Lessons from Friendship with Joe Namath from Dick Walker

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode.

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here with Dick Walker from Tampa, Florida. And Dick's been moving and shaking things in the business world since 1970 from his power base in Tampa. And that impact has been felt all over the country and lots of different arenas. And Dick, we were talking before, so we were talking before you grew up across from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, played ball with and against Joe Namath. That probably had to impact you seeing what he went through in his early years, college, pros, things like that, in the spot like that, that probably what happened to him resonated with you a lot more than most people because you, you know, you knew him and you could relate to it. What did your, what are your memories of those days of what you saw him going through when and maybe how you transposed that over to your, your own life?

Well, Joe was two years younger than me. He was a sophomore when I was a senior. So when we played against each other, both, I didn't play football because I blew my knee out my freshman year and I wasn't very big anyway, so it's probably just as well. But I played basketball at a pretty, pretty good level and also baseball. And I played both of those things against Joe. Joe. Joe was, and this is amazing. Most people don't know about this. Joe Namath was first team all state in football and basketball, and I don't think they had that in football and basketball, and I don't think they had such a thing in baseball, but Joe was offered a scholarship. Now, keep in mind now the time Joe was graduating is about the time I broke my neck. So I'm laying in a hospital bed. I was there for 43 days. Back then, they kept you a long time. And so I had three different operations during that period. But in any event, about that time, Joe and my buddy that I'm telling you about that I'm going to see tomorrow, he's, they were graduating from high school. And the day, the day that Namath graduated, he was offered, I forget the amount of money, but it was a lot of money back then. I think it was something like $75,000. Joe was offered X number of dollars to sign with the Chicago Cubs. And, and he, he turned it down because his dad wouldn't let him do it. And his mother worked at me with the bank back in Pennsylvania. So I got to know both Joe's, Joe's mother and dad as well as Joe. And Joe had had a family of. He had four other brothers and they were all pretty good athletes. And Joe was the youngest. So Joe was kind of the, the chauvin son of the group. But I watched him grow up in an area where most people aspired to have a good job at the mill. And Joe never wanted any part of that stuff. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know that Joe ever had a job. But Joe and I were very, very competitive. We knew each other reasonably well. I knew the other fellow better than I knew Joe, the guy that played with him. But Joe and I used to go to the pool hall and we used to play the old timers. And I was a very good pool player and so was Joe. And that's why we teamed together. I said to Joe, I says, joe, we can, we can play and meet the vast majority of these guys that you know that come to the pool all the time. This was not a bar, it was strictly a pool thing and about 20 tables. And Joe and I used to play nine ball and different other games. And Joe and I would go in there and it was not unusual for he and I to walk out of there with 5, 10, 15. That was a lot of money. Then 5, 10 or $15, probably half or two thirds at a time that we did that. And Joe and I, we both aspired to, to do something. And Joe hit it, you know, by the way, Joe Namath wanted to go to Notre Dame. He went and saw errors, precision and precision, was very, very interested. And they checked at his grades and Joe's grades weren't very good, so he couldn't get in. So procedure center to Maryland. I forget the coach's name at that time in Maryland. And so he went down there and it was the same thing. The coach was really fired up and excited about it, but they couldn't get him in. So that fellow in Maryland knew, I'm forgetting his name now. You know the all time great coach in Alabama, he knew Bear Bryant real well. He called Bear up and says, hey, I got this kid named Namath. He's phenomenal, he's outstanding. And he tried to get in Notre Dame, couldn't. He ended up here. I can't get him in. He said, send him down. So. And the rest is history. So that's how Namath got to Notre Dame. I mean, not the Notre Dame. I got to Alabama. Yeah, but the fact of the matter is Joe, Joe had a, he had a, an aura about him. Not only was he a great athlete and he didn't care much about school, but most anybody that was around Joe knew that Joe eventually was going to do something that would be meaningful. And he exuded that kind of, that kind of confidence. Now, I was two years older than him, so I was already thinking about some of this stuff. But Joe and a number of buddies of mine from Western Pennsylvania went on to, to have great careers in college primary football players. And here I was with a broken neck and I didn't have a college degree and whatever. And eventually, Larry, I didn't have enough physical, I mean, enough athletic ability to, I mean, I was pretty good, but I wasn't good enough to play, you know, Division one ball or anything like that. So Larry, I, again, I, I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew what I wasn't going to do. So that's kind of, that's kind of how I, I kept, no matter how I, I spun the wheel, you know, it came back to the same thing. My, my attitude about winning in life was pretty much I was going to have to, I was going to have to figure it out. You know, I, I didn't have a, I didn't have a path to run on.

