The Billion-Dollar Truth: Community, Not Gurus, Creates Winners

Foreign. And let me give myself a big welcome back. We've been on pause of the podcast since the first January, and I can explain some of that, and it relates to running a business of the kind of decision to go through. You have to have your heart and soul in what you're doing. You have to go off your instincts, you have to go off numbers. You have to, you know, unless it's a vanity project or something that nobody's going to pay attention to, you have to say, you know, what am I trying to do? Who am I trying to reach? Is it working? You know, the other thing is, is it working? Because what you try and do is on a daily basis, you know, it's about winning, you know, the podcast, Million Dollar Mastermind. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a idea that would capture people's imagination. But we're, you know, I'm making an adjustment in the name of the podcast and the focus of the podcast a little bit to dial it in. You got to be specific, to be dynamic. You know, if you're going to, you know, you're going to aim at the bullseye, you got to look at the center of the bullseye. Can't just look at the wall. You can't just look at the target. You've got to look at the dead center. When you throw, you. You can't control the nart, but you can control your eyes. And I've known that from bow hunting. You know, where the arrow. You know, we do compound bows, or we don't use these targets and sights. We do instinctive and like longbow out of. Out of England. And what you do is you look at your target, your eyes are on your target. It is on the spot. The hair, the, you know, the dot. And it's amazing how that works. You know, when you throw a football, you're looking at, you know, like. You know, like the super bowl champs with the San Francisco 49ers, where they won so much and you had Joe Montana. Bill Watch was a coach. I've got his book right over here on my. My bookcase next to me. And he would show Montana, you know, they practice, throw it in the middle of where the receiver's hands are going to be. Don't just go out there and throw and he catches it. Great. No, you got to hit the spot. And so it's like when you're doing anything in business, you got to hit the spot, and you got to evaluate yourself. You got to challenge yourself to dial it in or you're never going to hit the spot or it's going to be, you know, like winning the lottery. So it's up to you. You may never hit the spot in your success is never guaranteed. However, you can guarantee what's in your mind. You can guarantee what you're trying to do and what your intent. You know, that's one of the big things I've learned from painting over about a thousand paintings now is it has to do when you talk to the professionals, you talk to it's intent. What is the intent? You could tell if someone's just slopping mess up there or they're trying to go through the motions, trying to do it, like, do stuff. They like red stuff, you know, like red horses. Let's paint a bunch of red horses. And it just looks like garbage. Obviously, you see, it's just trash. It's never going to be hanging in the museum. But what's the intent behind it? And you can tell intent. You could tell, you know, I just got back, my assistant artist had just got back from two weeks in Europe going to museums. He said, you can tell, you know, the masters hanging in the museums. People walk in the room and people have no idea what art is, but they walk over and they look around a little bit and then they gravitate over to where the masters are. You know, what, what is it? It has to do with not only ability to execute, but the intent of what they were trying to accomplish. And so behind the podcast, it's like, what are we trying to accomplish here? And, you know, I'm gonna blame this on. It's always more fun if you can blame somebody. So I'm gonna blame the fact that my podcast was actually successful for me, all the 900 or something episodes and all of the fantastic guests. We have a million dollar mastermind. You know, I kept getting, you know, you're around these people, things happen to you. But along came, and I'm going to blame her, Gina Biancini. And Gina is the mastermind, creator, founder, owner, runner of Mighty Networks. And she came on to around in November and she. I had feelings about, you know, I wanted to do more. I was missing the mark somehow. She came along and she opened my eyes to the idea of community and how communities were like the new model for people actually making changes. It's one thing to sit at, you know, the model down through the history is you sit at Plato's feet and hopefully you learn something. But the deal is that the gurus, I won't call the names, but you know the name, the big guru Lord. And then it's just never enough. Sitting and listening to the feast is never enough. And so when they try and draw you in, and unfortunately it's okay if it's somebody legitimate who's actually done something, but I would say 90% of them have never done a God blessed thing except sell their courses and sell their coaching that they have derived from fraudulent sources, which is reading books or interviewing people themselves. They haven't ever done anything, you know, where the rubber meets the road. That's what people want to hear about, where the rubber meets the road. That's what I wanted to do on the Million Dollar Mastermind is pull out insights from people that actually drove the race car, competed, you know, competing, you can't win without competing. And unless you're competing, you can't ever experience the joy of winning. Winning is tough, but if you go through, you have to make adjustments, you have to