How to Outwork 50% of People—and What It Takes to Reach the Top | Larry Weidel

Larry Weidel (00:00)
If you’re going to be successful, Scott, you’re going to beat 50% of the people by working hard. And that’s going to be pretty easy for you if you find something you like. Okay? But then working hard is only going to get you so far. Then it’s a matter of what am I going to do to move up? I’m going to copy the people that are at the top. I’m going to model the behavior of the people that have already figured this thing out successfully. I’m not going to be trying to copy everything, but I’m gonna pick up my ideas for that are proven ideas from people that are proven successful.

Scott Bursey (02:07)
Welcome back to the *Real Estate Pros* podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re sitting down with the legendary Larry Weidel, known as the Serial Winner. He has over 50 plus years career in the industry. Larry has mentored over 100,000 financial reps across North America and is currently managing 11.5 billion in assets. Listeners.

Expect a masterclass on sales execution, high-performance habits, and the frameworks of a true serial winner. Larry, welcome to the show.

Larry Weidel (02:45)
Thank you very much.

Scott Bursey (02:47)
To help our listeners get up to speed, please give us the highlight reel of how your career started and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Larry Weidel (02:58)
I started in construction and right out of school and I was studying architecture and then I found out that you had to do three years after you get your architecture degree, you have which is very it’s a Bataan Death March to get that, And so your reward what as soon as I found out in my sophomore year that your reward for being one of the survivors of the Bataan Death March.

Is three years of drafting experience in an architectural firm before you could take your architectural exams at you know at minimum wage, by the way, as a draftsman, I said, I am out of here. It’s just like it’s not worth that it’s not worth that to me. And so construction was the fastest way out of Georgia Tech at that time, and so

I found another guy who graduated seven years earlier and we started building together. He was Mr. Inside, I was Mr. Outside. We built hundred houses in the first four years, quite an education in project management and you know, getting things done, meeting deadlines, and I didn’t realize kind of like a graduate course in project management. And so unfortunately

you still subject to no matter how good your house is and no matter how much people want it, they have to be able to get a mortgage. And I did not realize these things went on cycles and it’s feast or famine. And so we couldn’t we you know, in the early seventies we could not get sell houses ’cause people couldn’t get a loan because Jimmy Carter years with the Goldman Sachs, Jimmy Carter and the oil embargo and

our houses were stacking up, people wanting to buy, they couldn’t get financing, they couldn’t sell their house and moved ours. So I said, I gotta get a different industry. I’m not gonna work a hundred hours a week. I don’t mind ho working a hundred hours a week if it’s gonna pay off. But I’m not gonna do this. The time to get out is when you find out that how you look down the road.

A lot of times we don’t look down the road and we don’t know to look down the road because we’re just trying to survive. But then you like at some point you gotta pick up your eyes and say, Where is this taking me? And so once I realize that, I am a gambler. I will bet the farm. If I realize it’s a lost cause, it’s we gotta like pull everything out. Let’s get into another situation. And so I found out the financial services. I said, What’s the best industry?

What industry did the best during the Great Depression? And someone said financial services. And I said sold. Now, I wish I’d come across someone who said hedge funds, but there weren’t any hedge funds in the Great Depression. But that’s the only thing that would have been better. But I got into financial services. We got into a side of it of doing financial planning for middle income people and taking the Buy Term and Invest the Difference concept.

And for the first few years I was selling, but then we said, you know, this this is too good. People really like it. Let’s take it nationwide. And so it’s that’s what we did, you know, and you’ve done the same thing happens in real estate and the growth of all of these huge nationwide agencies and things like that. But we were ready to go nationwide and that’s what we did. And I got involved in in that one of the first expansions out of Atlanta. We were down in Atlanta, Georgia. And I moved up to North Carolina and

After a year, hit the ground, we finally got some things worked out to where you could compound, and wound up with recruiting twenty-five thousand people in the first the second eighty through eighty-three we recruited twenty-five thousand people, had a hundred geographic moves around the country out of that location, and so we were off to the races. And so

Those are the kind of things that you hope for, but when they happen, you kind of got a tiger by the tail and you have to use it or lose it, And so it’s been continuing to compound. But what’s happened from that is I learned how to pass on what was so hard for me to learn in my transition from the construction business

in sales, if you want to make money and if you don’t want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a professional athlete, you’re gonna be in real estate, you’re gonna be in insurance, investments, the financial services market. you got those two great worlds out there, finance and go through big go through towns and look and see what names are on the top of the biggest, tallest buildings in town. it’s financial company or a real realtor. So that’s what I decided to

get now if somebody had told me real estate was the way you made money during the Depression, I’d be in a real estate. But anyway, someone said financial services. So that’s how I made my choice and it worked out pretty well.

