REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 1014. Q&AF: Regaining Your Edge, Rewarding Yourself Responsibly & Working In Vs On The Business

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

On today's episode, Andy answers your questions on how to regain your edge when you feel like you're slipping, how to reward yourself responsibly as you start earning more money, and how to balance working in vs on the business when the craft matters more to you than the business.

Now my jury bottle Count it million What is up guys It's Andy Fursela 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&AF That's where you submit the questions And we give you the answers DJ go ahead and tell them How they could submit

Their questions to be answered on the show Yeah guys You can email your questions In to ask Andy at Andy Fusela.com You can check the link in the description below And submit them there Or drop them as always

in the comment section of these Q&AF videos right here on YouTube. Guys, if this is your first time listening, we have shows within the show. We don't just do Q&AF. We have CTI. CTI is called Cruise the Internet. This is where we put topics on the screen. We talk about what's going on. We make fun, everything that's going on.

We talk about how we, the people, have to solve the problems going on in society. If you want to catch that show, it will be tonight 7 p.m. Central live on YouTube and X. or you can catch a replay on YouTube whenever you want. Other times we're going to have real talk, real talk is just five to 20 minutes and giving you some real talk. And 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 take control of their life. You're unfamiliar with 75 hard is the initial phase of the live hard program, which is the world's most famous mental transformation program. ever and happens to be free. You can get that at episode 208 on the audio feed, the entire Live Hard program for free at episode 208 on the audio feed. There's also a book.

The book is called The Book on Mental Toughness. You can get that book at Andy Foreslla.com. It covers the entire Live Hard program plus a whole bunch of other chapters on mental toughness, why it's important, how to utilize it to create your best self. Again, you get that Andy Priscilla.com. A lot of you guys been asking about the MFCEO project,

MSEO project is now hosted on the operator standard app. And that is closed right now because we have a MVP group, minimal viable product group testing the app and working out all the kinks and shit. So that will be available to the public shortly. So for those of you guys asking. Now, we do something different on the show that most shows don't do. We don't run ads on the show. We're the biggest show in the world doesn't run ads.

And we have a trade that we like to make. So instead of us like filling you with a bunch of shit regarding advertisements, we just ask very simply, man, you help us share the show. So if you listen to the show, it makes you think, it makes you laugh, it gives you a new perspective. If you enjoy it, if you think it needs to be heard, it's a message we're sharing. Do us a favor and don't be a ho. Share the show.

All right. Yeah, I got yell at them more. Yeah. What's up? Make them scared, you know what I'm saying? What's going on with you, Don? Nothing. Yeah.

Yeah, another beautiful day. Just doing a thing. Yep. Thing is being done. every day you gotta do that thing though yeah yeah everything's good though man I got a nice day

we're in that bipolar phase man fucking 98 yesterday or whatever today it's like 50 bro yeah it's suck what is that dude I don't know I'll tell you this though I'm sick of it yeah

all right you gonna write a letter yep I don't know to who I'm probably right I'm gonna write the governor fucking fix this stuff yeah tell me you some of that weather control that's right man like dude it was like a hundred degrees when we walked out last night

Yeah. At like, what, 10 o'clock, right? Yeah. Now it's like, I can't stand it.

Bro, by midnight, it was like fucking 45. Yeah. I'm tired of it, dude. Yeah, it was crazy.

I'm tired of it, bro. I'm over it. In fact, no, no. No, no.

No, man, all is good, dude. It's, uh, it's for Monday. We got Q&AF lined up. Um,

here to get people starting their week off on the right foot. So, uh, I got three good ones for you. All right. Let's get it. Guys, Andy question number one. Andy,

Andy, I appreciate you more than you know. I've been able to create a better life for myself, my family, my people, all because of your free game that you've been putting out here. A lot of us are listening, brother, so thank you for that. Problem is, I used to have this chip on my shoulder. I wanted to prove people wrong. Prove myself right. Prove I wasn't average.

And now life is good. I'm not struggling like I was. And I feel, and I can feel that chip fading. If you lose the anger or the edge that used to drive you, what replaces it? That's a great question, dude. You know, it's very easy for us to have that chip on our shoulder when we're just starting out. It's very easy for us to collect all the negativity when we're just starting out because you don't have anything to show. Nobody actually believes in you.