improve, you have to push yourself through all these changes. The biggest thing that happens to you when you win, you build a company or you win some kind of award, a trophy or whatever, is that you go through changes yourself that you can use to accomplish things the rest of your life. And that's what I got into my. And covered in the my book cereal winning is that once you taste winning, it opens up the door to a whole lot of other winning, you know, unlimited winning. And once you taste winning, you don't want to lose that taste. You want to do it again and again and again and again. And you want to make it a way of life. And so that's what happens to you when you win, the transformation to yourself. And so as I. And then you learn and then you see what happens is you see things other people don't see and then you can pass those things on that you see that you've learned from accomplishment and being on the other side of it. You can't tell people how it looks from the top of Mount Everest unless you've been to the top of Mount Everest. Now you can say, oh, well, I've seen the movie, I saw the movie they took from up there. Yeah, good for you. God bless you. But the people you want to hear from are the people who actually been up there. They climbed and they experienced it. And so there's a lot of phony experts. But you know, Jesus had, I mean, all through there's always been false prophets, so we can't get too upset about it. And the things that we deal with now have always been out there. People that, you know, misunderstand you, people that attack you when you do good things, they're going to come in and see evil in everything you do. You know, you know, the naysayers, the false prophets, you know, the purveyors of lies and everything always been out there. So that's part of winning is you've got to learn how to navigate the false teachings. And you know, the people, there are a few people that are just actually evil and for some reason they just want to bring you down. So you got to watch out for them too. And it is a surprisingly large number and variety of those kind of people. But there's more false teachers, people out there that pre. Now, they don't know how wrong they are. They think they're right. And so that makes them incredibly convincing. But you got to navigate this thing. That's why I did. Million Dollar Mastermind is to give people one, yet another source of how they could get true real life inspiration and insights. The fine line, you know, it's different when somebody who's actually done it tells you about, you know, these truths and, you know, they, they're bringing from winning a Super bowl in the, you know, the moment of the, you know, they score the last touchdown or the last goal in the soccer match or whatever, hockey, sports, Tour de France in competition, and that they're telling you what went through their mind. And so that's what I was after in Million Dollar Mastermind. You can listen to those, those episodes are still up, but I figure I've got to dial it in a little bit more. And so long comes Gina Bianchini. And Gina, she really got me. She really made her point that the new model is not just listening to gurus. Because what I was saying before, the trouble with gurus, it's never enough. Never enough. You just don't get a transformation. Even in spiritual growth. I mean, you can go to a conference, you could go to a revival a with the great spiritual giants and you know, you get some insights. You might have a light bulb moment, but the changes happen over time. Changes are growth. You know, the way you, where you go through a transformation, spiritual transformation, physical transformation, business transformation. Folks, let me tell you the truth. It happens in two stages. You have the big moment, the boom. You're born, you start your, you get the idea, you start your company boom. Or in, you know, in the spiritual world, you know, you repent and you believe. And now you're saved, you're born again, but you're not mature. You know, when you Start a business, you're not mature when you're born. As a baby, you're not mature. You got to learn all the skills, but all the seeds are inside of you of being successful at that. You know, you plant an oak seed in the ground, an acorn in the ground, you know, it has all the ingredients to turn into a massive, you know, 100, 200 foot tall oak tree. Over time, it's going to take time, you know, it's going to take growing and water and soil, develop the root system. And so that's the way it is with your company. That's the way it is with anything you do, really. You know, you're raising your kids, you're, you know, you just got to go through all of the steps of maturing and developing. So there's a crisis situation where you're born, you start your company, okay, we're rolling. But now you got to grow. You got to grow. And that comes from pursuing from what's inside you, the seed of greatness. You start a company, you want to pursue the seed of greatness inside your company, inside that idea. You want to pursue that thing so you can get it out, work it out so the rest of the world can see it. So you have the people, personnel and facilities to where people can get out there and see and experience the great potential of this great idea that founded this great company. And so, and also, you know, with your kids, you want to grow them up with good foundations. And don't make this mistake, I'm going to talk about this sooner or later, but don't make the mistake, parents, of just focusing on your intellectual, I mean intellectual education of your kids. You know that reading, writing, arithmetic and history and economics and everything. Yeah, yeah. Well, what if