REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 225. Q&AF: Starting Or Finishing, Technology Taking Over & Creating An Impact

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

In today's episode, Andy answers your questions on what's more important, the start or the finish, whether you should invest in humans or automate the process with technology, and what is something or someone that has contributed to Andy's success.

What is up guys, it's Andy Frisella and this is the show for the realest, say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness and delusions of modern society and welcome motherfucking reality guys today we have q and af okay and this is where you provide the q's and i provide the afs and that's what we're gonna do i like that yeah all right now we do have a fee fee is very simple share the show if you found value in it if it made you laugh made you think if it learned you some stuff all right share the show fuck by that ho in it if it made you laugh made you think if you if it learned you some stuff all right share the show fuck man that hoosier's coming out bro it is what it is see people here don't know what hoosier means it's that's the term for redneck here in missouri right right indiana people don't understand that yeah they use it in a different term it's a

different thing up there yeah so anyway let's learn them yeah we got some good ones for you all right i mean guys as always you can email your questions into ask andy at andyfusela.com and uh with that being said here's question number one andy what's more important the start or the finish so i've been planning and planning to run my play and i just don't feel like it's ready to go just yet but should i go regardless and focus on the finish? So I've been planning and planning to run my play and I just don't feel like it's ready to go just yet, but should I go regardless and focus on the finish or should I focus on the start? I, you know, that's a pretty good question. I think they're equally as important, you know, and again, I think a lot of you guys who are, you know, new on new projects and, you know, new to wanting to create something of your own, um, overthink

things, right. They're both important. Uh, the problem with starting is that most people never do. So in the beginning, the start is the most important, right? Cause if you don't get fucking started, you can't ever get to the finish. Um, but I will say, I think people have the wrong idea about the finish you know people have this idea of entrepreneurship making money etc where they're trying to create a means to an end and you know they visualize themselves at 40 years old or whatever right 50 years old or whatever they

you know sitting on a beach somewhere with a corona like with fucking snoop dogg right fucking my time yeah right so like dude the thing is is like how long are you going to do that for you you go sit on the beach for how long you know like you're going to sit there for a fucking week and you're going to be bored. Right. And so I think people put the wrong emphasis on the end where I think the emphasis really should be. And I'm speaking from my own experience here should be on the process and it should be creating a process that you enjoy, um, that contributes to people that helps not only your customers, but also the people that work for you that are helping build. And so if you could get yourself to a point where you truly enjoy the

process, like for me, dude, I fucking love coming here every day. And people are always like, well, if you sold, you could get billions of dollars. That's true. but what the fuck would i do you know right you know what i'm saying yeah like i love coming here i love uh what we do here um whether it be you know working on any of the companies that i get to work on i love creating i love the people i work with um and so you know the end that i thought that I wanted when I started is not really what I want now because now I can have it. It's within reach. I can make a fucking couple of phone calls and, you know, be wherever the fuck I want

tomorrow. Right. But the truth is, is like that, that's, that, that was how I would become miserable. Right. Because I would remove the entire identity and the entire purpose of my life having to find a new purpose. Right. And so for those of you guys, uh, who are

at that position where you're thinking like, fuck dude, I built this. It's good. My advice would be not to exit it until you have a new purpose already lined up. Um, because I see a lot of people who, who exit and we hear these things all the time, right? The millionaire who committed suicide because he was unhappy. Well, that's because money is only a small part of that happiness. It's purpose. It's the community. It's the people you get to be around. It's the energy.

