The Joy Of Responsibility: Work, Passion, and Taking Your Life By The Horns with Larry Winget
Money, Mission and Meaning
Mark Michael Lewis
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Episode 15 - The Joy Of Responsibility: Work, Passion, and Taking Your Life By The Horns with Larry Winget

In this episode Mark Michael Lewis, CEO of SmartPowerDrinks.com, interviews Larry Winget, host of the reality show on A&E called The Big Spender, author of the best selling books "It’s Called Work For A Reason," and "Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get A Life." Join us for a no holds barred, laughter filled conversation about the brass tax of creating a life you love. Get inspired to bring your best to your job and recognize that your success is your own damn fault. Strap in, hold on, and get ready for a wake up call to get your Money, Mission, and Meaning in order with the Pit Bull of Personal Development Larry Winget.

Transcript

Transcript

The Joy Of Responsibility: Work, Passion, and Taking Your Life By The Horns with Larry Winget

Announcer:  This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com

[Music]

Mark Michael Lewis: Welcome to Money, Mission & Meaning: Passion at Work, Purpose at Play where we explore how we can integrate our personal values and professional skills to create pleasure and profit in the business of life. I’m your host Mark  Michael Lewis, CEO of Smart Energy Enterprises, Incorporated. SEE-Inc. A Beautiful Future Now!

Today’s guest is a firecracker named Larry Winget. You might recognize his voice as the host of the reality show on A&E called, “The Big Spender”, where he gets people to face the reality of how they spend money. Or you might have seen or heard, either of his best-selling books, “They Call It Work For a Reason” or his latest book  “Shut Up. Stop Whining and Get a Life”. Let’s get ready for a wake up call and get your money, mission and meaning in order from the pit bull of personal development, Larry Winget. But first a few highlights from the show:

[music]

[excerpts from Larry Winget’s interview responses]

“Then we have a lot of people writing business books and self-help books and giving motivational speeches. All those motivational gurus who do nothing but enable people to whine in my opinion. They tell people it’s OK. It’s a cold, cruel world out there and we need to circle up, hold hands and sing “Kum Ba Yah”and it’ll all be fine. Well that’s not the case.”

“People can fix their lot in life.  It can be better if they’re willing first to take responsibility. You never get better by laying blame anywhere except when you go to the mirror. It’s always your fault.”

“Business speakers and books are saying that the key to success on your job is to love your job and to be happy at what you do. That’s not realistic and I don’t say that. I think it’s unrealistic to expect people to love their job all the time.”

“I can tell you exactly what’s most important to you by looking at how you spend your money.”

“I can go through your checkbook and your charge account and I can say, ‘Where does your money go?’ Life is like a crime novel. Follow the money.”

“Anybody can become rich. It has nothing to do with your circumstance. You’ve got to rise above your circumstance.”

Mark Lewis: So welcome Larry. It’s a pleasure to have you on “Money, Mission and Meaning”.

Larry Winget: Oh I appreciate it thanks for having me.

Mark: I think we’re gonna have a good time. So first your new book is called “Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life” which is sort of shock therapy compared to the politically correct, delicate….

Larry:  Actually that was my first book. That came out in 2004. Still sells well though but yep that’s the first book.

Mark: Oh, I have those reversed.

Larry: And it is a kick butt approach to a better life. Believe me it’s a shocker.

Mark: Yeah for my listeners, the title, “Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life isn’t just a provocative title with a mammy pammy book behind it. The whole book is no holes barred kind of like ‘cold water splashed in your face’ wake up call.  

Larry: I hope so.

Mark: Larry, what were you trying to accomplish with that book?

Larry: [laugh] I feel that we live in a world of whiners. I really do. Everybody wants to blame someone for their lot in life and I’m just frankly sick of it. Then we have a lot of people writing business books and self-help books and giving motivational speeches… all those motivational gurus who do nothing but enable people to whine in my opinion. They tell people it’s OK. It’s a cold, cruel world out there and we need to circle up, hold hands and sing “Kum Ba Yah” and it’ll all be fine.