Yeah, the path to run on. There was a path to run on. But you had decided early on, and Namath was in the same boat. You made up your mind separately that you weren't going to run, run to the steel mill. And when you had your accident, of course that took, took that out of the equation as a possibility anyway. But his athletic ability removed him from that limitation. As you went forward, there's a lot to be said. How did you work through the thing of. I'm going to have to figure this out myself, this path for myself, because that's a confusing point a lot of people are at, and we can gloss over it and all, but when you're at that point, you need to recognize you're going to have to figure that out for yourself. But there's good news, and the good news is you get to figure that out for yourself. It may be confusing, it may be a lot of work, but you get to make choices about your future that open doors that maybe you couldn't open otherwise. And there's a lot of empowering going through that process because the same decision making skills that you use to get started are the same skills that you go back in and use the rest of your life. For example, you had to do that to find the job at the bank, the savings and loan. How did you find the bank, the savings and loan, the original savings and loan. Hey, listen, there's a lot of information.

Online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion.

In assets under management, and has done.

Well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellawinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move.

Well, the bank. The bank was first. That's after I broke my neck. I didn't have the school to go back to. My granddad had been the chief of police in the town, a little town of 8,000 people. I came from a family of five, and. I'm sorry, my mother and my dad both each came from a family of five. So in that town, I had, you know, nine aunts and nine uncles, and my granddad had just retired about a year or two before that as chief of police. So a lot of people in town knew the family, and some of them followed us when we played ball. But I didn't have the path that Namath had. Uh, so I had to. I had to think about, you know, and I did survive that. That horrific accident. They said I'd probably never walk again, but they were wrong. And I used to think about, you know, what am I. What am I going. What am I going to do? And here I was, I was the officer in a bank at a young age, 25. And then a year later, the one of my clients that I helped him get a car, he came in one day and he said, I want you to go to lunch with me. And I said, what's up? He said, well, you know, I'm on the board of this savings loan in next town over, little town called Rochester. And he said, we're about to have to make a change. The fellow is leaving. He's going down the road, open another savings loan. We're going to need somebody. And I said, well, I've never loaned any money on houses. He said, well, but you're good at what you do and you know how to deal with people. He said, I'd like you to come down, talk. So I did, and I got that job at that savings loan. That's the one I stayed at a little more than a year. And I realized that I couldn't row that boat. That's when I decided I was moving to Florida. So if, in my case, Larry, I think what happened was it wasn't Namath was the driving factor, but, I mean, Namath and Joe and I, we spent some time together, but I think it was probably more my parents than anybody else, and even my granddad and my uncle one that I moved. They all followed me when I played ball, and they all realized that I had a stronger desire than most to win. And I may or not. May or may not have had as much talent as some of the other guys, although I. I always thought I did. I don't know if I did or not, but I wanted it more than they did. And I. I realized and I had to. I had to decide. You know, a great lesson for me was if I was going to win, I had to work harder than most other people because I didn't have. The thing that I had was my mother and dad both believed in me. They told me day in and day out, you can do anything you want to. Anything you want to do. And, Larry, I think the more I think about it, I wish I'd have written this down. My mother one time said to me, she says, honey, listen. Says, I don't know why, but he says, she said, I don't think you. You even hear the word no when it is said. And I looked at her and kind of puzzled, I said, why do you say that, Mom? Just because, you know, it takes a while for you to realize and understand there are some things that you just shouldn't do or can't do. And I said, well, mom, some of the things that we think we can't do, I think we can. And I was only about 10 years old, so I thought about that a bit later. And about two weeks later, I was talking to the neighbor, and he said to me, he said, dick, I got to work on the car. He says, I can't talk anymore right now. And he said, I enjoy talking to you, but you talk a lot. That's what he said to me. He said, you ask a lot of questions. So I went home. Two doors away. My mother said, weren't you talking to hockey? And I said, yeah. She said, but he decided he needed to work on the car, and he couldn't have me talking to him a lot more. She says, well, you know, you really do ask a lot of questions. She says, why do you do that? And I looked at her and said, well, mom, if I don't ask the question, how am I going to know the answer?

