Transcript of 1005 Q&AF: Reinventing Yourself, Overcoming Guilt Around Money & Identifying Scalability Factors In A Business

REAL AF with Andy Frisella
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00:00:16

What is up, guys? It's Andy Purcell, and this is the show for the realists. Say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness, and delusions of modern society. And welcome to Motherfucking Reality, guys. Today, we have Q and AF. That's where you submit questions, and we give you the answers. Dj, tell them how they can submit their questions. Smit these motherfucking questions.

00:00:35

Yeah. To ask Andy at andyfriscellin. Com. Or you guys can click the link in the description. We go through those as well, or check them, leave them in the comments of the Q&A videos on the YouTube channel.

00:00:46

Now, if this is your first time listening, this is Q&A. We also have CTI, which you're going to be able to watch live tonight at 7 Central on YouTube and X. Other times, We have Real Talk. Real Talk is just 5 to 20 minutes of me giving you some real talk. Then we have 75 Hard Verses. That is where people who have completed the 75 Hard program come on the show. They talk about how they were before, how they are now, and how they use the 75 Hard program to become the ultimate version of themselves. If you're unfamiliar with 75 Hard, it's the initial phase of the Live Hard program, the world's most popular mental transformation program in history. It is available for free at episode 208 on the audio feed. Again, that's 208 on the audio feed. You can also get the book, The Book on Mental Toughness, which includes the entire Live Hard program, plus a whole bunch of other chapters on mental toughness, why it's important, how to utilize it and build it and create the ultimate existence that you're after. Something about our show, if you're new, we don't run ads on the show.

00:01:52

I think we're the biggest show in the world that doesn't run ads. I just don't want you guys to wonder who's paying me to say what when we talk about what's going on in the world? I ask very simply, if you get something out of the show, if it makes you think, if it makes you laugh, if it gives you a new perspective, do us a favor and help us grow that show, man. It's the only way we grow by you guys telling people. Don't be a hoe. Share the show. All right. What's up?

00:02:22

What's up, Doc?

00:02:24

What's crack-a-lack? Finally feeling better after five days of bullshit. It's good. Yeah, it's good. Hope we get back on schedule this week.

00:02:31

There's a lot to talk about.

00:02:34

Yeah, shit, man.

00:02:36

Apparently. There's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot to happen, but that's tonight. We got to start Mondays off right with some good quality questions.

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All right.

00:02:45

I have three of them.

00:02:47

Three good ones?

00:02:48

Three good ones for you. All right. I don't remember. When did I start saying that?

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The first time. Really?

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Was it the first one? Shit. Well, I do have some good ones for you. All right. So let's get into these, man. Guys, Andy, question number one. Andy, I'm 18 years old, doing my best to be something in this world. This might be an unusual question for you, but what part of you had to die for you to become who you are now? Old friendships, old habits, old beliefs. I think a lot of us younger guys want the next level without accepting that something in us probably has to go. What did you have to let go that most people What? Oh, man.

00:03:29

Oh, that's tough. That is. That's tough. Listen, I'll start by saying this. For 18 years old, when you've already figured out that you're going to have to give something up to get something, you're way ahead of most people at 18, just being aware of that. To get something that is different than everybody else has, You have to do different things. It's a different life. I think accepting that up front is one of the biggest keys to getting where you want to go. A lot of people want to have it all. They want to have perfect balance in their family. They want to have all the time to spend with their friends. They want to do all the things that everybody else gets to you, and they want to have a business. And the reality is that doesn't work because There's always so much time and so much energy that you have. So for you to get to a point where you were going to achieve all of these things, these things that nobody else that you know even wants to really achieve. When I say want to achieve, I don't mean, Oh, that would be nice.

00:04:50

I mean, they're willing to dedicate every single thing that they have in order to accomplish it. That is what wanting it really means. Everybody thinks it would be nice. For you to get to that point, you are going to have to give up the things that do not contribute to that, whatever those are. For me, I spent a long time in business The first 10, 12 years of business, to be completely real. We talk about this. It's a great story. It's a great success story. Started out $0, spent $12,000 to build off the first store. I lived in the first store for three years on and off. $7 our first day, $0 our second day, $23 our third day, eight months to have a day over $200, five years to open up our second store. Ten years to come to the idea of first form. 58,380 dollars total what I made for the first 10 years. This is a great story, and it's true. But here's the part you don't hear. During that time, I was still trying to do all the things that I did before. I was still trying to party. I was still trying to live like everybody else and do that.

