REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 146. Q&AF: Dealing With Dissatisfied Customers, Sharing Your Teachings & Starting Your Business Late

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

In today’s Internet era, you can produce the results in 2 years what used to take 20 years. On today’s Q&AF episode, Andy answers your questions about how to handle disgruntled customers to turn the situation around, when to start sharing your teachings in a credible way and why you should never think you are too late in the game.

What is up guys? This is the show. Oh shit, I fucked it up. Oh fuck! Oh dude, I fucked it up. Fuck, there you go. But none of you guys took the bet, so fuck off. What is up guys?

It's Andy Purcell and this is the show for the realest. Say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness, and delusions of modern society and welcome to motherfucking reality. We got it in there. We got it. It's fine. You know what? We got it in there.

Sometimes you're going to stumble. That's it. You got to keep moving. Hey, what do we got? We got Q and AF today. That's it. You got to keep moving. Hey, what do we got? We got Q and AF today. That's the deal. I want to remind you before we get started that we don't run ads on the show

and we don't run ads for the show. This is a straight value exchange. If it's good, share it. Talk about it. If it made you think, share it. Talk about it. If you learned something, if it made you laugh,

if it gave you a new perspective, if you think it's worth sharing, help us out. If we suck, then it you think it's worth sharing, help us out. If we suck, then it is what it is. Don't help us. All right. I love you guys. And I appreciate that we've been able to keep this show at the top of the charts for many, many years based off the straight up value exchange deal that we do. I think it's the way to do things. I think it's the right way to do things. And that's how we do it. And it only works because you guys share the good shit. So I appreciate you guys. DJ, what we got today? Hey, man, you guys know how it goes. We've got

three questions for Andy. As always, email your questions in, guys, to askandyatandyforsella.com. But with that being said, we got three questions. Let's knock them out. All right. First question. All right. And this is. First question. All right. And this is, so this question, I saw this when it's kind of like, like I've always wondered about this, right? And I'm sure a lot of people have. What's your opinion? So do you believe in the saying that, you know, the customer is always right, right?

Like how do you handle disgruntled customers, right? So this one person that sent this in, they had a bad, a customer had a bad experience. And even though their complaint was completely unfounded right you know they still made it right but that customer still bad mouth the company and still does it to this day right like how do you handle disgruntled customers our customers always right or are they sometimes assholes look man sometimes people just are not good people okay sometimes people don't take into consideration the difficulty of running

a business. Sometime, you know, I saw a meme the other day that, that said, uh, you know, McDonald's can mess up your order literally a thousand times your lifetime. You keep going back, but a small business owner or medium sized business owner messes up and you make it your mission to destroy them. And I was like, damn dude, that's so true in society these days, you know? And I think, I think there's two sides, you know, there's obviously always, you know, two sides to the story, right? I think as a business owner, you need to do what you can to make things right with customers, right? I look at people, customers who are upset with me as an opportunity. I look at it as an opportunity

for dialogue, an opportunity for dialogue, an opportunity to improve, to see where we fucked up and how we can make it better. I do not look at it as a negative thing. I actually value their feedback and I use it to get better. And I think that solves 99% of the problems. If you're a business owner and you're running a company, no matter what size, and you are in good faith, genuinely trying to serve the customer and you genuinely try to solve the issue that they had, take responsibility for the issue and make it better. Things are going to usually work out. Most of the people who complain will also sing your praises when you correct the problem. So they're vocal people by nature.

