It Took a Decade to Learn Not to Be Pennywise and Pound Foolish with Gary Kornegay

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell and let's get started. We are with multi million dollar earning Gary Carnegie from Beverly Hills, California. Unbelievable. His life is a vacation every day. I want to talk to you about, about expanding your business. You know, going from one, you know, the thing is if you don't keep expanding, you don't keep growing, you're going to flatline, you're going to go stale and then in spite of everything you do, you're going to start to slide down the hill. So you've always got to be looking for your next challenge, your next basically once you've won and start have a feel for how to be successful in life, it becomes like, what's your next fun going to be? Not where you're, you know, in the beginning it's a struggle. You're paranoid, you're fearful, but it's. And you're going to have that, you know, because you got to take risk every time you do something bigger. But it's more like what's your next adventure going to be? And some of those things as you get compounding in life, you can have more great things happen to you in a year than you've had in the last 20 years. And I know you've been kind of going through that. But talk about this lifestyle where you said you've got 30 people on your staff, family and friends that you pay to do things for you, to allow you to live, you know, basically run your businesses, stay in touch, but really not feel the stress. Really live a life of like you're at a resort every day but still run your businesses. And how you're a high maintenance guy, man, 30 people, just personal shift.

Well, now I'll tell you this, right, the people that I employ and they all play separate roles. I didn't just wake up one day and say I want to employ 30 people. It was a need that needed to be filled that would take my time away from playing the game that I'm playing. So therefore, instead of me trying to be, you know, the engineer, you know, on the technology side, I hired an engineer, you know, to do that. You know, I don't, I don't edit, but I have someone that does that for me, you know, and then social media kind of made it where it's like you almost have to, you know, to stay in touch with this world, this fast moving world. Someone has to monitor your social media, your marketing and things like that. And I didn't want to be doing that Myself, I felt my gift was to do what I'm doing now, talking to you, and help other people. And I didn't want to spend all my time doing unnecessary things like getting my car washed or cutting my own grass, you know, and so I staffed people because I wanted to free up my time to do what I'm really good at doing, if that makes sense.

And how do you get these people and are they part time, full time, whatever? Are they just. Whenever you need your car washed, you just call Joe or something like that?

Yeah, yeah, I have certain people. I have four. Four people that are full time. That's all they do. They take care of the pornography family.

Right.

Okay. And they've been doing this for 15, 16 years. So you have to understand, you know, my kids were in elementary, middle school, high school, you know, trying to pick them up from school. But I'm doing a podcast with Larry.

Yeah.

You know, I'm gonna send my driver to go pick my kids up, you know.

Right.

You can't trust everybody with your children. So when you get a good staff, you keep them.

Right.

You know, when my mom was dealing with chemotherapy and cancer, I had someone to take care of her. That lady used to work for me today, even though my mom passed away in 2013, but that young lady still works for my family. But I hired her to take care of my mother. You know, I couldn't do it all the time. So once you get your crew, you know what I'm talking about, people, you don't ever get rid of them. You take care of them, you know, they take care of me, I take care of them.

Absolutely. And when you have moved, when did the light bulb go on for you? That this is my strength and I'm going to be smarter if I don't try and be a jack of all trades. I try and focus on my strength because I've got. I mean, I've had so many people we promoted out to get their own location, get their own office. And I said, you know, the first thing, you got to get some secretarial help. First thing, open that thing up, get some administrative to take that, you know, that repetitive type thing off your shoulder. You know what they're trying to do, they'll try and palm it off on the wife, you know, and those guys never go anywhere, you know, because I don't want my wife, you know, for a period of time. Maybe the wife goes in there. But, you know, when I was even a trainee, I had part. I had a part time lady come in Three days. Because there's a lot of ladies at home. You can find men, of course, but in fact, a friend of mine, you know, a Mike Tuttle, when he started as a trainee, he knew his strength was talking to people and he didn't want, he hates paperwork. And so what he did, he took a cassette, you know, like, like doctors used to do in the old days where they talk into a cassette when they saw you. He'd take a cassette record around with him and he'd see a family and all the follow up details he would put on this tape. And then he would also dictate a letter because he's really good at letter follow ups. And he dictate a quick note for the guy to type up for him so when he came in he could sign it and send it. And he just saw people all the time in sales. And this guy, he found a guy who was going to college, graduate school, who needed a job. So he would drop off that cassette tape. He would have it in his garage and every day he'd drop off a new cassette tape and the guy would come by, pick up the cassette tape and drop off the paperwork that he had done for the previous day's cassette tape. You know, and he did that as a, I'll tell you, he did that as a first level manager trainee. And you know, he had a, you know, he went, had a. He built an unbelievable business out of Dallas, Texas.

But yeah, I was just with him actually in Cabo, Mexico. He spends a lot of time in Mexico doing a lot of philanthropy work to make sure stuff. He loves doing that Mike. And I was with him in Cabo and I didn't know that he was there when I was there. And I found out the day I was leaving he was there and he stopped what he was doing and took me to lunch and my family. He spent about three hours with him.

Yeah, you know, incredible human being. Yes, but he hates details, you know. Yeah, yes, but he can do the details. By the way, if he ever suckers you into a hunting trip, you'll have a, you'll have a ball. But he handles the paperwork on honey trips, you know, because I've always known him as a guy just not detail oriented, can't be bothered, can't remember nothing. But it came time where after 17 years, he talked me into going on a wing shooting trip down for doves in Mexico. And you got to get permits and register your guns and all this stuff in advance. And with the going across the countries and all, I got this Three or four page packet, detail, single pace, single line, typed. And to do this that the, I said, who did this? He goes, oh, I did. And he said, I'm the only one who knows all this stuff. I said, and you're the guy who's not detail oriented.

If it's something like you learn that.