It's all these things. And I think if people spent more time working on building something that they enjoyed in that regard, they'd be a lot happier and a lot more profit. You wouldn't want to escape that. That's what I'm saying. So like, you know, why would I? And that comes with time,

right? Um, when you're young and you're just wanting to make, and by the way, you know, when I say young, I mean young in the fucking game, right? You could be 40, you could be 50, you could be 60 listening to this and just getting started and that's okay. But when you're young in the game, dude, you know, we think about like, fuck dude, I want to get this place where I can live my dream and shit. Like right now, dude, now dude like you know there's all kinds of things i could do but i don't want to do that you know i'm saying like it's so it's so weird like i was just about to buy this house from florida and and um this is recently and i just came to the realization i'm like when would i go there and how long would realization i'm like when would i go there

and how long would i spend there right why would i go there and like you'd have to copy any fucking thing yeah i'm not there yet to where i want to do that you get what i'm saying and like i do want to do it but i also take into consideration the collateral cost that's going to cost me i don't get to see my friends every day right i don't get to be around people with that energy every day i don't get you know so like you know that's how i'm starting to see my friends every day. I don't get to be around people with that energy every day. I don't get, you know, so like, you know, that's how I'm starting to see things. And that changes as you go, you know, and what you think you want in the start is not exactly what you end up with when you can do those things. So, you know, I would say the long answer, the long short answer to that question is the start because the finish is always going to change. It's going to evolve.

It's going to get bigger. Your vision is going to get bigger. And once you figure out how much you can actually do, the new game becomes doing that. Yeah. Right. So, you know, I never imagined, I never truly imagined in the beginning that we'd be building a company that would one day rival, you know, Under Armour or Nike. And that's what we're doing now you know what i'm saying and like we're not there yet we got a long way to go but we're gonna get there closer than you were yesterday yeah exactly and and so you know i would say get fucking started bro and see where it takes you yeah you know and that's that's what you have to do most

people just don't ever start and then the other thing is is you know make sure you stick with it don't be one of these people that start something new every fucking six months or every two years when you get burned out. The first five or six years are going to be really hard. Nobody's going to believe in you. Nobody's going to want to work with you. There's going to be cooler companies than you that already have traction. You're going to have to eat a lot of shit and people just aren't prepared to do that. You know? So I would get in the mindset of like, all right i'm playing a 30-year game here what do i actually want to what do i actually want to do you see yeah yeah that's fucking awesome yeah any question number two so you you've talked a lot about you know technology and while there's great leaps and bounds that

we've made in fucking technology not all of it can be good, right? But specifically when you're talking about businesses, right? What is your stance on saving money by using automation or spending the money on actual people? Where do you stand on that? Well, there's a number of ways to look at that. You know, I personally, my personal views, I believe in providing jobs. I think it's a moral obligation of a business. I think that technology is becoming so advanced to a point where it's eliminating real jobs. And I think that's by design. I know it's by design after what I observed the last couple of years going on in the world. They want to replace the human element with the technology element and they don't know what to do with the human element.

So what they're trying to do is impose, you know, all this government aid and basically communist type, uh, society onto our society so that people can actually like, you know, their, their, their, their solution is the government will take care of it, right? And that's why you see them shutting down businesses and you see them closing small businesses and making it real hard with these mandates on all these small guys because they know if they put a lot of these people out, they won't be able to get back going. And their plan of replacing human element with technology element will be easier to implement. Yeah. You follow what I'm saying? 100%. All right. So I think we as business owners, American business owners here in this country have

an obligation to resist that and to provide actual careers and jobs. I think that's the right thing to do. Will everybody do it? No. But I think it's going to take a, and people's argument to that is, well, if you don't do it, then they're going to do it and they're going to beat you. But I don't actually believe that. I believe that the culture of America is starting to get really smart and they're starting to wake up to what's happening. They're starting to see the censorship happening on social media.

They're starting to understand how much control they've actually given up. They're starting to see how unethical some of these other companies are that manufacture with like slave labor in China and other places like that. And I think people are willing to support companies who are doing things ethically correct as much as possible, right? Right now, not every single product that we make is American-made, but we're working towards that. We're building cut and sew facility. We're building manufacturing facilities. Another company doing that is Jocko and Pete's company, Origin. These guys are creating American-made goods. And I believe that's the actual trend that is going. That's where I'm betting my money and my livelihood. It's not just me talking out of my ass. I just signed papers on two new buildings, the same size as this building

right across the street for jobs. Okay. So this isn't me just spouting some shit off. I'm putting my money where my fucking mouth is because I believe that the, I believe people in America will support that. I believe that people will pay a little bit more for American made goods and American made jobs because they understand why it's so important, especially after what's going on in the last couple of years. Will there be customers for these companies to automate everything? Sure, there will. But the truth is, I could beat the shit out of these companies that use all the technology with my human element when the human element is properly trained, properly understands the mission because these people fucking care.

