REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 668. Q&AF: Changing Culture With Lazy Employees, Selling Vs. Helping & Finding The Right Mentor

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

In today’s episode, Andy answers your questions on how to implement culture change in a 2nd generation business with veteran employees, what’s the best way to learn how to help vs. selling in business, and why is it important to know what not to do when learning from others.

What is up guys, it's Andy Frisella and this is the show for the real, let's say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness, and delusions of modern society. Welcome to motherfucking reality. Guys, today we have Q&AF. That's where you submit the Qs and we give you the AFs. You can submit your questions a couple different ways. The first way is, guys, you can email those questions into askandy at andyfrasella.com or you can go on YouTube in the comments section of the Q&AF episodes and drop your questions in the comments.

We'll choose some from there as well. We're just going to get right into the show today. You guys kind of know the deal. We got CTI. We got QAF. We got Real Talk, 75 Hard Versus. That's the show. Pay the fee.

Do the thing. Buy my shit. Let's do the show. Let's do the show. Guys, Andy, question number one. All right. I like that. Just right into it.

I like it. It's like prom night. That's right. Super quick. It was over before it started. All right, guys. Question number one. Andy, I'm in the process of learning how to run a second generation business.

Three of the existing employees have been here for 20 plus years and have known me since I was nine to 10 years old. One of the things that I struggle with is dealing with lazy employees and how to address it with them. I have been to HQ and around your employees. HQ is immaculate and your employees are top notch. If you could give me a piece of advice on how to address people being lazy, what would it be? I don't do well walking into rooms with the rooms being a mess and no one caring to clean up the mess that they've created. I'm about to flip the mercy, no mercy coin to no mercy and approach the issue in a way that I may turn around and regret. But there are days I feel like I'm raising adult children. I have my own children at home and I don't plan to raise others.

I would love to hear some advice from you. Okay. So first of all, taking a second generation business and getting employees that are, uh, sort of accustomed to indoctrinated have been brought up in this other environment that you're trying to change is going to present a number of challenges anyway. Then on top of that, they've known you since you were a kid. So no matter what you do, they're going to always think of you as that kid, which is going to make it extremely hard for you to get those people to operate at the level you want them to operate at so there's a couple things here number one usually when people say that their employees are behaving lazily it's because the leadership's terrible

that's why all right nobody wants to work hard if they aren't inspired nobody wants to work hard if they aren't coached right nobody wants to work hard if they don't have a good mission if they're not being compensated fairly there's all kinds of things that go into getting someone to run the ball down the field and uh just because you say so isn't one of those reasons all right so you've got to understand there is a reality to the circumstances that you have been placed in that is very difficult but but not impossible. All right? So if I were you, what I would do is kind of go down a list of things to check to make sure these bases are covered so that I know that the problem isn't me.

It's actually what we got going on with the employees. One, are you being a good leader? That's always the first thing you should do. You should always look in the mirror first. Are they behaving because they're mirroring your behavior? All right. Which most of the time they are. It's a tough one to ask. That's right. And so that's, you should always start with looking in the mirror. Are you leading right? Are you doing the right things? Are you setting the pace? Are you setting the tone? Are you painting the vision? Are you making it clear? Where are you coming up short? All right. And then address that. Number two,

you have to realize that these people who have been in this other system for 20 years, however long it's been, years and years and years, they are accustomed to a certain work environment and they're going to be very resistant to change. And so what you're talking about here is legitimately trying to change the culture of your entire business. And by changing the culture of your entire business, you are going to lose some of those people. So you have to understand some of these people are not going to go with your new ideas. They're not going to go with your new structure. They're not going to go with your new ideas. They're not going to go with your new structure. They're not going to go with your new vision.

They're going to say, we miss the old days. And, dude, honestly, those people need to be cut. You've got to cut those people from the team. Because any changes that you try to make moving forward, those people will become cancer to those situations because they were born and brought up in the past culture. All right. So you have to understand people are going to flake out. People are going to leave. They're going to retire. They're going to quit. They're going to find other places. And that's a good thing because when you're trying to improve the culture of your organization, you can't do it with cancer. All right. So you have to prepare yourself for that. And then after that, you have to go

and you have to set what the new culture is gonna be, which meaning painting a new vision, setting some new rules, setting some new guidelines, and most of all, becoming the kind of leader that inspires them to build something great. There's a famous story about laying bricks, and I can't remember where I read it. Some of you guys might recall this story as well. But it talks about some brick masons. Okay. And if you take brick masons and you

tell them to build a three foot wall, that's a thousand miles long, they're not going to be inspired. It's going to take forever. They're not going to care. There's no thought. There's no initiative. There's no contribution. It's just a simple wall. It's three foot high and it's boring work, right? So they're not going to work that hard because there's nothing to work for. But if you take those same brick masons and you say, we're going to build the most beautiful cathedral that has ever existed, these people will show up to work every day and give it their all because they understand they're contributing to something that is much bigger than themselves.

