TONY:
Hey, everyone, this is Tony. Before we start today's conversation, I want to give you a quick heads up. At the very end of this episode, I'm going to share a piece of music that's very close to my heart. My newest hit song. If you've ever seen those four words on every coin and every dollar in the US, hearing them on a song gives them a whole new weight. So stick around to the very end. I can't wait for you to hear it.
Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're diving into the mind of a true big hitter, someone who's built lasting success through leadership, mindset, and consistency. Larry Weidel spent over four decades leading an award winning financial organization across North America. Now as host of Big Hitters The Podcast, he shares what he's learned from the world's top achievers, the real patterns behind winning and staying on top.
Now, Larry's story isn't about luck, it's about principles. He refined what he calls the cycle of winning, how to start from zero, build momentum, and keep success going year after year. It's something we all want to do. You know, if you've ever hit a plateau or you felt there's more in your waiting to break through, more in there or whatever, this one's for you. Let's get into it. The blueprint for winning at the highest level. Let's begin. Let's bring them on.
Hi, Larry. Welcome to the Tony D'urso show.
LARRY:
Hello. Appreciate it. Glad to be here, Tony.
TONY:
Oh, the honor is all mine. You've you've accomplished some milestones here. We're all ears right now to learn about the big hitter mindset and perhaps, maybe kind of fill us in a little bit. Larry, how did it all start? What were those early days that led you to this career path?

BACKSTORY & EARLY YEARS
LARRY:
Well, the, uh, growing up, you know, I think a lot of our fundamentals, the way we think we're all different, everybody's life is different and it has to do with not, you know, we've got different talents, different interests, different experiences, different things that happened to us that form our viewpoint of life. And so some of those I know about are the early years, some of it I don't.
But I do know that as I went up, things did not, uh, I always felt like I could do just about anything, but there was nothing I really wanted to do. But the big thing, as we were talking earlier, my father was in the military and they moved us every fifteen minutes, which I bitterly resented growing up. You know, I put up with it growing as I was younger, but there was a certain thing in there, you know, you get that rebellious streak when you're pre-teen. Uh, it's like, no, no, I don't want that letter to come. I'm doing just great here with my friends and everything.
And so early on, probably the first thing that developed was a strong desire not to be under the thumb of some institution, or some somebody at the like at the Pentagon or at the corporate headquarters, some faceless EU bureaucrat. Maybe that could decide you had to move. And, you know, you have no choice in the matter. And my father, that was okay for him. It was not okay for his number one son. And so I bitterly resented that. But, you know, I had to go along with it.
And then the other big transformative thing, you know, I did some entrepreneurial things along the way to make more money because we didn't have a lot of money. My father was a sergeant in the Air Force, and so not a lot of money, you had to had to look for ways to, uh, look out for yourself growing up, which is good. You know, it forces you to think about taking care of yourself.
But the other thing that happened is in those jobs, as they got in the teenage years, I happened to notice that the lowest paid jobs, which is what you get when you're working in the summer, is the, you know, labor, minimum wage. They're the hardest working and the least respect. You get the least respect and you get the worst managers. They all seem to have some kind of incredible psychotic issue they're dealing with. And, uh, they fortunately, they have you in their life that they can take it out on, you know, and I, I not only didn't like, I, I recognize I'm not being paid any money. I'm working like a dog and I'm being treated like a dirt dog.
And so the thing is, in my life, I from my working experience, I got the the thing is, I said to myself, I don't even know what I'm saying right now, but I'm going to do whatever it takes to be able to be one of the higher earning people and up the ladder. Whatever thing I decide to get, uh, you know, to wind up doing.
And so that's what you know, and I think, Tony, that came from from sports because I played sports all year round. And you know what I learned about sports? I wasn't good enough to go, you know, be in college or pro, but, you know, I was good enough to play where, you know, you're participating. And you know what I learned? Winning is better than losing. Go figure. Yeah.
And the thing is, you know, it dawned on me, you know, you put roughly the same you play a game, you put roughly the same effort in as the people on the other side of the field. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. All I know is at the end of the game, if you lost. You're drained. You know, you're sad. You know, it's just, ah, you know, you're thinking about, oh what the effort I put in. And the deal is if you're in the winning locker room, you can't wait to go again. You know? And, you know, it dawned on me, like the the regenerative energy that comes from winning. And so I learned early. I got my lesson from athletics, Tony, is that winning is better than losing and I never lost it. I never lost that feel.
So whenever I get in any situation, I think that was, you know, I wanted to be independent, I wanted to move up and I wanted to win. And when you win, you know, you set yourself up to be successful. You wind up moving up the ladder. And so I think that was at the root of what led me. You know, I went through a whole lot of different steps along the way. And, uh, you know, I went to Georgia Tech. I was the second one of my family to, uh, go to a four year college major, four year college. I built a hundred houses coming out of Georgia Tech in four years. And then I found out one hundred hour workweeks don't matter if there's an oil embargo coming out of the Mideast. Thanks to our president and Goldman Sachs. And, uh, if people can't get mortgages, they can't buy your houses and you're sucking gas.
And so I said, I gotta swap industries. And I asked myself, what was the you know what, what industry? In other words, I'm going to work one hundred hours a week. I'm going to I'm going to be on something other than this roller coaster I can't control. And so I said, what was the best industry during the Great Depression? What was the industry to be in during the Great Depression? They said financial services and I said sold.
So I didn't have the sales skills. I hadn't done any of that. I didn't have any licensing or any of that orientation. But, you know, I felt like I could learn it and the people were in it were not that that much of a genius. So the over, you know, four painful years of learning how to do it. I kind of hit stride about four years in, and it's been a fun, fun, kind of explosive ride ever since. But that's kind of an overview