Well that’s not the case. Life is your own damn fault. You created the mess that you’re living and you have to fix it. Someone needs to hold you accountable. This book is about accountability. Personal responsibility. I remind people that it’s always your own fault. You created the mess you have, so you have to fix it.

Mark: I’ll give my listeners a couple of quotes from the book so they can get an idea, perhaps some of the more gentle passages. You say, “If your life sucks, it’s because you suck…”

Larry: Oh absolutely.

Mark: “…It’s your own damn fault, always and without exception”. And then to clarify that you say there are three reasons that people are not successful. Three main reasons: 1) They’re stupid. 2) They’re lazy and 3) They don’t give a damn. Now obviously, you make it clear. You’re not a motivational speaker. You call yourself an irritational speaker.

Larry: Yep, I have trademarked, “The world’s only irritational speaker”.

Mark: I love it. But why not be gentle and understanding with people and their challenges?

Larry: [chuckle] How’s that working so far for everybody else? All that gentle understanding, motivation, let me hug you and it’ll be OK. How’s that working? People aren’t taking responsibility. People aren’t successful.  They’re not doing what they’re supposed to do. And so I just tell people that’s not acceptable. You deserve better from yourself. We deserve better from you. And frankly, I’m not willing to take it.

I love people enough to tell them the truth. I do what I do from a motive of love. But I love people enough to tell them the truth! And the truth is people can fix their lot in life.  It can be better if they’re willing first to take responsibility. You never get better by laying blame anywhere except when you go to the mirror. It’s always your fault.

Mark:  In a sense, you’re saying out loud without apology what many of us want to say but either don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or simply don’t have the backbone or the cojones to say.  I personally find it refreshing but you probably get a lot of flak for being such a provocative guy or do you…

Larry: No I don’t get any flak. I make a lot of money getting paid to go on stage and tell audiences what their CEO, what their management is afraid to say.

Mark: [chuckle] …does anyone dare…

Larry: … I get paid to say what other people don’t have the cojones to say as you just put it. … I don’t get any flak from it. I get hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of emails and I welcome all that. The people who do want to complain about my message… that’s fine, that’s fine. What I’ve discovered is if you complain about it, you’re probably guilty of the very thing you’re complaining about. …

Mark: I love how you put it in the beginning of your book, you say, “You know, if you don’t like my message, you don’t need to tell me. I really don’t care”. [laughing]

Larry: I don’t care.

Mark:  …“If you like it, let me know… So, I suppose it’s your latest book, “They Call It Work for a Reason”.

Larry: “It’s Called Work for a Reason”. That’s the title, “It’s Called Work for a Reason”.

Mark: “It’s Called Work for a Reason”. People might guess by now you take a slightly … unconventional stance about common attitudes towards work. What do you think about how most people approach work nowadays and how it’s different than how earlier generations might have approached it?

Larry: Well my Dad worked for Sears Roebuck for 47 years. That’s 17,000 days he went to work. Every single day when went to work, he worked with, for and around idiots. Most of his customers were idiots. [Mark laughs] Now that is no different than it is today. It’s just that in his day, he understood that did not matter. It didn’t matter how stupid his boss was or how ignorant his co-workers were or whether somebody treated him poorly at work. He still had a job to do. That was the deal he made when he was 17 years old. The deal is I’ll show up with work. You show up with the money and he absolutely believed that if they showed up with the money, he was obligated to show up with the work. His deal was based in integrity.

We no longer have that sense of integrity. We believe so much in the rights of the employee that we forgot about the rights of the employer and the rights of the customer.
Therefore we have companies going out of business trying to make employees happy.

I have employees, I don’t care whether they’re happy or not. But you know what? They don’t care whether I’m happy or not either. They care that I do my job. I care that they do their job. We count on each other for that because as long as we’re all doing our job, our company remains solvent, profitable and everybody stays employed. That’s why a business exists.

Mark: Right and some people say, “…oh we want to have brotherly love at work …” You know, that’s not necessarily a place for it. It’s about getting things done. What do you think about that?