Scott Bursey (08:33)
I would say it certainly did. What a ride. What a journey. Larry, you’re a best-selling author of the book *Serial Winner: 5 Actions to Create Your Cycle of Success*. What are those five actions?

Larry Weidel (08:50)
Well, you start to think about winning. The reason I wrote the book when I started, what triggered that particular direction was the fellow who founded our company, a guy named Art Williams. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Art Williams, but he used to say the world is full of people who almost do things and we need more people who do things.

And that was kind of the trigger that got me going. So I asked myself and it’s like, what’s the difference between, everybody wants to do something great. Rarely does anyone do that, but the ones who do, rarely do they repeat. Yet on the other hand, Scott, all of us know people that seem to go through life and no matter what happens to them, they’re able to get, sometimes they have more disasters than anybody else, but they’re able to minimize those.

And then maximize the good things that happen. So I say, what are these guys doing different? And I it was the same way I took my detective mind to figuring out how to transition into sales and financial services. It’s like, what are the people that are really good at this? What do they do? What do they say? How do they think? And so it starts in their mind, how they look at things. And so I started unraveling that, like what’s the sequence?

And how can you make it an all the time thing? You know, because the thing about winning, Scott, and we learn this, in high school usually, you’re in sports, you’re in the band, you’re in the debating club or so you’re acting on stage. you get that thrill of winning. And once you get that thrill of winning, you don’t want to lose it. And so winning it gives you adrenaline. It creates a spike, a surge.

In the winning locker room, everybody’s ready to go out after the you know the game’s over. They’re exhausted, just like you know the guys of the losing locker room, but they’re ready to go again. They’re excited, they’re happy, they’re telling each other jokes and planning what they’re gonna do at night. Over in the losing locker room, everybody’s depressed, disillusioned, you’re wondering why they’re wasting their time on doing this. And so winning energizes you.

And so how can you get into a cycle where it’s really what life is? What was the thing in the Bible? God said, what did he say to Abraham? Be fruitful and multiply. He didn’t say go out there and get yourself educated and sit under a tree and think about life. Don’t go out there and sit out there and try and find yourself, Adam. No, he said, get your butt to work, be fruitful and multiply. And so the idea is that’s winning.

That’s making positive things happen. And what I discovered over the years, and the cycles of success is first you got to decide. You know, you gotta say, what am I, what do I want to do that I can get really excited about? Because we all are born with an engine. Scott, you were born with a different engine than me. And it’s that motivation. I don’t know if it’s your soul, I don’t know what it is, but in your innermost being, I don’t if you’ve got kids, but when kids hit the ground, they’re the way they are.

People have got two or three children, they’re all different. That’s what you hear. And you can influence them, you make behave a little bit, discipline think kind of knock some of the rough edges off. But, if they grow up and they’re interested in music, they’re gonna be interested in music right on. You’re not gonna change that. They’re you’re not gonna change and say, Okay, we wanna make you a swimmer, you know, and we wanna make you a gymnast or something.

You know, they’re gonna be interested in what they’re interested in. And we’re all born with that. So the thing is decide. And when you decide what really you’re curious about, and that activates your inner motivation. And that’s really gonna give you the power to move forward and overcome the things you’re gonna face. And then and so decide is a word that

We all know you gotta make a decision, but the deal there’s a whole lot more to it. There’s a lot packed into it. But then from that you’ve got to launch. You can’t sit around thinking about things the rest of your life. But I I’ve got a thing about overdo. My second step is overdo. And you don’t just do it, overdo it. Nike’s wrong, by the way. And I’m gonna write a book on this too. In fact it’s already written, it’s in the process of coming out. And the deal is it

Do it just doing it’s not good enough. Because we all underestimate everybody, you see that everywhere. You underestimate how long it’s gonna take, how much it’s gonna cost. And so you can’t just go with your idea of what just doing it, because you’re gonna miss, and you’re capable. Once you find out I almost just missed it, if I’d made a little bit more effort, I could have been there. Well, go ahead and make that effort now, because just assume you’re gonna come up short.