And so I think understanding that and seeing the opportunity in it makes dealing with these situations a little bit easier to deal with because you know that if you can do the right thing, they're going to do the right thing on you. And I found that to be the case. Very few times, I mean, has it happened? Sure. But I'm talking very, very, very, very few times. I mean, has it happened? Sure. But I'm talking very, very, very, very few times has a situation come up that we weren't able to rectify in everything that we could do to the point where we came to a good place afterwards. Most people are good people. Most people understand. Most people just want to be heard and acknowledged and they want their problem fixed. And a big reason that people

come at companies so hard is because so many companies will only respond to people that come at them that hard, right? They try to skimp on customer service, customer experience, valuing the customer in a genuine way. They try to pretend all those things that spend the least amount of resources, the least amount of money. They put their lowest paid people there and they don't really give a fuck. And customers know that. You can tell that. Yeah, bro. It's like when you call the bank and you got to stay on hold for an hour and a half and you start screaming in the fucking phone like, bro. So that's become everybody's automatic default. And we have to understand that as business owners that usually when people come at you really hard, they're coming at you not

because of you, but because of their past experiences dealing with other companies. They're conditioned. They don't give a fuck about them. So give a fuck. And you will actually see these people, when you actually address it, they'll say, holy shit, dude, I can't believe you guys actually cared. Like they're blown away. So I see it as an opportunity to do the right thing, to create positive word of mouth. And, you know, hopefully that customer will become an advocate and you could salvage the relationship because that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to have a relationship, not a transaction, but a relationship. And the other side is, yes, you're going to have people who, dude, I honestly, man, like I, I, I, I can't think of anybody off the top of my head

that has given us a chance to correct the feedback that has still hated us afterwards. Now I'm sure there's some out there and that's why I say, I'm sure there's some out there, but the truth is man um you know we we had that lady that one day remember like like we had a lady leave this really really bad review and um i was a prime example yeah yeah right and she was like fuck you like super fucking angry and at the end she was like i want my five bucks back from your app so i messaged the team and i'm like hey guys uh, she's pretty upset. You know, can you, we track her down and give her five bucks back, you know? And then we did. Right. And she, she couldn't believe that we tracked her down off of this

random podcast platform to her transaction and offered to give her the refund. And that was actually enough to open up a dialogue to where there was just a miscommunication on some things. We solved it. And she actually ended up inviting us out to her. At the end of her conversation, it was like, hey, I'm here. This is where I work. And if you're ever in town, please stop by. I love to meet you guys. So I think you got to keep that in mind. Most people are directing their anger at you because of the shit they've dealt with either that day or over the course of being alive, right? Like how many companies can you call and get a real human on the phone right now? As soon as an answer.

Yeah, right. I mean, we're one of them, but I mean, there's not that many. So of course we're going to deal, we're kind of cleaning up with everybody's shit. But if you're making a genuine effort and you make a genuine effort to solve that person's problems, nine, 9.9 times out of 10, it's going to become a positive for you. If you're doing it from a good place and not trying to manipulate them, you know, so that would be my advice on how to view those things. That's awesome.

That's awesome. I've always, I've always wondered about that. Cool. We're one for one right there, guys. All right. Question number two. Now this one's a little complicated.

I'm going to try to make it make sense as best as possible. The question basically is at what point would you say that I'm qualified to teach and share my experiences

of what I've learned, right? So the background is, you know, this person, let's say they, you know, they've been on their success

journey for a couple of years. They've experienced a lot of wins. They built careers for a few people and they truly believe that they reached a level where their opinion and their knowledge base is valuable. Right. Right. So, so how does, you know, and especially in today's era where everybody's a fucking expert on business, everybody's an expert on success and winning, but in your professional expert opinion, right? Like what makes somebody qualified to truly, to truly be listened to, like to truly, you know, learn from? Well, look, man, first off, I think you can learn from anybody, even if it's learning what not to do. You know, the, the, the, the person that's homeless on the street, you could probably learn a whole lot about how not

to fuck your life up by listening to what they did. You know what I'm saying? So first of all, second of all, you're always going to feel unqualified to teach, right? It's just the natural order of how we work. There's a very common psychological concept called imposter syndrome that most people suffer from. And they go through when they're trying to figure out if they're qualified to actually do what they think they should be doing. And, you know, we all have it. I have it. Everybody has it at some level of degree. And they go through, it comes and goes. And so I think the thing to remember is when you're thinking about, you know, teaching other people, there's a lot of people out

