Larry Winget: “Your Rewards in Life are in Direct Proportion to Your Service."

I'm not a tech savvy guy. If something is complicated, I won't use it. Period. What I like about Notion is that it's intuitive, clean, simple. My team adopted it quickly, and it's been a force multiplier for the business. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace for teams. Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one space that just works. It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use. And with AI built right in, you spend less time switching between tools and apps, and more time creating great work. And now, with Notion's new custom agents, the busy work that used to take hours or never actually happened at all, runs itself. You can build a Q&A agent that pulls answers from your existing knowledge and notion and responds inside Slack. So instead of answering the same quick questions all day, your team gets instant clarity without interrupting your focus. Don't just take my word for it. Notion is used by over 50% of Fortune 500 companies, and some of the fastest growing companies like OpenAI, Ramp, and Versel use Notion AI to help their teams stay ahead. Try custom agents now at Notion.com/quoteoftheday. That's all lowercase letters Notion.com/quoteoftheday to try custom agents today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. And the next one is this. Once you've gotten started, we've already alluded to it. You got to stay. You got to stay no matter what, even when it gets tough, when it gets ugly, you got to stay. Some people don't stay. Some people get started and they get started on something else as you already talked. My favorite story about staying is about George Washington. You can look it up in the history books. I'll give you the short version. You all will remember the picture of George standing on the bow of the boat. You know, one of these as he crosses the Delaware. What most people don't know is there is a story behind that. And I'll tell you what it was. George, the night before they crossed the Delaware, to engage themselves in one of the biggest battles of the Revolutionary War, met with all of his troops. And meeting with all of his troops, he said, "Fellows, I know how it is for you. One, we haven't been able to pay you like we promised. And I know that you're cold and most of you have frostbites. And I know that you're hungry too, because we ran out of food a while back. But I do have some good news. The good news is this tomorrow we're going to cross the Delaware, we're going to fight the British. And I just have one order. This is the order. When we get to the other side of the river, we're going to burn the boats. Now can you imagine the looks on these gas faces? We're going to do what George? Yep, we're going to burn those boats. See that's not what they had in mind at all. The George's way ahead of them. You see what they thought was they'd get in those boats and they would paddle across to the other side of the river. So go ahead and start fighting the battle. And think of the battle if it was not going their way, what they do is go back down, get inside those boats, paddle back across the river, go home, get warm, get some food to heck with the pace. See their families, right? George was ahead of them. He removed all avenues of retreat. And see when you remove all avenues of retreat, you cut down on your options. In fact, George only left them with two options. You're either going to win or you're going to die. When those are your only two options, you get real committed to winning. Now I bet that's not what you heard growing up, was it? I bet your mama said, "Now, you make sure you leave yourself away, yeah." I bet you heard, "Don't burn your bridges or an essence, don't burn your boats." Make sure you always got to way back, right? Never win, we ain't it's like that. You got to absolutely become optionless. You got to know that you've got to win no matter what. And the more committed you are to winning, your chances of success will go way up. Let me briefly tell you what my story is. And tell you how these principles tie into my life. 1983, I left AT&T and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I've been the area sales manager for AT&T. But I moved back to Tulsa, I decided to start my own telecommunications company. And started my own telecommunications company, I had no business going into business. Because it didn't have any money to go into business. I just started. And I found a technician that was willing to throw in with me and his wife would become a part-time secretary for us. And we started a company with three people with no money. But we did pretty good. In a few short months, I was able to sell more than he was able to install. We hired more installers and soon they were able to install more. And I was able to sell and we had to hire more sales people in the company grew. Until in a period of three short years, we became the second largest independent telecommunications company in the state of Oklahoma. I had two offices, one in Tulsa, one in Oklahoma City, close to $2 million a year in business telephone system sales. I had 35 people working for me, big fleet of trucks, and we were extremely successful. I started going around doing speeches for little groups, telling them what I had learned to become a success as a small business person. Saying if you'll do these things, you too can be a success. I lost interest in my company, hired a general manager and vice president of finance. And you guys run it while I go off and pursue some other things. And then one day I walked in my house, there was this note from my bank. And when I opened the note, it told me that my paycheck from my very successful company had bounced due to insufficient funds. I walked in my company the next day, pulled my vice president of finance together, my general manager and said, "Fellows, do we have a problem?" They said, "Larry, you better sit down." Anytime your financial manager tells you to sit down before he talks to you, you've got a problem. I said, "Tell me again, do we have a problem?" And they said, "Larry, you have a problem." I noticed they didn't say we had a problem. They said, "Larry, you have a problem." That's what I learned as my friend Joe Sharbinow, another professional speaker, says, "Out of all the people who will never leave you, you are the only one." And I found out that my company was bankrupt. And in three months we were bankrupting because