they're dumber than mud? What if they have no wisdom? What if they have no foundation about good and evil and ethics, right and wrong, good friends, bad friends. You know, what if, you know, they're going to go out there, they're going to have to make choices, they're going to be away from you, you're not going to be protected for themselves. And they're going to be, you know, they're very tempting things out there. Tempting to, you know, to make the wrong choice. And so you've got to educate them on right and wrong, on short term, fun and long term benefits. You know, so focus, please, parents, focus on that. Will you please read your kids the Bible, take them to church, get them around morally solid people, you know, don't wait, don't wait for the crap friend to come along who's a drug addict. And, you know, anyway, you know, he's four years old and he's covered in tattoos, you know, and swearing like a sailor. Don't wait till the bad friends come along, you know, build, build them in the right direction right from the beginning. So they mainly so they can make good choices when they leave you. Their education is great, but if they're making bad choices with their education, what is that? And so what? And that goes to business. That's why a lot of businesses go bust. Because the people making the decisions are, do not have the fundamentals to make good life decisions. You want to make good life decisions, folks, and where your business or whatever, so you can grow and so you can win. And part of that is being exposed to people that have been successful. Nobody's perfect, but they've been successful in choosing the right path to go. And they can explain why they did that and they explore the results. So that's what we did on Million Dollar Mastermind. And again, I'm going to say this, I'm going to get it on the record. The thing about so many of there are legitimate ones that do this, a lot of them, but you can tell because they've done big things. But so many of these guys, they want to get you in here for the $200 course. That's not good enough. And it's like, well, you got to get a $500 course and the $2,500 course and then the $10,000 course and then the $25,000 course, and we're going to take in Alaska and the moon and you're going to space capsule and then the light bulb will go on and you'll be a winner. No, you won't. You do not become a winner by going to courses. It's nothing wrong with the $200. $500. Thousand. $2500 course. What's wrong is that the impression that now you got it. And so what happened was people would come in and I was experiencing the same thing. You know, it's like going to, you hear that. You know, it's a frustration every great public speaker has had throughout time. It's like you speak and people are, you know, people are really, you know, they write you letters, they teary and they, you know, they laugh, they cry, they cheer, and then they never make any changes. You know, it's just like, how can I get my hands around them? And so Gina told me, she said, you know, the big changes happen from community, you know, and she said it this way, where the light bulb went off over you get around people to go through the same transition you're going through. And whether I'm telling you, folks, look for this. Look for this and value this. Look for people going through the same transition you're going through and are motivated to move up, and they've got good values that you could talk things over with. And she said, more things are learned from colleagues, your peers, you know, more positive pressure is exerted on you by being around people that are doing great things like you. They're going through the transitions because they're learning things. They're at the level where you are. You know, like, if I'd play in tennis and I go out there and I play with Roger Federer, not a whole lot, he can teach, you know, he's just going to blister me. I need to play with somebody who's a little bit better than me. I've always known that. But it's like that in life. You want to be around people that you can learn from that at least it might be areas that you're a little bit better than them, but you're going through the same transition, and you can go up together. And, you know, she got me thinking. I started thinking, wait a minute. Up to that time, Gina, I'd always thought, you know, I'd always given too much credit, I think, to the gurus in my life. I won't go through the list of them. There's about five major giants and that I had in life. They went out and changed industries, and for one reason or another, either I was related to them or in business. And so I won't go through the list of. I'm tempted to go through the list, but I'll go through the list at other time. But I was very fortunate. And I said, you know, you ingrate, why don't you. You're sitting on a lot of knowledge, Larry. This is why I wrote the book Serial Winner. Like, you're sitting on a lot of knowledge. Why don't you pass it on to people in a way where, you know, you can reach people you're not reaching already. So that's where the book came from and eventually the podcast. And I've got a course and, you know, wanted to pass this on. But, you know, I think I'll be, you know, I'm kind of a guru a little bit on that. But wait a minute. I was thinking I'm passing on information I've learned from gurus. I Become a guru. You know, there's, there's, you know, I've been very successful in business. Let's just say, you know, I could, you know, you know, I came into sales, I didn't know anything about sales. I came out of Georgia Tech, built houses, built 100 houses in four years. Did like the construction industry. It didn't like me either. And so I