Part 3 - How To Ditch The Bucket List And Live Your Dreams Now

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. If you and I have studied high performers in all walks of life or our entire careers, and I just don't know of one who kind of lucked his way to the top. I used to tell people on our team, I don't know how good you can be, but I know you cannot. You can't piddle your way to greatness. If you want to do something great, it's going to take everything you've got. But you still, it's only going to take the effort you can make in 24 hours in a day. So it's not like you have to do 48 hours a day. You're going to live. At the end of the day you're going to go to bed. So what are you going to get done between now and the end of the day? No matter how tired or worn out in the morning, you're going to get up and you're going to be rested, ready to go, then what are you going to do? And so when you do you make up your mind for this. What we don't know, Bill, starting out, we think short term, we don't think long term. And you and I have had a chance. We're speaking for the advantage of long term. And things change. Like we know the president and founder of the company, when we started, he went out, he had incredible success. He made his billions and then he had. But you got to do something else with your life. So he got in another industry he got excited about. They had a lot of fun, built some resorts, golf courses, this, that, the other, created some legendary properties. But now he sold that too, you know what I'm saying? It's like there are going to be stages you go through. But see, he kept the same mindset when they went out and they started putting the resort together, he wanted to build the greatest, the one people you know. And he built the old Edwards Inn, which is like the greatest on the east Coast. The magazine, the travel magazines write it up, they win the awards. And he didn't want to just be an inn. He had at a couple golf courses along with it and apartments and this, that and the other. Turned it into quite a unbelievable first class, second to none resort at every step of it because he came into that business with the idea of doing something great in a new industry. And Everything. And that gave them, you know, they like to travel the world, go over to Italy and New York and everything. But that gave them a reason when they were doing the traveling. They were checking out the greatest resorts in the world and bringing those ideas back into Highlands, North Carolina. And now they built something incredible and they're at another stage of their life with their grandkids and everything. And they've taken as far as they want to take it, and that's been sold now. But as you go along in your life and he's going to, you know that I don't know what the guy would do, but if they live, they're going to do something else great. Mind blowing, you know what I'm saying? But you carry that attitude. Be careful what attitude you carry with you because it's going to impact your family, your businesses, your outside activities, the friends you develop and be really critical of the attitude that you carry with you and the intensity you carry with you about your energy level, your intent. What is your intent? Do you want to do something great with your life or not?

You know, Larry, one of the things I want you to touch on real lesson I learned from you regarding a bucket list. Everyone's got this, I guess maybe since the movie came out. What's your bucket list? What are some of the things you want to do before it's all over? And you really helped me a lot. You said, I don't want a bucket list that I'm going to do one of these days. I want to live a bucket list life.

Right.

And that was a preeminent thought process that has to occur. If you want to do something great, you don't want to have to wait until you're old, then maybe start doing some things right.