They care. That automation don't care. And that's a big advantage that you have when you do things that way. And I believe customer experience trumps everything else. I believe that people pay for really a few different things, but one of them is convenient. And if you can be convenient and care, you could beat a company that's just convenient or low price. So those are my thoughts on that. I think there's an ethical responsibility for every single person out there that owns a business that listens to this to really think about what I'm saying. Because the future of humanity faces a massive problem when it comes to this. Just take the metaverse, for example, right? They're trying to create this whole entire virtual world.

Well, I don't think you could really find someone out there who is actually productive in real life who would not agree that this cell phone that we have takes away from the human experience. I think every single person would argue that they would agree. They spend too much time on their phone. They're not present enough. And the trend- If you don't think that, go check your settings and you can see for yourself. Yeah, but dude, what I'm saying is the trend of people being aware of that is growing, right? Like we see more and more people talking about health and not just health in a physical sense, in a mental sense, and removing themselves from being present on social media to being

present in real life. That's a value trend that is starting to happen that is unarguable. And I think there's a lot of people that are trying to use their influence to push technology. Even some of my friends, they want to push the technology because there's opportunity to make money there. But here's at the end of the day, as an entrepreneur, people still got to live. They still got to eat. They're still real world. And when you have all these fucking people focusing on NFTs and Bitcoins and metaverse and all this shit, which is fine, there's massive opportunity there. That just creates, when they focus there, that creates more opportunity in the real

world. And the real world's always going to make more money than what the fuck is going to happen over here. So from a monetary standpoint, I'm going to focus on real shit. I'm going to focus on real solutions for real humans, real products, real goods, real solutions. Uh, Kanye just posted the same fucking thing. I posted it. And you know, a lot of my friends who are in the tech world, you know, they, they, they think I'm fucking insane for saying what I'm saying, but like, dude, look, um, I'm kind of undefeated. So, you know, maybe you should ask yourself, like if I have a point or not, I know where I'm putting my money. I believe that there's going to be a

cultural movement that is going to circle back to family values. It's going to circle back to real life. Uh, I believe that one day we're going to look at cell phones as as um we now look at how cigarettes were advertised and marketed back in the fucking 50s and 60s and we're going to realize how unhealthy it is to the human experience and i think people are going to move further away from it and then more into real then dive further into it yeah you see what i'm saying and by the way this is for productive people of society. There is going to be a whole bunch of people that are totally happy putting those fucking goggles on and sitting at home. And then that creates another question. Well,

then the workforce is diluted. Well, sort of, because there's enough technology to to bridge that gap right so what i want to do is use just enough technology to bridge that gap to where i have an effective company that is competitive that works that provides solutions provides jobs provides careers but also i don't want to be hindered by the people who leave to go live this fucking fake ass life right right like you know they want to go grab virtual titties i'm trying to i'm trying to grab regular titties you know i'm saying so like that i'm just saying like it's real man i know it's real it's so fun i was just sad and it's so funny you say that though because i was i forget who i was just talking i'm just saying like that's the truth

like there's a whole bunch of people that have given up on themselves sadly to making it out here in reality, you know, and, and there's people willing to capitalize on that misery as opposed to trying to show those people that they can actually be successful in real life. I'm one of the rare people who do the latter and that's it, you know, and, and, and I care about people. I care about their health. I care about their existence. I care about their financial well-being. That's why I donate all this fucking time to do this shit. And I think there's ethical responsibilities that we are going to have to address when it comes to some of this technology. Because it's ruining the human experience.

It is. And I'm a little disappointed in a lot of my friends and shit because they're jumping in this for the money and not thinking of the ethical consequences long term. Yeah. Just like they're just focused on it. Yeah. And, like, dude, that's not, to me, I don't roll like that. Yeah. No, I get it, man.

