Part 3 - How To Deal With Betrayal In Business

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. Another one of the books I was.

Going to write for young people is Monsters you will meet in business because when you come up, you're young and naive and you think this, that the other. But you're going to have bosses that steal credit for all of your work. You're going to have all lie, cheat, steal the monster type thing. And this can happen. We had a guy, I thought you could tell someone was a crook. I learned I had a guy who was the most street smart. I don't think you ever met him. Red Tillman down in Charlotte. And this was the shrewdest street smart guy. He came up the rough way. Nobody could get anything past him. Well, that's what I thought. He had this young, good looking, preppy dress guy, very kind and nice to everybody in his office. And we found that one day the FBI came knocking on the door, found out this guy was running an insurance scam up in the North Carolina mountains and getting forging people's signature on their, their mutual fund accounts and changing the address over to this P.O. box. And then a couple months later he'd go in there and have them and he'd forge their signature. He'd have them with start withdrawing cash and sending it to this P.O. box. Of course they didn't know it was happening. And then he'd go like once a week up there and pick up the money and then he forges their name on their check. He had it going for about a year until the FBI figured it out and he showed up at the office. But this happened under the nose of my most street smart guy.

It's unbelievable, Larry. And you don't think like for example, go back to my own. Those guys who shafted me, when I look at it, when they filed bankruptcy and I got the papers, that was when I received the bankruptcy filings. It was bad, but it didn't make me feel bad because I felt I was not the only one who got scammed. Yeah, because you see the list of the people. Because I felt, why me? Because you can't when you're in those situations. You always say, why is this happening to me? But then he says, no, no, you're not that special. There's a bunch of other people this happened to.

Yeah, I had my most 16 year, most trusted person, the person that every day I heard people say to me, because they all knew her, how lucky you are to have Barbara. What would you do without Barbara? I wish I had a Barbara. Well, it turns out Barbara eventually got caught for embezzling a million dollars or more. We never from me, she got away with it. You know, the white collar crime embezzler. If you got an executive assistant for their benefit, your benefit, that's where the big embezzlements come from. And just keep them honest. In fact, when I had to let her go, all of my core people were mad at me. They couldn't believe that I had done this to the great Barbara. And so you and I both know this. We won't say his name. A multi billionaire. And we tell these stories forever. But he thought he had solved the financial problem. He was protected because his CPA was his cousin. He grew up with him, my cousin. But then later he found out he had sent the cousin over to buy this 2,600 acre farm for him to negotiate the sale and everything. He found out the guy buried a purchase of another 800 acre farm for himself personally and buried that into the price. But he didn't catch it for a while. Then he'd sent him over there to Savannah, to Gulf Stream to buy himself a G5. And he found out later the guy had also put into the price a twin engine plane for himself and buried that into the price. And he kept getting away with it for years until the guy got so arrogant that he gave himself a million dollar Christmas bonus. And that got caught.

Larry, experience I think teaches lot going back. So when I talk about how difficult it was for me at that point later on in my career, I had a guy and he was doing some sort of thing that resembled what I saw early, my experience. And I asked my company to terminate him. And everybody said to me, you are crazy. Why are you doing this? This guy is a rising star. He's doing a lot of stuff. But I noticed he was not doing things the right way. He left our business and five years later he, he was charged with mortgage fraud and went to jail.

Wow.

Sometimes these experiences at the time, you may think, you know, it's. But it prepares you, if you learn from it, it prepares you to prevent bigger mishaps down the road.

Let's just cut through the mustard here. I mean, this stuff cuts you to the bone. Sometimes it wrecks your finances. I mean, sometimes you have to wind up selling some of the things you have to cover the losses from these people. You know, I'VE got you and I know have a mutual friend. I won't say his name either. But when he started, he had gotten into the real estate with another friend. They bought a big office building, downtown Greensboro. And the other friend went off and sold the business out from under him and left him a $400,000 debt that he couldn't find him. And so he started 400 grand in the hole when he came into business with me of nothing to do with himself. But, you know, he got the lesson. And so tell people from your own personal experience when you're in that only the lonely, you're alone now. Everybody's with you when you're growing and going. And but when, if you're, have you noticed like Biden now Biden had. He gives up the stops running. There's a lonely guy now, Joe Biden, very bad. It's like John McCain the day after he was running for president, the day after he lost. The next morning at 10 o' clock, he had had crowds, he had had, he had this hundreds, thousands of people everywhere he went. You had to fight your way through the ground. The morning after he lost, John McCain was spotted at the local Starbucks in line getting coffee by himself in Arizona. So anyway, John McCain was in line by himself buying cup of coffee. All the crowds went away overnight when he lost the presidency. So you're alone now. And what does that do? How do you deal with it? Because tell people they're going to have, you're going to go through these things as well. You cannot. It's part of life. And so tell them, Bobby.