Larry: Yeah that’s the only reason a company exists. It makes a profit and it makes a profit based on its service to others. The better it serves others, the more profitable it will be. It’s not a place that we all have to love each other and have birthday parties for each other. We don’t have to do all that. All we have to do is respect the other person’s ability to do their job. We’re all ultimately rewarded on how well we serve others through the results that we create.

Mark:  Right and that’s also part of it. One of the things you point out is that people have forgotten what the purpose of work is all about…that service. And I know you have some things to say about that. I’d love it if you’d share it with my listeners.

Larry: Well service is what we provide to others. And that is what we are rewarded for. The better we serve others, the better we are rewarded. You’re rewarded in proportion to your service. Period. And so that’s a message that I just pound in all the time. I am rewarded for how well I serve other people. I serve a certain group of people. Those people reward me by buying my books and hiring me to speak and so forth.

You serve a certain group of people. And I don’t care what you do for a living, whether you’re wearing a paper hat and saying, “do you want fries with that”. You do that to the best of your ability. You serve your customer well and I guarantee your customer will serve you well and ultimately you’ll be paid more for what you do. That’s the approach that we should all have.   How can I serve better because that’s what we are paid for.

However, many times we go to work for a company and our employer doesn’t explain to us our role in the overall service of the customer. We think we’re there just to sweep the floor. And yet sweeping that floor has a real role in serving the customer well. We should have it explained to us. Every employer should explain to the employee exactly what their role is to the overall service to the customer. That’s a shame it doesn’t get done.

Mark:   You’ve been talking about one half of it, which is the responsibility and the rights. And I appreciate that. I’m 100 percent behind you about it. The other part that you’re not speaking about right now but I know that you’re all about is when you’re actually doing your best, when you say look, “I am going to do this to the best of my ability. I’m gonna honor the deal I made. I’m gonna put my heart and soul into and if I’m serving fries, I’m gonna serve fries as best I can”, you can actually enjoy what you’re doing. Then it actually becomes something where you bring your best to it. You start bringing your best talents and then you get promoted.

Larry: Exactly you see, I’m not one of those people who’s gonna tell you, you have to be happy every single moment. That’s one of the sad things that’s going on right now in business. Business speakers and books are saying that the key to success on your job is to love your job and to be happy at what you do. That’s not realistic and I don’t say that. I think it’s unrealistic to expect people to love their job all the time.

I spend 250 days a year on the road speaking. I hate all 250 days. I hate it. [Mark laughs] But I love the hours, the hundred hours that I spend on stage, enough that I’m willing to put up with the 250 days. That’s the way it is for everybody. We love about 10 percent of what we do and we’re probably going to hate the 90 percent. We better love the ten percent enough to help us make it through the night.

So you should have a passion for what you do and if you’ve lost that passion go back and re-look at your job. What is it about this job that I loved when I first got it? Day one. What did I find exciting? See if you can fall in love with that all over again because ultimately you are rewarded for that.

Mark:  When you know what you’re doing, how it fits into the overall service that you’re providing to the customer, you can take pride in whatever part you’re playing. Now you also say, if you don’t enjoy your job, quit. No buts about it. Stop doing the things you don’t enjoy doing.

Larry: Now I will add something to that though. Quit smart. Don’t go in tomorrow and say listen I don’t like my job. I’m gonna quit and then go home and go, I got nothing lined up. That’s not quittin’ smart. That’s quittin’ stupid. I’m saying you put up with the job that you’ve got. You give it your best every single second that you’re there until and while you’re finding something better suited to you.

Don’t cheat the job that you’ve got right now while you’re looking for a better job or a different job. So often we find people who don’t like their job and they say, “I’m just not going to work very hard and I’ll go look for another job. That’s not really how it ought to be done. You still owe it to your employer to give it the very best that you’ve got. But, I do believe that ultimately, long-term; you can’t be excellent at something that you don’t enjoy.

Mark: Right and also part of quitting smart, I assume is don’t leave yourself in a lurch either. If you quit when you don’t have anything lined up, you’re messing up yourself as well.