SPORTS, WINNING & ENTREPRENEUR PARALLELS
TONY:
as quite something. We have great similarities there. I, as a teenager, aside from being a paper boy earlier in my life, I worked in fast food and the one thing I enjoyed was not being a manager. Maybe it's the Italian in me, because when it's time to leave, you can go socialize and have fun, while the people that wanted more money, which was just really back then, ten, twenty five cents more an hour, they had all the responsibilities and the headaches, but that was teenage years. But it wasn't quite that way, you know.
And I had that aha moment of what industry should I go into? And that's eventually what led me into podcasting. But that's a different story. But we're talking about the cycle of winning here. And I get it how sports kind of helped mold you because yeah, you're either if you don't win, you're you're it's it's a drain. It's a drag. You feel terrible. And if you win, no matter how tired or hungry or anything you are, it's that adrenaline is is incredible. And we all want that rush, especially in business. We want that.
And you've discovered this, if I could say it that way. Or modified or codified this, this The secret to cycle of winning, and I like to know more about that and how you discovered what is the cycle of winning and how that works. You touched upon it. I'd like to dive a little bit more into that.

THE CYCLE OF WINNING & MODELING WINNERS
LARRY:
Well, I copied winners. You know, the thing is that, uh, you know, it's like how we I learned a couple of things during an insanely successful, the most successful way to learn. And it's not to go to a conference. You're not going to change your life forever at a conference. You're not going to have a permanent, life changing thing in a conference. Forget it. Now, you may have a light bulb moment. You may meet somebody. You may meet a group of people that you become friends forever and all, but you may get some concepts that you were missing, missing pieces. But you're not gonna, you know, change happens over time.
You know, God has clearly defined this by the planets. You have a sun, it comes up, you know, half a day, and plants grow because of regular exposure to the sun. And so you have to have a source where you're regularly exposed to people that give off energy. and you can learn from and you can model and you pick it up step by step.
And the other thing is it's just like, uh, the way kids learn just how we all learn to walk and talk. We watched our parents, and they might have been the dumbest people in the in the neighborhood, but they could walk and talk, you know what I'm saying? They might have had a terrible temper. They might have had a hard ago. Whatever their pluses and minuses, they could walk and talk. And if you're a little sucker and you know you're stuck in the crib, you don't want to walk and talk like the big folks. And so you learn how to model people, you know. So that's just the way I learned the business modeling.
You know, somehow I don't know who I would give them a banana if I could figure out who taught me this. But early in my life, someone get this in my head that if you want to move up fast, the, you know, you you know, you get good tools, you get the, you know, the good, uh, make the good effort. But have somebody that you can model that. Maybe even talk to or listen to. That's as high up the food chain in whatever arena. You know, if you want to be a guitarist, you want to be a fisherman, you want to be whatever golfer, whatever it is, entrepreneur, uh, find somebody that you can relate to, you know, some similar, uh, life values and everything. And so, uh, that you can pick up things from that will suit you.
And so that's what I did. I mean, that's how I learned. That's how I moved up the ladder. And I'm a brilliant teacher. I am a frigging genius teacher. I'm a fifty years. And you know why I'm good? Because I don't get anything easy. I've got to study it. I've contemplated. But what happens is, most of the time we think, you know, I wish I had natural ability. Natural ability is the worst thing for you. What you want is no natural ability. But having to develop hard work. Because if you work hard to learn something, you appreciate it more than the people who got it easily.
You know, people are naturally intelligent. They don't appreciate their intelligence. People are naturally athletic, don't really usually value their athletic ability like those of us that are jealous. You know, of how you know how they could hit the ball and run fast and all of that stuff. And so the thing is, when you work hard to get it, Tony, you appreciate it more. So I appreciated it more. And then of course, I was, you know, I moved up because I'm copying good role models. And, uh, you know, the deal is that if you have, you know, you beat half of the people by working hard and then you beat the next forty percent by copying, by having a method to your madness. And the way to get some kind of systematic approach is to copy the people at the top. And so that's what I simply did. And it was, uh, it was a way that I could continue to move up.

SPONSOR BREAK – SHOPIFY
TONY:
Larry's insights on breaking through plateaus and building momentum really highlights something important. Success doesn't happen all at once. It happens through clarity, consistency and taking that right next step. And if you're building something of your own a business, a brand, a side project, one of the smartest steps you can take is to make it easy for people to find you, support you, and buy from you. And that's exactly what Shopify helps you do.
You know, every successful entrepreneur I've interviewed on this show started out exactly where you might be right now with an idea, a dream, and plenty of questions. How do I turn this into something real? How do I build a professional online presence? And how do I actually reach the people who need what I offer?
That's where Shopify comes in. It's the platform built to help you launch, grow, and scale with zero guesswork and total freedom. Whether you're selling a digital product, physical goods, or a brand new business model, Shopify gives you everything you need to start, grow, and scale all in one place.
Shopify is the commerce platform powering millions of businesses worldwide, handling ten percent of all e-commerce in the US, including household names like Mattel and Gymshark, as well as countless entrepreneurs. Just getting started. Exactly like you worried you can't design a website? No problem. Shopify has stunning ready to go templates that perfectly match your brand's style. No design experience needed.
Need a little extra help along the way? Shopify has powerful AI tools created specifically for commerce, helping you enhance product images, write compelling product descriptions, and even generate discount codes effortlessly.
Concerned about marketing your new brand? Shopify makes it simple to attract customers through easy to run email and social media campaigns, turning casual visitors into loyal fans. And here's the best part. If you ever feel stuck. Shopify's award winning customer support is available twenty four over seven. Ready to help whenever you need advice.
So stop asking what if and start saying why not? Turn your entrepreneurial dreams into reality with Shopify by your side. Try Shopify today and bring your business dreams to life. Turn your big business idea into. Which Shopify on your side? Sign up for your one dollar per month trial and start selling today at Shopify. Go to Shopify. I. NY.
And now let's get back to this great conversation with Larry.

