The Fabulous, Priceless Things You Learn While Groveling Thru the Grit of Getting Started

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

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm with Gush Hashani, and we're having fun talking about winning this afternoon and the transformation that we've all had to go through from starting out and getting past survival education to where we moved into success education. And survival education will take you so far, will get you to where you can pay your bills, maybe, but success education will take you to places you never could imagine because who knows what you're capable of once you get into a winning groove. So, Guy, thanks for taking the time to talk this afternoon.

You're welcome. Great to be here.

And you know, Guy, you talk. Let's talk about what were things that you coming up, what were things that you were building? They were being beat into you by your life. You know, growing up, by the way, I had aunt and uncle. I grew up going down with my parents, going down visiting my aunt and uncle in Hialeah. And they were living in one of those thousand square foot houses, too.

That's great.

I spent many, many times down there, but there was not nine people in the house, I'll say that. But even growing up in that kind of environment to where you're playing sports, you go to college, you get a scholarship, you've got coaches that are driving you, driving you driving, you got games, you got a schedule, but things are being built and ingrained into you. And then when you went out and worked a whole nother set of applying those principles, even though financially you were on a treadmill that was not generating lots of income, you were on a treadmill that was generating lots of great education and preparation for greatness. So that once the light bulb started to go on and you ran across an opportunity that you felt suited you, that you could make big things happen in, you were really ready to go. But once those light bulbs started coming on of possibilities, talk about what you think some of those really great principles and fundamentals were being because a lot of people are on this point where they're behind on their bills, they haven't made the breakthrough. But the thing is, you need to consider the fact that while you've been going through this phase of your life, you might have been picking up a lot of people skills, a lot of technical skills, a lot of problem solving skills, a of lot. A lot of developing a lot of mental toughness and to prepare you for what can happen and allow you to have, like, amazing success once you find the right opportunity. So you were pretty much primed in a large degree for success because you already had ingrained into you a lot of the things that keep other people, once they find their opportunity, hold them back because they haven't learned about discipline and timing and extra effort and things like that. As you look back, what are things that you're grateful for that you got while you were going through that groveling in the grit and all of that stage?

All right, so I'm going to take you guys all the way back to the third grade, because I think that's where. And I did not realize this until I got into high school, but I didn't realize the lesson I learned from this because it was a very painful time. And I'm in third grade, and all of my identity, everything about Guy Shashati was he's a great athlete. He can get on any court, any field, and he's going to be one of the fastest. And that's just a gift. He's going to be so skilled. Obviously, gifts. These were all gifts that I had. And so you take the gifting that you have and you go with it. And what happened was my parents gave me a tremendous amount of validation and support when it came to sports, but in the classroom, it was almost like, we hope he can get by. And in third grade, there was a test that was done. I had to go back to school at night, and they made me literally draw out what I was looking at. And what I was looking at was, imagine a rectangle on a page and a circle and a triangle, but they're all intertwined. And they said, just draw what you see. And I literally could not draw. I could draw a rectangle, I could draw a square, and I could draw. I mean, I could draw a circle, and I can draw a triangle, but I couldn't do it the way it was intertwined. I don't know why I couldn't do it. It was just something. And I remember looking up and seeing the instructor over there to the left, and they're kind of talking to my parents like, you know, there's something going on here that's not whatever. And I just remembered thinking, okay, I'm going to give it even 100% more than I'm giving now to sports, because this whole classroom thing is not for me. I Couldn't sit still. Like a lot of boys growing up, I couldn't sit still. I was constantly getting in trouble for misbehaving when it really was just, I'm just. I couldn't sit still for eight hours a day in a classroom. It was just. It's just not conducive to, to me and to a lot of boys growing up. And so what happened was from that point on, from third grade all the way to 10th grade, so it was like seven years where getting by in the classroom was the objective. Even my parents were hoping that I could get by. So it was Cs, it was sometimes Ds and occasional F on the report card, but I was always able to advance. And then I get into 10th grade and I find out that you have to have a certain grade point average, though the GPA had to be at least 2.0. And this was in 1978. If you didn't have 2.0 or better, you could not play sports. And then I thought, oh, here we go. You're going to try to take away. The only thing that I am completely passionate about, I love is sports, and you're going to take it away. No way that's going to happen. And I overnight applied myself and I used all of what I had learned in sports. The mental toughness, the staying after it. Because in sports, Larry, you know, if you see me today, you might not believe this, but I was literally the smallest, scrawniest kid on every team I've ever played on. Even through high school and into college, even I was the smallest. I weighed the least. I wasn't very tall. I was 5, 9, 170 pounds in college. And that was at my highest, strongest weight in college. But I outworked everybody in the weight room. I outworked everybody everywhere. I just knew that in order to be successful and to not get hurt because I was playing football, I had to make sure that I was strong. So that's what I did. And I got after it. And then as soon as I realized they're going to take this away from me, I began to take some of the principles I learned in sports and applied them to my grades. And I ended up in the top 10% of my high school class, which after my 10th grade year, at the beginning of it, you would have thought that wasn't even possible. So there was over a thousand people in our senior class, and we. I finished in the top 10%, which gives you an idea of that lesson right there of if you're going to change something. If they're going to take what you want more than anything else away from you, you have a decision to make, you're going to let them do it, or you're going to absolutely refuse and realize. At this point, I didn't have a lot of success training yet. This was just sports success training. It wasn't life necessarily success training. And then once that happened, everything after that, that was an obstacle. I looked at it differently than most people look at their obstacles. I remembered my obstacle of my grades and not being smart. I believed I wasn't smart for all those years. I thought I was just inferior intellectually to everybody else. And then I realized, wait a minute, that's a lie. That's one of those lies, what I call from the pit of hell, that it's an agreement. You see, everybody has made all these agreements through their life that they don't even realize are agreements. They're things that they agree with that aren't true, but we've made them true in our own head. Not being smart was an agreement I made in my own head. And as a result of that, after that, every single time something came up that was a struggle, and it was kind of like the way I was brought up, I just had this trigger in my brain that said, wait a minute, is this true or not? And why is it true? And if it's not true, how am I going to change it so that I don't become a victim to this incorrect way of thinking? And I think if everybody knew that, that they just had to say, wait a minute, let me reevaluate whether this is even valid or not. Is it true? Almost every time it's not true. And we could just reevaluate it and say, wait a minute, what can I do to make that? Anyway, so from that point on, it was like, I'm getting after it. I was very successful coming out of college. I was very successful in college in playing football. A lot of that was athletic ability, but it was the beginning process they called me. My nickname was the Fanatic in college because if I did something, you knew it was going to be done at a high level. Period. End of story. I'm getting after it. In practice, I returned kickoffs, returned punts, was a wide receiver, and even in practice, I would run my kickoffs back in practice at full speed. And people are just like, man, this guy is over the top, right? But it was all about this mental way of thinking that led to me being very successful as a teacher, very Successful coaching. And then you run into the obstacle of corporate America, so to speak, and you realize that corporate America, especially large institutions like a school system, is loaded with incompetence all around you. And I began to realize that I'm not good as an employee of somebody because in my brain, I want to achieve at a level way up here. And everybody else is saying, hey, hey, relax, take it easy. You don't need to do that. All around me and I'm like, no, I'm here to win. I want to do the best job I can possibly do. And everybody around me, including the people who are above me and my superiors, they're in many ways incompetent. And they're trying to just get by and pick up a paycheck. And that was not what I was about. I was about getting after it, making it happen, being the absolute best I could be, and doing the same with my players.