Larry: Well and you’re cheating your family and the people that you have obligations with and you’re cheating your bills and your creditors and all that. Don’t do that. Quit smart. But I do think when your job quits being fun and if you hate it, you ought to quit and find something else.

Mark: Yeah and be responsible about it to yourself, to your family and to your employer. Absolutely. That brings up the next section. We’re about to take a break to support our sponsors. When we come back I want to talk to you about your reality show on A& E called “Big Spender” and what that experience has been like for you. Is that cool?

Larry: That’s cool.

Mark: Excellent so I’m Mark Michael Lewis, talking with the pit bull of personal development, Larry Winget on “Money, Mission and Meaning”. We’ll be right back.

 [radio break]

Mark:  And we’re back with Larry Winget, the world’s first irritational speaker and the world’s only irritational speaker. So Larry, by the way, congratulations. You created a reality show on A&E in which you really get to do what you love to do and shine. Well done!

Larry: Thank you.

Mark:  For my listeners, if you haven’t seen the show “Big Spender”, not only is it entertaining good dramatic reality show TV, it’s also sobering and inspirational about how you approach your spending habits. I highly recommend it. Larry, on your show you kind of take your “wake up and smell the coffee” attitude to people who are really out of control in their spending habits. You do sort of an intervention with them. For you, what’s the show really about? What do you want people to get from it? …

Larry: What I want people to realize is that they really don’t have money problems. The show, it’s called “Big Spender” and it’s about me fixing their money problems. But it’s not about money problems. It’s about personal problems. These people overspend because they have misplaced priorities.

When your priorities are straight…you see, I can tell you exactly what’s mostly important to you by looking at how you spend your money. I can go through your checkbook and your charge account and I can say, “Where does your money go?” Life is like a crime novel. Follow the money. Always follow the money and you’ll find out what’s important.

So when a guy stands in front of me and he’s absolutely broke and I say, “you have this little boy and I actually had this happen on the show. You have a four-year-old son. Do you love your son? He says, “Well of course I love my son”. “I have to tell you I don’t believe you. I don’t think you really do love your son”. And he said, “Well I don’t understand how you can say that”. “Let me show you what you love”. I reached into his kitchen drawer and I pulled out three packs of cigarettes. I said, “You have a three pack a day cigarette habit.  That’s twelve dollars a day that you spend”. Every single week that’s 75 dollars. Over the course of a year, that’s a lot of money. And I said, “You spend more on your cigarettes than you do on your little boy so it looks to me based on how you spend your money, you love your cigarettes more than you love your son”.

Now that offends people but I guarantee you it’s true. You want to find out what people really care about, watch how they spend their money. So I don’t point out so much to people about their money problems, I point out how they have misplaced priorities. When you show people that their priorities are wrong and confront them with it and ask them to get their priorities straight, then their money falls into place…

Mark: Yeah absolutely. After you watch show after show. It’s great to watch. At some point, after someone gave you a sob story about their problems you said something that from my perspective is classic Larry Winget. I personally wish more people would say it more often.  You said, “You have just made the wrong excuse to the wrong person”. How do you feel about people acting like they’re a victim of their own lives?

Larry: Well see it’s real easy especially in turns of money to act like a victim. All you have to do is sit back and say, “I can’t afford”. “I can’t afford” is the most victim statement I have ever heard. It really is. It makes you the victim that “I don’t earn enough” or “things cost too much”.

Things don’t cost too much ever.  The problem is you don’t earn enough money. You don’t earn enough money because you aren’t willing to work hard enough. Or you’re not willing to invest in yourself so you can get a better job. Or, you spend your money on things that you shouldn’t be spending them on that have no future value. Don’t ever tell me that you can’t afford anything. You can afford exactly what you want to have if you choose to make that a priority.

So you’re right, I’m the wrong guy to whine to because, I’ve been broke. I’ve been so broke my cash bounced. I’ve been bankrupt. I’ve lost it all. I grew up dirt poor and I figured out how to become a multi-millionaire. I’m on CNBC’s “The Millionaire Inside” this month, last month and forever talking about this very thing about how to develop a millionaire mindset and to get over your past and your problems and get on to becoming rich. Anybody can become rich. It has nothing to do with your circumstance. You’ve got to rise above your circumstance.