Skill, if, if, if it's something he was really interested in, he got detail oriented. Yeah, yeah, but the other stuff, no, I'm not detail oriented. He knew how to do it. He just wasn't going to let anybody know. And I hired a part time secretary three days a week in the mornings because she had a kid in school and she had always worked outside the home till the child came along and she wanted to get out of the house. And this was so far back, Gary, that she actually, way before computers and all of that, she actually brought her own portable typewriter to work every day for her four hour shift so she'd have something to type on.

Was that the heavy typewriters? The heavy one?

No, it's a little portable one. Yeah. And so, but you know, I don't even have any idea how I afforded it, but I did, you know, you afford, you afford what you decide you're gonna have to have. And so staffing up like that, where did that light bulb go on for you that, you know, something told you that or you saw somebody, where does it. I'm, I'm hitting this point, Gary, because people need, there's so many people are held back because they won't untangle themselves. You know, I heard this thing, you know, it was way back, if you're going to spend your time on $5 an hour jobs, you're never going to make $500 an hour. And so you got to turn those jobs loose. You know, now it's $15 an hour job, but you gotta, you gotta let somebody else have those jobs if you want the thousand dollar an hour jobs, you know, so yeah, Larry, it took.

Me, it took me, I'm not gonna lie to you, it took me probably a decade to understand that, you know, how about that? Yeah, it wasn't right away because number one, I go from that old school, if you want something done, do it yourself, right? Number one, that's a blessing, by the way, and a curse.

Lead by example.

Lead by example. Do it first and before you know it, you find yourself doing everything. And I didn't want to let go of that. So back in there we had copy machines where I copy every application. I'd file it my Wife, what are you doing? Let me do that. No, honey, I got this because you put in the wrong file that I won't be able to find it. And then finally, I hired my wife to do administration, but really it was me doing it through her. So she goes, oh, my God, are you gonna stand over me the whole time? So then I hired her. And then little by little, I started releasing that fear of nobody else could do it better than me. And then I started realizing, monetarily wise, as you were talking about, that, you know, Gary, you're penny wise and dollar foolish. You're penny wise and dollar foolish, which means you try not to pay somebody $10 an hour, let's just say back then, because, you know, you want to save $10, but you would have made a thousand in an hour if you wouldn't be sitting here cutting your own grass, let's just say, you know, and so I have to learn that over time. And then as I got older, Larry, I started scaling, you know, the. My staff. And I noticed that my income kept going up, you know, because I now freed up my spirit, my energy, and my frustrations. I put them on. I paid somebody else to do it. All my headaches. How about that one? And that gave me a better experience of what I was involved in.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And 10 years. But, you know, what forces you to do that? If you focus on growth and you say, my main job is to grow this thing, that reality will come to you a lot quicker, you know, because you run out hours in the day. And it's easier if it's in the context of I have got, you know, you've heard, I spend so much of my time trying to get people to stop running their lives according to some method they heard in a book or a tape or from a speech or that somebody else did it. I said, live your life, grow. I said, other people will tell you trends, give you some ideas how they handle it, but basically, you got to figure out the details in your own life. And the main thing you got to do is grow it and don't get some momentum going and then start looking over your shoulder. Am I doing this the right way? Is this working out the way? Is this fit how I heard in a book, or is this how I, you know, I heard that so and so said, you know, when you get to the end of the road and you get huge, the pattern is gonna probably fall in and look like just about like everybody else's, but you're gonna wiggle your way there, you know, What I'm saying, it's like you don't try and follow the twists and turns that other people did because they might have done something, because all of a sudden they went on a camping trip and got tick. Got ticks in their body. And they were out of commission for six months going to doctors, trying to figure out what it was. And so, you know, and so all of a sudden their business, they did this, this, that, the other. Well, and then two years later, you say, well back, you know, they did this. Now there's reasons you just keep. Grow your darn business, you know? Yeah. Keep your mind on. And usually what'll tell you is like, activity. You'll run out of time, bottleneck you. You run out of time. So I gotta offload some of the things I'm doing, or this is as big as I will ever get. And probably it'll be temporarily this big, because if I don't keep getting bigger, I'm gonna flatline and then I'm gonna decline. And once the decline sets in, it usually happens fast. You know, once you. Once you lose grip on that flagpole and you start to slide down, good luck regaining that grip. You know what I'm saying? Right.

What a great analogy. That is so true. And I think that's where I'm at, Larry. I'm 57 years old and I got this tight grip right now, as you know, my peers, and I'm holding on tight. Because you're right. Once you lose that grip, I've seen many do that, and they can do.

It not because they're sorry, because they're stupid, because they're ignorant. It's just what happens is you get sidetracked and you get your mind off of your main goal as a leader. And your main goal as a leader is to produce results, bigger results. Your team can stagnate without you.

Right.

The only way to measure your impact in a given month or year with your team is how much they grew because they could maintain without you, you know, or they could slump without you.

Yeah. It just doesn't. Yeah, there's no. There's no effort needed in maintaining. You're correct. Right. But in the growth process, you have to be laser focused. You have to be about your business. If you're a team, if you have a team around you, depending on what kind of business that you're in, for them to not stagnate. Right. They gotta grow too. I think that you asked that in the first session, you know, like, you know, where do you go now? You know, what mountain do you climb? Why are you climbing the mountain? Why are you going out to the next level? Like, isn't this enough for you? It's because if I stop, I have a movement of people that if I settle at the level I'm at, they're done. They're in trouble.

Right?

That makes sense. But the people that believed in us, they hadn't got there yet. Does that make sense? So they need us to go to the next level.

Absolutely. Fantastic insights. Thanks so much, Gary, for being with us and looking forward to doing it again.

Anytime, Larry.

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 widel on winning.com I'm the million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go, go, go.