Motivational speaker Larry Winget offers a get-tough, “stop whining” message he says people don’t want to hear.

But somebody’s listening — and reading. Winget, known as the “Pit Bull” of motivational speaking, has written five top-selling books, including at least two that have made the New York Times Bestseller list. He has been the star of A&E network’s Big Spender series, was featured in two episodes of “The Millionaire Inside” on CNBC and appears frequently on Fox News and Fox Business.

“So, there’s an audience out there,” Winget said, referring to his message. “And they especially want to hear it when times get tough.”

This weekend, however, Winget is taking it easy in Muskogee, visiting his mother and his friends from the Central High School Class of 1970.

Winget, who now lives near Phoenix, recalled how he went from being the kid in the bright green boots to being a leading motivator. He said he learned lessons of honesty and hard work from his parents, Henry and Dorothy Winget.

“My dad worked for Sears, and my mom worked right next door, at Nash’s,” he said. “Then they came home, worked in the garden and raised chickens.”

From them, he recalled learning “honesty, integrity, pride in work. You get a full day’s wage for a full day’s work.”

Honesty was the main lesson, Dorothy Winget said, “to be honest with them and have them be honest with you.”

“I think we punished more if they told a lie than if they did something very bad,” she said.

“My dad told me a man is as good as his word,” Larry Winget said. “You gave your word.”

In high school, Larry Winget was known for his creativity and individuality.

Muskogee Public Schools Superintendent Mike Garde, one of his classmates, said Winget “has always been a creative person.”

Winget recalled showing his creativity by driving a pickup painted with psychedelic flowers and designs.

“I had a pair of chukka boots I painted bright green and wore them on Rougher Day,” Winget said.

He also was in several Central High School dramatic productions and played baritone horn in the band while Garde played oboe.

Upon graduation, Winget attended Northeastern State University, working his way through college as a telephone operator.

“I was one of the first male operators with Southwestern Bell,” he said. “I ended up, through lots of years and lots of towns, in Wichita as a sales manager for AT&T.”

After divestiture of the Bell System in the early 1980s, Winget started up his a telecommunications company in Tulsa. He said he was doing real well with that business and that his company had the telephone system at Tulsa International Airport.

“Then, the Corporation Commission ruled we could not do that,” he said. “I went to work that day fine, and came back home losing half my business.”

He said that after going bankrupt, “I decided everything I ever wanted to do in my whole life was be a speaker.”

Winget said he always had been an award-winning salesperson and decided to channel that as a sales trainer.

“I became a business humorist,” he said “Then, about 13, 14 years ago, I went through a mid-life crisis. I didn’t like what I was doing, didn’t like what was coming out of my mouth, pretty much didn’t like anything about the business. So I went away to Arizona to find myself.”

That, he said, was when he quit wearing suits and put his earrings back in.

“I started dressing how I wanted to dress, saying what I wanted to say, and next time I went on stage someone heckled me,” he said.

What he said to the heckler propelled him to his new career and current success.

“I told him ‘Shut up, stop whining and get a life,’” he recalled. “The audience reacted real well to that line. I became known as the guy who said what he wanted to say and told the audience what I thought they needed to hear instead of what they wanted to hear.”

Winget’s message produced books that brought a get-tough message to the self-help market. The books had titles such as “It’s Called Work for a Reason,” “You’re Broke Because You Want to Be” and his current piece, “Your Kids are Your Own Fault.”

The father of two grown sons, Winget said he wrote a parenting book because “after years of speaking to Fortune 500 companies, I decided that you can’t get your business to run right if you steer away from core values and not teach kids to tell the truth or not teach kids how to work hard.”

They were core values Winget traces to growing up in Muskogee.

Garde expressed pride in how his classmate turned out.

“He found a good channel for his creativity,” he said.

Reach Cathy Spaulding at cspaulding @muskogeephoenix.com.