REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 24. Hashtag Fail

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

Failure is guaranteed. Most people fear failure so much, that they don't even begin what they want to do. They make excuse after excuse and never make any progress. In today's episode, I share with you the 4 steps you must know in order to understand failure, and how to utilize it, so that you can build yourself up into an unstoppable force that can accomplish anything.

I told my teacher, dumb bitch, I'm gonna get millions. In the project, living. Spoke it till existence. Mode changed to 50. Got more cars than diddy. I only weigh 180, but my watch cost 250. What is up, guys? This is Andy Frisella, 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 I've got a very important show for you especially for those of you who are struggling right now with uh the situation happening with the economy you know maybe your plans aren't working out the way you planned maybe you're even failing in business or in your career, this is going to be an extremely purposeful and intentional podcast to help you realize that what's going on right now will ultimately serve you, okay?

So what we're going to talk about here is failure. But before I get into it and before you think, oh, I've heard all this before, you haven't heard it from someone who's actually built stuff. Okay. You haven't heard it from someone who's actually built a number of different companies that are all very successful at whatever they do. You just haven't. You might've heard people who make memes for a living, talk about failure. You might've heard people who are professional motivator speakers, and that's what they do for a living, talk about failure. But today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about failure from the perspective of the real world, okay? I'm a real guy, just like all

of you guys. I started out with very little. I've struggled, and I fought very hard to get this far in life, and I feel it's my obligation to share with you how I did it. And a big part of how I've done it is by learning how to see failure the proper way. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And before I get into it, I'd like to remind you guys of the fee. All right. We have the best audience of any podcast on the internet anywhere, okay? We don't run any ads. We don't have to run ads on the show. We grow the show to the top of the ranks consistently because you guys share this,

all right? And that's how I prefer to do it. So this is a trade. I'm going to teach you something. I'm going to share with you something that's helped me. And in return, I ask that you help me out by sharing the show. I think that's a fair trade. It's one that's worked out very well for us in this community since 2015.

So let's get into it, guys. Let's talk about failure. There's so many misconceived thoughts and myths around the concept of failure. You know, people can read about it or they hear me talk about it right now, but still they seem to never understand. They'll hear what I have to say, but they don't apply it to their situation. And guys, you have to stop that right now. I don't want to hear about your fucking situation

or your excuses. Look, everybody has their own. Contrary to popular belief, nobody has a clear cut winning path that is free of resistance and failure all the way to the top of the mountain. All right? We all have failures, right. We all have

failures, right? We all experience it. Our problem is we don't see the failures in others. We see a popular actor. We don't wonder if he's a failed parent or spouse or how many times he screwed up to get where he is. We see some with the top of the business world and we don't wonder how many times they failed a company before quote unquote making it big. I mean, every single big name that we could possibly think of has experienced massive failure to some extent. You know, just some examples off the top of my head, Thomas Edison, man, he tried 10,000 times before he got his light bulb to light up the first time and that invention changed the course of the world. Henry Ford's another guy that I like a lot,

right? He had multiple failed automotive businesses before finding success. Again, someone who changed the world. Colonel Sanders was 62 years old before his famous secret recipe found the attention of the masses and turned him into a lifelong success. Again, a guy who has had a tremendous impact on the culture of society. Dr. Seuss, another guy you all know, was rejected by 27 different publishers. J.K. Rowling started on Harry Potter as an unemployed, recently divorced single mother. None of these stories experienced success the minute they decided to try to do something. But instead of what most people do and quit, they kept at it. Assuming you're going to go out there and kill it on your first

try guys is an arrogant thought. It's extremely naive. It's an ignorant mindset that is belittling you and quite frankly, inaccurate. You're insulting everyone that went through this process by even thinking you're better than having to deal with the failures. I respect the hell out of anybody that goes out there and tries, even if they fail, because at least it shows that they don't think that they're better than everybody else. Okay. I want you to think about that by you thinking that you're going to go out and execute on this play the first time you run it and it's going to score a touchdown is arrogant. People spend their whole lives becoming skilled at what they do. To think that you're going to open up whatever it is, whatever the path is that

you're trying to be on and just jump on it, dude, it really can't get much more arrogant than that. And when you think about it like that, it really makes a lot of sense that we fail, right? This is why I respect people that try. People that are willing to go out and do what it is they want to do, even though they know they're going to be bad at it. These people are going to build confidence. They're going to earn some self-respect.

And eventually, they'll have failed so many times and gotten used to getting up and brushing it off and laughing at it that they're going to look back and say, Hey, the whole reason I'm here is because I had the balls to look like an idiot. That's really the secret here, guys. It really is. Look at it from the perspective of a little bitty kid, guys. All right. You guys have all been around enough little kids to know children generally lack the fear of failure. They're not afraid to try anything. Why is this? Because the fear of failure is something that comes like a force around you that's instilled by society. Look at a kid learning to walk. You don't watch them take their first steps, fall down and then say, man, you know what? Screw this. I'm just going to crawl around the rest of my life. It sounds ridiculous. Okay. Remember when

you were learning to ride a bike. Did you pedal a few feet, fall down, scrape your knee, and then never try again? No. And that's the point. This lesson, when you're just a little bitty kid trying to learn how to ride a bike or walk, this lesson is the ultimate lesson for you to learn. You just forget it. You learn this lesson when you were a little bitty baby. If you continue to try, you'll have success. You know that if you take a ride for the next 30