And then this third step, third step is when things start once you launch and you’re rolling, guess what happens? Things go wrong. Okay? And I think that the really the game doesn’t start until things start to go wrong. Because that’s where you like, okay, I’ve done enough to have things start to go wrong now. I’ve got enough, I got my direction, I’ve got some momentum, and now things are

Meteors are falling out of the sky and screwing my life and my plan up. So like that’s a good sign. That tells you you’re moving forward. And but you’ve got to adjust and not quit. In that third stage, when things go wrong, you learn how to adjust and not quit. And then you move on as you’re getting closer to the finish line. The closer you get to the finish line, you gotta narrow your focus. You gotta stop your thinking, stop your

outside activities, you got to get through that line. And so that’s you know, that’s a skill too. All of these are skills that the more you do it, the more you automatically do that thing. And then when you get to the finish line, you don’t just celebrate like that, you run through the finish line. And when you’re the number one thought you should have when you go through that finish line, other than gratitude, I did it, is like, wow, what did I learn from this? How can I improve the next time?

What’s on the other side of that finish line? When you get to the top of the mountain, you look around and you say, I’m seeing things, other mountains out here I never even knew existed. But I’ve earned the right by climbing the mountain. And so when you make these breakthroughs, opportunities open up to you. And so you want to be alert, looking forward to say, Okay, I’ve improved, I’ve got experience, I know things. Next time I’ll have better equipment, I’ll have better support. I’ll be able to

navigate around certain things quicker and then you start evaluating your next opportunities and now you can carry that momentum you got momentum you want to carry that momentum forward and into the next thing because you want to keep winning. If you win the Super Bowl, Scott, once you win that Super Bowl that I know you’re you got into your future, you do not want to go one and sixteen the next year.

You know, if the Vikings win the new Super Bowl, they do not want to have a one win sixteen loss season to follow up because all of that joy of the Super Bowl will be gone. So you want to win and you want to be able to keep winning. And so that’s the challenge of life. So you keep improving allows you to continue to win and move into your next project. So that’s a kind of an overview.

Scott Bursey (16:17)
Larry, is there one specific daily habit that has allowed you to win for decade after decade?

Larry Weidel (17:08)
I would say, yeah, in terms of yeah, I would say there is. And I had two people, and it was like that two great people that it came through there, our training programs, in I guess at least no two decades apart. But both of them had this I noticed when I was in their office around them, I noticed their.

doing this, and I realized that’s the way I that’s the way I think. It’s like they would walk around the office, and when they run into somebody, they’d say, Okay, great, what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? They were always focused on what’s next. And I don’t really think about it that much, but since you asked, I can tell you that’s really the way I operate. It’s like, what’s next? Because you want to keep moving.

you want to keep whatever momentum you’ve got. You want to stay fresh. You want to keep that forward progress because no matter how daunting the challenges are, like I mean, just today, every day there’s something, right? I mean this you know at lunch today, Scott, I had something dumped on me that I had to wade myself through. I said, why am I you know.

How stupid am I that I’ve this situation I’ve gonna wade through it? Well, in 45 minutes I was through it. And but it’s like we have all of these things, obstacles that come into our schedule, interruptions, and it’s like you gotta knock it out. You can’t like stall out because some of it’s gonna be it’s like life. You know, sometimes it’s gonna be easy, sometimes it’s gonna be hard. It doesn’t matter. You still gotta move. And the I would say that has served me.

Well, because we’re all gonna get challenges, but you don’t wanna allow the challenge to slow you down any more than it should, you know.

Scott Bursey (19:02)
I love that framework. Larry, curious to know, what is a common weakness you see in new leaders when they first start trying to build teams?

Larry Weidel (19:11)
They get well there’s a thousand, you know, it depends on who it is and what it is and what background they’re coming from. But they try and do too much of it themselves is you know, and they get overwhelmed and try and do everything at once. You know, you could there’s only all you all you can do is all you can do. That was another phrase that Art Williams had.

And usually you find that all you can do is enough. And so the thing is you keep moving forward, but not let yourself get overwhelmed. It’s overwhelming the details to start something new. That’s why I’ve got so much respect for people who start new companies and come up with ideas and they make it happen because you know they all of the complexities, they the jigsaw puzzle in every, you know, multiple areas of their life they had to put together to make it.