Well, it's led to a lot of opportunity. Fortunately, success in one thing, in your main business thing, if you do it right and you organize it right, can create discretionary time and discretionary income to do other great things. Not just other things, but other great things. You know, we've got Ike guys in our business that we know that are peers. And one of them had the goal that he wanted to be the biggest. He wanted to own more single family homes than anybody else in Ohio. And he does. I don't know why he got that, but I mean, he owns more real estate, individual single family homes in Ohio than anybody had another guy. He loved to travel and he wanted to go to every one of the Caribbean islands. Caribbean. And he has, I mean, there's a hundred and something of them or 170, he knows them all. That was just a family thing. That was a great goal for him as kind of their goal of greatness. People have different goals of greatness. Now with me, I've unfortunately always been interested in. I have a short attention span and a lot of interest in a lot of subjects. I started out as an artist and a photographer at 12 years old over in Italy in Tuscany, which is kind of like my hometown. There was no exposure at that time to sports on TV and other things. Going to the museums and art things. That's what you did, you know, you went to the Vatican. And so I got infected with the art bug and photography and we moved back to the Hamptons. A lot of art in the Hamptons. But I did have a role model, adult role model that could show me a career path with the art. So I went into architecture down to Georgia Tech and lasted two years until the light bulb went on. I found out you're going to be 40 years old before you can make any money in architecture. It's worse than medicine in terms of the punishment you go through to be Reese. The thing I just wasn't going to wait that long. So I went in building construction, but I wound up in building construction. And I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a passion. But I like doing well was a passion. But then when I got hit with a crowbar in the face, my reward was to getting laid off after four years of 80 hour work weeks. Like screw this industry. I don't have to put up with this. And so that's what I chose, financial services. But I did financial services because it was I could do something great in my business career. And fortunately construction, building 25 houses a year and having to build a house through like 20, 30, 40 stages and multiple houses, multiple stages, multiple subdivisions, organized my brain. I had an unfair education coming in to Primerica or A.O. williams because I wasn't that great in sales. But as soon as you got me into multiples, into running teams of people, it was my ball game. I knew how to play chess at that level and so I could multiply it on out. But that was doing something great in business. But that allowed me to go back and feed what I'd always done, which is like the photography and the painting. And so now I've got like over a thousand paintings and they've let me know that I need to spend some time marketing that. So I'm starting to open up the marketing thing. You got a marketing consultant come up in the Last few months. But I went through the stage with the family. You know, the family. Like, what are we going to do as a family? Well, my wife, she was interested in nothing but horses. Okay, we'll do horses. So we wound up buying a farm, getting our own barn. We would go show. And the last thing I was going to do was bust my rear all week long and then go out there and be the guy to wash down the horse and hold the bridle. If we were going to go to the horse show, I was going to be riding. So we did fox hunting. I did show jumping. I've done hunters, I've done dressage, I've done cross country. I've won first and second place in competition against Olympic riders. With 110 riders in one class and 120 the next day. So if you put yourself in a position, because I wanted to get the best horse I could get, which is I couldn't get a Olympic horse, but got pretty good horse and great training. And then you could do. You could have moments where you get really satisfaction. But I've hunted with Tuttle. He took me 17 years to get me to go to Mexico and do wing. Shooting down there was the most fun I'd had doing anything. So I did that for about 10 years or something. But then we went down to South America and Argentina multiple times. And really Ireland, Scotland, England multiple times doing pheasant shooting. And so I've had all kind. You know, the thing is, you can have lots of goals. I look at goals as a bouquet of flowers. It's not like there's one rose in the pot. You could have lots of flowers in there. You have a bouquet. You have a great goal for greatness with your family. This with grow a greatness for the first son, the second son, the first daughter, the second daughter, your spouse, your family. You know, something you want to do for your parents. You know, one year we bought both grandmothers brand new cars and we just. Brand new car, they walk outside thing with the ribbon on it and all that. But so you can have lots of goals in your life. You're only limited by your thinking. And I never wanted to be limited because I wasn't thinking big enough either in stretching the business or in the personal life. Because whenever you make a breakthrough, there's other people around. You go through that same breakthrough and you set off a ripple effect. It's like you throw a rock into the pond and the ripple set off. But if you could throw tons of rocks out there, you set off kind of ripples. Even now, today, people will come up to me and say they plugged into things or they got caught up in something I was doing 20, 30 years ago. And they've gone out there and set new records and done this, that and the others like, things I would never be capable of, but I was there to set it in motion. And I know you've done the same thing because you've. In your family. I know you don't like to talk about it, but talk with your foundation. I mean, you've given gems. And I know you supported how many missionaries? What's the most missionaries you supported at any one time?

I don't know, Larry. I honestly, I'm not. I just don't know. One of the things I've enjoyed.

I like to talk about it, but it's nice to be able to donate. Somebody's got to donate the next wing onto the hospital, folks. Who's that going to be?

Yeah, that's part of that bucket list that you're talking about. Most people think of a bucket list. I think your bucket list, Larry, should not just be places you go, sporting events you go to, jumping out of an airplane, going to the Taj Mahal, things like that. But organizations that you can contribute to that really will make an impact on people's lives and their children's life and their children's children's lives. And so they're all over the place. And when you become financially independent, they come. You can see them. When you're broke and you're living paycheck to paycheck, you cannot see the need of other people. You have to be told about it, but you can't see it, Larry. That's one of the things that the bucket list. And you find, again, an industry that you can make a lot of money at, that you feel good about, and you can make money, and that money will go on to help other people.