00:06:16

It wasn't until I let go of the things that legitimately didn't press forward and replace them with things that did press me forward, that thing started to move forward. If I hadn't been 18 and I had known this, what I'm saying then, and I had done that earlier, I would have got through that 10 years in probably 4-6 years. It's easy when you're young to believe that you can do all the things. But the reality is, is you just can't because you have to understand that there's other people doing what you want to do, and there's There's people out there, even at a young age of 18, 19, 20, 21, all the way up to 30, let's say, that are willing to go all in. If you're three quarters in or 80% in, and you're still not 100% in, you're going to have a hard time winning against these other people. Because they're 100% in, and it doesn't matter if you have more skills, that delta is too hard to make up. It doesn't matter if someone's not as good as you. It doesn't matter if they don't know as much as you, the application of their energy being 100% where yours is 80, 60, 40%, whatever you think it needs to be, which it needs to be 100%, you're going to lose.

00:07:43

The first thing I'd understand is that you are signing up for a life that is different than everybody else's. The minute that you accept that I am on this path and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get where I want to go, you have to understand that there are parts of you that are going to have to be let go. There are parts of you that take away from this extremely difficult path and hold you back. I don't know what those are for you. I don't know what those are for you. It's different for everybody. Maybe for you, maybe you're fucking a gamer and you're playing Call of Duty three hours a day. Okay, well, that three hours a day is costing you progress. That's the truth. That's one thing I had to give up. I was a big gamer. Really? Oh, yeah. You're a big gamer now? I loved gaming. I loved gaming, but I'm not going to be a professional gamer. The first 10 years of business, dude, I'm playing fucking Madden football all the time. I'm playing Call of Duty all the time. It cost me. I could have got where I'm at much faster.

00:08:53

You guys even have a much better opportunity because you have things that we didn't You have the Internet. You have social media. You have highly-evolved ecom strategies that are cheap to put together and easy to get moving. If I was being completely honest, dude, I would trade places with any 18-year-old kid at this point in time. Knowing what you know. Dude, not even a debate. Even with all the shit going on in the world, even with all With all the stuff happening, even with all the changes, the opportunity for young people to win has never, ever, ever been better for a bunch of reasons. One, the technology allows you to move much faster than I had the opportunity to move. You guys who are young, you might hear, Oh, it took you 10 years. Yeah, bro, we didn't have social media. We didn't have ecom, we didn't have the Internet the way it exists today. It's hard to understand that if you've never experienced I'm thankful for it because it makes me understand business in a different dynamic than most people do. But the opportunity is so great because of the technology, the change that's happening, and also the fact that there's a lot of people that just don't give a fuck about winning.

00:10:21

When I was coming up, everybody wanted to win. The culture was much different. I think we're swinging back to this. We're seeing young people We're seeing people have a lot more ambition now. We're seeing young people understand they have to win. They have to win soon, too. We're seeing that come back in culture, but it's still nothing like it was when I was a young buck getting started. When I was a young buck getting started in business, bro, everybody wanted to win. Winning and making money and kicking ass in culture, that was the pinnacle. Something was wrong if you didn't want that. Well, they It was just different. It was just different. Winning was celebrated, and it should be. It was celebrated a lot more than it is now. But because of that dynamic, you guys are in a situation to win because a lot of other people are just accepting the reality. They're looking around, they're saying, Well, I guess what's going to happen is going to happen. Or they have some fundamental belief system installed in them by the school system, or their parents or their aunts, or their uncles or their culture that says winning is bad, making money is selfish, it's morally inferior.