said, you know, I knew it didn't like me because I got thrown out of my feet. I mean on my butt with a wife and two year old son and another one on the way. And right before Christmas in 73, and I said, you know what, I got to get in a better industry because I was working 100 hour work weeks and this is my reward after four years. So I said, you know, I got to get in a better industry. And I got in financial services. And you know, because I said, you know, what industry made it through the Great Depression without. See, you gotta make good decisions folks, about yourself. I'm not saying everybody makes my decision, but you gotta make good decisions for yourself. And so, you know, I evaluated. Here's how I evaluate. I said, what industry? Cause I was desperate. I mean, I didn't have any money. I did have a wife who worked outside of the house. I didn't, you know what I knew how to do. What I had my degree in was not gonna help me anymore. So where am I going to go? Well, first of all, it starts with an industry. And so I what I said, what industry made it through the Great Depression with flying colors? They said financial services. I said sold. I'm getting into that. And what's the biggest market of financial services? Middle income people. There's unlimited numbers of millions of those. Plus their families are being reformed every year. And you know, they're, they're farming unforming, they're growing old, new ones are coming up. You'll never be able to saturate the market. And so it's a stable, they're fun to work with, they appreciate it. Go, go, go. I'm going to get a financial services and work with middle income people. So that's what I wound up doing. And that's what I've been doing the whole time. In the beginning you had to get in sales and I was terrible at sales, I'd never done sales, but I knew that, you know, sales was how you made money. And most people made money and big money in the world, unless they're a professional or a professional athlete or you know, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief or something. And so, you know, I figured if other people can learn sales, I can learn sales. And so, you know, I eventually learned sales. But sales won't only going to take you so far because you got 24 hours of the day. So we got into sales management and I went from not being able to make, not even knowing, have a securities license, not even know how to explain those things to where now, you know, a million years later, I've got six and a half billion dollars in assets under management. You know, we paid, you know, I won't get into all that. But anyway, about 15, 20,000 people around the country in a financial services organization, they, most of the time, they know what to do. So they don't bother. They don't want me messing in their business. And so. But I still override, you know, I still. It's like the great thing about building a company is you still get to participate in the success. And so it allows a chance to do other things like write a book, do podcasts and start other things, you know, do the. Over the last eight years, do a thousand paintings. And so which I've done more or less photography and painting ever Since I was 12 years old so they could put more time into that. And so the thing is, it causes you to reflect as you're. The great thing about Find people to teach, you know, as soon as possible, find somebody who's on the way up. If you want to learn and you want to, you know, you want to make progress, find somebody to teach. That's my advice to you. You know that. Because it causes you to think things through more clearly. Now what happens is that, you know, cause you can't, you know, you gotta be specific when you're explaining things. And they'll help you because they'll ask you questions. And that's the thing about sales. If you just listen in sales, you know, you make one or two statements, you get them interested a little bit, and then listen to what they talk to you about. And you know, that's how you can get educated and you can learn what you need to know by what the questions people ask. So I was listening to Gina and I had always thought I'm just so lucky because of these five people that I was exposed to. And they told me things that I use, ideas are a dime a dozen, you know, they don't care who use them. And so I could use those ideas and have success myself. But what happened was, and so I thought that was the reason for the success, you know, that and hard work. And so Gina Made me realize, wait a minute, that's not the whole story. I've had lots, in fact, more light bulb moments along the way. Life changing life breakthrough moments in conversations with people that were in the business with me or outside of the. In clubs, churches, associations that, the neighborhood where in casual conversations these things come up and you find out they happen to know something about it. And it dawned on me. Gina's right. Community is where you get the bulk of your change transformation. And she said, if you find a group of people, you know, that are in a community where they're going through a transformation like you're going through or you want to go through, of course you still want to listen to the gurus and you know, find out, you know, the, the big picture, things like that. But when it comes into massage on the daily, weekly, monthly basis, you want to be around other people going through the transition. You could learn from them. You can ask, you can ask them questions that you would never ask the guru. Maybe you never get close enough to the guru to ask the question. You'd feel like a fool asking that kind of question to the guru. And you know, it's just so many things