They say they believe in you, but you know they don't. don't. And there's all these like dark, doubtful emotions that sort of come from that time. And if you don't know how to use them properly, they will crush you. So in the beginning, it's very easy to collect the negativity and then, you know, put it up here on your shoulder, draw from it when you need to push yourself down the track. When you do get to a point where you are in a place of a little more comfort and you've proven yourself a little bit and people are no longer doubting you the same way that they did and they're not they're not like you know putting that same negativity into your mind the way that they used to uh it can be hard to operate from a place of negativity

when you're in that position okay and we call you know the dark energy not not negativity so speak but just dark energy right like you're not doing it because you know, I want to go run through the field of roses. I want to shove it down motherfucker's throats until they fucking die. Okay. That's easy to have when nobody believes in you. Yeah. Okay.

But once you're proven and once you've stepped out of that, there's a transition that naturally occurs with most high achievers. And they go from this place of letting the dark energy to drive them to this place of they're more confident in themselves. and that shit no longer works. And so what you have to do at that perk, by the way, it doesn't no longer work. You just don't have as much of it or the same amount of it.

But if you want to get some more, I'm going to tell you how, all right? So when you get to this point in time, it's very important that you realize the way to really move down past that point is to expand your purpose and mission from where it was, all right? A lot of businesses come and go because they have this initial vision of where they're trying to be. All right. And once they hit that first vision and they get to that spot and they haven't like thought about a bigger mission or a bigger path to take, it's very dangerous. Because what happens is is people get in a place where they're comfortable.

They get complacent. They stop doing the things. They stop being driven. They stop pushing themselves down the trap. And you slow down. and everybody else is still running full speed, and you end up losing that way. This is why I tell people all the time,

you know, people that win once are actually more susceptible to losing and not regaining it than the person who's never won at all. Because the person who's won once, a couple things happen. One, they start to believe it's them. They believe, okay, I'm gifted, I'm doing this.

Instead of saying, I am the result of the actions that I took, okay? Two, they get to a place where, you know, they don't feel like they have anything else to prove. Okay. So what happens then? They stop getting better. They stop learning. They stop moving forward. And it ends up crushing them, dude.

So you have to understand that at some point in time, you have to combine this initial, you know, fuck you with a bigger purpose and a bigger mission and a bigger goal. and when that goal expands and then you start talking about it, you say, I'm going to do this and this and this now. Well, the same process repeats itself as when you first started out. Okay. Everybody will start saying the same negative shit, but they'll say it in a different way. They'll say things like, man, are you sure? You know, you got something good going on.

You don't want to fuck that up, you know? Like they'll start to talk the same way and kind of put the same things. And that will give you more of the negative, which allows you to utilize it again. So when you're in this spot that you're in, you've got to be very careful, okay? You don't want to sit there and get comfortable and feel complacent. The time now is to think about, okay, I'm this age, which I'm assuming they're younger, I've got all this life in front of me. What am I going to do with this business from here to there, all right?

And on top of that, what would I do if I didn't have the business? what would my life look like? What do I want it to be? And you kind of have to reassess where you are and what you are. And by the way, you might get to be 60 and you might say, well, my goals have changed and my life perspective has changed. And I would like to do these things. And that's okay.

But if you stay still and you get in the spot of being comfortable, you are setting yourself up to get killed. And a lot of people who have won once because they think that it's them, they think that like they could just catch it right back anytime they want right they think they can just flip the switch well i did it once so i could do it again dude you've forgotten how hard it was to get the ball moving okay an object in motion tends to stay in motion all right you want to keep the fucking the motion moving so that it doesn't stall out and then you end up trying to restart this shit and you know do what you had to do in the very beginning of what what you were doing anyway all right so The short answer is this.

Expand your vision, expand your goals, expand what you're trying to do from this point forward. Make it big so that you can have a big mountain to climb, which will give you lots of purpose and lots of drive. Think about the people that are going to benefit from that. Think about the obligations you have. Think about all these things. And then once you form that plan, make the plan public, hey, we're going to do all this shit and let everybody talk shit. And now you've got what you need it again. You've got the purpose and the fuel.