Mark:  Excellent. Now we’ve been kind of highlighting, maybe it’s something natural for you, kind of highlighting the tough guy side of your personality but at some point in basically every show when you get people to really see the consequences of their spending choices on their friends, on their family, on their own future, they break down and cry because they finally get it.

Now although you’re tough, in those moments it’s obvious that you’re really on their side. What’s it like for you to kind of get in there where most people have some of those difficult challenges in their lives around money and really crack them open and see what’s possible for them. What’s that like for you?

Larry: I’ll be the biggest bad guy in the world until they cry. Because at the moment they start to sob and they break down and say to me, “You’re right. This is my fault”, and they feel that remorse, that’s the moment that they own the problem. I will be your biggest supporter, your best friend and help you do anything once you own the problem and when you show me that kind of emotion and remorse…. Not just the emotion. I don’t care if you cry if you don’t feel bad. But if you genuinely feel bad to the point that you give me some emotion then I’ll know you own the problem and then I’m your best friend and supporter.  That’s when we will work as a team to get this thing fixed.

I’ve had people with no tears felt no responsibility and I’ll be hard on them to the very last second of the show but if they’ll say, “Listen, you’re right.  I’m sorry. I made this mess. Help me fix it”, I’m there.

Mark: You get some phenomenal results in the show. It’s time for another quick break. When we come back, I’d like to get a sense for your personal journey and what it means for you to be living the life that you are currently.

Larry: OK.

Mark: OK great so I’m Mark Michael Lewis with Larry Widget host of the reality show on A&E called “Big Spender” on “Money Mission and Meaning”.

[radio break]

Mark: And we’re back with Larry Winget. So Larry you’ve published a couple of best selling books. You do keynote speaking engagements for corporations and organizations around the country. You host a brilliant reality show on a major network, and as you brought up, you currently are being featured on MSNBC.

Larry: No, CNBC.

Mark: CNBC. Sorry about that. Their “Millionaire Inside” series where they highlight your work. You do a couple shows with them. Can you tell us a little about that?

Larry: Yep.

Larry: Well the first show we do with them is called, “Debt Free” with David Bach and Jennifer Openshaw and Robert Kiyosaki of  “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. We talk about absolutely how to get out of debt and turn your life around. I have a lot of experience with that based on how I grew up.

And then the second show is called “Get Inspired”. Four more of us on a panel Keith Ferrazzi and Laura Morgan and Robert Kiyosaki again and we talk about how to get inspired no matter what you’re growing up with or facing. And all of us pretty much grew up with nothing. We talk about how we turned that around. That’s really my area of expertise when it comes to the money. I can’t teach you how to invest. I don’t know enough about investing. I know how to teach people to go from broke to the point that they have the right attitude on how to get rich and how to get out of debt. That’s what I teach people.

Mark:  Right and in terms of getting inspired, I assume that there’s something in there about finding what it is that you care about and doing it with your whole heart and soul.  Does that fit for you? .

Larry: Yeah that does fit for me. But it also goes back to what we have been talking about that in the meantime, if you have a job, you still give it all you’ve got. That’s what you owe your employer. I’m very much still about the integrity of hard work while you’re finding your passion. It took me a lot of years of just doing jobs until I was able to pursue my passion but when I had a job I gave it the best I had. That’s what everybody should do. Give it the best you’ve got.

Mark:  Right. This show is called, “Money, Mission and Meaning” and it’s really about overcoming what I think it’s a false separation of how we earn a living and what we really care about such that we can really be and create who we are as we work. When I work with clients, (I do coaching) I work with clients who are in a job that they’re not really satisfied with, I help them find how they can bring their heart and soul to it and get so good at what they’re doing that they actually feel a sense of satisfaction from it and that inspiration, when you’ve got that then you can take that into the next piece. You’re honoring the employer you’ve got and you’ve got the energy and the inspiration to go on to find out what you really want to do.

Larry: Perfect.