like even last, even during quarantine, we're skiing, here's the thing, we're skiing on Aspen Mountain during the quarantine. And they have this thing, they're like Gestapo up there. They literally had guys with guns and black, I mean, commando outfits up on the mountain or where they're guns. And I don't, I don't take that kind of bossing too well. So I had a confrontation or two. Wear your mask. Wear your mask. And so anyway, you're supposed to wear your mask while you're skiing down the mountain. You know, you're skiing or at least, you know, always have your mask on on the mountain during, during the COVID And you know, have you ever been skiing, you know, how cold it is, how much frost? And then you have the goggles, you gotta wear goggles. And they frost up anyway. So I couldn't ski. I was up there, I'd get up and I'm wearing my mask because I got the Gestapo commando agents up there monitoring everything. So I wear my mask. I get outside. As soon as I ski like 5ft, my goggles are fogged, I can't see a God blessed thing. How am I going to ski? So I fought this for a while. Finally I just went down the hill and eventually I was about to turn in my ski pass for the year. And eventually I asked the guys behind the counter, who sharpened the skis. And I know they were, you know, they're like semi pro skiers. I figured they would know the answer. This just shows how stupid you could be or how stupid I could be. So anyway, I said, you know, Timmy, what do you do up there with all the fog in the mask, you know, when you're skiing? He said, I wear the mask until the top of the hill, and then when I start skiing down, I take the mask off. Nobody's going to stop you while you're skiing downhill and say, put on your mask. And that's all the problem is. Like, I'm such an idiot. Why couldn't I figure that out? But, you know, there's things like that in life that happen over and over again. They're so obvious. You can't see the forest for the trees. How many parents have picked up incredible parenting advice from their friends and relatives? Little babies yelling, this. And they will try this. You know, try that. You know, have you done that? And then all of a sudden, they use that every day for the next six months. You know, how do you keep a toddler? How do you get a toddler to behave a little bit? Well, you can go to. But if you have friends that have their kids under control, you might want to talk to them about it. And so how much of that goes on? It goes on all the time. And I was oblivious to it. But I started thinking. Gina forced me to think about this. You know what? When we started our company, we had this going on because we were a small company and we could learn from each other. We would see each other all the time. But now that we're a big company, we're a small company. We started, we had like 85 people, four offices, primarily in the north side of Atlanta. And that was in 75. But I said, you know, now we're 150,000 people scattered all over North America. People coming up don't have a chance, don't all have a chance to have that kind of interaction and learn. And I said, what if? And I said, people listen on podcasts. Let's just say somebody's interested in whatever. Whatever their business is, they're trying to start their business. The lawnmower business and the fire alarm business, this, you know, sales, whatever. Who do they associate with? You know, where do you. Where do you. Where do you find a group that are going through the same. You can find mediocre people because the movers and shakers. It dawned on me, wait a minute, Larry. This is who you work with. This is. This is who I've always worked with. The 20 percenters that do 80% of the work. I can't make them 20 percenters, but, you know, that has to do with them. They want to do more, or they, you know, they have. They have a little bit better personality, a little bit more energy, they get up a little earlier, they work on things, they think about things a little bit more, they put a little bit more into it, they're a little bit more serious, and they're just. You can get more done with people like that. Plus, it's just more fun and more entertaining. And so that's where I've spent my time. I said, wait a minute. If you get those people, if you could find a community where they could come together from, say, all walks of life. Because winning is pretty much winning is. The principles are interchangeable. If you're a basketball, you know, whatever sport you're in, you get in the locker room at halftime of the, you know, kickoff, the season, middle of the season, super bowl, if you're behind, you're ahead, you're whatever, essentially, the coach is going to say the same thing, whatever the sport, whatever the sport, because winning principles are transferable. They're universal. And you need the coach there to remind you and to get you to pay attention to it and to keep you focused rather than this injury that happened or you may have done something dumb in the first part of the game. And so I said, all these winning principles of winning are universal. That's what we even further established. That's why I wanted to do the Million Dollar Mastermind, to kind of let people see the universality of all of these principles. And so what if we start a community for winning? And so I said, I've got all of these people. So that was one thing. Gina got me thinking about it, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it. It's like, people listen to my podcast, you know, we had, in a short period of time, we had, you know, millions of views, and I was impatient. We weren't growing faster, but I wasn't that educated. We were probably. We were. They tell me we were