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

In assets under management, and has done.

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

Like, I would tell my players all the time that my job is to get out of them what they will probably never get out of themselves. And in order to do that, I would tell them, I said, listen, guys, I'm going to have you so mad at me at times. You're going to be like, he is relentless, he is. And I won't use the words that they sometimes used, but they would be so upset with me. And it was only, and it was usually the better players, right? Because the players that were not as good, they would usually give me pretty much what they had. And you know, as a coach, whether somebody's giving you all they had. And I would usually take to the side my best players and say, listen, guys, you just walking on the field, you're better than most of these guys. But that's not going to make you great. What's going to make you great is to find out how great you can be. Not just you're gifted athletically, how can we take you to another level, get out of you? And I said, I need your permission to do that, even though you're going to be pissed off at me at times. And every time they would say, great, coach, do whatever you got to do. I want to be the best I could be. And they would say that until it was time to make them the best they could be, Right? Which meant to push them and to just grind it out and to work hard and do all those things. And players were never like, man, coach shows favoritism to these better players. Because that happens a lot on teams. It was actually the opposite. And they did not understand why I was so tough on the better players versus players that were giving me everything they had. They just didn't have the talent necessarily or the God given abilities to be much greater than they were. So that was another lesson that I learned there. But when I got into business, things changed. I'm like, I can take everything I learned as a coach and just apply it to business and I'm off and running. And then I realized when I got into business and it involved getting a hold of a lot of people that I knew in my natural, my natural network of people that I grew up with, other teachers, other coaches, friends, high school buddies, people I grew up and I realized that a lot of the people that I thought were entrepreneurial wanted to win in the worst way. A lot of them didn't. And when I got into business, they used to make jokes and say, hey, when you make your first million, come see me. And then we'd go see them. And then they would say, oh, man, we knew you had what it took. You had the gift of gab. You are just naturally gifted. And I look at them like, are you kidding me? Do you not remember the ridicule that was going on five years ago, six years ago, when I just got started, seven years ago, and all of a sudden now you're Mr. Supporter. And I realized the world is filled with people who are going to be mediocre. It's okay, because all you need is a few people, not a lot, a few people who really want to do something special with their life. When you find those people, you can take over the world. And that's what happened to me in business. We found some really good people. People I did not expect. You mentioned earlier about people who on the outside, they just look the part, right? They're good looking, they're in good shape, they have great personalities. And you just think, man, this person is going to be great in business. They just seem like they have great people skills and they're just sharp, you know. And I look at it like this, Larry. I look at people in business and I say, okay, let's look at a continuum. On one end you got a one, and on the other end you got a ten. And a one is like a. They're just like a mental midget. Like they need so much work, they have no mental toughness. Everything happens to them and they're just, they're crybabies and they got so far to go. And on the other end is a 10. They're mentally tough. They've been through a lot, they have it together, all that kind of stuff. And on that continuum, most of the people that I ran across that were interested in business, they were a two to three in those areas. And in order for them to be successful, they're going to have to be a 7 or an 8 or a 9. So how am I going to get them from where they're at to where they need to go in order before they start having consistent success? And the answer to that is, number one, they have to be 100% coachable. If you're a two or three and you enter business, man, you better be completely coachable. You better be reading books, you better be transforming the way you think on a regular basis, absorbing it, getting great at your craft, knowing what you're doing. And you got to spend crazy hours doing that because there's, it's what I call catch up time. Everybody else, not a lot of people, not everybody, but the people who are more successful than you are ahead of you on that continuum. And the good news is they will typically stop and slow down at some point. And if you don't, you'll be able to pass all of them. Okay? And that's what happened to me in business. I started, I got into business and I began to really just self improved, self improved. Books, tapes, listening to all these different people, people I respected. And nowadays it's so much easier with technology to really get inside your brain all that you need to. And boom, I moved along that continuum and then I started having success.

Priceless insights. Thanks so much, guy.

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