Yeah. Yeah, hell yeah. Dude, I want to ask you this, and I feel like I know what you're going to say, but I feel like this needs to be said for all those people out there that might be assuming that they're going to get to a place and the negative energy, we'll just no more. They'll have no more of it. They don't have to worry about that no more. Why would you not want it?

Well, I mean, I guess the question, like, will it, does it ever go away? No. But why would you, why would you, if you had a fucking high octane, you know, race car and you're driving down the road and, you know, don't you want to put gas in the car? You know what I'm saying? You're going to run out of gas at some point. So, you know, I think it's a misconception amongst people. I think people, you know, they don't realize that all the paths you choose, every single path that you choose, no matter what you decide to do, no matter where you decide to go, no matter what you think it's doing, no matter how easy you think it's going to make things, all.

All the paths lead to hard. All of them. All of them. And once you understand that, your perspective changes. Now it becomes what kind of hard would I like to have in my life? Okay. Would I like to have hard with a bunch of money? Or would I like to have hard and no money?

Okay. Because it's going to be fucking hard either way. So it's what hard do you want? And you have to realize, you know, I think a big eye opener for people is for them to sit down and realize, okay, man. Here's what I want to do, but this is going to be hard. And realizing that if you don't become that, it's going to be hard too. And no matter what you choose, no matter.

And what's cool. What's crazy about this is that the more you try to make it easy, the harder it gets. Okay. That's the fucking part that people miss. So every decision that you make in your life leads to hard. They're just different kinds of hard. Okay. So there's no escape.

There's no easy. There's no, there's no easy street. There's no beach with the coronas and you just sit on it and chill up. That shit is fucking bullshit. Okay. Every choice you make leads to hard every single one. And if you grasp that and accept that, then you have a much easier time going after the things that you actually want.

You see what I'm saying? Yeah, bro. So being broke is just as hard. Fucking right, dude. I said that like 15 years ago on a meme and it's been hijacked by the internet. I made a meme that went viral like 15 years ago about choosing your heart. Okay. Being successful is hard as fuck.

Being broke is also hard as fuck. Choose your hard. That was something like that. And now like everybody's hijacked it to where it's like their thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like putting the shopping carts back and all this other fucking shit. But that's fine. That's what I do.

I fucking set the trends. So it's fine. Yeah. But the point is that it's true. Okay. you the easier you're trying to make your life the harder it's going to be okay and if you just accept the heart up front the easier it's going to be once you're down the path it's only ease of it there there there it's a myth yeah it's a myth it's like uh it's like what's that fucking

planet and avatar you know what I'm saying like it's it's made up place it's not a real thing that's Wakanda for me but yeah yeah okay well yeah Wakanda like you ain't going to what kind of. It doesn't. It's a fucking fairy tale. Like this easy life shit that is like people, everybody's chasing for one reason or another. It doesn't exist. It's a myth. It's a mythical thing. Tell me a decision that you've made in your life that wasn't hard that was worthwhile. Tell me a decision that you made that you thought was easy that ended up, that didn't end up making things harder. All right? Everything leads to hard. So you have to equip yourself to become the kind of person that can tolerate hard things. This is why it's important to build your mental

toughness. This is what Live Hard and 75 are created to do. They were created to create the skill set, not the traits, the skill set of grit, fortitude, self-esteem, self-confidence, perseverance, discipline, mental toughness. These are things that you have to invest in to create in yourself. The biggest lie that's told about these qualities is that people are born with them. They are never born with them. They are cultivated through habitual actions taken over the course of time that create a resiliency inside of someone to be able to handle the hard things. If we really think about what all of you listening and watching what your problem is, your problem isn't that you don't know what to do. You know what to fucking do. Everybody knows

what to do. We live in an era where you could figure out what to do in three seconds. That's not your problem. Your problem is you can't fucking do it. So you go. You got to got to develop the ability through those skills to be able to adhere to a plan. And when you can adhere to a plan, no matter what that plan is, it actually makes you limitless on what you can create. So you have to understand that everything that you're trying to do starts with these skill sets, discipline, mental toughness, grit, fortitude, perseverance, self-esteem, self-confidence, These are the things that create the foundation of successful achievement over the course of one's life. Nobody does it in an easy way.