You know, Larry, I think as you're speaking and I think about it during those moments because not only it impacts you in such a way, you even start not only doubting your business venture way of success, but you start doubting yourself because you start to go back and you start to say, maybe I should have done this, maybe, maybe I should have checked this. Maybe. Why did I overlook this? How come I became so gullible? But I think two of the things, I think it's, that's why it's so important to surround yourself with some good people and a good partner. So for me, I have a very strong partnership. And so my partner, the two of us, one of the things, we would try to lift each other up. We would look at each other and say, you know what? Okay, two of us can work through this. And then you seek counsel from people who are more experienced than you. And so what I did, I went to people who were more successful and who been to an. I said, darling, I tell them exactly how I feel and what I was thinking and seek their guidance. And that's why even today, I tell people that at every level of success that I have, I have a world of respect for people who are more successful, because whatever I've gone through, chances are they have gone through that and more. And so I think it is so important. You talked earlier about mentorship and having, like an inner circle of having people that you can go to for counsel. I think that is so massive because a lot of times people try to do things on their own and think, well, only what they are thinking could be the possible solution to whatever situation they're facing. There are other people who are looking from the outside and who have probably experienced that, that their advice and their guidance is priceless.

And could we say to people that don't. If you get hit with a lightning bolt out of the sky and it just don't go into a shell and hide and talk to people that have been there, done that, who have seek out wisdom. You look for comfort and counsel, but go for it. You need more at that point than someone to say, there, there, Bobby, it's. I saw something on television the other day. Somebody like their father just got killed or something. There's a young person, their father got killed. They go see the neighbor. The neighbor says, it'll be all right. No, it won't.

What you said, Larry, that is so powerful, what you said. It's more important that we seek wisdom than counsel.

Yeah.

Because people can console you. They can be empathetic to what you're facing, but they can take your part out. But if you seek wisdom, you seek people who have accomplished things. And the one thing also I think is so important, which I did at the beginning, when it happened to me, is that you tend to feel, why am I the victim? And you tend to go, why me? Well, it's not only why me. You're not the only one who faced difficulty in life and went on to do something. Most people who have accomplished something significant had setbacks, maybe. They may not talk. I'm so glad we're talking about this. They may not talk frequently enough about the setbacks and the hurdles that they had to overcome, but they did. They can give you the wisdom and guidance to get you over.

That's a bad thing. But how do you make good things happen? Like, at a certain point, you know, if you're running a business, you'll be going along and you'll have a growth Surge up to a certain point. But then it's the natural thing is your team, your organization, everybody kind of feels good about where you are and the progress you've made. And then you can be motoring along and they don't see it. They think they're doing great. But, you know, like, we're just getting ready to go into a big slump because we're not growing. We're starting to get a little sloppy. We're starting to take things for granted. We're starting to get a little arrogant. We're starting to not check as much as we used. Starting to just get sloppy. And so how have you dealt with that where you say you just got to change things, you got to get everybody's attention, you gotta launch a new blitz because this is unacceptable. You know, we're growing, we're doing good, but we're better than this. How do you put your foot down and go for greatness when you've already had a great run and this and the other? But you know that if you don't get in charge at that point, you're going to lose your momentum. You're going to start into a decline and things are going to start get. You might be making money, but it's going to be. You're going to have, you know, it's like, problems are all. I always looked at it like this. Why? One of the reasons I wanted always, you hear, grow or die. But another side of that was, way I looked at it is like, you always have problems, but if you're growing, you stay in front of them. But as soon as you slow down, the dogs can catch you and drag you down. And I just wanted to stay in front that way, keep going that way. And so how did you. When you saw you were in that situation where we got to do something dramatic, something big, a big turnaround, and that led to a big growth thing. What did you do? How did you do it?

