What Your Objective is, Dictates What You Will Be Doing with Doug Hartman

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 here talking with Doug Hartman, and Doug knows how to. We were talking about multiplying. Doug knows how to not only recruit, train, get people excited about his opportunities, but turn them into leaders and multipliers. He's got 1,000 offices in financial services, 25,000 agents. He's got a food services business already in 1,000 stores getting ready to go nationwide. Doug has also been spent a lot of years in the software business and took a software company public, made millions and has lived that life of the software angel investor. And so he's had lots of experiences, real estate projects, other, other adventures. And so, Doug, along the way, you've accumulated a lot of knowledge about getting people to line up behind you and to do great things. And so talk about when you wrote your book. When did you write your book?

Well, I wrote my book while I was on staff with Campus Crusade. It actually it sold about 100,000 copies and actually was printed into a couple foreign languages. But basically it was some of the principles that are utilizing and drawing commitment out of a person towards a particular objective. An objective like the Gateway Commission in the ministry and like Bitterman Invest. The difference in our business, where you're really helping people and by doing that in this business is so unique. Now you mentioned I've been in a lot of business. That's true. But not all of them turn good. I actually have learned more in businesses that have failed than in ones that have succeeded.

And what was your first? Well, you had the swimming company that, by the way, that's how Arnold Schwarzenegger got his business started too. Yeah, he and the little short bodybuilder Frank Colombo or something like that. Yeah, two bodybuilders out there. And I guess there's a lot of pools being built out in Southern California at all times.

Yeah, it's number one in the world. That's an interesting point. The market for swimming pools in the world, the biggest market, Southern California, and it's less than 1/2 of 1%. Now, you take that and you look at what our market is and it is about 90% of the general population. So the as far as the business is concerned, this is a absolutely incredible business. It is Scalable. I mean, we have less than 10% of our market share, actually less than 5%. And it's growing. The market was, was huge when I first got involved with you way back 40 years ago. And 40 years ago, you know, we didn't have the market penetration was almost nothing, and now it's about 3 to 4%. But here's the interesting thing. The market is five times larger than it was when we got involved 40 years ago and wasn't any penetration at all. So this thing is just an incredible dream as far as client availability.

And that's one of the things to look at when you get into a business is what is the market? How big can I get? Another thing, is the industry, is it a growing or a dying industry? Is it a popular industry? And then you look and evaluate the company inside that industry. Is this a company on the way up or can I build? Is there a gap in there? Can I supply that, fill that void? And you know, you've applied that kind of thinking to all of the things you try. Just because, you know the right principle, like you say, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to turn out great. What are some of the things that, what comes to your mind when you said some of the things that you applied your expertise, you had your winning principles, you got going on it. And it's also nice to have other successes. I'm reminded when I talk to guys like yourself who have multiple projects going on. They were interviewing Michael Eisner when he had the Lion King was the big success. And they said in the interview they worked their way around to, well, how does it feel to have a monster hit like the Lion King? And he goes, well, that's great. You know, it's unbelievable. But he said, we won't talk about the 20 other movies that came out last year and bombed.

That's exactly right. That's exactly what takes place in business.

Yeah. And he said, thank goodness for the Lion King, otherwise I wouldn't be here talking to you right now.

Yeah, yeah.

It's kind of like racehorses. If you want to have a winning racehorse, you better have a lot of racehorses.

Yeah, absolutely.

But what have you. What, what are some of the lessons that really strike you that things you've learned that you would not have learned any other way, would you say?

Well, I think that the number one thing is a cause oriented type thing. You know, you have maslows, a hierarchy of needs.

Yeah.

And the ideal business would be where you could go all the way up to the top of that hierarchy and self actualization, where you, where you really. And I guess you could kind of sum it up by the, what the army puts out as their phrase, you be all you can be. Right. You know, and basically that's, that's the key in self actualization is that you're not thinking of yourself. You're thinking about, I'm taking the potential that I have, whatever that is, and maximizing it to the fullest. It's kind of like an individual playing golf. There's, there's two, there's two objectives. One objective is to beat the other golfers and win the, and win the contest. And the other objective is I just want to beat my own record. So you have two objectives. One is trying to conquer the world or beat the guy next to you. And the one that I choose is you just try to maximize your own potential, forgetting about the guy next to you and trying to be, using the army phrase, all you can be. And that's basically what Primerica allows us to do, is to be self actualized, that we can give. It gives us a chance to be all that we can be because of the way that it's structured.

Well, how does that play out in some of these other businesses? Like a food product or something like that? You really miss that, don't you?

Yeah. You don't have it. Yeah. Basically that's a, that's a business, that's a business model. And it's different from a movement. Primerica is a movement. It is people in a movement. One way to explain that is that people would tell other people about financial services and trying to help them whether they got paid or not. In a business, you don't do anything if you don't get paid. And that's one of the major differences in a movement versus a business. A business is like Peter Drucker in his management courses. Peter Drucker kind of the father of management listed out. There's planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Planning is setting your goals and objectives. Organization is looking at the tools around you to accomplish that. Leading is where you actually get down in the mud and start making it happen. And controlling is not letting it be written in stone that you can change it and it's flexible.

And how does this work out when you, you know, you coming up with that kind of background and that kind.

Of.

Situation, had that working for you in Campus Crusade, have that working for you in financial services. Helping people become financially independent, keep from being ripped off with crappy products and, you know, saving their financial Lives, you know, that's a cause. But when it comes now to getting into software, how do you evaluate how did you get going on that? Because you were successful with it. I mean, you took that thing and you went public with it and made millions.

Well, that's true, but it was just kind of a business thing. I mean, who did we really help? You know, who did. Who did we really. Who did we actually change people's lives for the good?

Yeah.

Really? Not too many.