It's just you have to equip yourself for the fucking hard. That's the point. Okay. Once you do that, once you've built that, yeah, you've got to maintain that. But the truth of the matter is, is that it becomes easy to maintain because you're seeing how much it produces in your life. So when you start to understand, okay, if I do this and this and this, I'm winning and you believe that. Now your light bulbs going off in your head. You're starting to realize, oh, shit, you know what?

I am in control of my life. I am in control of the things that matter. I am in control of the 99.9% of the outcomes. I'm choosing to abandon the responsibility of creating those outcomes by being lazy and not doing what the fuck I'm supposed to do. Amen, man. I love it, dude. I love it, man. Let's hit our next question, guys. Andy, guys, question number two. Hey, Andy, I'm 24 years old. I've noticed that every time I get a little money, I want to

upgrade my life, better clothes, better car, just feel like I'm progressing in general. But at the same time, I've heard you talk about delayed gratification. How did you think about spending money when you were young, did you sacrifice everything to build or did you allow yourself to enjoy some of it along the way? Oh, man. I mean, obviously when I was younger, I was way more irresponsible with money. I mean, that's just like a young person thing, right? Like, you see the thing.

You're like, I got the money. Fuck it. Right. It's a deal. Yeah, it's a deal. Right. Like, that's the thing, man. It's like when you're young, you know, that's just a normal part of growing up, dude,

financial irresponsibility. So like for me to sit here and tell you guys, oh, yeah, I fucking saved every penny and I did, no, I didn't fucking do that. I fucked off a lot. But a lot of that fucking off cost me a long time, cost me a lot of opportunity too. All right. So I think there's a balance to be had there and the balance is this. You want to, you want to touch it. You want to feel it. You want to know what it's like. You want to feel a little bit of the reward, but you don't want to Put yourself in a situation where it's like financially damaging, right? Okay. So and you also don't want to deprive yourself of any of the reward because if you do that,

you get to a place where like, what the fuck am I even doing this for? Okay. So there has to be some sort of reward along the way, right? Depending on where you come from, you know, some people don't come from much. And it's very exciting to have a few bucks to be able to go, you know, Like you have a couple thousand bucks, dude. Like that's a big fucking deal, right? Like I remember what that was like.

And dude, I got to be real. Couldn't tell me shit. Yeah. Yeah. I was bawling, bro. So, um, so I think what I learned to do was I reward myself incrementally in little ways. Okay. I still do this.

I'll give you an example of this right now. So like you guys all know, I'm a huge car guy. All right. and I will straight up buy cars at will. Like if you're leaving me to my own devices, four other cars will show up. You've been there. Like tractors and fucking tanks and. Yeah.

Like DJ will show up at the house. The guys will show up and they'll be like, what the fuck are these two things? I'm like, oh, I fucking. They just came last night. Yeah. It's like fucking Amazon. Look, I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's awesome too, right? Like it wasn't always like that.

So, but now that I can afford anything I want. it takes the fun out of it. It takes the fun out of it. Okay. It's not the same as what it was when I really had to fucking grind to earn that thing. Like my first Lamborghini, bro, was a huge deal for me. Huge deal. I dreamed about it since I was eight years old.

I took my brother. I took my dad. We all went to get it together. It was a huge fucking thing. Now these motherfuckers are getting dropped off in the middle of night. You know what I'm saying? And I'm calling, I'm calling TJ. And I'm like, hey, man, can you meet this dude and drive

to thick up the house. Like, so it changes. It's different. It's different. So you have to realize that you've got to reward yourself. The dopamine that comes from the reward doesn't necessarily have to be like this expensive thing, this massively expensive thing.