Yeah. And the thing is, you expand your thinking where your passion is not just limited to what you're going to do as a career. Your passion can be in all these other areas. You can develop these passions and make big impact there as well. It's not just, you know, you got to think beyond just like, I'm going to get passionate about my job or my career and my thing, and I'm going to do this. The world is bigger than that. That's kind of a first step, though. But it's an important first step to let yourself get out of yourself.

I think we all have a creative, a part of Our lives. We're creators, made by a creator. We're supposed to create something. And I heard this, that the purpose of life isn't to live forever, but to create something that does. And that's what you're doing with your artwork. That's what you've done in our business. You created something that will live for 100 years beyond you. So that's a big part of greatness, doing something big, isn't it, Larry?

I think, Bill, way back to the beginning of where we started down in Macon, Georgia, and the first guy came up underneath T faircloth with, like. Was it Jack? Like, wasn't Jack White? It was Jack Shulman. And he joined. He was like, first new trainee who did exponential growth and kind of a hero of the early days when we were just starting to recruit and train and develop. Up till that time, we were all pretty much salespeople. And so Jack comes in, and he got recruited because he learned he could be part time, and if he made a few sales part time, he could save that money and he could get a Winnebago. You remember that story?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. A Winnebago. Imagine that.

All he wanted is he only joined so he could get the Winnebago. And the thing is, he got in and he found he was really good at it, really successful. He never bought the Winnebago, but he bought a whole lot of other bigger things. I've done this thing. I had a slideshow, Bill, I did one time. I think it's still on YouTube. It's called why not you? And I would go, you know, be. I'd be up there, went for like, eight, ten minutes, and I would show great things that I'd been able to do, other people in the company been able to do. And then I'd flash in, I'll look a huge, big mansion up there, or like, one of those big custom motorcycles or yachts or some kind of thing in a family on a great vacation in Hawaii, having fun in the surf and everything. And when you do it from different sides of the audience, you went, wow. You would tap into their emotion because you'd hear spontaneous wow. Ooh. Around the room. And the thing is this. I think that's good because they say that's materialistic and just selfish. I think you need to let yourself get turned loose. If you want a Ferrari, turn yourself loose to go get a Ferrari, because that will unleash potential inside yourself that is there, but until it gets unleashed, you're never going to impact the world. Who knows what it could lead to. But in the fact of unleashing the Ferrari type energy, you probably never buy the Ferrari. Maybe you buy 10 Ferraris or something. But it'll turn you loose to doing great things, and I think it's great. Let yourself be a little materialistic or to watch something tangible like that. A vacation in Hawaii for the family, where I take the whole family to Hawaii, which I know you've done many times, to take these lifetime experiences or to be able to donate something to people in need or something like that. Why not turn yourself loose for something that, like, gets those engines in, that internal engine inside you roaring? Because once you start roaring with internal motivation, the sky's the limit on what you can do. What do you think we've accomplished today, Bill?

Well, hopefully we've got people expanding their minds to go beyond just a normal job, career, profession. I want to keep doing what I like doing, and they never go beyond this cocoon stage that keeps them from becoming a butterfly.

Right, and. Absolutely. Well, I think that. Have we done it and we covered it?

Oh, I think you did, yeah. I think we opened up a lot of mines. We've expanded the mines. We've gotten the cobwebs out of a lot of mines because people are. So you said this. You got goal of greatness. You got to start associating with people who think and have goals of greatness like you want to have.

Right? Absolutely. Well, Bill, this has been fantastic. A lot of fun. Looking forward to seeing you soon and the family and you guys have a great summer.

Thank you, Larry. It's always my pleasure. You're great. Longtime friend. 50 years.

That's right.

49 years for you, 50 years for me. Take care. Thank you, Larry. Bye.

Thank you for listening to the final part of this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. Great ideas. Don't care who you. If you're motivated to move up in a big way. Right now, I've created a free training video to remove the mystery on how to set yourself up for big success. This is the information that has changed so many of our lives, and it can have the same impact on you. And the video is completely free. You'll find it@widelonwinning.com join us on over there and thanks for being part of our community.