Larry, what you're saying is that you start and you get growth and you have people around you that major contributors to that growth. But then when you get to a point, and you may not see it, you may not think it is, but those people around, they have reached their peak in their mind, they have plateaued. And so if you want to move to the next level with folks who have already plateaued, it frustrates you. I went through that. I went through that. I've been talking to our guys and said, we got to go to the next level. In their minds, there was no next level. They were done. And I'm trying to move to the next level with people who don't want to go to the next level. And so you get through that period of frustration and then going back and I start, look, I says, listen, I gotta find some other people who are not where these guys are at, who are where these guys started to take me to the next level. So you always gotta have new people coming in. And then when your existing talent that you have, there may be one or two who may be maverick, who may be different, that says, well listen, I'm with you. I want to do something big, but from my experience it won't be the masters. So that's why you always got to have an influx of new people coming in. And you're not going to make these people who have plateaued feel bad. You're going to use their. Because their level is higher than a new person. So that new person choose to strive to their level. That's going to create growth within your business.

I'm going to say this fast because we've been talking a long time and we can't open up a whole can of worms here. But be aware that if when you move to incredible success, you may have the people that got you there are probably not going to be. Not all of them are going to be the ones that will take you on. Up we went, we saw that the company that you and I have been a part of for a while and when you original of the original seven, the founder seven, there were some of those that just were not equipped mentally for our emotionally really didn't have the desire to keep the ride going. After we had grown about. We've probably grown a hundred times, but to keep on going, they were ready to check out. And so it was tough not to get the pats on the back. And all of that stuff is like in your core circle, you're just be aware your core advisors, you're going to, as you go up the ladder, you're probably going to have, as you have success, you're going to have to have some turnover in those key core advisors. And you got to be tough enough to make those changes because it's not fair for the people that it's going to be uncomfortable for some of those people to stay. And you got to be tough enough to call that shot. And it happens to founders too. Founders of companies often reach the point where they get up to the point they used to run everything. Then they go public and they get a board of directors and, and they run it For a while. And then the board of directors say that original founder is too much of a cowboy wild card and they throw the founder out. And they get in somebody who's a real CEO, who's been trained to be a CEO, has CEO experience and then the company can double again if you get the right one. But so it happens to founders too. You've got to be a little bit cold blooded if you're the guy in charge and you're having to replace some top people around you. It's like we at all levels, you're subject to that. But usually they've had so much growth and everything that you can make a happy thing, put them in another position, put them over something, another division or something, but get somebody else direct to you who's still as hungry as they were five or 10 years ago and is capable. What would you say? Look at good advice you got coming up.

I got tons of good advice and one of the things I, I think one of the big advice I would say that really helped me along the way was that I was always told whatever your vision is and whatever you're talking about, make sure you sell it. Go back to the idea of life is sales. The people around you. If you want to do something, you got to sell them on why they should join you, why it's going to be good for them, how it can change their life. Don't just ask for a commitment. Say, listen, I want to do abcd. I'd like for you guys to come along. You got to sit down and say, when we do abcd, here's what could happen to everybody. So one of the things that I think that has helped me over the years is that whatever we are venturing out, whatever we are talking about, we want to achieve the parties that are going to play a major role. I sit down with them and I show them how they will benefit. Yeah, it's going to be good for the team collectively. But here is what this could mean for you and mean for you and your family and, and mean for you in your life. And I think once we get sell that to them and says this is something, yes, I want to play for the team, but there is some big gains for me as well. I found that over the years that has really helped me tremendously.

Fantastic. I'm looking at the clock here and realizing time has flown. And so Bobby, I'm going to give you the chance to give a final word to wrap this up for everybody.

You know what I say to you, Larry, Listen, we live In a part of the world, you can be anything you want to be. But remember, no one of us is good enough to get where we want there by ourselves. Surround yourself with the right people, and if you don't have the right people, seek them out. Don't be afraid. Go out, find people. I always tell people, you know, one hour with a wise man is worth years of study. Find people who have been where you want to go and learn from them. If possible, ask them to mentor. Seek whatever help you can get from.

People who are successful or a wise woman. We know a lot of them. So anyway, thank you very much, Bobby. This has been great. Look forward to next time. Okay?

Thank you, Larry. Really appreciate it. It's always an honor and a pleasure to spend time with you and to learn from you.

Okay, Great man.

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