So like for me, dude, like when I wasn't, you know, bawling out, you know, I was making a little money, okay, but I wasn't like being able to buy cars and shit, right? I'd buy dirt bikes. or I'd buy a fucking four-wheeler or I'd get a I get a cool you know something that was like cool and I really enjoyed but it wasn't like putting me in this spot and that was after a goal was met for yes that's a whole thing so like I do I don't buy anything for myself ever now where I don't have a reason for it so I make up little games you know like hey if I get to this I'll buy this. If I get to that, I'll buy this. It's not always monetary, dude. Sometimes it's

other things. I think it's a balance. And I think it's what's more valuable than even rewarding yourself. Like, by the way, that reward might be a new pair of Nike's. It might be a nice dinner. It might be a nice dinner. Yeah. And at some point in time, it was that for me. Yeah. Okay. So don't take like, oh, I got to go out and spend five grand on a this. No, it could be 200 bucks. It could be 100 bucks. It could be whatever, man. Whatever's relevant to where you are. been there, bro. I've been to the exact same spot you guys are at. Like, I've been, you can't get any worse than where it was. So I know what the fuck I'm talking about. Like, you know, it doesn't have to be this thing. Like, as you progress, the rewards get bigger. But, um, I think the more

important thing for people is to get themselves in a situation to, to, to taste the success. And what I mean by that, I used to do this thing called window shopping. All right. And what I did, because I didn't really know any successful people, bro. Like, I knew two dudes growing up over my first 15 years in business that had like cool shit, right? It was like not the, the internet wasn't like the way it is now. Like, you know, where everybody's renting all their shit and faking all this bullshit. The, um, so like what I would do is I would do things like I would go to the car dealership and like walk around and look at all the exotic cars, right? or I would drive up and down the streets of the streets that I would like to live on.

Funny enough, my last two houses were houses that I actually had dreamed about living in when I was in my teenage years. We'll go to and see. Yeah, I would literally drive up the street and be like, I'm going to live on this fucking street one day. Yeah. Right. So I think that's more important than the buying of the thing.

But it's okay to buy some shit once in a while. You just don't want to fucking do it to the point where it like pulls back your ability to move forward in the business. And that's where people make the mistake. And I made a mistake before, too. I made the mistake before where we started making a lot of money. I started spending a lot of money and that money could have been used for other things. And it cost me time. And I had to learn that the hard way. So you guys have to understand like the way I'm telling you now is not the way I did it when I was fucking 25, but I'm telling you as somebody who is not 25 and been doing this for a long time, that's the way I would have done it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, there's something

about it, dude. You know, we talk about this stuff all the time together. And it's like, you know, one of the things that I always found super helpful that you've told me was like, sometimes it's okay to kind of be a little uncomfortable. Yeah, absolutely. Just to keep fucking trading. Absolutely. You know what I'm saying? That's a real thing. How important that is. That's a real thing. Yeah. That's a real thing. Just to break up that complacency. I hate, I don't like talking about this. People hear it the wrong way. It's like when I talk about luck. Yeah. Okay. I don't. I don't like to talk about luck because when I talk about it, the first thing that people will

fucking say is it will see. There it is. Fucking lucky. See? Lucky. I'm not lucky. That's right. Right.

You're not lucky. Like this first thing they'll fucking say and think. Is there luck? Yeah. There's shit that happens that you're like, holy fuck. I can't believe it happened. But you can only capitalize it on it if you're ready. Okay.

You got to be in motion, right? The luck doesn't happen when you're not in motion. So. So when we talk about like this idea of stretching yourself a little bit financially, that's a really strong, good thing for some people. Some people have the ability to do that. Some people, because what happens is if they get like too much cash, they start to get real lazy. They start, they don't want to get out of bed.

They don't want to fucking get up and do shit. And that's why I think it's always good to deploy your cash into things that are making money and bringing your cash down to a point where you're like, fuck, I need some more cash, right? Because it keeps you moving. So I think it's a good idea to stretch yourself a little bit. But you guys who are young, you need to understand an emphasis on a little bit. All right. You don't put yourself in a fucking where it's going to be a real problem. But you can ride that line of where you're uncomfortable. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like for me, like I have a set amount of cash that I like to have, right? And if I get below that point, I'm like, all right,

I act like it's zero. I act like it's fucking, that's my zero. That's your new baseline. That's my zero. If I go below that, which is an absurd amount of money still, because like I want to, I want to make sure I'm secure, right? Yeah. But if I go below that, bro, I'll run in here. I'll be running around. I'm fucking broke. And you guys have all seen it. You know, so it's a good way to, It's a good way to create urgency in yourself by mentally training yourself to have that discipline around that. Yeah. I love that, dude.