Yeah. I agree. I was just talking to somebody who's, like, in the movie The Patriot, bro. Like, could you imagine, like, right now we can fucking pick up this phone and DM literally anybody in the world instantly. Back then, they had to fucking send the letters and it was a handwritten. When's the last time you wrote a fucking handwritten letter? I would be okay

if society got back to that. DJ, everybody feels that way and people are losing the ability to write. They're not even teaching cursive anymore in schools. I mean, it's definitely i would be okay if society regressed in that way look i think people that listen to this show and other shows like it are starting to realize the damage that some of these these crazy fucking

tech people are willing to put on society for their own benefit yeah yeah and i i think we have an ethical responsibility to ask ourselves how much more we want to invest of our lives into these fucking science projects that these fucking nerds have created. That's fucking real. Okay. So yeah, that's my take. And that could change, bro. I've been wrong about, I've been wrong about shit, you know, but like, I don't feel like

I'm wrong. And I'm putting my, that's where I'm putting my, myself, I'm going that way. And I get made fun of, and I get, you know, told I'm missing shit and this and that look, dude, I had, I listened, I had the opportunity to buy a fuck ton of Bitcoin and fucking $2,000. And the money I could have put in, I've made 10 times more money betting on myself. I'm probably one of the only people in the world that's able to do that because I have the machine to do that. But the point is, is that I'm running my play. And here's what I want you to understand. If you do go into that, all right, if you do go into that, you know, you dive deep into that because a lot of people right now are being like, fuck Andy, he's fucking wrong. He's an old head. He doesn't get it.

Bitcoin to the moon. What you should do is consider the fact that I've seen all this play out and maybe understand that I see something that you fucking don't. Okay. But even if you don't agree and you want to go that route, you are still going to have to understand how to have real entrepreneurship skills. All right. Just like when a lawyer graduates law school, not every lawyer makes it because they have

to know law and business. Same thing with doctors. Doctors have to know doctor stuff and business stuff. And a lot of them neglect the business side and then they make, they're a slave to their own little system, right? So my, I'm not knocking this, okay? I'm saying you should approach it with an ethical thought in your brain. Is this right? Is this good? Is this something that will benefit humanity 10, 20, 30 years from now? I

don't think it will. All right. That's for everybody to answer. But what I will say is that if you are going to go into that, do not abandon the actual skills of running a company because you're going to have to have those skills anyway. And I see a lot of younger people, they see this opportunity as like a fucking, I can print money, print money, print money. But the problem is you don't have the skills to keep it. You don't have the skills to reinvest it. You don't have the skills to grow the company around whatever it is you're doing. And if you did, you could make a lot more fucking money and do a lot more better with it.'s there's all kinds of ways to look at that um but i see how i see it that's how i'm gonna roll and if i if i crash

and burn on it i'm cool with that like i don't have a problem but like i'm not going to ethically contribute to humanity being enslaved by a pair of fucking technology goggles i'm not doing it that's real yeah and even if i'm the only one, a hundred years from now, they say, and I was completely wrong. I'm going to be able to live with myself and say, I didn't contribute to that. Are you still on what you believe?

Yeah. Yeah. That's real. Andy, our third and final question for you, Andy, what is something or someone that if you didn't have, you would not be where you are today?

Wait, what? What's something or someone that if you didn't have you would not be where you are today wait what what's something or someone right that if you didn't have in your life you would not be where you are well i mean fuck look around here bro there's fucking hundreds of people here to contribute to what we're doing you know any of that like all the things that i have you know my dad my fucking mom my brother like my business partners like the community people in this building i mean it's all listen people try to a lot of guys like try to take credit like that like they they built all this shit you can't build something like this on your on your own you fucking can't like the bet like my job is to fucking you know steer the boat and not hit any motherfucking icebergs. That's real.