So are you asking your people to build a three-foot wall that's a thousand miles long? Meaning show up to work every day, do your shit, go home, make it very corporate, no fun, no real mission, no real contribution. Nobody's going to work hard for that. It doesn't matter how much you pay them. It doesn't matter. It's not inspiring work. Or are you building the most beautiful cathedral to ever be built? Because that difference in mentality is the difference between people being intrinsically inspired to build or just showing up for a paycheck. And that's what it sounds like you're dealing with.

What it sounds like you're dealing with, not knowing any more than what you asked, is that you're dealing with a culture of people who have been showing up for a check for a long time and you want to go improve the second generation business and build it into something greater, which you should, but you're going to have to get real clear on what that you should, but you're going to have to get real clear on what that looks like and how you're going to do it. And you're going to have to get buy-in from a lot of these people. And a lot of these people that are there now are not going to buy into that. So you're going to have to bring in, you know, new, hungry, ambitious,

driven people that buy into that vision. So that's going to be the transition that you're going to go through. Any single operator, if you ask them, that has gone through this where they've made an intentional play to change the culture of their business, they have had a lot of people quit. And my advice to that is that it's okay. It's all right. That's fine. It's not personal. I'm not mad at you in fact i'm glad that you're going on to do something that you feel like you need to do so i don't waste your time and your life and your energy by keeping you here in something that isn't what you want to do and that's good for you and it's good for them so that's how you

should look at it um and then take the time to design communicate and start building this cathedral that you're working on building and you'll find that certain people will step up and certain people will wash out i love this now with this with this being i mean because again we don't know how long she's you know this company has been in business right but when you talk about a major cultural shift right like you talk about truly changing the way things are done and are being done is this a situation for just hey let's just rip the band-aid off yes or is this a situation for just, hey, let's just rip the bandaid off? Yes. Or is this a more gradual, slow and steady wins the race? No. This is the way we're doing it.

If you don't want to do that, that's cool. There's the door. But this is what we're doing from here on out. The boundary has to be very specific, very clear, very hard, not in a mean way, but just in a, hey, this is what we're doing way. And the reason that people fail at switching a culture, especially in this situation from first generation to second generation because that alone is a problem it's a big well no it's not a problem it's it's a challenge if you're walking into a culture because at one time that family-owned business was aggressive at one time they wanted to build something at one time they were all

bought into building something. And what happened was people got older, people got comfortable, people got in their little rhythm, and the company kind of stopped. And then the second generation comes in and they want to do their part, right? Because nobody that inherits a second generation business wants to ride into the dirt, even though a lot of people do. But real operators, they want to take that and they want to build it into something great and greater than what the first generation did and that's that's what you should do that's what you're supposed to do a lot of people talk shit on people who come in at second generation you can't fucking help where you're born bro right yeah you know like some people are born with no opportunity and they have to go take it

some people are born with some opportunity and then they shit it down the drain some people are born with no opportunity and they have to go take it. Some people are born with some opportunity and then they shit it down the drain. Some people are born with some opportunity and they take that opportunity to build greatness with it. And that's what people that listen to this show are going to do. So when you think about that, you know, we have to remember that that's difficult. And these people haven't done that in a long time. They haven't been aggressive and they don't remember what the fuck that's like. So likely they're going to resist that. And they're going to say things in their mind. I'm too old for this. This is not what I want to do anymore. I'm tired. I'm, you know, I'm burnt out. They're going to say all this shit. Even,

even 40 year old people say this. And it's like, they don't realize you got fucking 40 more years of kicking ass to do, bro. You could do some great shit in that 40 years. What are you going to do? Sit at home, watch fucking Netflix, eat fucking bullshit and be a fat little shit bag. That's what you're going to do instead of going and contributing to something that could actually be awesome and say, hey, we fucking did that.

You get what I'm saying? Absolutely. There's a big mission and a big purpose in building something great. And the reason most entrepreneurs can't go from the first generation to the second generation is because they lack the courage to hold that hard line and say, this is what we're doing to switch it. So, uh, yeah, it's not a, it's not a gradual thing. It's a walk in on Monday and say,

guess what? This week, our mission is this. We're changing everything about the company. We're going to do this and this and this and this and this and this and guess what that week you better be prepared because you're going to have 30 of your people walk out the fucking door yeah and that's what's going to happen dude 20 they're going to walk out the fucking door the rest are going to be super excited though they're going to be like well fuck those guys we're going to do this revitalize yeah and that's what's going to happen so um so and then you're going to add people in who are maybe a little bit younger a little bit fresher a little bit more hungry that want to go hard and take that second generation to uh you know new new levels and and that's how it's going to work this is the shit we cover in