Well, one thing I'll say about you, Dick, and I've known you forever. You do seem to be a guy, just your normal mode. And I'm sure you're unaware of this. Your normal mode. In a relaxed situation, most people have a little bit of relax, kickback, you know, happy, go lucky. It's not that you can't laugh or have fun, but it just seems like your normal mode is inquisitive. Well, you know, you have that look on your face. You're going to ask another question. In other words, your natural mode is to be thinking about stuff. I've noticed that.

And I'm thinking all the time, Larry. I'm thinking about. That's why certain things in life, like, you know, I'm thinking in my head why, you know, a lot. Not because, well, that's the way it is. I don't buy that it isn't the way it is. Most of the time it's the way it is because that's the way we allow it to be and we accept what is that. I was never terribly excited about that, Larry. You know, I know a bit about your background and you know a bit about mine, even more now than you did before. But, Larry, nobody handed us anything. I mean, we had to go. We had to go do. We had. We had to find a, you know, a path we wanted to run on. And everybody has decisions to make, and some of them go down one road and some go down another road. We don't always make the right decisions. Like moving to Titusville I thought was a great idea, but didn't take me too long that the. To realize that I had to get out of there. And Tampa ended up the resting spot. I love Tampa. I like Pennsylvania a lot. It's a great place to visit. But I remember, Larry, you and I, I don't know if you remember this or not. We were at the Cloister, and it was the night that I was about to get promoted. And the reason I know this exactly, because it was on my birthday, December 18, 1979, and myself and Ken Hacke and three other guys got promoted that night. Of course, Ken Hacie died in an airplane accident. And the other one was a big tall guy. I forget his name. And one of the fellows was Ken Somebody, and he was from Carrollton, Georgia. I can't remember his last name. And you and I were talking and you said to me, you know, you asked me a question. How did you get things going so quick? And Tam, I don't remember the exact question, you know, and I, you know, and I told you what I, What I had done, and there was nothing magically about it. You know, I. I did what I. I tried to replicate what I had done when I first joined the company because I knew how to sell insurance, because that's what I was doing. I was selling term insurance. But then you remember a guy named Tom Powers? Remember that guy?

Yeah.

Tom Powers recruited me. And Tom Powers and Ed Randall, you know, they, they knew each other. So I got to know Tom pretty well. But. But in any event, the fact of the matter is that, that, that where I was in the business that I was in, Larry, I didn't have anybody there to help me or train me, so I had to do it on my own. And what I did, I kind of tried to replicate what I had done myself. I had to try to create people and build relationships with people, you know, not just. Not just look for, you know, how you can make more money or whatever, how you can make a difference in somebody's life and do something that is meaningful. And it's about relationship, not partnerships, relationships. And so that's, that's what I tried to. That's what I tried to do, and that's what I did when I came to Tampa. And I attracted some. Some. Some pretty good people, regardless of what I was doing. And I think they believed that. That we were going to go someplace. So they, they decided to jump on and let's. Let's ride. Let's ride the horse. So that's basically especially been my attitude.

Yeah, you can't get, you know, when you're. You're starting out and you're learning it yourself, you've just got to figure out a way to do it, you know, you. And you'll get better at it. You'll get more polished. And you want to find people where you don't have to say it to them perfectly. You know, they're looking for, you know, they're kind of similarly motivated. And if you fumble and stumble your way around to presenting what you're excited about in your words, they're going to get excited about that because they see it something genuine in you. It's not a formula thing. You're not reading it out of a book. And, you know, through repetition, you know, you get polished and get the systems all in place and everything. But in the beginning, you just tried. You're trying to replicate success. You'd had success before, so you were trying to replicate that with other people. But when you're getting started, if you haven't had that success, you got to find a role model and plug it together until you get some traction, you know, get a toehold. And then through repetition, you can get better. Thanks for sharing all of that, Dick.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, Go.