In this solo episode of the Big Hitters series, Larry Weidel warns that the biggest error successful leaders make is losing focus and enthusiasm after achieving success. He argues that leaders become bored, drift toward adding unnecessary features, and let the core product or system slip from the spotlight. To counter this, he stresses the need for continuous, incremental improvement, maintaining excitement for the main offering, and using systems like contests, measurements, and fresh learning experiences. He illustrates his points with vivid stories—from dairy farming routines, a player‑piano salesman who lost his spark, to a photography workshop with Jay Maisel—showing how novelty fades and focus wanes. Weidel concludes with practical advice: keep the main thing the main thing, avoid feature bloat, keep measuring and improving core processes, and continually re‑energize yourself and your team. He ends with a call to action to join the Big Hitters community and subscribe for more high‑level, no‑fluff guidance.
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But if people wanted it before, they'll probably want it in the future because there's new generations coming up that haven't seen this thing before. So once you find something that works, once you find anything that works in your business, a marketing system works, a product that works, a routine that works, beat it into the ground. Do it and do not let yourself get off track. Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level— the decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, You're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hello, and we are back talking about winning in business. And let's say you've won, you're having success, so you wanna stay on track and you don't want to make common mistakes that people fall into, leaders fall into. And so what is the biggest mistake leaders fall into once they've got success going? And what do you think it is? Well, there's a lot of them, but biggest one would probably be you got off track working hard. Everybody works hard. People are successful. They're not stupid. They're not out there going to make an obvious mistake. It's not like a conman's gonna come in the front door and talk 'em into something stupid. But what happens is you try and you get bored. One thing is you get bored and what you're doing Is not as fresh and exciting for you as maybe it was when you got started. You know, the idea, the dream, the vision, you've been doing it over and over again. You know, it's just like it— I can only imagine an NBA basketball star on the winning team, on the championship-winning team, the day after the whole long season is gone and you played the playoffs, you played every single game. And then the next day someone throws you a basketball, you probably don't want to see the basketball. You probably want to think about something else. Well, it's like this. You cannot get bored. You know, the number one thing for a leader to do is keep themselves excited about what they're doing. And it doesn't happen automatically. You have to work at it. You got to put systems in place. You got to find ways to keep yourself— Challenged, thrilled, and excited about it. That's why you want to be improving. Improving puts a fresh take, you know, puts a nice little slice on the knife of making it a little sharper. You know, if you got a different technique, if you got some new hires that you're excited about, you got some new equipment that you're excited about, you got some new ideas, you went to a clinic, an exhibition, you know, end of the year conference, something like that. And, or you went and visited a competitor and you picked up some ideas you're excited about getting back and trying. That's the whole idea, that you've got to keep yourself excited about what you're doing. And let's face it, nobody's mastered everything about what their entire business— there's always zillions of things that you can make little slight incremental improvements. And once you've got, if you're a top successful person already, Like a championship team, you probably are beating just, you know, you're beating everybody. And so any improvement you make is just going to further increase your lead over the competition. And so there's big payoffs for making those, you know, slight improvements. And that's how, you know, you go— when you go through wins, if you want to keep yourself fresh and on track, You look for ways to improve quicker, faster, better. And that'll allow you, you know, it becomes stale when you're doing the same thing over and over. And it's easy to get sidetracked with the idea. You know, it's almost subtle, like, well, let's come in and let's offer it in more colors. So let's come in with more, usually with, with most things, it's more features. We've got to have more features. And then you have brochures with thousands of features. And the main thing is buried. In there, you know, I used to tell people, you know, our sales force is like, you cannot let your— if you're in the dairy, you can't let yourself get tired about doing what makes you special. If you're in the dairy business, you can't get tired of milking the cow. You're gonna be milking that cow. What do they do it twice a day? And you're gonna be milking those cows twice a day forever. So you better get used to it and you better find ways to measure it. To improve the feed, to improve the, you know, the fields, the health of the cows, the quality of the milk, the cream percentage. You know, all of these, I'm sure, I don't know anything about dairy farming, but the idea is that I'm sure there's lots of things to measure and improve on. And you've got to let yourself almost have a childish excitement about these improvements because it'll make it better. It'll make your life better. It'll make the product better. And that's how you keep moving up. You don't move up just because by, because you want to, you think about it, you do because you do things that allow you to elevate yourself. And I remember being in 2010, I was in a photography workshop in New York City and Jay Maisel, the legendary photographer Jay Maisel said, we had to show 10 of our own images. And show to the class, and people would you know there was like 12-15 of us in the class. And he said, you know, everybody oohs and ahs over everybody else's pictures. And he said, after we got through, he said, you know, there's a phenomena that I've noticed in these classes that people get super excited about everybody else's pictures, a lot more excited than they are about their own pictures. And you know, he said, and