00:11:38

All these things, and to be honest, you want to let go of shit? Let go of that shit. Let go of listening to people who aren't ever going to do shit. Let go of listening to people who are on a different path than you. It doesn't mean that they're bad people. They are just choosing a different path. If you're choosing one path and they're choosing a different path and you consistently listen to them for feedback, you're sabotaging your own success. You've got to realize that most of the shit that you read online is not built for actual winners. It's built for people who want to feel like they're trying. Those are two different things. Two different things. Feel like I'm trying and actually doing what it takes to win, two completely different things. The market for the people that want to feel like they're trying is huge. It's a huge market. Those people want to buy shit. They want to buy programs. They want to listen to podcasts. They want to go to seminars. They want to do all these things to feel like they're winning, except due to things that actually create the winning.

00:12:46

And if you are in that 1-2% that actually wants to win, and you're consistently reading all this shit about balance and recovering and all this shit, dude, you're going to get way off fucking track. Because that language is built for people who are not dedicated to win. The people who win, nothing else really matters. That's just the truth. And you could judge it. People could judge it. It's like nick Saban says, high achievers don't like mediocre people, and mediocre people don't like high achievers. You could try to explain it. You could try to justify it. You could try to point out all the good things that it does. They don't give a shit. It's a waste of your time to even try and explain it. If you're asking me what to really let go of, let go of listening to people who are never going to do a motherfucking thing with their lives. I can tell you as someone who was you, and that long ago, in my perspective, one of the One of the biggest things that I did wrong was I listened to a lot of people who were very negative, and I let that shit get in me.

00:13:51

It serves me because I'm able to take the negativity and then use it for positive, productive action. But not everybody understands that. Not everybody understands how to eat the negativity, put it into a fucking chip on your shoulder, and then draw on the chip whenever you're having a bad day, or whenever you feel like quitting, or whenever you feel like not doing what you need to do, which, by the way, is every motherfucking day. The bottom line in the answer to this question, I cannot answer it for you, but what I will tell you is, audit your actions in the places that you spend your time that do not produce the outcome that you're after and eliminate as much of those as possible and replace those with things that push you forward. That's how you should be thinking about it. It could be different for everybody. It could be... You could be like, Dude, and I It takes a time in all kinds of things, bro. Like bad girlfriends, right? Not bad people, but girlfriends that didn't align with what I was trying to do. They want a different life. These are all things that are very It's important.

00:15:00

Everything has to align for it to actually work out. That's not some hocus-pocus, Oh, it's nice to have. Shit. No, it's required. It's required, guys.

00:15:14

That's the luck everybody talks about. You just had everything fucking aligned in the right way.

00:15:18

Yeah, you got to align your whole life to winning, dude. And by the way, people will say things like, Oh, well, they're probably not having much much fun. No, winning is pretty fucking fun. You know what I'm saying? How are you going to listen to how unfun winning is by people who've never fucking won anything? How do you know? Yeah, right.

00:15:41

I was going to ask you this, too, because obviously, you're a little older than me, and so there's a different perspective here. But I would also argue, too, that, okay, you might be doing this at 18, but guess what? You're going to do it again when you're 30, auditing and seeing what needs to be cut out. It doesn't just-No, you need to be doing that all the time.

00:15:58

On a daily On a daily basis.

00:16:02

It's not just one time you can cut some shit out and you're good.

00:16:05

Listen, the mark of true high IQ people is not this intelligence rating or whatever, right, of IQ. It's actually your ability to think about why you think. It's having thoughts and then analyzing those thoughts as to why you think them. If you're able to generate awareness when it comes to the actions that you're taking, I'm doing these things, and then you're able to question, Well, why am I doing these things? Now you're in a position of awareness where you can analyze things. Most people lack that ability. That's why we have all this dysfunction around societal conversations. Everybody reacts emotionally or they have a thought, but they don't know why they reacted emotionally or they don't know why they have the thought. That is the mark of someone who's actually intelligent. You have to consistently audit yourself and coach yourself along the way. Which means At the end of your day, there should be reflection. There should be a thought process. You should say, Okay, what decisions did I make today? Why did I make those decisions? Eventually, what happens is you become highly aware. It's just like tuning a car or working out with weights, and your awareness muscle gets stronger.

