REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 230. Q&AF: Difference Between Ego & Arrogance, Giving Friends Honest Feedback & Misconception About Failure

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

In today's episode, Andy answers your questions on the difference between having an ego & being arrogant when operating at a high level, the best way to deliver honest criticism to a close friend, and what's the biggest misconception about failure.

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 to motherfucking reality guys today we have q and af that's where you give the q's and i give the afs now how do they get the q's in guys you can email your q's into ask andy at andy for seller.com yeah do that i like the q you bring the q's and i bring the i like that hey you do i made it up a couple shows ago i know i'm saying that it Hey, you do. I made it up a couple of shows ago. I know. I'm just saying that it's fucking sticky though. I know it's provocative.

It gets people going. Why? Cause I've been doing this for a minute. Yeah. Hey, it comes with it. That's what I'm saying. All right,

what do we got today, bro? Hold on. Hold on. I forgot. Oh yeah. See, even though I'm a seasoned professional

i did forget that we do have a fee see and the fee is very simple if you like the show if it made you think if it taught you something if it gave you a new perspective if it made you mad share the show especially if it makes you mad yeah you chose the word season is that like a like like why that word because you know you're always saying that white people are no seasoning so i'm saying i'm seasoned bro you're so racist come on man you you took it there i didn't even oh come on dude you were gonna already go there true True or not true? It's true.

All right. I got some good ones for you, though, man. Okay. Yeah, we got some good ones for you, man. Good. Let's knock these out. Andy, question number one. I'm still thinking about the seasoning.

If I was seasoned, what kind of seasoning would I be? I'll smoke paprika for sure. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, you're lemon pepper. Would it be a sprinkle or a rub? Oh, you're a rub, baby. All right. 100%.

No sprinkle. Yeah. Don't forget that. Just saying. Smoked paprika, baby. Hey, bro, I watched your chef show last night. You fucking need to do a chef. Just a minute.

Bro, there needs to be a DJ Chef chef youtube channel i'm just telling you where like a video a week of you cooking some shit yeah that shit is entertaining man i appreciate it man yeah i just like fucking eating like that honestly that's it bro that shit will make anybody want to eat where'd you learn how to cook listen i learned how to fucking eat first like that's all it is i just like fucking eating good fucking food man well i'm saying we need to launch the the chef reggie show hey man all right i see it back to the reason we're here yeah questions man the ruined tyranny forever i mean never mind answer questions that's the other show yeah that is the other show that's the other show all right weird how we have like all these different shows on one channel hey man it's a different news hour that's all that's it that's it yeah that's it i kind of

like it right now it's like soap opera you know what's fun dude is i get to come in here every day and talk about different shit yeah like like today we're going to talk about like you know probably how to get better yeah how to win how to make more money how to be more fulfilled i'm just guessing that's what we're going to talk about and then you know tomorrow or the next day we're going to get to verbally rape every fucking politician out there it's fucking great what billy say punch these uh politicians in the face peacefully with my words what do are you saying? Politically. Yeah, politically. All right. Andy, question number one for you.

You've experienced, you've seen both of these things over the course of your business life. I should say. Because I'm seasoned. Because you're seasoned. Smoke paprika. But Andy, can you go into detail and talk to us about the difference between having an ego and being arrogant and what you've seen over you know 24 years of business yeah dude look man first of all every single person has a different opinion or different definition of those terms right like the minute you get hot on yourself and you say hey i'm doing good shit or whatever everybody wants to come at

you and say oh your ego is getting the best of you remember where you came from well you're too good listen every single person that says that shit to you is losing pay attention to that okay they're losing all right the the number one fucking loser comment that i can recognize that someone's an actual loser is when they say, remember where you came from. No, bro. I'm trying to get away as far as I fucking can from that. Yeah. Like that's what people don't understand.

That's the point. Driven people are not worried about where the fuck they came from. They look where they came from. They remind where they came from. They realize they're no better than they were then. And they appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. But like, nobody's like when you try to connect that future version of yourself back to where you came from,

a lot of times there's really no connection, you know? So you're going to have, I just want you guys to understand anytime you set out to do something that's relevant or great or outside the norm, you're going to have people attack you and say you're egotistical and you're arrogant. First of all, let me remind you of something. There is not a champion out there. I don't care how nice they seem. Tom Brady. Okay.