there that haven't done what you've done. And if you really have made money and you really have developed some success in an actual business, you know, you probably have some good things to offer. The problem with the whole thing is that we have this, we have the majority amount of these quote unquote coaches out there who have never done anything real except coach, right? They pretend to be very knowledgeable. It's easy to repeat the shit Gary Vee says, or what I say, or what other people say. It's easy to repeat that shit and pretend like, and you know what, if you're good enough, you could probably sound like you actually know it. But the truth is when it comes down to the nitty gritty, those people aren't going to know what the fuck to do. And so where I'm, where I have a problem is, is when people present themselves

as if they run a real business when their business is only coaching and all they do is collect people's money and tell them what to do. You know what I'm saying? Like the guys I roll with, those guys are all real entrepreneurs, you know? And yeah, some of them have their coaching part of their business, but I like that because they're actually doing it. They're in the game. They're learning things as they go with their company that they're able to then share with their people. And, you know, that's why it's important to do your due diligence when looking for a coach. And look, dude, I'm not knocking people that want to be coaches and shit. Like, dude, that's a cool thing, right? Like you're 20 years old, 22, you want to coach people and shit.

Look, motherfucker, go out and do something first. Build something. Be the student for a while. Because when you're the student for a while and you build something that's truly credible, that everybody can see and everybody can get online and order and see how you do business, just like they do with me. I get tested every day. Hey, are you really what you say you are? And they, every day my team backs that shit up, which I'm very thankful for, but I've built some shit and we've built some shit and my friends have built shit. And, you know, learning from someone who's just a coach who doesn't do anything else besides bringing money off their YouTube or off their coaching platform or off this. And then they're like, you know, flying around pretending like they're some sort of boss. Those are not the guys. Those are not the people to learn from, you know, and people figure that out. You know, usually by the time people come to Arte with Ed and myself, you know, they've gone through this program or that program or this

program or that program and they're, and they're hesitant. Right. And then they find out the difference when they start learning from people who are actually operating and do, we're not the only ones. There's other great entrepreneurs out there teaching as well. I feel like we're the best, but that's, that's cause it's me. You know what I'm saying? It's Ed and it is what it is. I'm sure everybody else feels like they're the best, you know? So, but yeah, man, I think the main thing to remember here, guys, is that, you know, if you build something real and you've learned some real lessons, you know, and here's another thing. I shared my shit for free for years and years and years and years, eight, nine, 10 years before I ever really got into like coaching. Yeah. Which I still don't even call

myself a coach. I'm more just sharing my experiences. This is what worked for me. Right. Exactly. So, you know, putting that time to give it away for free for a little bit and build your credibility. You know, when I first started telling people, I would get a lot of pushback like, Oh, what makes you qualified? Well, that was a good point. Yeah. But I'm very qualified now. Yeah. Right. So, so you got to pay your dues and you got to pay your time and you know, you'll know when it's time. Good question. I mean, good question. Good answer. Two for two. All right. Finally, rule, uh, question number three. Okay. Am I too old to be young in the game? No.

I don't even know how old they are. Yeah. I'm about to retire. I've been in my career for 30 years. No. There's no age limits today. No. And here's why.

Because what used to take 20 years can now take two years because of the technology difference. What used to take 20 years where you had to build a business to build enough capital and grind it out with no advertising and word of mouth and everything at home before you could advertise on the radio and TV and on billboards and shit, right? Because that was like the big, that's the big point you had before the internet. That was the big point you had to get to. And that took a long time. Right. I couldn't afford to do radio. I couldn't afford to do TV. I couldn't afford to do billboards. So it took me years and years and years and years and years and years and years to build up the cashflow off of that hard grind to get to that point. Now something happened when I got to that point. The internet came around, which was bad and good because I had already crossed the border from medium or small brand to medium brand where I could afford those things. And then the game changed. All right. But that was

great because now I could actually target in and make my advertising much more effective. I could key in on people who were at, I mean, what Facebook and Instagram, you say whatever you want about them, but, and Google, what they've done for small business is literally leveled the playing field and taken the 10 year gap of trying to grind it out to, and made it two years. Okay. So, and you, most of the people that are listening right now have no fucking clue how good they have it because they've grown up with this around them. Dude, you guys are so fucking lucky to even have the shit and you could criticize them all you want, but you're lucky as fuck to have it because now for a small budget, you could target in on people who are qualified already to grow your brand. And if you