GROWTH, TEACHING & THE ACCIDENT
LARRY:
You know what I found out I liked moving out. up. I like winning and as a result, in the business we were in, we moved from being in sales to where we were opening offices, you know, recruiting, training, developing people to run their own brokerage outfits, basically, you know. So I love passing it on to them. It's like, here's, you know, when you, you learn a big secret, you know, something that's mystified you for years. And you, you figure out how to do it. It's like, let me show you this, you know, and you you have all kind of, you know, you have a natural excitement about this stuff and you're able to captivate people's attention and they're able to duplicate what you're doing because, you know, in my case, I'm not that particularly bright. And so if I explained it to them, they pretty much could understand it. And if they're motivated, they can have success.
So I've got, you know, I've got people that have, uh, I didn't even know I had a system until I got ready to write the book. You know, I was like, I had I'll make this brief. Seventeen, eighteen years ago, I got a cycling accident in the middle of Palm Beach, right in front of the police station. The jack legs put in a new curve that they didn't bother to put a light on, and I happen to be going through there. After being on the golf course for about ten hours and, uh, riding my bike to cycle down with my nephew and boom, there was, uh, an accident that has taken me seventeen years to recover from.
So I was shut down, uh, for the first few years of that where I couldn't get off the couch. I mean, I gained one hundred pounds, you know, I, you know, I fortunately, I could always drive my car and go to and from therapy, so I was never hospitalized, but, uh, you know, it was miserable. But. So I went through the thing. You'll you'll love this. It's like, you know, okay, turn on the television. You know, you're on the couch. You have no energy. You know, I'd have to sit up for, like, two or three hours to kind of get if I needed to use the bathroom or get some water to drink. I'd take two or three hours to get the energy to go do it. But, uh, the thing is, I'm watching television. I could watch television. I could watch television, but I can't watch commercials. Okay.
So I said I got to do something different. So I got Twitter, Facebook, this, maybe this. Allow me to stay in touch with my organization. You know, that's all over the country. And, you know, even back then, it was, you know, ten, twelve thousand people. And, uh, right, nowadays, like fifteen thousand five hundred offices all over Canada and, uh, all over North America. But the thing is, if you have an organization, you need to you need to wave the flag. You need to let them. They need to know you're alive. And so I said, well, I'll do Twitter, I'll do this, I'll do that.
And eventually I said, well, I'll write a book, you know, because it dawned on me in my I had plenty of time. It was like I was in prison on my couch. Basically, it dawned on me I was a very fortunate young man in the sense that I had lots of exposures early on to really Five, you know, hugely industry leading type or sport, you know, in whatever field they were in, they were giants, you know, and, uh, I learned a lot of things from them that if I had not learned those concepts, I would have wouldn't have been successful, you know? So you have to use, uh, you have to use ideas. You have to have concepts that kind of shape your, your activity at all.
So I said, I'm sitting on a lot of information I need to give back. So I started to write the book, and it was only when I got to the end of the book, I realized, wait a minute, there is a cycle of success because I wrote the book, starting with the idea that the world needs more winners. Everybody wants to do something great. Here is the premise for the book serial winner. And it turned into, by the way, the I've been voted the forty forty second best management book of all time. You know, that happened about ten years later.
But the thing is that all this came from the idea of like, uh, the concept was everybody wants to do something great with their life. Very few do of the people who ever do something great with their life. Usually it's one time. You know, usually they're one hit wonders. And so, in spite of that, we all know people that seem to go through life like Pollyanna in the sense that no matter what happens, ever happens to them, they bounce back. They minimize disasters, they maximize the good things that happen. And it's like, what? What have they got going on in their life? You know what? What what makes them different. And, well, obviously it's how they think.
And, you know, I worked my way back to I could never be an athlete like Michael Jordan, but I could copy how he thinks I could play golf like Tiger Woods, but I could copy how they think. And, uh, even Jack Nicklaus says the thing that turned him made him a professional. A winning professional was after he played a top tournament, he heard Ben Hogan say to another, Ben Hogan was still playing at the time. Ben Hogan said to another pro in the locker room that, uh, he said, you know, if that fat kid ever learns how to think on the course. He's going to win everything. You know, and Nicholas, I obviously was the fat kid, but, you know, so he had to learn how to think like the other, think his way around the course rather than just kind of hammer the ball.
And so I, so I, you know, I started off that premise and, you know, it was like, how do you start? And, uh, you know, we can go through that if you want. But by the time I got through it, I said, wait a minute, there is a rhythm to this thing. This is how it goes. But I only really discovered it by writing the book. I didn't realize I was operating that way.