That doesn't have a fucking healthy, strong ego. Yeah. All right. Because a healthy, strong ego is what you All right? Because a healthy, strong ego is what you need when you're in doubt of yourself. That's whenever you got to come in and you got to say,

no, motherfucker, you're the baddest motherfucker on the fucking planet. And you can't operate at the highest levels without that sort of an ego. So a healthy ego and healthy belief in yourself

and healthy respect for your own abilities is absolutely necessary to get to that level that you're trying to get to. Okay. And regular people who do the regular life thing, I'm not knocking them. They'll never understand that because humility is overvalued in society. Everybody wants to be humble. Everybody wants to be meek. Well, no, actually I take that back. Everybody wants to tell everybody to be humble and everybody wants to be meek. Well, no, actually, I take that back. Everybody wants to tell everybody to be humble, and everybody wants to tell everybody to be meek.

But on the internal, most people want to be a bad motherfucker. It's just the truth, right? And there's nothing wrong with being someone who believes in their own abilities when you actually have skills. Now, the difference between arrogance and ego is whenever you overestimate those skills and you think you're actually better than what you really are. Okay. You follow what I'm saying?

So that's arrogance. When you start to think you're the best and you're this and you're that and you're this and nobody can fuck with you and really you're just a rookie motherfucker, that's arrogant. You will get smashed for that. When you know your skill set and you're comfortable with who you are and you believe in yourself and you know that nobody can fuck with you because of your skills and your experience and things you've already been through, that's ego. That's reminding you, hey, motherfucker, you're bad as shit.

You've done all these things. You can handle this shit coming down the pipe. And it's an absolutely necessary part of someone's character who's going to win. Yeah. Right? So that's how you have to look at it. Now, when it comes to humility, humility is overrated. All right. Now, what I mean by that is everybody wants to fucking push you to be more humble. That's the fucking narrative in society. Oh, you better calm down. Like, dude, you know how many motherfuckers told me that

all of them, you know, where they are place. They were when they told me that All right. So humility's value in the pursuit of success is Way overstated where where the humility really comes into play Is that you have to understand that you are no better than any other human just because you're more successful You have to understand there's a whole lot of shit that you don't know Okay, and you have to understand that you can whole lot of shit that you don't know okay and you have to understand that you can still get better no matter how good you are that's humility in the success realm that's how it serves you so when you over humble yourself okay and you don't talk

about you know you won't toot your own horn because bro nobody's gonna toot your fucking horn so you're tooting it yeah you gotta be got to be the first to toot it. That's just reality. All right? It will leave you under-recognized, underpaid, undervalued, and fucking frustrated. That's the truth. But you have to have a certain element of humility because if you don't, you lose the ability to learn. And if you lose the ability to learn because you think you fucking know everything already. Then what? You get beat by someone who is humble enough to continue to learn and get better and improve no matter how good they are or how big they're winning. So you have to have a healthy balance of ego and humility

to actually be what it is most of you are trying to be. But working into a healthy ego is earned. Okay. You have to earn that in the beginning when you haven't fucking done anything, you should be extremely humble. You should be an open book in terms of what you're willing to learn. Um, you don't have any skills yet. So all you have is humility and where you should, what you should understand at that point in time is that you are capable of developing skills just like anybody else would be following. I'm saying, right.

So a healthy ego is developed through, through the process. It's not a bad thing. Like anybody who says, Oh, the fucking guy's got a big ego. You're fucking right. I do,

brother. You're fucking right. And it's earned. That's right. Yeah. That's fucking awesome. So like it, you know,

people, it is what it know, people. It is what it is, man. I don't really give a fuck what people think about it. That's real. Yeah, that's real. That's awesome. Andy, question number two.

So I'm going to read the read the question. I got a little bit of backstory for you. So the question is, Andy, what's the best way to deliver honest feedback to a close friend? So the backstory is a buddy of mine started a new t-shirt business and honestly the shirts are terrible the quality the graphics and the problem is he only wants to hear the good feedback so what's the best way to deliver honest feedback to a close friend or to anybody for that matter uh show them show them show them what the alternative looks like, right? If that guy's shirt sucks and his logo sucks, bring in a shirt that feels right. Bring in a shirt that looks right.

Bring in a logo that looks right and say, hey, dude, look, I think we could do better with this, all right? This is where I think you need to go. Nobody likes to be told they're fucking wrong. But if you do it the right way and present a solution with it, people who are somewhat intelligent will realize, okay, let me backtrack this. If you are not able, and this goes into the first question, if you are not humble enough to recognize when your answer is wrong, you're not going to be very successful. That's another part of humility.