Yeah, it's a, it's a real thing. You're going to be very careful with it. Bro, so many people hear that and they're like, all right, cool. I go out. Let's go get the Lambo. Yeah. That's not what I'm saying. Get the Lambo.

That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, get the Lambo if it's going to improve your quality of life. And it doesn't put you in a fucking serious bind. Okay. And that's the other thing. Remember this. You're going to be fucking dead.

Okay? Like you're going to fucking die. All right. I've been fortunate enough that I was kind of a little irresponsible that I did a lot of really cool shit. You know what I mean? I'm not sorry about those experiences, but I never let it fucking handicapped me. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So you got to do things that you enjoy. Like a lot of people don't like for cars, right? Like they don't understand the car thing. They think it's about like showing off on Instagram. They don't get it, dude. Like, first of all, that's a, I spend so, how much time do we spend in our cars? Quite a bit of our life, right? Yeah.

Like the average person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. When you, wouldn't you rather spend that time as something that you felt good about and you enjoyed and that you liked? But AC smells different. I'm just saying. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, right. I'm just saying, dude. That's some real shit. Yeah. It's not about the stuff. It's about the quality of life that the stuff creates and the experiences that it creates and the memories that it creates. And there's a value to that. And that value is not always dollar and cents.

You know what I mean? It's not always, it doesn't always make sense. This gets into the conversation that we talk about like, you know, logical buying versus emotional buying. Yeah. All right. A lot of people are programmed to think that emotional buying is a bad thing. It's actually not a bad thing. There are certain things that you should be emotional about when you buy.

Like, do you really love your house? You're going to live your fucking house. You're going to live in a house. You've got to spend all kinds of time there. I used to never be this way, by the way. I was the guy who did not give a fuck about his house. I loved cars. I didn't care.

You sleep in a fucking car. I didn't care. Yeah. When I got my house I live in now, I got it. It made sense to me because the house is so fucking awesome. and it's such a cool thing to come home and like just see the grounds and see everything. And like, I'm, that's an, that was an emotional purchase for me. Because like, dude, here in St. Louis, you know, we don't have $100 million houses, right?

Like that's not a thing. No. So the amount of money that I've put into my house, I'll never get back. I'll never get back. Okay. I'll probably lose. If I sell my house, I'll probably lose $10 million. But I knew that when I built the shit because that's the quality of my life.

Yeah. So I said, okay, if I'm going to live here for X amount of years, am I willing to pay this much money for this experience? Yes. Yes, I am. Right. Yeah. Right.

So that's that there are certain things in life that are emotionally okay if you're aware of the actual logical financial sense, right? So you can evaluate all the metrics and all the data. And then you could say, all right, but I really want it. Okay. Do it. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

But you can't be emotional about everything you buy. It's about things that are going to add to the quality of your life. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Would you say that's important? Because like dudes, like you see this shit. And this is totally untrue. But like people get on the, you know, they'll see a post of one of my cars or something.

They'll be like, ah, fucking stupid. You know, there's just depreciating asset. Well, first of all, dumbass. not my cars okay my cars go up in value he lost 50% when you put up a lot no yeah so that's

that's ideally like if you can make an emotional decision an emotional buy and it fucking goes up now you're really making smart decisions yeah all right yeah yeah would you would you say too because I feel like this is important on the sense of like you know having those things that increase the quality

of life sometimes that's all you got when shit is going crazy when shit's hitting the fucking fan when it's hard out there. Sometimes that's all you got. You know what I'm saying? You might have had a shit day, but, you know, at least my house is all right. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? It's like, that's the importance of having those material goals, I guess, people will call them. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, man. It's your life. Yeah. You know, you just got to, you got to think, like, you can't think like a, like a poor person, bro.

Yeah. You know. That's fucking real. Yeah. A poor person talks about every logical financial decision from a financial aspect and then makes every single buying decision on emotion. every single one. That's what they do.

So they could talk all this shit, but they don't practice it in real life. No. And that's why they stay poor. I love it, dude. We got one more for you, Doc. Let's bring on home. We got a question number three, guys.