PLATEAUS & BREAKTHROUGHS
TONY:
We're speaking with Larry Weidel, talking about big hitter mindset. You can find him at Larry. Larry, we know that l a r r y weidel. That's w e d e l leary weidel. Larry. Absolutely amazing on the winning formula. And we, as part of wanting to win, we we hit those plateaus. We hit those ceilings. You know who doesn't. You know, things go great and then all of a sudden, things change the world. Look at what's going on right now. Protocols change. Look what happened a couple of years ago. The world shut down. That's why I got into podcasting.
Before that was so many changes. Like, what can you do to control your business? You don't. You don't control. If an oil embargo comes, what do you do? So there's these stalls, whether it's somehow, however they're orchestrated, but yet you still want to win and break through that plateau. What's your method? Do you have a method for this?

LARRY:
Well, uh, yeah, it's it's how I do everything all day long. I mean, I, you know, put I actually wrote the book. I realized, oh, that's what I do all day long, every day. I mean, I don't even have to remember it. It's like, first of all, you have you lock in your mind on a target. And I think every area of your, you know, you've got to have a big target, Tony. You know, whatever it is you want to do in your life. If it's your kids, your wife, your family, your recreation, your vacations, whatever it is, when you know your church, your your, your charitable things, whatever is an element of your life, you want to have a special goal for it or it's not going to be, you're going to lose interest in it. Would you agree?

TONY:
Absolutely. Because it's that purpose. I, I consider it I call it like the gasoline in the car. The car doesn't go to your destination by itself. It needs you. And you need that gasoline. You have gasoline. That's like your purpose. It's a bad analogy, but it's a great concept. It takes you to where you want to go. So that purpose fuels you to to follow through on on whatever you're, whatever you're, you're trying to accomplish.

LARRY:
Yeah. And so the thing is it starts with a decision. And, you know, there's a lot that goes into being able to decide and lock in on, uh, something that's significant enough to where you'll keep it on your mind. But if it's not, you'll forget it. You know, it's like a, you know, we forget the Forgive the insignificant holidays, but somehow we remember Christmas. You know, very few people have gone through a December without Christmas was today, you know.
So the thing is, the bigger these goals are, the more important they are to you, the more likely it's, you know, it kind of solves the problem of staying focused and this, that or the other. And so what happens is I look at this, you know, I heard that, uh, Michael Eisner on, uh, out in Aspen, they had this TV show where they interview all these big shots out there in the local Aspen thing. And they were they interviewed him, and they were talking about some movies that came out and this, that and the other. And I think The Lion King was big hit or something, I guess it was. And they said, you know, I guess that's great to have The Lion King. Unbelievable. You know, it's like, you know, millions and millions of dollars. And he goes, yeah, he said that was that was good. But he said, you know, there was like this many other movies that we put out last year. And he said most of them didn't go out like The Lion King. So it was good. It was good to have a hit. It was good to have the hit.
And so the way I look at it is like I've got I always have, I'm always shooting for the top in any area of my life because anything you do is more fun at the top. It's more fun when you do it special. And so the deal is your odds are against you making something, you know, achieving any kind of special goal. But if you're going for special goals, you're going to hit some of them. And so if along the way, uh, some of the things you're working on, you run into a delay. You know, a lot of times, Tony, it's not that we get beat. It's like we get delayed, you know what I'm saying?
It's like you're working on something. This, that and the other. Like, for example, my phone. Okay, I'm trying to get the new iPhone. I'm one of the stupid people who gets new iPhones every year because I'm a photographer, I'm an artist, and I take a lot of pictures. And so stuff. That's how I. That's how I justify it to my to my accountant. That's the trouble is, you have to update these stupid things and I hate to update them. So I sent it to my office and have them do it for you. And they put in all the passwords. But I take the phone, I get to send it in. They've got the new one up in Georgia where my main office is. I put it in a Fedex box across the street from me two weeks ago. Within an hour, the box somehow locks up and Fedex can't get into it.
And for some reason, this is like solving the Mideast peace process. The war in the Mideast, getting this box open for Fedex. They've never had a box. They've never had to deal with this, I guess with Fedex, because they can't get it open. So my phone, the simple little thing like my phone stuck over the box across the street. I get to look at it all the time and but things like that happen to us all day long. And the deal is like you learn to live with. Because if I get stalled out on this side, I could put energy into the, you know, something else.
And so the way I look, first of all, you got to understand everything you're going to do. You're going to run into delays, problems, surprises, bumps in the road. And so I have a thing in my book where the the third step is to adjust. Don't quit. You know, when things go wrong, you adjust. You don't quit. But really, until things start going wrong on a project, it hasn't really started yet. That's when you really know it started. Not when you start, when things start going wrong, because you got enough energy into it, enough forward momentum to where now things can, you know, it's like you get in your car until you start getting some bumps on the road or some traffic jams. You're not moving.
And so so the thing is, if you get delayed on one thing, if you've got other things going on, you know you're living a life. You're not just doing one project. And so it's not like, oh, this one little thing's got to go perfect or, or Larry's going to have a little bad day. I don't give a crap. You know, if you stop me here, I'm going to go there. You know, life is. You're not going to beat me down like that. As long as I'm living in a free country and I can keep moving forward. If I got my health, you know, I can deal with life. I can keep moving forward.
So I don't really have a lot of sympathy for the people who fall apart. When Bobby's little world ran into a problem, you know, a, you know, a frog jumped into his soup or something. What do I do? Get another bowl of soup, Bobby. Shut up about it.