I own the company that took me with it. And I did get very lonely around my company. Things changed dramatically for me in my life. I went to work one day thinking I was extremely successful, had all the trappings of success, drove the big cars, had the nice clothes and the jewelry and so forth. And one day was all gone, lost everything. And yet that was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life, the best thing. Because it allowed me to get out of my wrong work and into my right work. It allowed me to not just go to work anymore to make a living, but to begin to live my making and by living my making to make my living. That's what life's really all about. Now, I tell you that to give you a perspective to say that no one has the market cornered on failure or success. Everybody has a story like that. I wouldn't trade my problems for any you've got, you wouldn't trade yours for anybody else. We all have things that happen to us in our lives. It's not important what happens to us. What is important is what we choose to do about what happens to us. The principles that I'm telling you tonight worked for me in my life. And once I've just given you with the keys to my success the first time in the world, the keys to me becoming a success the second time. And they will work for you. I promise they work for thousands of people across the country that I speak to and tell the story to and tell these principles to. So I would suggest that you and all of your heart don't look at what has happened to you no matter how good it has been or how bad it has been. Because things can change. They can change and you always have the opportunity to make it better. You can take responsibility. You can make a decision for things to be different. You can set some goals for things to be different in your life. You can violently attack those goals with a great passion and start to achieve the excellence that I know everybody in this room deserves. And then once you start no matter how ugly it gets, you stay for all it's worth and you become committed to winning. And then you go to the next you got it, which says you got to know the law. Now I am not talking about the law of our city or county or state or federal government. I'm talking about a much bigger law than that. It's called the law of reciprocity. The law of reciprocity. And you may be saying Larry, I don't know that law. Oh, yes, you do. You know that law. You just haven't heard it called the law of reciprocity before maybe. It's a law that's been stated a lot of different ways. I'll give you a few of them. Six vigorous stated the law this way. He says that you can have everything in life you want if you'll just help other people get what they want. You can have everything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want. Or will night and gas stated the law this way that your rewards in life are in direct proportion to your service. Your rewards are in proportion to your service. Science calls it the law of cause and effect that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Bible states that this way as you so so shall you read. And the world says it this way what goes around comes around and it's a law. And there are no exceptions to this law. And we think we can break this law because we don't like it. The law doesn't care. And we think well, maybe we'll be the exception to the law. There are no exceptions to this law. It works every single time. It's kind of like the law of gravity. You see if you step off the top of the 10 story building and you go. Splat on the pavement below if you had a breath of life left in you and it's. you had that breath of life, there would be somebody there with a microphone. And if somebody ran up to you with that microphone, stuck it in your face and said, why did you step off the top of that 10-story building? You see some stupid people might say, I didn't know this would happen. Well, that's too bad. You're still dead. It works that way with the law of reciprocity too. If you say, well, I didn't think this was going to happen. It's too bad. You're still dead. You can never break this law. So you got to know the law. If you're going to be truly successful, understand this law, teach it to your children. Practice it every single day and don't look for the exceptions because there are not. And then the next you got to say, you got to ask. You got to ask. There's an ancient saying that says, ask in ye shall, receive. You know, we get so confused about that. And yet such a simple statement, ask in ye shall receive. But we think it says something different. We think that sometimes it says, deserve and you shall receive. Folks, I got to tell you, I used to sit in my office and deserve all the business I did not get. Because life doesn't care how deserving you are. It's just done care. It doesn't care at all. See, life's not set up for the observers. Life's set up for the askers. And then the next one, once you get caught in that deserve and you shall receive trap, you get caught in the next trap that says, need and you shall receive. Have you ever needed it? I mean, really needed the business and it wasn't there. You know why? That's because life will play a dirty trick on you. It'll find out that you need it and it'll go. I'm not giving it to you because the more you need it, the more of it you won't get. That's the way life is. Have you ever found that to be true? Sure. We need to remember what the Bible says. The poor will be with you always. That's the way it is. See, I believe the best thing we can do for the poor is not be one of them. Wouldn't you agree? Say yes. You can't help anybody when you're broke. Can you notice that? That's right. So we have a commitment to be all we can be, don't we? Say yes. Yes. Absolutely. So life's not set up for the observers. It's certainly not set up for the needers. Now we get mixed up about that statement again asking you should receive. When we think that it says gripe and you shall receive. You know, folks like that. They think that the more they gripe, the louder they gripe, the more of it they ought to get. Because after all, they deserve it and they need it, right? So that's the way life's not set up for the grippers. The needers of the observers. It's only set up for the askers. You got to learn to ask more. You have to ask more people to do business with you. You have to ask more from the people around you. Most of all, you have to ask more from yourself. You have to ask, ask, ask, ask.