00:17:34

What happens is you're able to audit and coach and assess yourself immediately. When you get to a point like that, the progress that you make is much, much faster than everybody else. So awareness is a huge deal, and it really just comes down to you saying, Okay, I made that decision. Why did I make it? I thought this thought. Why did I think I said this thing. Why did I say that? Was I emotional or did I actually mean that? And that is the process of awareness that allows you to coach and audit and push yourself forward at a much faster rate. How much faster of a rate can you progress if you can identify your mistakes before they even materialize? You see what I'm saying? So that comes down to you rising above. It's almost like you You start to look at your life from above, like 10,000-foot view, and you start to look down. And it's not you, it's you're coaching you. Does that make sense?

00:18:40

Yeah, that's a whole different level of awareness.

00:18:42

Yeah. And that's where you got to be, because what it does is it allows you to fucking audit and make assessments in real-time. Yeah.

00:18:50

You can see, okay, that's about to waste my fucking time. I'm not even about to do that.

00:18:54

It's not happening. Or someone comes to you with a big emotional blow-up, and you're Five years ago, 10 years ago, right now, you react. You get all emotional. Over time, if you're able to take that pause and then think about things, those things stop pulling you off track because they come in and you see it and you're like, Yeah, okay. And you go right back to what it is that you were working on that presses your forward and you deal with that whenever the fuck you need to.

00:19:26

Yeah, dude, that's real, bro. Listen, I think that's the biggest thing with these young guys. Listen, he knows what it is. He knows that he has it. He just don't know what exactly that is yet. It's different for everybody.

00:19:38

Well, I think the fact that he's 18 years old and that he understands that he has to give things up to get things is a level of awareness that is very uncommon at 18 years old. Usually, awareness is a key dictator of success. When people come to me and they say things like, Man, I'm doing this and this and this, but I'm worried that this and this and this could happen. Well, that's awareness. That's you growing in awareness. The fact that you're aware of it means you're probably not going to go down that path. You see what I'm saying? When people have awareness and you understand, Okay, I can make this decision and I could go right, and this is the way that I need to go, or I can make this decision, I can go left, and this is what's going to happen. When you develop that ability for vision, which comes from awareness, now you can make decisions instantly that you know are going to be the right ones, and you don't have to wait for them to materialize into bad shit. This is also the importance of getting around people that have done the thing you're trying to do.

00:20:42

What if you're around someone who's already been down the path, and they're like, If you go down that path, this is what's going to fucking happen. You're going to get railed. Yeah, you save three, four years. What does that cost? Yeah, no shit. Fuck.

00:20:56

I love it, man. Guys, Andy, question number two. If I'm being honest, I don't want to do well. I want to be wealthy. I want freedom. I want options. I want to win at a level that changes my family's trajectory. I want to be the ultimate rebellion. However, I was raised to believe that chasing money too hard makes you greedy or shallow. Did you ever wrestle with that? And at what point did you decide it was okay to want more?

00:21:29

Well, you've got to fundamentally... Okay, why do you think that? Where did that come from? Why do you think that making money is evil? And who installed that thought in your brain? This is what I'm talking about.

00:21:43

Probably somebody that didn't have it.

00:21:47

I'll explain it, but you have to understand that there's a reason you think those things, and you have to remove yourself from, you said, I was brought up to believe believe? Well, that doesn't mean that those beliefs are accurate. That doesn't mean the people that put those beliefs in your brain actually know what the fuck they're talking about. In all likelihood, they probably don't. Unless their life looks exactly like the one that you want, I wouldn't listen to that shit. And let me explain something further. So there is a highly popular narrative about money in terms of it being a bad thing. And it always comes from people that don't have any, all right? Which should discount it right away, but it doesn't. But if you understand where that comes from, it can help you get away from that mindset. Unlike today, where you have social media, and you have the Internet, and you have all of this instant communication, that is relatively new in commerce. For a very long time, before Before that, there were only three ways that people could communicate. There was radio, there was television, and there was print. There was no instant feedback for 70 years.