MY FACET MINUTE
TONY:
Now it's time for my facet minute. A quick story from one of the facets of my life.
Years ago, I learned something that changed how I approach every project. It wasn't during a business deal or a big interview. It happened in the middle of a simple, ordinary moment. I was working on a creative project, something that I had poured my heart into and suddenly hit a wall. I wasn't sure what wasn't working. I just knew something felt off.
So I stepped away. I took a breath and instead of pushing harder, I asked myself one small question, which wasn't small at the time. But when you look at it, it is. And that is, what's the one thing that would actually move this forward? What's the one thing I can focus on? The one thing I could push that would resolve everything. And instantly I knew it wasn't a complicated part. It wasn't the time consuming part. It was the thing that I had been gently sidestepping. It was the thing that required clarity and honesty. And the moment I tackled that one thing, everything unlocked.
I've used that little question ever since in podcasting, writing books, building music, helping In entrepreneurs, even in personal decisions. Sometimes the biggest shifts in our lives come from the one thing that we keep putting off or that we overlook. So if something feels stuck in your world right now, ask yourself that simple question. You might be surprised by the clarity it brings.
And before we continue with this great conversation with Larry, I want to take a quick moment to thank you for being here. Thank you. Your support means the world to me, and I truly appreciate you following and listening to the Tony D'urso show. If you're finding value in today's episode, please hit that follow button and share the show with someone who would benefit. It really helps us reach more entrepreneurs and leaders who need this kind of insight.
And if you haven't yet, make sure you're getting my Elite Entrepreneurs newsletter twice a month. I break down lessons from top guests. I share book and podcast highlights and give you tools to move forward in your journey to success. No cost, no fluff, just real value. Join me at Tony O. Let's grow together and keep rising. Tony D'urso.
And now let's get back to this great conversation with Larry.

ACCOUNTABILITY, FACTS & RESPONSE
TONY:
What stops one person, you know, the entrepreneur working to make his business grow? The business person. We're doing our eighty whatever hours a week. We don't even stop to think of these things like there's just two. Not that we're snobs, but they're just so small and insignificant to the big picture. I've got to get this business going. I've got to get this thing launched. I've got to get this thing going. And if some protocol comes or something happens or the Fedex box locks up, that doesn't stop my whole world. I don't go home and sit on the couch, watch Netflix or whatever. I figure out a way to do it, I keep that going.
And with that, Larry, there's accountability in our self discipline in a way. And we've got to keep going. And I kind of want to go well do you have is there a routine or that's just a natural for you. Like it's it's a no brainer. Like if there's an oil embargo and I can't produce my product, I'll find another way, another country, another source. It's like it's a no brainer for you. Is there a system or routine that kicks in, or is this something in your book? Because it's it's ultimate accountability and self discipline, I think to just keep going and figure out a way.

LARRY:
The way I don't know how other people look at it, but the way I look at it is like this. You've got to get the facts, you know, things happen that you know, they can't happen in a way that it's no big deal. But it can also happen with the most infuriating thing that ever happened. And you know this since the beginning of of the the planet, you know, this is like and you're just. But the deal is this. At some point, you need to calm your butt down and say, what are the facts? You've got to go back to facts because you've got to operate. You know, if you're going to get through life and you know you're going to keep on moving, you've got to operate off facts, faith and feelings. You've got to get the facts, you know, just like regroup.
First of all, you got to be your own best coach. And you got to say, wait a minute, how bad is this situation? Or how much of a disaster is this? Or what did they like? Somebody says something. You know, somebody's like, wait a minute, what did they really say? You know, did they really mean, you know, you know, do I need him to really respond to that? You know, or like, if you run out of money, you know, we run out of money. We're always running out of money in business because things that's one of the things everybody underestimates in life. Everybody underestimates time and money on a project.
And so the deal is like, okay, we're running out of money. Okay, we might have to squeeze this here, but we'll find more money. You know, they'll be it might be a a day, a week, a month. It might be my money, your money, the friends money, the banks money. We'll find. We'll put it on pause for now. You know, you don't have to throw everything up in the air. So the deal is, once you get the facts, it allows you. You know, I wanted to write a book, Tony. You know, while I was sitting on my couch before I wrote the first book, I had all these books I was going to write. One of them was going to be monsters. You will meet in business, and this is going to be for these naive college kids graduating and not knowing, you know, the people, the people that look so honest and friendly to you that that will basically destroy your life if you let them.
And so the thing, you know, like people like me and you, uh, rarely do someone like me and you reach our stage of life where we have not been embezzled out of a million dollars by somebody once or twice. And usually it was our most trusted personal assistants, you know what I'm saying? It's like until you, you know, it'd be easier if somebody bothered to tell me about that, you know, when I was on the way up.
But as you you move through life, you find that once you have the facts, it puts you like, what I was going to say is, if you're right, that that's what they say about if you're around a narcissist, pretty soon the narcissist will screw your mind up so much that all of a sudden you act like the crazy one. You know when you're totally saying they're going crazy, but they draw you in, and then all of a sudden you look like you're an idiot. And that's what will happen in these things if you let the emotions take over you, you know, like, what about this? What about that? If this goes, this is like, calm your butt down, what are the facts?
And then what are the options? Because it's either, you know, it's like I'm on a road, you know, like we're in a hurry to get to a wedding. Are we? You know, we want to get to the, uh, the. Let's just say you and I are invited to the white House, and we've never been invited to the white House. And we're buddies. And, you know, we fly into Reagan in D.C. and we get a limo, and then we're just about there. We got our tuxes on at Traffic Jam, you know, or some kind of thing happened on the road. Some accents like, oh, no, we're going to miss a thing. We'll figure something out, folks. We'll figure something because we're going to get to the white House. You know, we'll call in a helicopter, we'll do this, we'll do that or whatever.
But first of all, you got to say, how much time do we have left? You know, what are the options? You calm your butt down and you say, oh, no, no, that's not going to be helpful. What you say is, what are the facts? How far is it? And then you go, what are my options? And then it's like you choose if you got, you know, you got a cool head and you usually the best option is pretty obvious. You know, you don't have to be a genius. It's like, okay, we're going to take that option and maybe we'll be ten, twenty minutes late. Big deal. You know, we'll still get there, but you think your way through things by, first of all, getting the facts, getting the options, and then make the best option and then go on it, you know, and then choose that option. And you go with that and you don't waste any time feeling sorry for yourself. How did this happen to me? You know, I go through life, you know, this. These things always happen to me. It's oh shut up. Yeah, it always happens to everybody.