rta by the way this is what we do in depth like we go through these scenarios uh in depth this is this is a very broad brush over this topic but that's uh that's that's where we do that kind of deep level stuff at so so that's the gist of it um and there's a lot of nuance a lot of intricacies and there's a lot of questions but you have to be prepared to do it man and if you do it gradually dude people don't respect the new rules like if you do it gradually they don't know where the line is they don't know where the you know where the boundary is in terms of you know it just muddies the water yeah you know well last week that was okay right it's not okay this week it makes it seem like last month keep changing yeah last month that was okay well you only said we were changing this and this and this

not that right right that's the you walk into so it's much easier to say hey nope here it is these are the deals if you don't do it this isn't the place for you and that's okay i'll help you find another place to go but we're doing this here and that's that's how you got to do it i love that man yeah i love it uh guys andy our second question andy question number two hi andy and dj i'm 24 years old i started my own construction business last year and it's been a challenging journey. I've been working long hours, late nights, early mornings to make it successful. My question is related to my three employees. I want them to make a good living, but at the same time, I need to make sure that I can provide them with a steady paycheck. As a new business owner, I am looking for advice on how to improve my sales skills.

While I know how to build buildings, I struggle with sales. I've listened to a few guys online, but I always feel as if they force customers into buying things. And I definitely don't want to be a pushy sales guy either. Can you please give me some insight on how I can improve my sales skills without being too pushy? Okay. First of all, there's a couple of things here. One, sales is hard because people don't understand what sales really is about. All right.

Sales is actually not about selling at all. It's actually about helping. It's about solving a problem. And the reason that so many good people are resistant to learning how to sell is because they don't like the way they see other people sell or they don't like the way they've been sold. And so they get this feeling about sales where they say, this is grimy, this is gross,

this is not how I wanna do it. And the truth of the matter is, is you have been exposed to people who are very weak salespeople. Now, they might put up some big numbers from time to time, but over the long haul, those people will spike, and they will go down, and they will spike, and they will go down, and they will spike, and they will go down, and as a sales organization or a salesperson, you want to continue to go up, and the only way to continue to go up is to not look at it like selling, but look at it like helping.

All right. I'm not trying to get your business today on this deal. I'm trying to solve your problem, make you so happy about how I solve the problem that you'd bring me every single friend and every single person that you've ever known ever to help solve their problems as well. That's the attitude of selling. So when you get the right attitude of selling and the right intent in your heart and say, okay, my job is to solve a problem the best way possible. And the, whatever that means, whatever the scope of that means, that's my job. That takes the focus away from like the cheesy, slimy, salesy bullshit. That means you don't have to go get a talk track. You don't have to go practice lines. You don't have to have closing, right? When

you try to help people and it's very obvious that you have the solution that they need, they close themselves. All right. So you're right. A lot of the salesmen online are fucking shitty salesmen. What I'm telling you is how to sell long-term, not sell short-term. Short-term, they'll have pitches and they'll have closes and they'll have this and they'll have that. And you're correct. It doesn't feel good when the customer actually buys from them. And so what happens is they only buy once and then they don't tell their friends, they don't tell their family, they don't tell anybody in the world. And then eventually, if you do a really poor job, they tell everybody not to go with you. So it's very short-sighted to think about selling in that way, which is part of the problem we have with all these fucking idiots all over the internet

talking about how they're going to coach you into how to sell. Okay. It's help. It's not sell. And anybody who disagrees with that, show me what they fucking built. Show me what they've actually built. All right. they've actually built. All right. Because I'm telling you, if you want to win long-term, it's helping. It's relationship building through solving problems. That's how you should think about sales. And if you think about it that way, and you have the right intent with the customer that way, now you're in a situation where you don't feel cheesy about it. You feel like you're doing something good. You know that you're doing something good.

And by the way, the customer can feel it. How many times have you been somewhere where you know you're getting sold? You know it's a line. You know it's bullshit. Oh, hey, Steve, it's great to see you. You know, like they do all this stupid cheesy shit that they see on the fucking internet and they suck and it makes you

feel weird and yeah you might buy but you're gonna be like oh dude i don't know that guy was a little weird he's a little over the top yeah i got what i wanted but right instead of dealing with the guy who wants to help you you drive away from that deal saying damn dude dj's the fucking man bro fucking awesome bro he helped me he told me the. He told me what I didn't need. He told me what I needed. We fucking got it done. Bro, go see DJ if you have a fucking, you see what I'm saying?