00:23:13

For 70 years, these companies were able to advertise products. They were able to tell you that they were the best products in the world. The only way for you to find out that they weren't were to buy them. But here's the thing. When you buy a product that wasn't as it was advertised, which became the norm, that became the strategy, you didn't have a way to spread the word of mouth fast enough to stop them from making a fuck ton of money. So for 70 years, you had corporations and businesses who happened to gather up enough money to be able to advertise. Then they went and sold inferior products or did things that weren't exactly the way that they said, or in some cases, sold things that were harmful, like cigarettes, and told you they were healthy. They were allowed to do all of this predatory marketing. And so what happened is the regular people, rightfully so, started to develop this mentality. And the mentality was this, the only way to get ahead is to fuck people over. Now, back Then that appeared to be true because that was the only way that people could fucking hear about products.

00:24:37

When the Internet came around, and by the way, not only did it appear to be true, it was true in a lot of cases. There was a lot of people who made a lot of fucking money with predatory marketing and nefarious strategies in terms of taking advantage of the consumer. That mentality got baked in to our grandparents and our parents They brought this idea, they observed it, they saw it, and then what they said to you and other people was, Well, you don't want to be one of those guys who just takes advantage of people and makes a bunch of money because you got to step on everybody's face and blah, blah, blah, which is their perspective, right? It was a real one. Yes. But here's the thing. This is not saying all businesses did that, but the biggest ones did. When the internet came around, it changed things. When the social media came around, it really changed things because now everybody had an instant way to communicate back and forth. So these companies that were used to doing these things couldn't do them the way that they used to do them because the minute that I bought one of these products that sucked, I'm posted on the internet.

00:25:50

These dudes fucking advertise this. It's a fucking hook of shit. Look at this thing. And dude, if you've been on the internet for long enough, you can remember when people started doing this. They started putting companies on blast. They started showing the products. They started showing the quality, and the word of mouth started to spread. That created a different scenario, dynamically, in business. And now the dynamic is honest, and it's this. If your product isn't what you say it is, if your product doesn't actually help people, if your product is some marketing bullshit, it will get found out right away. So nowadays, the only way to sustain yourself is by doing things above board. You have to make a good product. You have to be what you say you are. You have to solve the problem you say you're going to solve. Otherwise, the entire internet knows. So we went from a situation where your parents and your grandparents and this person who's asking the question, they probably observed all of this shit and I wouldn't say intentionally, but that's their perspective. They're telling you that everybody they know that ever made any money was a fucking piece of shit.

00:27:09

Today, the only way to actually make money is by solving people's problems the best way possible. Yeah, and not being a piece of shit. Okay? And that's an ethical thing. Yeah. All right? You live in an age where it's possible, and not only possible, it's required for you to make a lot of money. You You have to create a product that actually provides value to the consumer. This idea needs to be thrown out. This is old school thinking. This is old. And yes, do we still have some fucking shit bags? For sure. But what happens to them? We see it all the time. How many people do we see that come around on the internet, they start making a little bit of money, and then all of a sudden, they're gone because people start finding out they're taking advantage of people, or they're not who they say they are, or they're scamming people. The culture self-corrects it now. It's actually the opposite of what you've been brought up to believe, and you need to accept that. Because the truth of business is this. You are not chasing money. That is not what a business is designed to do.

00:28:21

When you ask most people, what is the purpose of your business? They will say to make money. That is not the purpose of a business. The purpose of a business is to solve a problem that benefits the consumer to which they trade you money for that solution. Money is the byproduct of the value that you provide. The two things that you need to do here is you need to let go of this old way of thinking, understand why it exists, and now you could probably let it go. Two, instead of thinking, I'm chasing money, and by the way, I I hope you get rich as fuck. I hope you become a hundred billionaire. There's nothing wrong with that. We need some good hundred billionaires. You can want all that shit, but you got to stop and you got to say, Okay, I want all that shit, but the only way I'm going to get that shit is by solving enough of this problem over here to where they trade me enough money to give me what the fuck I'm looking for. If you can let go of that negative thinking and then also replace what your intent is for your business as an operator, meaning I'm here to solve a problem.