Right. Yeah. And, and like, I have to maintain all these other people who are making the ship run, you know, and, and, and we all have our responsibilities and we all work together. So the answer to that is like, yeah, everything you see in my life, every single person you see I'm with, like, those are the people that make me who the fuck I am. You know, you know, like it's not me, it's, it it's it's everybody it's a team effort and and that's real shit that's not like it's not like the foo foo shit no that's not bullshit like that's real shit and a lot of

people like to say oh i did this i did this i did this you you might have done a lot of it but you can't get to the level that we're at here without a complete fucking team effort. I mean, bro, how many superstar people do we have here working? I mean, everyone. Yeah, right. That's what I'm saying. So it's like, you know, I don't have one person who was, you know, I hate to say it, like more than that. You know what I mean? I got the right support at home.

I got the right support here. I got the right support. All that shit intertwines together, bro. You know what i mean i got i got i got the right support at home i got the right support here i got the rights all that shit intertwines together bro you know what i'm saying and like people don't people don't uh people don't really consider that yeah you know and that's why it's important to to surround yourself with the right kind of people the people like like a lot of you guys put way too much or way too much attention on people that don't have ambition, that don't really want to be anything else. You want to hang with your old friends from high school because that's what everybody does and they make you feel bad if you don't. And like that's, dude, it's just going to get you in a place that you're not truly happy you know so you really have to work around to create a circle of people who have the same uh at least ambitions to be better than to just live in our glory days from 15 years ago or 20 years ago whatever right or at least support your ambition yeah but like dude even then like people people people that don't have the ambition, they're not very good supporters

because they don't understand it. It's just the reality, you know? I never thought about it like that. Yeah. They can't understand it because they don't have it. And so like, I try to limit my interactions with people like that because dude, they're talking about things that are wasting my energy. You know, they're talking about things that don't really matter to what I'm trying to

do, you know? And that might sound selfish, but you have to be a little selfish if you're going to create something that affects big change in a big way so you know i don't try to surround myself with small talk um i'm a bad small talker um you know that how's the weather today yeah fuck you mean bro it's fucking raining exactly like you know and and you know sometimes people get mad at me about that but i just don't have any interest in bullshit you know i want to talk about real shit i want to talk about i want to talk about making money i want to talk about making fucking change i want to talk about making things better

and then i want to talk about the rewards of those things and if you ain't want to talk about those things i don't want to talk you know so um those things. And if you ain't want to talk about those things, I don't want to talk, you know? So, um, I think it's important for you to audit your friend circle because there's a lot of truth to that saying, you know, um, if you hang around five broke people, you're going to be the sixth. You hang around five rich people. You're going to be the sixth. If you hang around five fucking criminals, you're going to be the sixth.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's reality. And, and, and so dude, you really need to look at who you're going to be the sixth. I mean, that's reality. And so, dude, you really need to look at who you're spending your time with because you may think that that shit doesn't affect you, but it does. And it creeps in little by little by little by little. And people are going to say shit like, oh, you've changed or, oh, you don't care about it or, oh, you're too big time. It's not about that. It has nothing to do with that. I still love all my old friends that I, that I haven't talked to in a year. I fucking love them the same. They just don't really understand where,

you know, what I'm trying to do. And so, you know, we, what are we going to talk about? You know what I mean? I don't give a fuck about sports. I don't give a fuck about high school sport. I don't fucking care. I don't want,'t give a fuck about high school sport. I don't fucking care. I don't want, I'm not talking about the neighborhood. Like I'm not, I want to talk about big picture shit that I can affect change in. I want my life to actually mean some shit and I don't have kids.

So it's a little bit different for me. So instead of making my mission, my kids, I'm making my mission, everybody else, right. You know, and that's,

that's a big mission. It's probably going to take my whole life, but, um, you know and that's that's a big mission it's probably gonna take my whole life but um you know that's that's that's how i see it so that's fucking awesome yeah well andy that's three so guys go pay the fee yeah do that now Now my jewelry box froze Fuck a bowl, fuck a stove Counted millions in the cold Bad bitch, booted swole Got her on bankroll, can't fold That's a no, headshot, case closed