do a great job with them, that the ability to accelerate that word of mouth out of that person is unlimited because now, and this is the second part of how lucky you are. Now a person can have a great experience with your brand and snap their fucking fingers and push a button and tell the world about it. That never used to exist. That never existed. So think about this. Back in 2002, a customer came in and saw me and Chris. They had a great experience. For me to get the result on that word of mouth was a two or three year process. And I had to maintain that relationship at that level for two or three years to continue for him to keep talking or her to keep talking about how great we were. So like,

dude, now you have an opportunity to hit a home run on one transaction. And, you know, that's a short sighted way to see it. You should be trying to build a relationship, but you can do such a great job on the first time that these people will allow you to have access to their network just because you cared about them and did a great job. And then, you know, the ability to get the word out is accelerated so much, right? So what that does is that takes an opportunity for someone who might be 60 years old that can't afford to put 20 years in like it used to take. And they can put two years,

it completely changed their life. And at 62 years old, you still got fucking 20, 30 years of good life if you take care of yourself. For sure. Would you say that the same thing could happen on the negative side though too though? Yeah, you can destroy your business just as fast that's the dangerous part and that's what we see a lot of people do yeah right a lot of people they go in

with that old business mindset that transactional mindset of i'm gonna get from this customer as much as i can get and uh i'm not gonna give them in return quite as much as i promised yeah and that will ruin you and sink you as well which do do we see this every day, right? Like we see brands do this shit. People get pissed off and you know, that goes back to the first question, right? Like then now, now, now those two questions tie together, but you have to remember, they only work together if you're in good faith. Like if you're running a company right now and you guys are sitting there scheming about how to get the most from the customer and give the least you are going to lose no matter what the technology is yeah so it's important that you operate in good faith which is um i provide a product or service

that is designed to provide a solution of some sort to this customer my job is to provide that solution to such a great degree that they have no reason to go anywhere else and if you you do that genuinely, even when you piss people off, they'll be able to read between the lines and see that it was a mistake and you'll likely maintain them. Now, if you're the business that we're talking about, where these guys are just trying to hustle and get one over on people, the internet will fucking destroy you before you even get out of the gates. All right. So integrity has never been more important in business than it is right now, ever. That's one of the best things about the internet is it made companies transparent. You know what I'm saying? So you have to have good faith. You have to deliver what you say you're going to deliver. You have to be about it. Whereas in back in the day, they had mail

order ads, right? Like you see these ads on TV and shit. Still see them. But because there was no internet you know you could go on and let's just you know say skate by for a couple of years that's right like you could like a big thing that used to be uh on tv when i was a kid was ginsu knives all right and a lot of people that probably never heard of ginsu but that's because i'm old all right but they will show this motherfucker like cutting through bricks and shit on the commercial and i don't know if the shit cut through bricks or not but you better believe that motherfuckers got that and try to cut through a brick right and when it didn't i bet you they got pissed hell yeah but i

bet they were still able to sell millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of knives because the word of mouth was was uh suppressed right like i could only tell you and you and you guys here don't buy that fucking knife. Hey, that fucking knife is bullshit. But what the internet did was it gave a checks and balances to the consumer, which we have seen the consumer start to abuse. Right. With cancel culture and things like that. But, you know, I think the even playing field is much better now because it forces integrity where you used to not have to have it and you could still make money. And that's why like there's that stereotype that still exists in society where, you know, if you're wealthy or you made a lot of money in business,

you had to have fucked people because for 70 years people did it every day. For sure. Right. And it became part of American culture where like the parents would come home and they say, look at that rich guy. He fucking ginsu knives don't even cut through that fucking brick right like and fuck that guy go for real and they tell their kids that and their kids start thinking well yeah all rich people must be screwing people and the internet completely changed that now are there still people out there that scam the fuck out of people absolutely but those people get exposed they get caught every single time. Their businesses never work long-term. They never become a brand, which is what you guys are

all trying to build here. You're not trying to build a fly by night bullshit. There's no value in that anyway. So, so yeah, man, it's awesome, man. Three for three there, man. Yeah. I'm always going to be three for three, bro. You know why? Cause you're the one that calls it. So yeah, man, uh, the good questions. I'm, I actually liked these it. Hey. So. Yeah, man. Good questions. I actually like these episodes, dude. Short, sweet. Get to the point. Teach some shit.