00:29:41

I'm here to help people do this. And whatever that is, it could be anything. Whatever their fucking problem is, solve it in the best way possible, solve it with the best product possible, make them happy, and they give you the fucking money. And not only do they give you the money, they're happy to give you the money. They love giving you the money. You feel good about taking it. They're proud to give you the money. And there's nothing better than running a business where you know that you're helping people and you're becoming successful by solving that problem. That's a good feeling. You could be proud of that. The bottom line is very simple. Most of us grow up not really understanding success. It's very, very important to understand that no matter where you come from, who you are, where you were raised, you have the ability to win if you follow the game plan and let go of these ideas that are the old way of thinking, and then accept that I'm going to solve the problem better than everybody else. If you can do those two things, bro, there's nothing you can't build. There's nothing you can't build.

00:30:48

Yeah, man, hopefully that helps you understand where that mentality comes from. I hope it helps you guys free yourself from that thinking, because if you can't If you think positively about making a lot of money, you're going to have a really hard time making it. Let me tell you something, too, that these people, they, the people who will never do shit, will never tell you. They will never tell you what it's like to employ a thousand people and for them to have careers and jobs and families. They will never tell you about that. They won't even bring that shit up. They'll bring up the nice car the dude drives. They'll bring up the fucking bullshit. They never talk about the money that these people will contribute to their local economies through charitable means, rebuilding their cities, sponsoring sports teams, sponsoring youth programs. I don't know about you guys, but I don't see any of these big companies sponsoring the fucking local baseball teams. We got to understand, dude, you have an ethical responsibility to become successful. You have an ethical responsibility to become successful because what it actually means is that you're providing far more value to the world than what you're taking away from it.

00:32:04

That's the reality. This idea of chasing lots and lots of money, fucking great. But if you are sitting there thinking, Well, I want lots of money, but fuck, dude. Are they all going to fucking hate me? Yeah, they probably are. You know what I'm saying? They're probably not going to like it. By the time you actually, and this is the fucking funniest part about it, these people will constantly criticize you and constantly fill your mind with doubt and constantly get you to second guess and be frustrated and think you won't make it until you're actually making it and it becomes undeniable that you're going to make it, and these same people switch their tune, bro. All of a sudden, it's, I always believed in you. I always was proud of you. I always knew it.

00:32:55

Can I get 100 bucks? Yeah.

00:32:58

You know what, dude? You're going to be happy to give the 100 bucks. It comes with it. Listen, not only is there nothing wrong with winning, you have a responsibility to win. But not only is it not wrong, it's a great thing. It's a fucking great thing. You're never going to find someone who has done what we're talking about here who's going to say, Man, I fucking wish I never did that. You know what? I wish I would have just stayed poor. I wish I would have just stayed where I was. It doesn't happen, dude. The only people you ever hear say this shit are the people that don't do anything. That's the only people. Why the fuck are you listening to them at all?

00:33:42

There were people that didn't have to work for it.

00:33:43

Well, I mean, that's a whole nother conversation.

00:33:45

That's very rare. That's not me. That's not you.

00:33:47

Listen, are there people who were born on third base that may... Yeah, for sure. But there was people that came before them that built it. That's right. All right? And you're one of those. So yeah, dude. That brings up a whole 'nother' topic. We can argue all day long about what's fair and what's not fair. But at the end of the day, it doesn't fucking matter. What matters is, do you overcome the unfair things to create the outcome? Because it's never going to be fair. My challenge is, I have unfair things that happen to me. I had unfair things that I had to overcome. Maybe they weren't the same unfair things that you have to overcome. But the great stories and the noble action is overcoming those things. It's not staying where you are and using that as some excuse as to why you're nothing. We all know those people are full of shit. We know it.

00:34:40

Yeah, it's real. Let me ask you this, Sunead. I don't think I've ever asked you this, but when Talking about money, do you look at money as just this tool? It's this inanimate object that allows you to... You know what I'm saying? Because I feel like a lot of people, they're either super fucking attached to money itself or they're completely displaced from it. Is it a tool for you?

00:35:04

I think most successful people are not emotionally attached to money. They're more focused on the service, the product, the value that they're providing, knowing that the money will take care of itself. I think most people that have money have an abundance mindset when it comes to money, meaning they let it flow. They don't think of it because dude, when you think of money, you get some money and you're like, Fuck, I don't want to fucking lose it. Here's what you're telling the universe. I'm afraid. This is a sacred resource. I don't want to fucking lose it. You're focused on not losing it. You know what happens? You lose it. When you detach yourself emotionally and you realize that this is just a byproduct of the solutions that you're providing, the money may get short sometimes because that's what happens in business, but you're going to have a much easier time bringing it in all the time. Yeah.

