the biggest gap in the world is the gap between knowing what to do and then doing it, right? Like, we all want to lose weight. We know we need to eat less, workout more. We just can't seem to do it as we crush the next Big Mac, right? And so getting ourselves to do it and then understanding people enough so that we can provide roadmaps to our people who want to grind it out and get there.

Well, you gotta. You know, we're giving people a lot to think about here, Ian. And these are things you gotta. That's what you got to do. You got to think this through. You know, it's like you got to learn how to coach yourself, discipline yourself, motivate yourself. And I don't want to overload everybody with this trip, Ian, because we can come back and revisit it later. But for those that really have gotten into this subject and they're really thinking maybe there's something here I need to dig deeper into, and they want some more input, what do you suggest if people want to connect with you, and what do you suggest on that line?

Well, Larry, that's a great question. First of all, you follow me on social media, ianpruckner, on Instagram, on Facebook. And then, Larry, one thing I want to share with people real quick, just a nugget to get them thinking and to keep them thinking. One of the things I try to teach our people is that there's three levels of motivation. There's material motivation. There is. Which is, like, material needs, right? Like food, water, shelter, clothing, basic things like that. Right? Okay. Material motivation. And then there's respect and recognition. Motivation, respect of the people we want respect from. And then there's legacy. They're kind of like in this. In this escalating pattern. Right? And so, you know, motivation is a discipline, and everybody's motivated. People are like, well, I'm not motivated. That's not true. Take your car away from you, take your house away from you, take your kids away from you, and you'll run through brick walls to get those things back. Right. The problem is we just haven't tapped into that for a positive use. We would be reactionary with it instead of actionary with it. Right? And so there's those three levels of motivation. There's two sorts of people. Stick people, carrot people. Stick people are people that like the donkey getting hit with a stick. Boom. They're going to move when there's some pain there. When that bill is due and there's no money there, boom. They'll get out there and start making those sales calls. Other people are carrot motivators. They put a carrot in front of them, they'll go wherever they want. Put an incentive trip, a new title, a promotion, a bonus, and then they'll move. And just like the grind and the gift, everybody's a stick or a carrot. One. Primarily one of those two. And so there's ways to approach each level of motivation, Larry, that just works like a charm, Right? Because once we understand who we are and how we're motivated, we can begin to use that knowledge to move ourselves and to move others towards the things we want. So one of the things that people can do if they want to get some of that information, which I think is just going to be unbelievably helpful to them, just a deep dive into that. If people want to text the word growth, G R O W T H growth to the short code 484848. So if they text growth to 4848, I actually have an in depth training and lesson on exactly how to identify if you're a stick, if you're a carrot, and based on which one you are, how to navigate those three levels of motivation, to always have a lever on yourself to move, to do the things that nobody else wants to do, to do the things we need to do. And it's part of like a master class that I did, but I want to give it to the people listening to this podcast totally free. So it's totally free of charge. You just text GROWTH to 484848 right to your phone. We'll send you a link to that video lesson. And it's powerful, Larry. I mean, this is a decade worth of how do you get people to do what people want and need to do, but just aren't doing? Imagine, Larry, if you had the formula to be able to, to get yourself to act when you need to act, how you need to act, because you want to act that way. I mean, that would just be power, would change your life. Like it changed my life, like it changed yours. And that's really what that is. They can text GROWTH to 484848 and send it out. Just a gift from me to you. I hope you guys get some benefit from it and tag me on social media with your top takeaways. Hey, here's what I got from this. Here's. I want to engage with you there and help you get to that next level.

All right, thank you, Ian. This has been great. And you know, this podcast is for people in a hurry to do great things with their life. And the thing is, you don't need to, you know, you don't need a thousand ideas a lot of times to get going. It's like the light of fire. Sometimes all you need is a match. Hopefully this is going to be served as a match to really fire up areas of your life that maybe, you know, you want to get fired up about. So hope hopefully people will stay tuned. We want to have you back on. Hopefully they'll follow up for some more information. And thank you for putting that together. I know, I know you put that together because people are asking you all the time about this stuff and you just cannot, you know, we have individual conversations with people and you just don't have time to cover hours and hours of information. And so, you know, you write it down to make sure if they really are hungry, they can get it. And so appreciate you making that available on a free basis to them. And so thanks so much, Ian, for being on.

Hey, Larry.

Appreciate you as always.

Excited for a decade of dominance, getting ready to do some big things as I'm sure you guys are as well. God bless everybody. Thanks for your time.

All right, let's do it. Big.

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