Mark: Now for you, at some point in your career, you made the choice to kind of turn yourself on loudspeaker and just… unapologetically be you. How did you come to make that choice? And how did you deal with the challenges?

Larry: It was about ten years ago now; I had a classic mid life crisis.  I got to the point that I hated my marriage, I hated my job, I hated going on stage and giving my speech, I didn’t like my staff. I just wanted out. I just felt like I had prostituted myself literally because I was selling out every time I took the stage. I was not authentic. I was doing great. I was your typical motivational speaker, sales trainer. I was very, very successful. I just did not feel authentic to who I really was.

So I went away. I told my wife I gotta go for a while.  I’ll call you in a couple of weeks. I said if the house burns time call me, but in the meantime, just leave me alone. Let me try to find out what’s going on with me and I went to Sedona, Arizona parked myself out on the side of a mountain and just kind of sat for a couple of weeks, read listened to good music and thought and said, I don’t care what I’ve built here. I’ll throw it all away but I gotta be who I am. I have to be!

And so the next time I went on stage, I had a speech scheduled a couple of weeks later… I went on stage and I was heckled. And I’d never really been heckled. I’m a funny guy comics get heckled so every once and a while you hear a comment. But this guy stood up at the back of the room and just lit into me during a speech. And I stopped and I just kind of exploded and I went on this rant and part of the rant was, “you need to shut up and stop whining. You get to create the life you want to. I’m sick of listening to it. I got my own crap I’m dealing with. Everybody in this audience does and we don’t need to hear yours”. It’s about you taking responsibility for your life and the audience went crazy.

So I went, gee, this works pretty good. And it felt good. It felt good because that’s what I really had been wanting to say. So I made that commitment that I was going to go on stage and be who I really was. I worked through my mind that I served others best when I gave them the best of who I was and the best I can be is authentic….when I am absolutely true to the core of my very essence.

And at the same time I just heard Dennis Miller on television talking about how comedians go on stage and try to endear themselves to the audience. The audience will like them. That’s what speakers do. That’s what writers do. And he said he was never very endearing so he just gave it up and decided just to be Dennis Miller. So that’s when we started saying Dennis Miller is caustic and irreverent and all that.

I realize I’m not a very endearing person. I am caustic and irreverent. And I have the ability to communicate very, very clearly what I think, as caustic as that may be. And when I started doing that and became authentic within myself that’s when my career really exploded.

Mark: That’s probably when you fell in love with your career again.

Larry: I absolutely fell in love with what I was doing because I got to just be me. I know a lot of speakers and people see people who are just inauthentic. They see a stage presence and then they see their personal life. The good thing about living a life that’s authentic is I don’t have to put on a show. I am who I am 24 hours a day. You can call me up cold and say Larry, what do you think about this and I wouldn’t even have to think for a second about what I believe. I know what I believe. I live what I believe. I speak what I believe and so there’s no separation between the stage persona Larry, the author Larry, the television guy Larry and the Larry that I live 24 hours a day at home.

Mark: I’ll say that’s exactly what this show is about because I believe true power is just telling the truth. The truth is the power and it’s your truth and when you tell it, when you bring your truth to whatever it is you’re doing, that’s when things really start to happen because people resonate with the truth. …

Larry: People will pay a premium for that Mark.  They will pay a premium to see someone be authentic. They don’t have to agree with you. People hire me and pay me a lot of money when they don’t agree with me. But I think they pay because they want to see someone be authentic.  They want to see someone say what they really believe whether they agree with it or not.

Mark: Absolutely. Let’s take it slightly different. Like virtually all of us, this life that you’re living wasn’t handed to you. You’re no Paris Hilton…no offense. You created your life. You persevered through challenges. You got rich. You lost it. You built it back up. So I want to ask you a couple of questions. Just take it wherever you want. What has your journey been like to get where you are? How is sweeter to be where you are given where you were?

Larry: My journey has been a roller coaster. But you know, I like roller coasters a whole lot better than merry go-rounds. [Mark laughs] So I like the roller coaster life. …

Mark: Hallelujah!