00:35:58

Just go solve some more That's right.

00:36:00

Yeah.

00:36:01

Dude, I love that. I love that. This goes right into our third and final question, guys. Guys, Andy, question number three. Andy, if you were looking at my business and trying to decide whether it has real scale potential or if it's just a high paying job, what are the first things you look at? What separates a company that can 10X from one that just grows, literally, with the owner's effort?

00:36:25

The value of the product. What problem is it solving? Just because you have a good idea, it doesn't mean it's going to work. You've got to have the awareness, which goes back to the first question, being able to look at whatever it is that you're creating in a very objective frame of mind. Bad entrepreneurs look at what they do and they are emotionally attached to it. They look at it, they say, Well, this is what I do. Then when they go out and sell it, And people don't want it, they're confused. So the first thing you have to really understand is, do people actually want this product? Is this a product that solves a problem in such a way that people are willing to give me money? And by the way, there's a great thing about the Internet. You could fucking test this shit right now. You can make fake landing pages, run traffic to them, see what the conversion is, and figure out if there's a fucking demand for it or not. You didn't used to be able to do that. You guys have so many advantages, bro. I would literally trade places with any of you, fucking any of you, even the dumb motherfuckers, because I was dumb, too.

00:37:39

I know how to operate being dumb. I would trade with any of you because you have all these tools and these abilities to know things that we just had to fucking go like... Back in the day, bro, I'll tell you this. When we started First Form, our first product was Level 1 light. We didn't fucking sell any of We wouldn't sell. We thought it was going to be this great thing. It didn't sell. Where most people would have done when that happened is they would say, Okay, well, First Form is not going to work. We're just going to go back to doing this. No, we said, Okay, well, they must not want that. So what do they want? And we started figuring out what they wanted, and we started making those things, and then we started making them better and better and better and better and better. And that process never stops. You always want to be improving. You always want to stay ahead of the curve. But at the end of the day, dude, you've got to be willing to assess your business or your skill or your product in a way that isn't emotional because you desire this certain outcome.

00:38:49

Let me tell you something, dude. Yeah, it hurts to look at a product and say, Fuck, that fucking product sucks. It sucks. It sucks to do that. But that saves you so much time, bro. That saves you years of your life beating your head against the wall. I give it to you with our energy drink. When we came out with our first energy drink, you guys who have been around for a minute, we came out with it. One or two of the flavors was pretty good. The rest were fucking terrible. They were terrible. By the way, I was transparent about that on the show. Was I not? There you were. Did I not tell you guys, fucking this one ain't that good? I don't fucking like it. Now, Now we partner with a company that that's what they do is make fucking good drinks. And those of you who drink the drink, it's a thousand times better.

00:39:37

Not even comparable.

00:39:38

Okay, but if I had sat in that meeting with these guys who do this all the time and been emotionally stuck to the decisions that we made without them, we couldn't have made that progress. All right? So you have to emotionally detach. You have to look at your shit and say, Okay, do people really fucking want this? Does it solve a problem? Or am I wishing that it would solve a problem? Or am I hoping that they will like it? Two different things. Because when you don't get emotional about it, you can make fast decisions. When you're If you're not intentional about it, you can't. When you're saying, Okay, well, how do I know if my idea is good enough? Well, you could test it. If it doesn't test out, it's probably not good enough. You can also do things like talk to people who you don't know. Here's another mistake a lot of you fuckers make. You come up with this idea, you want it to work, so you go to your fucking stupid-ass friends who aren't doing shit and say, What do you think? Oh, dude, it's great. It's fucking going to be great.