in the top 1% of all entrepreneur podcasts in the, you know, in three years. But to me, you know, I like explosive growth. I like dominating. I like, number one. It was just, like, not enough. You know, it's just I wasn't getting out of it what I wanted. And the response in terms of transformation with people, because there was no way of getting feedback from People other than the intermittent review or something, go, go, go. But you know, you have the dumbest people on the Internet getting these go, go, go's. This has changed my life, you know, you know, their mother wrote the review or their brother. And so, you know, you can't really take much from that. And so, you know, it's like, how can you get more involved with helping people really make the rubber meets the road transitions. So this community thing came up and then the other deal I do on a regular basis, other than that I've done for 15 years. Really I've done it for 40 years in my organization for 15 years, I've done it for everybody inside this company. Coast to coast is where we get the biggest and brightest people currently performing at the top, the top performers. And we pick their brains. And the idea is that whatever they're doing, we can probably learn from them. And you know, we have. I've had between 1,000 and 1,500 people for 15 years. I started that before our company went independent in January of 2010. And we went independent. We were stood on the balcony, my son and I, Adam, we stood at the balcony at the World Trade center and they rang the bell and we went independent. Largest independent financial services organization in the world and still are still growing. But the, the thing is that I knew that if we went independent now, you're going to need some bell cows, you're going to need some leaders. And so the company, the corporate guys are kind of hands tied in terms of speaking to the field force. So we need some people from the field that would set people on fire and you know, something beyond the lawyers and accountants and things like that, you know, people who are actually out there doing it. And that's who people follow. So that's why I, before we went independent, that's part of the big reason why I started this thing. We called and after lots of soul searching, I went back to an early term we use way back in 75 and that is big Hitters. You know, we use the idea of big hitters. Art Williams, I heard it from him, probably he gets credit for it anyway. But the idea term had stayed test of time. And so I said, okay, we'll call it Big Hitters. And so we had the big hitter call on Monday and you know, we went 15 years. But the problem is again, just like in the podcast, you don't get a chance to talk to people. So I'm explaining to you why I put this thing on pause. I put it on pause. So I Could start a community that would blend. See, I went into Keystone in early December. See, I had Gina in here in November, and she got me thinking about community. Then I went into the last big Keystone annual convention. One of my top guys, Andy Young, ran in Keystone end of the year celebration. And we had started it off probably 30 years earlier in Aspen, had run it for about 15 years, and then he ran it about 15 years in Keystone. And so it kind of read its course. People wanted to go to warmer weather. So this was the last one. And we're walking. Adam and I are walking into the reception, and he got a guy come up from Toronto, that one side of the parking lot. Hey, big hitters. Unbelievable. You know, we were listening to the big hitter call. I had no idea who he was. I didn't know he'd been listening. I've been doing it 15 years. I don't know who's listening around the country. And then we had another group from the other side of the party lot said, yeah, us too. We're from Chicago. We're on every week. Unbelievable. Appreciate it. It's like, you know, it dawned on me. Wait a minute. You know, Gina's right. I had no idea who these people were. I had no way of fighting them. I had no way way of impacting them in between calls and getting specifics, you know, giving them specific fill in the blanks of things that might be big difference makers. I had no way of getting them an opportunity to meet each other and to learn from each other and to go through the transition together. And so I said, community opens that up. Now, not everybody's going to want to do it, probably one out of ten, but because it's. As soon as you charge a dollar for something, the crowd scatters. Have you noticed when it comes to money, you know, everybody scatters and they love it when it's free. The trouble is, nobody ever uses stuff that's free. YouTube has got hundreds of millions of videos on every subject, but they're all free. And people use for entertainment. They don't do a darn thing with it, really, do they? Be honest. Because it's just not an environment. Because you go from that and then it's like, how can I plug that in? Who can I talk that over with? How can I massage that into my life? So I said, for the one out of ten that plugged into, you know, we had about, you know, we had about a thousand on regularly plugged in that I could keep up with. I had replaced this. And the other I never kept up with that because mainly time zones, you know, the California, you know, we do it at 9 o' clock Eastern and every Monday. And then, you know, it's 6 in the morning in California. And so they, a lot of them listen to it on the replay, but I couldn't keep up with that. But I knew there was a thousand, at least 1000, 1500 on every week. And so we started it and we had like 83 people who signed up for the program, which is the minimum that mighty networks recommended, $48 a month. And