TONY:
So true. It's too often, not too often. But the successful business people, the successful entrepreneurs, the people I interview, they don't just sit there and cry and get emotional when something happens, because that just blocks the thinking. They move that emotion out of the way, and they just exactly as you say, Larry, what are the facts? Forget feeling bad and sorry and whatever else, you can feel that later. But how do you handle this? And it's just that confront that looking at it straight on, which I think is an acquired skill. You weren't born necessarily looking at it because you're one hundred percent right. Growing up, there's like, oh my gosh, my uncle did this. And this happened to my friend Joe. Oh no. And you're so caught up in the news that you forget in a way, or you're not trained to look at the facts. Yeah.
And I think that's a great mindset. This may or may not be your mindset shift, but I think it's a great one. And it's very similar to the last question where I was asking about accountability and discipline. But this seems to be the same question. But this is really the mindset to operate and run a business. And in that, Larry, you have to unlearn things, but you can't unlearn to be emotional. If someone close to you gets hurt, it would be wrong not to feel emotional and sad. It's not human. So the emotional part is important. But yet if you've got to run your business and something amazing or not amazing can happen. Either way, you've got to take action. You can't just stop. So there's a mindset shift that has to happen, and we have to unlearn particular beliefs along the way. I think you talk about this in your book.

MINDSET, RESPONSIBILITY & LEARNING FROM LOSS
LARRY:
Yeah. And it's a matter of being in the you know, if you're not working towards something that's important to you, you wouldn't get that angry or whatever, but you know, you are worried and then you get that. But that's like you're setting up a game, you're setting up a competition. I'm gonna see if I can pull this off. And then you got to learn how to compete.
You know, it's in golf, like Rory McIlroy. I mean, he's got he turned into a phenomenally clutch golfer. But you know, he played in the Masters and he like, you know as a young player. And he blew it. I mean her humiliating worldwide humiliation for the young kid like Kent. You know I remember the announcement. Can he ever come back from this because he was so far ahead in a manger, you know. Can he ever come back from this or is he damaged? You know? No, I think he went out one the next week.
So the thing is that. But, you know, it was humiliating. But you learn how to do that. We all have to learn. Nobody's born being mentally tough because we're all selfish. You know, we're all toddlers when we grow up and, you know, whatever we want, you know, we want it with every ounce of our being. And we don't. We hate everybody who's going to stand in our way. And then we learn like, well, that's not the way. You know, the people that still are narcissists are people that never got the memo that you can't go through life that way.
And so so the deal is we, you know, all the and you know, that's why you like to be around people that are successful and people that are in stressful. And that's why it's great to, you know, even I don't watch I spent my life watching sports, but I got burnt out on it with Covid. So I don't watch any of that, that stuff anymore. But, uh, the thing is that watching at the highest level, the great athletes, the great coaches and, uh, you know, see how they perform in the toughest moments, you know, how they handle adversity. You can learn from that. You know, they're they're playing it out.
You know, you see one guy does it, you know, like, for example, Marv Levy, wonderful guy, Harvard graduate, you know, brilliant, brilliant genius. Coach of the Buffalo Bills. Went to four Super Bowls in a row and lost all of them. And you know what he said I watched I listened because I'm in the game of winning. I'm a student of winners and I listen to every game just to see what's he going to say. You know what he said every game? Didn't say we weren't good enough. We came in, I thought was this I was that we were unprepared with this. You know, we need more talent or what. He said, no, you know, we had that bad break in the first quarter and you know, and know, such and such. He blamed it on. He didn't take any responsibility.
He did that four times in a row. And if he had played, if they had been as unfortunate enough to qualify for their fifth Super Bowl in a role, he would have lost that one too, because he never did learn the lesson that if you get beat, you got it's your fault. You got to take responsibility and say, I should have done something different because that allows you, even if there was nothing, you couldn't do different. At least it allows you to make sure there's nothing that you left a chance. You know, and so winners don't leave things to chance. And they make sure they're not the like. If something disastrous happens to me, I don't want to add to it by acting like a, you know, an idiot in the way I respond.
Because a lot of times, you know, it's just like these things in cover ups and politics, they make things worse. But by not accepting responsibility. Take the humiliation. Yeah, you caught me. I shouldn't have done that, I apologize. No, they want to cover it up, and they make it worse. So the response can make. You can make things better or worse for yourself, by the way you respond to these situations. So, you know, winners want to minimize the damage when something happens like that. And the first step is take responsibilities. Like what are the facts? Okay, I got to fix this thing.
You know, when I got embezzled out of a million dollars, what I said was okay, my fault. Sixteen years most trusted personal assistant. I let her get too close to the money. Okay, but that lesson is going to save me at least twenty million dollars down the road. You know, because I'm going to learn. I've got my antenna finely tuned now. And so, uh, that is not going to happen to Larry again. But, you know, you have to learn. And, uh, if you're not going to learn, if you blame it on people and this, that and the other, you know, but I said my fault, my bad. And I'm going to fix it. And so that's really how you we all have to learn these things, Tony.

ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS & BUILDING SUPPORT
TONY:
Larry, you've spent your life. You've written about it. Studying winners, studying champions, studying losers. Is that the the number one big mistake is just taking responsibility? Or is there something else that we need to make sure that we put in place to build a big company to build our championship team?

LARRY:
Well, yeah, you've got to get yourself organized for success. It's not a one piece of the puzzle. You got to get yourself A through Z organized for success. And the way you do that is you look at the areas of your life that are working for you, and then you look at the areas of your life that are not working, and you've got to put you've got to make adjustments or get more support or training or reinforcements, maybe staff help or something in areas that have always brought you down or have always, you know, minimized the impact of your. You know, the effort that you were putting in. And so you've got to get yourself set up for success. A through Z.
So when you start things, you can start them. You can handle the things that you know, the surprises, the bumps in the road as you go through it. And you can come up the other side, uh, winning and uh, successful in pretty quick period of time. And you can make winning a regular type. In other words, the things you're setting out to do in your life, if that's happening for you, great. If it's not happening for you, why, who, why, where, what goes wrong and fix it. And if it's something like, well, I just don't like to do these kind of things and I don't. Well hire somebody. That's why we hire people, because none of us like to do everything, or none of us are good at everything.
And so, you know, you got to find a way to win with yourself. And, uh, you know, you get the kind of support things around or the structures in place that allow you to accomplish the things you want to accomplish in your life. And so that's where Self-coaching comes in. You know, you've got to coach yourself and you've got if you can't be CEO of your life and set yourself up for success, you're never going to build a company.

STAYING MOTIVATED & THE POWER OF COMMUNITIES
TONY:
Absolutely everybody in the world has an answer to this. Next question is going to be the last question, I think. But it's important. And I want to know your answer because you've spent so much time really studying the winning cycle here. And that is we have our ups and downs. We talked about that. We have our discipline and we talk about all these things. But at some point, you know, we just get we fade, we motivation goes, we we lose some steam. We're we're not so consistent. It's like, yeah, we got the money in the bank. We, you know, we got the nice house, we have the nice car, we have the things that we've always wanted. Ah, but I just don't feel so excited about my job or my business or empire or whatever, and yet you've got people that depend on you, so you've got to remotivate yourself.
How do you stay consistent and focused and motivated regardless or not? Regardless when when something comes?

LARRY:
Tony, congratulations to you for putting your finger on the number one problem for all entrepreneurs and all people who want to be elite. And that is your number one job is to keep yourself super motivated and excited. Nobody else. You know, the thing is, you fought for your independence, your, you know, the opportunity to run things on your own and be successful. And that means you don't have a boss, but you've got to run yourself. You've got to keep your job and nobody else's job in the world, because you would resent it if somebody else came in and you would say, I've got to keep myself fired up.
And if I'm if I've lost that, I need to get some new input. I need to get some new friends. I need to get some new activities. I need to investigate. I need to go to some different places. I need to talk to some different people. That's why people do these mastermind groups. And that's why, like, I've started my own big hitter community. And uh, is because people draw inspiration from other people that are going through the same transitions, are living the same kind of lives that they're going through. We take, you know, encouragement from me. You know, this whole thing about winning. Well, you need to measure you put yourself in an environment to where you can notice it. You know, like if you're around other motivated, excited people, you'll tell if you're fading, you know, because they're more fired up than you know. They got things to talk about. You got nothing to talk about.
And so the thing is, we kind of pick each other up by, you know, our networking. And I'll say this here's what here's my thing of that, you know, the deal about you know, your your success is geared to take your top five friends or the top people you spend your top five people you spend your time with. To a large extent, you know, that's going to dictate the success of your life, right? You know that.
You know what I believe? I don't think not your five group. It's the five communities you're part of. You know, church, neighborhood, family, people, you know, people. You go to sports games, you know, you do recreation with, you know, you maybe play golf with or tennis with. I got a gung ho guy who cuts my hair down the the road here. Cosmo. Well, I was wondering what you know, he's always parking and this, that. And the other is like. Well, I found out the sucker plays. I didn't even know he played tennis. He plays recreational tennis with Jack Nicklaus over Jack Nicklaus house. And they got a whole community of those people that go in and out, because Jack Nicklaus has his own, basically tennis complex out of his house out there in Palm Beach Gardens. You know, he's got a whole community of people that every Saturday they get together and they're playing tennis together.
But, you know, like even in LA, you had a whole group of guys like Garry Shandling when he was alive. There was a a bunch of those guys. I forget their names right now that they would always play pickup basketball together, you know, and you had that energy, you know, they when you'd see them on a TV show or whatever, they had a certain kind of you didn't know why, but, you know, they always seemed to have a little bit more bounce than the other guys, you know. And so I think, you know, it's a matter of the groups that you I think your top five groups that you spend your time with are the real secret of staying on track and stay motivated because it's a complex thing. You know, when you say staying organized for success, but if you're in that environment and you're around people, you know, and, uh, you know, for me, uh, I won't go all the clubs that I'm a member of, but, uh, you know, it makes a difference. It's it's for my mental health, for nothing else.
You know, I, I still haven't gotten back to where I can get out and play eighteen holes of golf, believe it or not, after all these years. But I can go out there and I can, you know, I can hit balls for fifteen, twenty minutes and chip and putt and then go have lunch. And then I'm around all the, you know, the billionaires and millionaires of the club and, uh, have some little conversations. And so, you know, it re-energizes me, you can kind of, you know, you look around and you kind of pick up the energy. And so when people are winning, you're around people that are winning and they have things going on in their life. It rubs off on you. And so you don't want you know, it's like a friend of mine said a long time ago, it's not so much that people are losers, but they're loners.
And so that's what, uh, that's why I went. I said, that's where I spend all my time now in my community. Because, you know, we need people, you know, believe it or not, we learn more from you, learn more from people going through the same thing you're going through. Then you do at the foot of a guru. And it's not that some of these gurus are not great, but there's only so much you could get there. And so anyway, that's what I would say.