I do, yeah. I mean. You got anything to bitch about today? Because I feel like bitching a little bit. Well, I mean, fuck. I mean, everybody saw what happened in New York last night at midnight. Did that happen last night or is that happening tonight? No, that happened last night at midnight.

Those people got fired? 70,000. Really? Yeah. You know, dude, I happened last night at midnight. Those people got fired? 70,000. Really? Yeah. You know, dude, I got mixed feelings on that. Yeah. Like, I feel like, you know, and this is going to piss a lot of people the fuck off, but like, what's new?

You know, the thing- Welcome to the Real AM, guys. Yeah. You know, dude, listen, we try to tell y'all, we try to tell you to quit pushing this crazy shit. We try to tell you to stop it when it started. We try to tell you to, hey, wake the fuck up and stand up. And I guess, you know, it fucking sucks. It's wrong. It's not right. I feel terrible for those people. And I'm sure a lot of them did try to speak up and do things that got silenced. But, you know, at some point,

guys, we're going to have to all get together uh besides our differences and say hey uh fuck all of you that are trying to do this shit yeah you know i just realized so they're not done like the next step me and dot was just talking about the next step is teachers now it's gonna go to teachers no it's gonna the next step is gonna be the police yeah and they're gonna fucking replace the police officers with military people dude they're listen this shit is scary as fuck yeah it is and people should be nervous and i i've the only thing that makes me feel okay with where we are right now and me personally is that i've been sounding the motherfucking alarm for since it fucking started and and you know like i see this shit happening and i'm kind of like you know that

emoji i always use when my hands up like guys i you know i i fucking of like, you know, that emoji I always use when my hands are like, guys, you know, I fucking told you, you know, and it's people need to band together. People need to get together. I see it happening. You know, I definitely. Yeah, dude, I see BLM getting together with some with some other groups. I'm not a supporter of the BLM organization. As you guys know, we've talked about this, the ideology of

the Marxists and how they take money and they give it to other people. But like I always said, the actual pure message of Black Lives Matter is a good message. And I think those are the people who are upset about what's going on. It's the purists who are there because they actually believe that black people shouldn't be fucking beat like by the cops and shit which everybody believes so i actually see this as a good opportunity i think we're going to see some people that maybe uh we didn't expect to unite unite to fix this problem and that's exciting to me yeah you know i think it's just interesting too because we were also talking about this uh before we got hot but you know just understanding there there are countless of ways that you can be involved or

stand up to the man right like there's numerous ways you talk about it all the time you can go to your civic meetings you can go to school board meetings but you can also simply walk into a business that has signs posted everywhere and yeah simply not do what those signs are telling you to do is it you know like we were just in civil disobedience yeah and people don't understand what that means that means civil disobedience that doesn't mean violence yeah it means civil disobedience yeah we were just it's no different than when when uh black citizens of this country used to go and sit at the counter that was only for whites yeah it's no different and you know that's that's how this shit has to be handled mass civil disobedience mass not compliance it's the only thing that'll fix it. It's what I've been saying for two fucking years. And hopefully

everybody will figure it the fuck out. Otherwise we can look forward to being like Australia. Yeah. Oh fuck. So that's a whole nother podcast. Yeah. No shit. Well, Hey guys, that's the show. I got to go to our board meeting here. I'm already a little late for it. 21 minutes late to be exact, but I wanted to crank this show out for you guys. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. Share the show, pay the fee, and I'll see you next time.