Where it actually had a functioning, successful business, you know, that’s an astounding achievement. And while you’re going through it, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. And so you’ve got to keep that’s why the best way to get past that is to have small, achievable steps forward. That’s when I say step, when I say I operate off of what’s next, it’s like, okay.

Maybe I’m not gonna do it. Maybe the odds is are against me. Maybe there’s no chance of me ever reaching the goal that I set for myself, but I can get one step closer. You know what I’m saying? I can at least get this done before I get knocked out. And so I think that that would be one of the things is they the demands eat them up and they try and do it themselves and

they just let it let themselves get overwhelmed. But the main thing is you gotta stay in the game. You gotta keep moving. And you know, no matter how knotty and involved that situation is, it might not look that confusing tomorrow. You know what I’m saying? you untie it, you make some steps forward, you look at it fresh eyes. It’s amazing, isn’t it, Scott? In life, you can have something that’s just overwhelming to you, and you take it as far as you can get.

And then you come back and look at it the next morning, it’s like, Wow, I didn’t realize we should just do this. You know, so fresh give yourself a chance to come at it with fresh eyes and keep on moving, I would say, in the especially in the early stages.

Scott Bursey (21:48)
That is game changing right there. What perspective. And Larry, thinking about the landscape, what do you see as the biggest threat to scaling a business in today’s fast moving world?

Larry Weidel (22:03)
Usually it’s either money or personnel. I’ve evolved over my career in addition to running the financial services business, I’ve taken that those techniques and I built a virtual online training center. Basically, it’s it’s just like if you’re learning tennis, you go to a tennis center, but it’s like a professional training center for winning.

And so you can continue to develop yourself the skill sets, but one of the best ways to continue develop yourself is to train someone else, bringing them along, because in a teacher student situation, the teacher is learning. And if you’re taking on, you know, you’re passing on what you have learned and you’re developing, you gotta be constantly thinking about what we’re doing. If we do this right, we’re gonna grow. And there’s gonna be more demands. You know, it’s kind of like a nursery.

school. That’s the way I always thought of my business. It’s like we’re running a training center is kinda like a nursery school. You got all these little toddlers running around, you gotta keep them from poking their eyes out and running out in the street and stuff like that. And so to do that, you gotta have plenty of nursery workers. You know I’m saying if you’re gonna bring in twenty more kids, you better bring, you know, in more staff. And so the key to expansion, scaling is usually not the facilities and everything, it’s the people to run the facilities.

And you’ve got to be thinking that has to do with your vision from the beginning. It’s like, am I just solving today’s problem and I’m talking to people to get them to get this, the the workload we’ve got today? Or am I teaching the systems? And I would you you know, I would talk to people like, when you’re in my shoes, okay, I want you to be thinking about this problem like this. I want you to be, when you’ve got this challenge yourself and you’re out in your own office.

Here’s how I want you to be operating and remembering and you know, so you’re getting your all of along you’re challenging them to think beyond their current situations.

Scott Bursey (24:03)
I love how simple you make that look, Larry. And let’s get into the weeds, my friend. If you were starting from scratch today with only let’s say fifty K, what is the one specific move you’d make to trigger growth?

Larry Weidel (24:19)
If I had fifty thousand and I was going to trigger growth, I haven’t thought about that one.

You know, in terms of picking an industry or picking a thing, first of all first of all, I would attack, I guess if you really want me to answer that, it wouldn’t matter about the fifty thousand, okay? I would I would like, okay, I gotta move forward. What are my options? And this is how I approach everything in life. And this the whole idea is that everything that happens to you, Scott, situation, circumstance that you’re confronted with.

Immediately there is an array of options. which direction am I going to go in? And then one will be the best of the group. And so how do you say, like, what am I, you know, what can I do? I’m not I’m not going to go back to school and get an education. I’m not going to move to another part of the country. What can I do right here? What’s available for me? And you start gr gathering data, getting the facts on the table. And you start to see what I would do, I would get those facts as quickly as possible.

