20 Minutes of Winning

Larry Thornton believes that Winning Through Working Hard and Relating Hard requires taking a portion of the time that people devote to the grind of accomplishing tasks and instead investing it into building relationships with others. Not convinced? Listen to this episode and maybe you will be.

Winning Through People Skills requires engaging with others in ways that create mutual benefit.
In this episode, Larry discusses two women – Pat Greensmith and Walker Jones – who have taught him a lot about developing and using people skills. They have very different approaches– Pat tortured Larry with surprise inspections of his restaurants while Walker makes everyone she meets feel valued and appreciated. But both helped Larry become a better businessman and person.

When Larry Thornton started as an artist at Coca-Cola, a fellow artist went out of his way to orient Larry to the job. Six years later, that man’s job was being eliminated. Larry urged the man to work under him rather than take early retirement. When Larry moved on to McDonald’s, the man moved up into Larry’s former position. How these two individuals treated each other and mutually benefited from doing so can be captured in five short words: Winning by Lifting Others Up

Confidence breeds winning. But most of us can’t manufacture confidence ourselves. We need others to help us get there. Larry Thornton was a poor-performing high school student until his white English teacher Miss Nichols invited him into her home for lunch – a very rare event in the late 1960s – and told him he was college material. Once Larry believed in himself, he could act with confidence and success followed. That is the essence of Winning through Belief in Yourself. And once we have been successful, we need to act as mentors to help others believe in themselves too.

Larry Thornton has built his business career in collaboration with two corporate icons: McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Repetition – doing the same thing over and over and over – has been a key ingredient of the winning formula for both companies. For individuals, repetition channeled in the right direction creates good habits and good habits lead to winning. But repetition targeted the wrong way will create bad habits. Can you harness the power of repetition to build good habits? That’s what Winning through Repetition requires.