Andy, I started my business because I believed in the work. Now, I spend most of my time selling, negotiating, marketing, and dealing with people. It feels like I don't actually get to do the things. thing I'm good at anymore. Is that just what growth requires or is there a smarter way to structure this? To say what he does. Uh,

does not. All right. Okay. So you got to understand something. Whatever your skill set is, let's say you're a, a woodworker and you're fucking the most amazing woodworker on the fucking planet. And you want to turn this woodworking into,

a business. Obviously, you have a great product and obviously you're skilled at it. Once you start to turn something that you really love into a business, for at least temporarily, it will pull you away from that craft. Okay. And you'll have to learn this whole new set of skills, which is business. A lot of doctors, a lot of lawyers fail to understand this because they go to school for so long, their egos are so fucking inflated that they think they know how to do everything and that's why you see them open a practice and go out of business

or open a law office go out of business because they yeah they might be great at being a doctor at the craft they might be great at being a lawyer they're fucking terrible at running business and if we're being honest dude I'm gonna be totally honest doctors are the worst business people

I've ever fucking met yeah because their egos are so fucking big they won't fucking listen to anything and they think they know everything I went to so-and-so for 12 years. I don't give a fuck. They gave me these letters, man. You can't sell a motherfucking thing.

Yeah. Okay. So you got to understand. These are two different skills. Your craft and the skill of business are two different things. And if you want to actually turn this into a business, you're going to have to pull away. And instead of working in the business, you're going to have to work on the business until you are able to learn how to operate a business to the point where you can bring people in to help you

with that process. And as you bring skill people in, and as you build a culture, and as you build systems and start to scale, which by the way, this doesn't happen overnight either, okay? Then you could go back sometimes and do what you do, right? A really good example of this is my buddy Jesse James. Okay. So Jesse James, you guys know him. He did Monster Garage, West Coast choppers. You guys have seen his apparel. He sold more apparel than most apparel companies. but Jesse is a craftsman. Yeah. He's a fucking artist.

And I don't know anybody that loves his work more than Jesse. Yeah. Okay? He loves it. And he loves it for a lot of different reasons. It's not just because he loves to do the thing. He understands the value of the work for it does for your mental. Your,

your, you guys should read his book. He's got a fucking awesome book. It's on Amazon. But when he first started out, he's building fucking bikes. Okay, then he started having to sell bikes. So he had to create a business.

Now he has a whole team that helps him run the business. And guess what he gets to do? He gets to go build bikes. And he builds the sickest fucking shit in the world. Bikes and guns. Bro, Jesse's got his own shop. He walks in there in the morning. He fucking works.

He does what he's doing. And he gets to do what he loves. But that didn't happen in one day. You know, he had to go through that transition of, I'm building, I love this, so I'm building a business around this, to the business is very, well run to back to doing what it is that he does that drives the brand. You see what I'm saying?

What did this look like for you? Um, well, you know, funny enough, like this is appropriate for me too. Uh, you know, when I was, when we first started, we started in retail stores, I worked the counter. Okay. And I fucking loved it. I loved working the counter of the retail store. I love talking to different people, you know, 40, 50 times a day. Like, dude, I can't tell you. Like, I get there, nine o'clock. close it, nine o'clock at night, and it would go by like that because I'd be just do, like, I loved it, right? In 2006, when we started to really expand, I couldn't, I couldn't work the counter. And at first, it made me feel really guilty because I was like, fuck, I can't even, these guys,

I wasn't, I was uncomfortable with it. Like, these guys are doing the work and like, they probably think I'm out here fucking off. But dude, without me out here, quote unquote, fucking off, the business can't scale, right? Which means they don't have jobs, which means they don't. can't build careers. All right. So what it looked like for me was I worked the counter. I went over and started building the business. I became, you know, pretty fucking good at operating a business, built multiple businesses. And what I found out was that I actually liked that a lot too. So now that the business runs without my minute by minute input, I'm able to do more of the

things that I like. So for me, like, I may not work in the store anymore, but like, we always have guests here, right? We always have people here that are training. We always have people that are in town. I'll go spend my time talking to them. Right. And I enjoy that. You're able to scratch that age. Yes, for sure. Yeah. So it's, it's a little bit different for me because I was never able to like go back to the fucking store counter to work. But I do it in a different way now. And, um, and to be real, dude, like, I'm so conditioned to the like, crap. And I'm so conditioned to the like, of running companies now that like I couldn't do without that at this point. You know what I mean?