Yeah. What were you thinking about at the time, though? I mean, it was a good idea, it was a good business thing because not everything's going to be able to have a cause.

Yeah, it looked like a good business opportunity. I couldn't utilize a lot of the things that I used in Primerica to be successful because it's all structured. It was, you know, people are generally lazy.

Yeah.

And if you're just applying management principles to them, you got to go through an awful lot of people to find somebody is really willing to be committed. And then the question is, who are they committed to?

Right.

In Primerica, it gives us a chance to make unlimited income and at the same time help people and really do a great job for them.

Well, but the thing is that when you're evaluating other business opportunities, like I went out and there's a software, I don't know, medical something thing out in Aspen, or not too far outside of Aspen that I've been involved in. I actually use the products, you know, but they haven't been on the market. You've got to get it through the doctor and they can't advertise yet and everything stuff is wildly successful and so. But you just can't say anything about it until, you know, they do the Trials and it's $5 million for a trial in the beginning. How do you go out and get 5 million DOL. And then how do you bring in all the, you know, the core group to fight it through and. But I tell you, I was, I hadn't heard anything from them since last summer and went back, went back in and checked to see if this empty room that was going to be their new lab had, you know, if they even had the rent, were paying the rent on the empty space. But now they've got it developed and they've got clean rooms in there and they, you know, there's four people at the concrete floor and the folding tables and the, you know, the metal chairs with the computers just going at it. But there was an energy. There was a palpable energy. There Even though it was just a startup phase and you had the. Somehow they captured the vision of making a difference, coming up with a product that can make a difference in people's lives and of course making a lot of money themselves. But you could tell somebody had sold them on that thing and there's going to be a lot of steps to where they go public, you know, or they hit the big time. But they were working, somebody had made that sale. But in their world, I guess maybe they've got it going that this is going to be, you know, it's a life changing type product, you know, it's, it can do real good in the world, you know. But how do you do that? If someone's just got a great product where they can have a great job, they can feel the pride of being building something big and unique and special. There's got to be a way of tapping into that. Doug?

Well, yeah, you know, we have. There was a product called Billy Board that came out Probably, I'm guessing 20 years ago and we were involved, I got involved in that. And it's a unique product. It was the invention of the year on television and it was, I lost a ton of money on it. So it's not the fact that it was a great product. It's all the infrastructure that goes into the company to help market that product, to make it, to build it. You watch your cash flow. There's a lot of missing, a lot of different parts. And I get involved in different things because I look at it as almost recreation. It's fun for me. Some people play golf, I play business. And basically it's fun. And you have to be a little careful in Primerica. You have to make sure things aren't. Everything is compliant, everything is worked out the right way. But if you get all, if you check all those boxes, it can be a lot of fun. There's a benefit of making money. It's kind of like the individuals with that making money is keeping score. So you're playing the business, but you also want to win.

Well, you've tapped into the motivation that causes people to get excited about being involved in a product that's on the way up, that's new, fresh and exciting and is cool. You know, they just, you know, like tennis shoe, like. How can you get excited about Nike? Well, in the beginning maybe there's no good running shoes around, but now how can you get excited about Nike? Well, it's. They're cool, you know, you got cool shoes, cool clothes. It's cool, you know, And Nike is the number one brand with kids for the last 17 years or something. And it's got to be motivating working inside Nike, you know, and at least in the United States, not in the sweatshops over China maybe. But I think that's the message for people out there. You know, ideally you're going to have look at your opportunity and turn it into a cause because that people will, you know, like you said, for self actualization, reaching, you know, digging down deep. They feel like they're making a difference, you know, like Zelensky and the Ukraine and all the Ukrainians are fighting right now. You know, they. That's a cause, you know, Right. If you could get that going, fantastic. If you can't get that going, then you turn it into the next best thing by creating a movement and a new special cool company bringing a new product to market. And you're a part of that, you know, you're important because that's. Very few people do that. You know, you talk about the odds we've got to overcome and the fight for market share and how we've got a better, you know, better Billy board than the other guys, but. And you're talking about fighting the odds against you and things like that. The leader has got to cast a vision that'll capture people's imagination and it's got to be a big enough vision that where people can see a place for them to excel and to move up and have something great happen in their own lives too if they buy into this thing. And where did the Billy board without blaming people, where do you think that derailed?

Because it is the product of the year.

How can we fail? You know?

Yeah, it was. It's just that the product itself doesn't. It can be a wonderful product but if you don't have all the supporting stuff that goes along with it, that's what makes it fail. It's still. I think I was talking to my son and I mentioned Billy Borden. He says that he actually has bought some. It's a flexible two by four and it's still out there. The market's there, it's expensive. He actually bought some. And so, you know, the right people, you have to put together the management concepts in order for it to work. It's not one thing. It's not just because it's a great product. It's not because you just have a lot of motivation. It's not because you have the money for the capitalization. It's a combination of all those things that's what makes our business so great, quite frankly, is because what's the capitalization? Filling out an iba, you know, what's the. What's the negative? Cash. I had the swimming pool business. We sold fiberglass swimming pools. We were number one in Southern California in that you buy. We were new company, so we had to buy the fiberglass pool. Cash. Cash. We had to pay cash for it. And then we take them and put it into the somebody's yard. And you had to wait until they paid you. And so in the middle of the busiest season, we were selling four pools a day. And I got a call, I got a visit from the banker, and he came out to the factory and said, look, you guys, congratulations on making all these pools. He says, you don't shut down right now, I'm going to report you to the police. They're going to put you in jail because you can't float checks. You can't, you know, we didn't have the money, so we fled. Well, we make the check good when they pay us. And he said, you can't do that, so you got to shut your business down. That's where I learned about cash flow.

Thanks so much. If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works 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.