Okay. So some people cannot listen to fucking, they have to be right. There's people like that. And there's a lot of them right now. There is, there is. And that will keep you from winning. That's another area where humility comes in. All right.

So how I would address that is sort of how you and i were talking keith yesterday about videos so i i text video a video format to keith yesterday i said hey what do you think about this and he's like he's like well we could do this i said no dude i asked you what do you think about this and he comes back he's like well i don't really like it i think we could do this and this and we came up with a better solution than what i had suggested yeah you see what i'm saying and that's where you want to be as a leader dude you want to be able to accept feedback you have to understand there's people on your team that are smarter than you and all kinds of shit so you have to listen to what the fuck they say that's why you hired them yeah and if you're arrogant yeah going back to the you won't yeah if you have a healthy bro i know i'm

good but the reason i know i'm good is because i'm smart enough to listen motherfuckers that know better all right so that all ties to you you know what i'm saying it all ties together connected yeah so um you have to be willing to to approach it the correct way and sometimes when people are new in business like like it sounds like this guy's pretty new, they're very defensive personally about their projects, right? Because this is like a new thing and everybody's telling them it's a bad idea and everybody's telling them that it's not going to work. And there's so much resistance that you face when you start a new project, just from starting a new project that people get their defenses up, right? Naturally, yeah. Right. So so this dude is really your friend and you really want to help him i would suggest at this point in time um coming to him with better

solutions and the problem at the same time does that make sense yeah so like give him the problem yes for sure yeah because that doesn't really solve anything like that's just an attack yeah so if you want to fucking really help this person get an example of what you think is good you know say hey i want to talk to you about some stuff i've been looking at this and this and this make the meeting about him moving the company in the right direction that you think it should go instead of saying you fucking suck like dude everybody sucks in the beginning right everybody makes stupid looking t-shirts in the beginning everybody's t-shirt quality sucks in the beginning that's just how t-shirt companies start yeah i know because i fucking have one all right if you go compare

what i was doing 10 years ago to what we're doing now i would fire a motherfucker for making this shit that i approved 10 years ago no shit you see what i'm saying so like dude that's a progression so just have some tact have some understanding that when things are new people are usually not supporting it and be the person who supports it by going at them with not just complaints but also a direction to fix it because the real frustration comes from people just piling on negativity right right like you start to feel alone you start to feel like everybody's against you. Actually, my Enneagram was just about this today. Not everybody's against you, bro. They just don't know how to support you. Right. And that's what you have to remember. So

be a good friend. And this goes for everybody, not just this person asking the question. When you have someone in your family or your friend is starting something new, don't be one of these people that tells them all the bad shit with no solution. You're not helping. You're creating stress. You're creating anxiety. You're creating resentment. The best way to do it is to go to them and say, hey, I like this. I appreciate what you're trying to do. Let's look at this and this and this. Even if you're not in the company and you're just a friend, dude, my friends have done that for me over the years where they know, let's say they were using a different product or something that I wasn't aware of. They bring it to me. They say, this is fucking amazing. You should look at that. I've looked at it and then we've done it

better and it's made us tens of millions of dollars. And I love those guys now because like now they helped me get onto something that worked. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. When they could have just brought you the problem. For sure. Which most people do bro that's what most people do that's why i don't fuck with anybody like dude you know i don't fuck with anybody yeah and the reason i don't is because most people are not aware enough to do what i just said they're always just piling on bullshit it's fire andy our third and final question for you and, what would you say is the biggest misconception that people have about failure? That they can avoid it. Like they think, they think most people think that, well, there's two, one that they can avoid it. And then the second one, when it happens,

then it's the end of the world. All right. Those two, those two misunderstandings cost most people their dreams all right first of all if you never fail it means you've never tried anything different or outside the norm you've never even really tried if you haven't failed look at a kid who walks how many times did ryan fall down when she's learning how to walk she's still falling now okay but does she ever look up at you and said dad uh i think this isn't for me right right no she fucking picked herself up she fucking did two steps instead of fucking one step and then eventually it's three and then eventually it's four and then eventually it's 400 right and then eventually you don't even

notice you're doing it because it's so natural it's the same thing with what we're talking about here okay you have to go through the fails you have to go through the fails. You have to go through the tests because every single failure that you have, every single setback that you have is another lesson that you put into your fucking skill tool belt. Okay. Because that situation, whatever it is, the fail will reappear down the road. That's the thing you have to understand. So whatever fucks you up today, once you push through it and you recognize not to make that same mistake again, now when it reappears five years from now, you know exactly how