I'm not a craftsman though. Yeah. I'm not a fucking I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a I'm not that kind of a person. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. So the the art of building companies is that's my craft. Yeah.

That's what I love. That's what I love now. Now would you say most people that are, you know, maybe going through that transition phase and are hesitant from having a transition from in to on? What do you think that that fear or that hesitation comes from? Well, they, was it there for you, originally?

Like when you were making it, like, oh, yeah. You said it like, no, yeah, I got to fucking. Well, not only that, dude, I think I'm fucking off. It's scary. Yeah. Okay, you don't know what the fuck you're doing. You never ran a company before. You don't know what, you don't know what all these things mean.

You don't know any of this shit. It's scary. I think the reason people hesitate is because they don't know what they, what they don't know. Yeah. Right. And it's uncomfortable to do things you don't know. So a lot of businesses will stay a one man or two man operation forever because they never break out of that fear.

to go out and scale it out, right? This happened to me too. You know, when we had our first store, it took us five years to open our second store. The reason that we wouldn't open the second store was because we didn't know how to run a two-store operation. We didn't have the systems. We didn't even know what systems were.

We didn't fucking know anything. You know how we learned it by just doing it? Open it up the second store. And then we figured it out. And, dude, we thought about doing that like our second or third year in, but it took us five years to like get a, over the fear of doing it. So yeah, it's scary. And you're vulnerable and you're like, oh, man, I know how to do this, but I don't really know shit about this. And I can't trust any. You're right.

You can't. That's why you got to learn it. All right. And then when you become an expert at that, now you're able to know all of this shit and you're equipped to be able to have people that work in there that are competent so that they're not just lying to you about all the bullshit that you don't know. Yeah. Right? You got to know your shit. So, yeah, that's a, The point of the question is that's a natural progression that all people make. Typically, when especially whatever they're doing is some sort of craft. And by craft, I mean like has a creative artistic aspect to it. Right.

That's a very hard transition for people to make. Or the trades fields. Yeah. A lot of people just start a business and they sell a widget and they don't ever go through this process. They're just running the business. Yeah. So, but for somebody like this.

Yeah, bro, it's a natural progression. It's natural to be scared. It's natural to hesitate. But just realize that if you don't do it, you're never going to get what you want. You accept that. Yeah. You need to think what your life is going to look like if you don't do it. You can't get fixated on if I do this and this and this and this and this and this and who gives

a fuck. All that shit's going to happen, dude. all the bad shit that you think is going to happen, it's going to happen. And guess what? It isn't that big of a fucking deal, right? There's very few mistakes that you make in business that will actually put you out of business. So like, you think you're the only one ever that, like, did this? Yeah.

You know, it's like when women have children, right? Like, and they have a kid. And all of a sudden, like, like, everybody in the world's talking, like, it's the only thing, you're the only person who ever did it. It's like, dude, people have been having kids for millions of years. That's right. How'd you think you got here? Yeah, you're going to be fine.

You're going to be fine. Yeah. It's okay. You know, like people who have fucking kids in caves, bro. They turn out all right. You know, like you're going to be all right. It's the same in business. Like you, you are going to be all right, man.

This isn't that fucking hard. Like, it's hard, but it's not like something you can't do. you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, plus you might get into the on the business shit and love that. That's what happened to me. Yeah. That's what happened to me.

Yeah. So I just think it's a natural progression. That's a natural fear. And you need to start analyzing, okay, if I stay paralyzed, what's my life going to look like? And you're going to know the answer right away. And that's usually where I'll get you to move. Stop thinking about like, you know, if I do this, just no. What if you don't?

What if you don't? Okay. That's how you need to be thinking about it. I love it, dude. I love it, man. Guys, Andy, that was three. Yep. All right, guys, we will see you tonight.

CTI Live, 7 o'clock, live on YouTube and X. And other than that, don't be a ho. Show the show. Went from sleeping on the flow. Now my jury box froze. Fuck a bull. Fuck a stole. Counted millions in a cold.

Bad bitch, booted swow. Got her own bang. Just a no. Headshot case closed.