we said, we'll see because, you know, there's, you got expenses in running these things that you have to, have to, you know, you have to cover your expenses. And so sure enough, we had about 80 or so people out of the thousand 1500 that would see me at conventions say, oh, big hitters, unbelievable. And that's great because we're only after the 20% that do the 80% that want to become 1 percenters. I can help people if they're 20 percenters already. I can't, you know, if you're an 80 percenter, you're just not taking things that serious. You're just not that motivated. I can't help you. I want you to be happy, do, you know, get excited about something else. But if you are in an activity, in a business, in a sport, in a thing that you want to become elite, you want to see if you can become a 1 percenter, that. Because here's what I found out about winning. Everything's more fun when you do it well. And nobody does anything much that they don't do well. Nobody. If you're a crap chess player, you're not going to be playing chess. But if you're pretty good at chess, you're going to be looking for games because you like. We like to win. We all like to win. And so the thing is, if I knew in my entire life I've been interested in a lot of things I won't go through, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I got a short attention span. I've got a lot of things I like to do. But I always go and say, I just know from the beginning it's just like, this can be a whole lot more fun to do it well, to do it like the top people can't be a professional, can't be a Michael Jordan, can't be a Tiger Woods. But you know, you can be pretty, you know, you can get good, you can get better than most. You know, the, the 1% of 1%, of 1%, greatest of all times. The goats can't be as good as them, but you might be better than 90%, 95%. That means you're going to get more enjoyment out of whatever it is than 90% of the people that do it, because they just kind of slop through it. And if I'm going to do something, I'm going to take my time, my schedule to do something. I'm going to bust my reader to get good at it as fast as possible. Because what I found is in 90 days, with concerted effort, if you get good equipment, good instruction, and you focus in for 90 days, you could pretty much get as good as about 90% of the people worldwide who do anything. Speaking language, whatever it is. Not maybe speaking of language, but anyway, you could probably get better than most in 90 days and get it where it's pretty. You're pretty enjoyable. And so I always look for, how can I get good at this thing? How can I, you know, because that is just. You get around the better people doing the sport. There's just more enjoyment at 40 different ways. And so that's what I've always focused on. That's it. It made me realize this pause that we've been on has caused me to think, what am I really good at? What do I enjoy doing? How can I help people? Who can I help? How often can I help em? And, you know, my tip of the hat to Gina being Jeanne, who got me thinking about this, and, you know, I learned you gotta be flexible. You can learn. So like I said, when you go through and you build things, the greatest thing you have yourself is that you make changes, you develop, and you can use these things the rest of your life. I can use this inside the rest of my life. The insights I've gotten over the last six months from being on this pause, setting up the community, which most of y' all will not ever get involved. But you, you know, I'm just telling you what I've been doing, but it's there for you. See, I never even had it there for you. This is one thing that drove me nuts, is for the, the super serious people who wanted more and understood, you know, they didn't mind paying for instruction. You know, I think people pay for an education, don't they? You know, you pay for an education, you know, so it's valid. But, you know, things cost money. You're going to join a country club. I mean, they even collect money at the church, you know, wherever you're going to go. It takes money to pay for things, facilities, electricity, this staff if you want the benefits and everything. So there's no apologies for charging, but I didn't even have the environment, I didn't have anything to offer and so now I do. If you want to get involved, God bless you. But otherwise, listen to the podcast. I would tell you if you can get it done for free, be like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Don't go to college, drop out of college, that expensive college. Just go out there and build yourself a 100 billion dollar company. Not everybody can do that though. You know, Steve Jobs, he, you know, he didn't go to college or small college. So the thing is that he certainly didn't have a, a degree from Stanford. Let's just say, you know, maybe you don't, you know, need it, but if you do need it, you are interested. I got something for you now. And I always knew that I could do pretty much everything once I got the basics. I always had that confidence. But I didn't have the confidence in putting the original Tinker top, you know, Lego blocks together. Like how do I get, ah, get it, you know, get the basic plan and get going, you know, get, I'm somebody, I can learn how to ride a bike, but I, I like training wheels, you know and you know, you know, I want to go fast, I want to run it, but in the beginning is like, somebody help me ride this bike. And so maybe you're at a point where you want a little more help getting going. And so I've got that for you now. But you don't need that, you don't need coach. You know, unfortunately I'm very successful and I don't have time, I just don't have, you