00:40:50

But all of it. What's funny is once you start, then you're like, Oh, you're an idiot. You've got to talk to people who are unbiased. You have to be willing to accept that feedback. You have to be willing to listen to the criticisms from people who are not biased. And that's a hard thing to do because your ego is involved. I made this. This is my idea. And now you're telling me that it sucks. Fuck you. That's what shitty entrepreneurs do. Great entrepreneurs come back and they're like, Well, I talked to 20 people, bro, and I don't think this is the move. I think Maybe we need to... This is the data I collected. There's all different ways to collect consumer feedback and data before you make big investments now that you just, quite honestly, weren't able to do before. So I would do those things.

00:41:46

Now, is this a myth? Let's dispel this myth, or is this myth real or not? Is every single business scalable? I'm assuming, off of this, the answer is no.

00:41:56

No. Not every business is scalable. Businesses where you're trading your time for money are very hard to scale. Tattoo artist. I got to sit down. I got a fucking tattoo. I got to trade my time for money. I can only tattoo X amount of people per week until my back gives out, my body fucking crumbles. I know a lot of tattoo artists, bro. They all say the same thing. But I know a couple of tattoo artists that have figured out that the way to scale it is not by scaling themselves, it's by starting a shop and then renting space or coming up with a tattoo after care or some ancillary lane that can be scaled. Can every business be scaled? No. Can every business have an opportunity to scale if you look at it a little bit differently? Probably. But it requires you just to have a different mindset and be able to, like Like I said, have awareness, rise above it, look at it. How could I do this? Here's my skills. This is what I'm good at. By the way, if you're good at trimming the wings off of grasshoppers, that's a fucking useless skill.

00:43:12

We have to be able to assess if our skills are really valuable or not. Then if you don't have valuable skills, you got to learn some. The whole point here is that most things can be scaled if thought about properly There are certain things that will never scale because the product isn't of value enough or people are trading all of their time for the money, and you only have so much time.

00:43:42

Bam. Does that make sense? It's like a history thing, too, man. What about timing of the service or scale of the product? Sometimes the market is just not ready for that yet. I'm thinking back because the people were like the fucking Ford Model T, right? The motherfuckers on horses was like, No, you're crazy, dude.

00:43:59

Well, yeah. But also, yeah, you can be... Dude, this is a really good point. This is a really fucking good point, especially in today's day and age, with all of the AI revolution happening and everything changing. That's a good point. I'm glad you brought that up. You can be so early that it feels like there's no need. You can be so early that it feels like there's no need. That's actually a really good sign, but it's It's really hard to see, and it takes a lot of fucking patience to let things materialize so that people actually get it. Most of the people that make products that are early have a lot of experience. They understand psychology. They understand where everything's going. They understand why people do what they do. They understand the evolutions. They've seen other evolutions. For example, I mentioned earlier, one of the things that makes me an effective entrepreneur is that I grew a business, a successful business, pre-social media. Then I adapted and built a massive company post-social media. Now we're building AI tech that's going to make all the shit that I've done look like a I have a fucking booger on my nose.

00:45:16

But that's over 30 fucking years. Right now, the AI tech that I'm working on is early. I have to sit here and I'm like, Fuck, is it fucking working? Is it working? But little by little, it's working. You see what I'm saying? If I were to come in and say, Oh, well, it's been 90 days. I don't know, and quit, I'm going to miss a huge opportunity. But you only know that shit through experience. You can't know that when you're 18. There's a lot of nuance there, bro. But most of you guys are not reinventing a new concept. You're taking a concept that's already existed and evolving it. You have a lot of proof already that these things will work, and you've just got to take that and add to it and make it better. That's easy. That's the easiest thing. I love it.

00:46:13

I love it, dude. Guys, Andy, that was three. Yeah. Hall of way to start a week.

00:46:18

Yeah. All right, guys, we will see you tonight, seventh Central, live on YouTube and X. Do us a favor, man. Share this show out. Share with your homies. Share it, especially with the young bucks out here trying to build shit. Don't be a hoe. Share the show. We're from sleepin' on the flow. Now my jury box froze. Fuck a bowl, fuck a stove. Counted millions in the cold. Bad bitch. Share it, especially with the young bucks out here trying to build shit. Don't be a hoe. Share the show.

Episode description

On today's episode, Andy answers your questions on what habits you need to leave behind to become a better version of yourself, how to overcome guilt around wanting to earn more money, and how to know if your business is truly scalable.