And then I would say, what does my inner engine respond to? Because I don’t want just something to do. Let’s just say, Scott, they could be the business entrepreneurial expert says, you want to go in your town, start a plumbing business. that’s the way to do it. we researched it, we got all and I said, I don’t want to be a plumber. Okay. I’m not a plumber. And so it doesn’t matter what everybody else says,

I gotta get find out what the options are and I gotta see what inside me turns me on. Because if I got five thousand, I got five dollars, or I got five million dollars, what’s gonna make the difference is do I have the drive to make that thing work? And so the first step I would make, and I get the facts, my options on the table, I would see what I respond to, and then I would dig in as fast as possible to

Get everything in there to see if there’s a way to make that work. And then I’d try and find as fast as possible, somebody who is already successful in that arena. where can I either if you can’t find a living person, they have the entrepreneurial groups around the country, they have all these, associations and things, but I start at talking. Who knows somebody who’s great? Let’s just say you want to open up art gallery.

who knows who’s the best who knows art? Who’s got a friend? People know people. And then you find like who’s the most successful art gallery in town? Get around it. You know, where it is, you know, if it’s maybe you want to get something, you do a coaching business in in tennis or a coaching business in golf or start a fishing, get a charter fishing operation, to start with. Like who’s doing the best right now with that? What can I learn from them? What you know, where cause you’ve got to, it’s like this.

If you’re going to be successful, Scott, you’re going to beat 50% of the people by working hard. And that’s going to be pretty easy for you if you find something you like. Okay? But then working hard is only going to get you so far. Then it’s a matter of what am I going to do to move up? I’m going to copy the people that are at the top. I’m going to model the behavior of the people that have already figured this thing out successfully. I’m not going to be trying to copy everything, but I’m gonna pick up my ideas for that are proven ideas from people that are proven successful.

Now there’s a reason they do things the way they do it. And I need a pattern to get going on. And so what you do is you develop you beat another 40%, Scott, by having a management philosophy. And the management philosophy is how I’m gonna set up my routines, my schedules, and

it took me a minute to think about this because I never think about starting over scratch. But I would go about it methodically the way I do everything. Because you’re gonna you gotta figure out how to do this. Could be solving problems the rest of your life. You know, you get your business successful, it’ll go to a certain point, then you might have to shift directions or, you know, somehow to get it into new territories or new product lines or whatever. So you gotta learn how to think and solve problems.

Scott Bursey (28:44)
Rocket fuel, pure rocket fuel, Larry. And you have really given us a lot of fuel here today. But is there any final words, any additional words of wisdom that you could leave with our listeners?

Larry Weidel (28:59)
Absolutely, Scott. We need winners. The world needs more winners. The world needs more respect for winners. The world needs more successful companies. The world needs more positive energy, and that comes from winners. Winners and successful companies are the positive fertilizer for the world in a world full of negativity and groaning and complaining and conflict and everything. The antidote is

comes from the people that are making things happen. Not the people divisive, griping about what’s wrong, the people that are solving problems, got their minds on the solutions, crawling forward, you know, to make progress. You know, they want to they decided to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And so we need more winners. And that’s what I focused my life on. And that’s why I developed the training center, because there’s so many people out there with so much potential.

But sometimes they get stuck and sometimes they just need a little help. it’s kinda like learning how to ride a bike. Sometimes you know, no one’s gonna re no one’s gonna ask you when you can ride a bike. Did you need someone you did you need training wheels or something like that? You know? You know, it’s how long did it take you to learn how to ride a bike? It doesn’t matter. And sometimes people need training wheels, they need some support and things like that to get you know, basic skill down to where they can move down the highway. But and so that’s what I

have focus on. But the deal is, yeah, the world needs more winners. Unapologetically, folks, go for success because you are a rare quantity and you’re gonna make a rare contribution in the world, just like Scott’s doing with his podcast.

Scott Bursey (30:44)
There we go, Larry. That’s a winning recipe. Thank you for highlighting that. And for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you directly?

Larry Weidel (30:58)
We have a website where I like for people to start if they want to get familiar with what I do and what we do. It’s called TheAmateurTrap.com. And we talk about the difference between amateurs and pros and where you’re you want to get want to do better. You see people that are doing better, but you don’t know how to jump that gap. And pros are people who know how they’ve got the same skills, but they know how to do it

what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and they know how to do it where they feel like it or not. And so helping people I’ve got a a little handout on that and people can find out how to get a hold of me there, but also on my *Big Hitters* podcast that’s on YouTube and all the Apple, Spotify.

Scott Bursey (31:45)
Larry, thank you for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Larry Weidel (31:51)
My pleasure.

Scott Bursey (31:53)
This has been an absolute masterclass. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you received value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be filling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Larry, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.