know, somebody wants to come in and bring in two or three or four of their people and have a, you know, a one day or a two day thing, you know, I, I gotta, I gotta charge em through the nose, you know, I Recommend you don't. $100,000. I recommend you don't. You know, if they want a 90 minute call, that's 10 grand. I don't, I recommend you don't do that. But the reason why is I don't, I can't even do many of those because of my schedule. And so that's why I value your time. I value my time and so I want to make sure that these podcasts as much as possible hit the spot. I'm going to do everything in my power on the podcast to get you where you don't need to join the community, but if you want extra, we got it now. And we got some magic happening there, people. Magic. I heard this Gina reminded me of something I heard back in nineteen early eighties from a videographer that I'd hired to work with us when I took the family out to video their family on a ski trip out at Keystone. And he said we were meeting one night and organizing the next day's activity. And he said, I don't know what we were talking about, but he said, yeah, when people talk, magic can happen. I've used that phrase my entire life, you know, to try and figure things out. You know, you start talking about it, you start fleshing it out, you get motivated people, you start talking things out, magic can happen. And Gina said that's what they found in the communities. You know, people don't come for the guru. You know, they don't come for the main person. They might center around the main person. She said, you know, they don't want you barrage them with a Niagara Falls of, of new content every week because, I mean, there's, you know, if you're busy, you want to be using information. You don't want to be sitting, studying, listening to, you know, 40 hours of tapes. She said, what? People see you do a little bit of content. You, you, you fl. You put that in there. But she said, you know, again, they're going to get podcasts and things like that all the time. They said, mainly you get them to where you get people talking to each other and you create this peer groups and you get these challenges going. People don't want to be left behind. And when people see somebody else doing it, you know, I remember I was ready to quit the financial services business, the business that's paid me $100 million since 1975, September 9th, when I joined a couple years in, I was ready to quit that business because it was just like, is it going to happen? Is it going to happen? And I went in the other room and there was another dumbbell in there who's a professional athlete who was working the off season, Jim Nash. And you know, Jim is just kind of a, kind of a lazy professional athlete, basically in the off season, because they're off season, he was just kind of going through the motions to do something, and he's like a Baby Huey kind of guy. So Jim, no offense if you're listening, but you saved my career. So I went in next door and I said, jim, I don't know why I was asking him of all the people in the office to ask as I just, Jim, see this is people magic. I said, Jim, oh Jim. I said, do you think this thing's going to work? I was the expert in the office. I was the guru. And so I'm in here with this rookie in off season. Jim, do you think this business is going to turn into anything? Because we had just got independent. We were just getting settled in the new office and falling into our routine. I said, jim, do you think this is going to mount to anything? You think we're kidding ourselves? Is this worth it? And so I mumbled some kind of question like that to him and he goes, well, but I don't know Larry, just because that's kind of the way Jim Dud thing is, he bent over, he was like 6 foot 5 at about 280 pounds in his suit. He had his suit on and he bent over, said, I don't know Larry. He said, they just sent me this, so I guess it's probably going to be all right. He showed me a $5,000 check and I said, Jim, you just made five grand out of this. You just got paid 5,000, okay? Unbelievable. There's no way I'm quit now. No way. But at that moment, if Jim had said, I don't know, Larry. He said, I don't, I don't know. I'm, you know, you know, if he give me the wrong answer, I could have walked away from something. Eventually turned into a hundred million dollars in income to me. And so folks, I realized people magic had had that impact on me when from Gina. And so I'd like encourage you to get involved in that wherever you can. You know, maybe it's going down to the music store. If you're, you know, if you're in the music, maybe it's hang out down at the music stores more. If you're in cameras, hang out at the camera club, you know, hang, you know, join. If you're into skiing, join the local ski club. We got ski clubs all over the country. Find like minded people that, you know, go through this thing, enjoy what you enjoy, where you can go on and have some great times together. But that's what I've been doing. I've been creating the Big Hitter community. I'm changing the name of the podcast over to the Big Hitter Podcast. I'm consolidating and getting ready to have a whole lot of fun. And so I'm welcoming you to come along for the ride and you know, the, you know, any way you want to help you know, give a rating, give a click, whatever. Follow us. Come and follow us. Go check us out wherever you want to check us out, but mainly do something big and then let me know that because I always love hearing about, you know, what one thing the world will never have too many of big hitters. There always will be a worldwide shortage big hitters. And so if that's what you want to be, go, go, go and do.