Larry: I met with a financial advisor, and I am sort of a financial advisor, this week. And he said, “…so what’s your style?” and I said, “Listen, I’ll put it all on black and roll the dice. If I lose it we’ll do this all again tomorrow. It would be fun”.  I’m a high risk, high reward kind of guy. I’m full out against the wall kind of living life. That’s how I like it. My life is fun. I don’t want any regrets.

My journey has taught me live with no regrets. Every single thing. My biggest screwups, all the stupid things, and believe me I can be the poster child of stupidity; I’ve made so many mistakes. I make more mistakes by noon then most people will in a month. It’s because I’m active. I’m doing a lot of stuff. I’m making a lot of decisions. When you make a lot of decisions, many of them aren’t going to be the right decision but you learn from every mistake. I’m always looking for the lesson and I then I just try not to repeat that mistake so I won’t have to learn the lesson more than once. That’s what I think makes it all so exciting and so much fun. And, I guarantee you that’s what brings in the big rewards.

Mark: People like someone who’s going someplace. They like interacting with it.  When someone is vital, when someone’s in touch with their truth when they’re willing to put it out there, it just raises the energy of every interaction.

Question. You don’t really talk about God much. You don’t talk about spirit. That’s not your shtick. But my sense is you have, you’ve spent some time asking big questions. And I’m curious, how do you understand what you’re doing in the big picture of kind of what this whole thing’s about. … being human. What inspires you …?

Larry: Actually I do talk a lot about God but not in the traditional sense. And there’s a whole chapter in my book about spirituality and God and all that. My definition… and I’ve read 4,000 books in the last 20 years. That’s a lot of books on everything and every single book that I’ve read  about every major religion and minor religion  … all comes down to the simple concept that God is love. Period. Love.

Service to other people is the best way to show your love. Every great person on the planet served others well. And so it goes back to everything that I speak about. From authenticity to customer service to great leadership, it’s all a matter of service to other people. And so that’s how I show my love. I don’t do it like you do it; like Sid Ziegler does it or Tony Robbins does it or how any of those other guys do it. I do it my way but still I’m showing love through my work. That is my ultimate motive. And I think that’s the most spiritual godly thing I can do is serve others well by giving them the best of who I am based on my experiences and my accumulated knowledge.

Mark:  Amen. So what’s up for you next? What’s on your plate? What do you want to do next?

Oh I got a lot of stuff going on. I’m working on another television show that may be coming out. We’re trying to negotiate that right now. I’ve got some interest to do some shows in Europe, which I may do.  I’m working on a syndicated radio show that we may be able to pull off here very soon. So I’ve just got a lot of a stuff and I’ve got a lot of new books coming out. I got a new book being released in January of ‘08 called “Your Broke Because You Want To Be”.

Mark: Nice.

Larry: … So that’s a book about how to get out of debt and that it’s always about personal choices… all the things I talk about on most of the television shows … “Big Spender”, CNBC. So that book will be coming out. So I’ve got a lot of stuff. I guarantee you I won’t be sitting back idle for long.

Mark: Excellent. I’ll just say, I’ll look forward to it.

Larry: I appreciate it.

Mark: Thanks for coming on the show Larry. I wish you nothing but the best.

Larry: Thank you so much for having me.

Mark: You got it. If you want the transcripts to this show, you can go to our site at personallifemedia.com. Go to the Money Mission Meaning page and on the page where this podcast is, there’s a biography of Larry and some great stuff. And for more information about him and how you can get him to speak for you or if you want more of his products or to find out about some of his shows, go to larrywinget.com. There’s a lot of information there, there’s clips from his show. If you go to my blog at moneymissionmeaning.com, I’m putting up his “Ten Top Tips for Business”.

I’m your host, Mark Michael Lewis, CEO of Smart Energy Enterprises, Incorporated. SEE-Inc. A Beautiful Future Now! That brings us to the end of our show. So thanks for listening and join us next week on “Money, Mission and Meaning: Passion at Work, Purpose at Play” as we interview cutting edge business leaders who are committed to making a positive difference in the world about the motivation and practical ideas that create pleasure and profit in the business of life.

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