the reason Why is not that you don't have great photographs. It's just that you've seen yours so many times. You know, you took the shot, you got excited about it, then you've seen it again and again. You showed it to other people and everything. It's not as fresh and new and exciting. But then when you bring somebody else's photographs come in here, it's like, ooh, wow, ow, that's incredible. Yeah, it's the first time you've seen it. And so it's a common thing. We look at, you know, we look around and we say, you know, we're kind of bored with what we do. You know, we kind of, we've lost our thrill for it. So, you know, let's just try and add more features to it. You know, and you get involved in what that does is if you don't, if you let it go too far, you can get sidetracked and you wind up pushing, you know, you go into all this trouble to put all these features into your product and then you want everybody to know. Hey, look at all these great features we added to it. Well, it could be they could care less about the features. They want the main thing. And I remember, you know, you know, the main thing has still gotta be the main thing. And the main thing for a leader to do is to make sure that the main thing remains the main thing. And when you add all these other features in to just try and keep yourself excited or energized about your thing, it's so easy to get off track. I remember one of the fellows, Rick Stamey, down in Thomasville, Georgia. He worked in a mall. He went through a mall one time and they had one of these player pianos back in the early days where they had the player pianos in the mall and the thing would automatically play. And then you had the keys and you had the music up there. And if you just pressed the keys the way they said, I guess they lit up or something like that, all of a sudden You're playing some really nice piano, please. You know, a piece of piano music. And so he went in there and he'd never played music before. He never thought he could play an instrument. And he said, you know, he said he just got super excited. I'm playing the piano. Listen to this. He showed his wife, showed his girls. This is— and he got into it. And so they, before you know it, he had bought one. And then he was so ecstatic about it, they wound up hiring him at the store to work and to sell these pianos. And he sold them like hotcakes because he would do the same thing. He said, get in here, let me show you this. I'd never played anything in my life. I never thought I could play anything. And now in no time, I'm doing this right there. Come in here and try it. Get your hands on there. And he was selling those things like crazy. Over time, what happened? Over time, he got, he lost, you know, the thrill of that. And he got interested in, you know, the features, you know, the different kind of wood, mahogany, walnut, oak, the finishes, the electronics that was inside of it. You know, the keyboard was made out of this, that, and the other, the cheap and then the expensive ones. And then the, you know, when the amps, the soundboards in there, what they were made out of. And he got in all these details about how these things worked. And the more he learned about it, people would come in, he would talk about this stuff because he was excited. He had learned all these other features. And guess what happened? Before long, he wasn't selling any pianos anymore because people, people never got excited enough about the features to buy the piano. Like when he got in there and got them excited about the sound and the music and the feeling. Of being, I'm playing music. I've never thought I could play music before. I want one of those. You don't get that from just saying like, this is walnut versus oak. And, you know, the superior electronics on this one versus that one. So he got more knowledgeable, but he got sidetracked. And so the folks, the thing is, you know, I got a million stories on that stuff, but like with cows, you're, if you're in the, you're the dairy business, I used to tell people you can't get bored. Milking the cow. You can't say your mind wanders. Say, let's just see. I'm bored milking the cow, you know, on the the tits down there. You know, let's just see if we could milk the ears. You know, see if we can get milk out of the ears or the nose. Try milk the nose or milk the tail. You know, if you try milk the tail, you're going to get kicked in the face. The thing is, you can't get. You've got to stay with how things work. You gotta keep the main thing. And the milk delivery system is located underneath the cow, not on the ears. And so you could go, you cannot let yourself lose your enthusiasm over your main product if it's successful, cuz it's hard to find something successful in the world that people want. But if people wanted it before, they'll probably want it in the future cuz there's new generations coming up that haven't seen this thing before. So once you find something that works, once you find anything that works in your business, a marketing system works, a product that works, a routine that works, beat it into the ground. Do it and do not let yourself get off track. Keep— run contests for your people, you know, about how many they can get it done, increase their efficiency and things like that. But Do not let yourself get off track. Your main moneymaker, you know, it's the whole thing of shake your moneymaker. Once you find you've got a moneymaker, you gotta keep shaking your moneymaker. You can't let yourself get tired of shaking your moneymaker. And so anyway, what's the biggest mistake that high achievers, successful company CEOs and everything Biggest mistake, they get off track. It's not because they're stupid, not because they're not working real hard. It's they just get, you know, the siren call of let's do it a little different. Let's, you know, do it over here. Getting a little tired of the way you're doing it there. And you wind up getting diverted from the main thing. Keep the main thing, folks. Don't make that, you know, as a leader, you make a lot of mistakes. Just don't make the number one mistake. All right. That's it for this episode. If this resonated with you, do me a favor, share it with someone who's ready to level up. Winners find winners, and the right conversation at the right time can change everything. Want to go deeper? Join us inside the Big Hitter Community at joinbighitters.com. That's where the real work happens. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Remember that you're either growing or dying. And there's no standing still. Keep winning, and I'll see you next week.