feet, you might fall and you might fall on your face multiple times. But eventually, because all the other kids in the neighborhood have learned to ride their bike. You figure out that, you know what, if they can do it, I can do it. Where have we gone away from this? Why do we lose this? Why do we forget this? Why did you forget this? A big thing that you have to learn about failure is that most people are going to view it from the wrong perspective. I have a couple ways I want to share with you on how you should be looking at failure. Okay. Number one is this. You have to realize that failure is a scenario to learn from. You have to reframe the failure as an investment in your education and in your

knowledge base towards the skill or the craft or the outcome that you're attempting to go for. Part of succeeding and part of getting where you want to be is figuring out what doesn't work. It's a natural part of the process. And knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what to do. You can only learn what not to do if you're willing to try and you're willing to fail and you're willing to look stupid and you're willing to be laughed at and you're willing to be embarrassed. Age works in your favor here. The older you get, the more experience you get and the more experience you get, the more you realize that you fail over and over and over again in life.

And every time you do, you pick something new up about what not to do. And you have to realize this is just as important as doing what the right things are. Because if you can't replicate success in everything that you do, you're going to be a one trick pony, meaning you have to know what to do and you have to know what not to do. And the only way to learn what not to do is by being willing to look like a fool. Point number two, guys, you have to look at failure as a moment. Now now there's a few points I'm going to make here and I need you to understand all these differences first off you have to make it a definitive moment then you have to understand that that definitive moment has passed you by and then you have to

immediately look towards the future and start moving forward again. You cannot dwell on your failures. You need to look back and figure out what it is you need to learn from them. Take that knowledge and start to move forward again. This is what champions do. You have to consider and recognize each failure as a low point that you can build from. And this is where most people do get lost, right? They look at failure as a moment, but then they stop. They say, oh man, I screwed up. Oh, you know what? Got to file for bankruptcy. Oh, you know what? I guess I wasn't meant to be an entrepreneur. And that's it.

They go dig a hole, they fucking lay down and they die because this failure devastates them. And they're only operating with part of the equation in mind. Right? You're going to get punched in the face. What did you learn from it? You're going to get kicked in the nuts. What did you learn from it? You're going to get your shit stomped out of you.

What did you learn from it? These are the things that you have to understand. Because if you don't get up and take the lessons from every ass kicking that you get in life and continue to move forward, those ass kickings that you get were for nothing. So that's point number two. And point number three, guys, is this. You have to look at failures as unavoidable.

They're part of the process. That's just the way it is. They're going to happen and they're going the way it is. They're going to happen and they're going to happen to you. They're going to happen to your loved ones. They're going to happen to your kids and they're going to happen a lot. All you have to do is figure out why it happened and avoid that fucking pothole the next time you walk by it, okay? Finally, point number four is this. You've gotta view failure as part of the equation. It is part of the success equation.

Trying to create success without failure is the same thing as trying to bake a cake without fucking sugar or butter or eggs. It's the same concept. You have to see it as part of the process. If you look at it like an inevitable step that you have to take, it's going to be that much easier to pick up and move on when you get those stings, when you get those setbacks, when you hit those roadblocks, you just have to understand it is what the fuck it is. It's an

ingredient of the success recipe. Each time you start something new, you have to understand that you are going to fail not just once, not just twice, but likely dozens of times over the course of your life. And the difference between people who make it and people who don't is how much of this shit they're willing to put up with. Once you come to terms with that, you'll be able to start to recognize where you are in the cycle and begin to start moving forward from there. Guys, look, as an entrepreneur, you have to become very familiar with failure. I know I have. Okay. I've experienced it myself way more. It just seems like I'm the only one that ever talks about it.

I've seen it around me plenty of times over the last fucking every single year I've been alive. Okay. It's just part of the game. It's unavoidable. One of the most annoying things I hear is people that come up to me and they say, dude, I've always had this idea or we're working on this plan or concept. And then these people are 15 years older and they're saying the same shit. This is what most people do because they're afraid

of looking stupid. Everyone wants to find the foolproof plan. And I'm just going to tell you, man, there is no fail safe. There's no surefire way to get to where you want to go with no pain. That's just reality. You have to step the fuck up. You've got to get over yourself because the truth is if you haven't tried to pursue what it is you really think you could become, it's one of only two reasons. One, you're afraid of being embarrassed. You're afraid of looking like a clown. You're afraid of your friends and family laughing at you and making fun of you. That's the truth. And nobody wants to tell you about it because it's not popular, but here it is. Failure is unavoidable. Failure is a teaching moment and a learning moment.

And failure is absolutely 100% part of the process. It's just not the sexy part of the process. It's not the part of the process that everybody brags about on Instagram. It's not the part of the process that everybody beats their chest about on Friday night when you're drinking beers with your boys. All right. No one brags about it, but you know what? Maybe they should because the more you fail and the more you move forward, the more you're going to succeed.

And that's a mathematical statistical fact. If you can't understand that failing shit is a part of the process and without failing shit, you can't possibly know what not to do. You have a problem with your understanding of what the formula is. If you don't know what not to do you're going to continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again so instead of being mad right now because things are shut down instead of being mad right now because maybe you failed at something because of what's going on in the world, because instead of sitting at home and pitying and pouting, understand that you're given a gift here of a lesson.

What's the lesson? What can you learn? How can you apply it moving forward? Because the only way you're going to be called a failure is if you don't move forward from this point on.