CLOSING THE INTERVIEW
TONY:
I love that advice for the. It's great advice for the person that wants to really take your business up for the hungry entrepreneur, for everyone. It's the groups that you're associated with that you hang out with. I really like and I'm and I'm going to ponder and take a look at the groups I'm with against that, because that is brilliant advice.
Once again, this is Larry Weidel. We talked about big hitter mindset. And again Larry Weidel dot com. Check it out and get everything and find out everything about him. Guys check out his community and be part of the winning club on this. Larry thank you so much. Great advice I really really enjoyed it.
LARRY:
I thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. Look forward to next Tuesday.
TONY:
Absolutely. So great. Thank you. Wonderful, wonderful wonderful I like that.
Well, guys, that was amazing. And if you like this, share this with your friends. Tell them about Larry. Tell them about the the cycle of winning and some of the points that came up. Tell them about the communities. That was absolutely amazing. He dropped gold with diamonds and jewels embedded in it. And on that last question, I really, really like that. I've interviewed a lot of millionaires and billionaires in a decade. I haven't heard that one before. That is priceless, guys. And what he's been through and accomplished. He just didn't sit back and say, oh, woe is me, I've got to watch Netflix for the rest of my life. He got back up and took care of things, even though something unfortunate occurred. We have those that happen to us. It's a matter of being resilient and getting back up.
So really great points. I really hope you got as much out of this as I did. And guys, wherever you're getting this, please follow the show. It helps to bring more amazing guests to you. All right, let's use this and let's help you move on your journey to success. Thanks to remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. So good seeds do good deeds. And I'll see you on the next episode.

SONG INTRO – “IN GOD WE TRUST”
TONY:
And before we close today's episode, I want to share something special with you. Something I mentioned at the start of the show. This is my brand new song, inspired by four powerful words printed on every US coin and every dollar. You've seen these words your entire life, but when you hear them as a song, they carry a whole new meaning. It's called In God We Trust. Here it is.

SONG LYRICS – “IN GOD WE TRUST”
SONG:
Walking by a bus stop. Not even a book. Feeling everything is just plain old. Stuck. A dime on the ground. I held it to the light. What it said restored my sight. In God we trust the words shine true. Guide my steps and all I do. Through trials and storms I find my place in God we trust. Amazing grace. Yeah. I took the next bus. Though my pocket had no fare. I told the driver of my life with a humble prayer. He gave a smile and said, go on, son. I knew then that my hope had begun.
In God we trust. The word shined through guiding my steps and all I do. Through trials and storms I find my place. God we trust. Amazing grace. I found a diner with a crowd at the door. And asked the kind lady if I could do more. She smiled and said, you can stay if you dry with a dime in my hand. I whispered on high. When the road feels heavy and hope runs thin. That coin reminds me where faith begins. One small coin, yeah. The truth so wide. In God we trust forever. My God. In God we trust. The word shine. True. Guiding my steps and all I do. Through trials and storms I find my place in God we trust. Amazing grace. Forever we sing. God we trust. Forever we sing. In God we trust.

FINAL CLOSE & NEWSLETTER
TONY:
And that is in God we trust. The song that truly came to me as a gift from God. I hope you enjoy it and I'd love to hear your feedback. Thank you for listening and thank you for spending this time with me today. I hope this episode and this song gives you something meaningful to take with you. And by the way, this song is part of my very first album, which is now out. If you want to hear more of the new music, visit Tony. That's Tony.
I appreciate you. Thanks. So remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. So good seeds do good deeds. And I'll see you on the next episode.
Your support means the world to me, and I truly appreciate you following and listening to the Tony D'urso show. If you're finding value in today's episode, please hit that follow button and share the show with someone who would benefit. It really helps us reach more entrepreneurs and leaders who need this kind of insight. And if you haven't yet, make sure you're getting my Elite Entrepreneurs newsletter twice a month. I break down lessons from top guests. I share book and podcast highlights, and give you tools to move forward in your journey to success. No cost, no fluff, just real value. Join me at Tony D'urso. Let's grow together and keep rising. Tony D'urso.