to handle it. Whereas the people competing with you who are less experienced at that time down the road, they get fucked by that same situation where you are skilled enough, savvy enough, and experienced enough to deal with it. So a lot of it has to do with how you view failure through the perspective. Every time we fuck up and bro, we fuck up a lot. Every single time I make sure my biggest thing is okay. What'd you learn? Right. What'd you learn? You know, this like, dude, you see me do it. What'd you learn? And if they learn the thing it's okay. Don't do that

again. And that's where you, and that goes for employees too. A lot of people are not savvy enough leaders to understand that most employees on your team, they want to win with you. Okay. So when they fuck up a lot of times, CEOs or bosses or managers will fire these people and replace them with someone who still don't know. And then they do the same shit over again. And then it happens a third time and a fourth time because they keep kicking people out

instead of looking at these failures and mistakes as an investment in their education. Right. You see what I'm saying? So you have to understand that it's part of the process. It's just part of the fucking success recipe. Getting your balls kicked in is part of the deal it just is and the longer you go overcoming them and realizing that point number two it's not a fatal thing it's just a temporary thing now you're able to see it through the proper lens and the proper lens tells you okay if i touch that stove today and it burnt my fucking finger guess what tomorrow i'm not going to touch it yeah no shit okay so now you're better than you were yesterday. You're smarter than you were yesterday. And this is how failure should be addressed and how it is addressed amongst people who are hiring successful people, whether they're entrepreneurs

or inside of a company or whatever. They understand. And this is something I say all the time. I say this from the stage. I say this here. I said it for years and years and years. There's only really two things you have to have to win. One, don't fucking quit. And two, don't make the same mistakes twice. If you have the capacity to do those two things, there is literally fucking nothing that can stop you but time. Okay? Like you can run out of time.

That's right. But outside of that, bro, keeping it moving, try not to repeat the same mistake twice. And if you do, don't do it a third time. And that's really the key to success. It truly, truly is. It's just most people get hung up on that first or second or third failure. And they look at it and say, fuck, I'm really bad at this. No, bro. Everybody's bad at it. It's just the motherfuckers on the internet lie to you about it. Make it look easy.

Yeah. So we all go through it. And it's just, if I could make someone understand something about the process, it would be to understand that that is just a normal part of the fucking entrepreneur win big,

win at anything process. You are going to have to get real comfortable with making mistakes, real comfortable with things not going your way and learning lessons, dude. It's so simple to me standing on the other side, right? Like, you know, a lot of people listening right now, you're just at the first step of this mountain you're trying to climb where I'm up. I've already climbed the motherfucker and I'm climbing the next one over it. Right. So like I'm standing on the other side at the bottom of your mountain and you're standing on the other, on one side of the bottom of the mountain, looking up at it. I've already climbed. It's easy for me to fucking say, step here, step here, do this.

It's so fucking simple for me to understand. I wish people, I wish I could take what's in my brain as understanding this concept and like just implant it into people. Because if you, I wish I could take what's in my brain as understanding this concept and like just implant it into people. Because if you, if I could, you would not fear failing at all, at all. And a lot of people like, you know, you asked me this, didn't you? Like what the other day we're doing cardio, you asked me in the process of growth, what are you afraid of? Yeah. Yeah. You, he asked me like, just as a friend the other day, he's like, bro, does any of this shit ever scare you? I'm like, no. What'd I tell you remember what i told you i said i said bro i don't know what the fuck i'm doing anyway right oh yeah yeah i i've gotten this far i don't know what the

fuck i'm doing so if i don't know what the fuck i'm doing on day one and i continue to move and i don't know what i'm doing on day on year 10 and i don't know what i'm doing on year 20 what do i have to be afraid of right right you see what I'm saying and that's the attitude you should have hey I don't I never did this before I don't know everything I think I know what's best and then move forward with that you know that's it dude that's all you can do you know like a lot of people come to me and they're like oh bro you're doing this and this and this and this and this. And you've never done that before. And I'm like, no, I haven't. Well, how do you know you're going to get it done?

Well, the same way I got all the rest of this shit done. Right, right. Like, I'm going to fucking not quit. I'm going to learn my lessons. And as long as that takes for the job to get done, it's going to get done. It's that simple, dude. It really, truly is that simple. That's fucking fire. Guys guys andy that's three

so go pay the fee yeah do that went from sleeping on the floor now my jewelry box froze fuck a bowl fuck a stove counted millions in the cold bad bitch booted swole got her own bankroll can't fold just a note headshot case