Totally different conversation post-sale. And post-sale is where the actual growth of your business exists. It's not in today's sale, all right? So start thinking about it as helping with the right intent, not selling. That will help you and it will help them and it will help your organization grow. Now, the second thing is, is that you have to have reps. Okay. Reps matter. It doesn't matter how many books you read. It

doesn't matter how many courses you look at. It doesn't matter how many Instagram videos you watch or YouTube videos. If you don't get your ass out there and actually interact with people, you fucking can't do shit. Okay. So you have to get reps, whatever that means. If you can't get enough reps with what you do, then you have to put yourself in situations where you can get the reps. Some of this is worked into the live hard program on phase three. It requires you to go talk to strangers and do kind things. These are in there, not just to make the world a better place, but to improve your skills at operating with people. So what I used to do, which I've talked about a number of times on the show to

improve my people skills. Number one, I worked in a retail environment, which means I got lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of reps every single day for years with what i just told you before about helping and not selling okay secondly um i used to actually put myself in situations where i had to talk to people like when i talk tell you guys how i used to go to the grocery stores and i'd make myself talk to three strangers before i left the store real conversations just polishing up those skill sets with the right intent I'm gonna have three conversations And I'm gonna make sure that that person walks away Feeling really good about themselves If that's what you practice

Bro, you're gonna become a fucking sniper With the ability to do this Like nobody will be able to fuck with you Your skills are gonna get so good And the best part is There's no manipulation involved It's no bullshit It doesn't make you feel bullshit. It doesn't make you

feel grimy. It doesn't make you feel salesy. You don't got to have slick back hair and a shitty ass suit. Yeah, bro. You don't got to have that. You just got to show up. You got to help them. You got to tell them the truth. And if you do that for a long time, your sales will continue to go up. That's how it works. You avoid those spikes because what happens is the customer remains happy with the purchase process and the post-purchase process, and they tell all their fucking friends. And since we have these little devices in our hands that every single person in the world has, it's never been easier to get them to spread word of mouth. And do you know what the number one indicator that creates sales is? Word of mouth.

So we have this amazing tool in our hands to spread word of mouth and people still are out there selling the old school way. Oh, here's my opening pitch. Here's my closing statement. And now they're doing it through e-com. You know what I'm saying? And they're just having to run. And these guys are repeating the old play in a new way they're they're having to go from widget to widget to widget to widget to product to product to product and now it's in come into this coaching space and all this bullshit bro the reason these people that you see them doing this and then that and then this and then that and then this and then that is because they lack the understanding of what i'm explaining in this question they are trying to hard sell every single person they make and yes they can make some money

for a while but eventually if the product doesn't work if the product's shitty if it doesn't solve their problem and you're creating buyer remorse every single time someone buys it eventually people stop buying that and then they have to switch and those people then go do the same exact sales technique that exact same way again never learning the lesson and so their their income goes up and then goes way down and then goes up and then goes way down and the true the only true way to make a lot of money and become wealthy is to let your efforts compound over time and the only way in sales for your efforts to compound over time is by doing the right thing Telling the truth helping people with their problem and then they trade you money for the solution to that problem And then if you do it well enough, they tell all their friends which becomes your biggest lead funnel. That's the game. So

I don't know how to explain it any more than that If you can't understand that and you think i'm wrong then go do it your way But i'm going to tell you right now, if you give me 5, 10, 15 years, I'm going to destroy you doing it my way over the quick and easy way that everybody tries to teach you on the internet. I want to follow up on this

because his real concern here is being able to provide for his employees. Now, early on in business, this is how you're going to do it. This wasn't how you started the sales mentality mentality right like it's no what my question is is like how quick was the transition like when the moment you changed over to actually giving a fuck about people bro listen i'll tell you exactly what happened yeah my first 10 years in business my first my first eight years in business for real i i was focused on me i was focused on what

i could get what could i get. What could I get? Dude, it was so much so where like Chris and I would see someone coming in and we coming into the store and we would say, well, I'm going to, we should try to get this person to do this. Right. We had no dude. We were terrible. We, we were the worst fucking, we were them. The people I'm talking, like the guys I'm talking about about the reason I could talk so confidently about it is because I was that guy okay, so What happened was? Chris and I got to a point in our business where

We were looking at closing the business because we weren't making any money Yeah All right And I I went and started I was gonna go open a carpet cleaning business with my dad and he was gonna go to OCS school and become a fighter pilot All right, and we were gonna close the store and we had two stores at that time we were going to close the store uh the stores and fucking no we had more than that no we had like six stores at this time yeah so so we we weren't making any money though. It was hard as fuck. And we were having this conversation about what we were going to do.

And, uh, and I said, uh, I, I hurt my back in training. I hurt my back on the carpet cleaning training. I was in bed for like 30 days.

Okay. And during that time, we're talking about like how we're going to exit the business. And I fucking, cause I went and did the carpet cleaning train. I'm like, bro, I don't want to clean carpets.

It fucking sucks. Fuck that. I don't care if I don't ever get rich. I kind of liked the business and i fucking because i went and did the carpet cleaning tree i'm like bro i don't want to clean carpets it fucking sucks fuck that i don't care if i don't ever get rich i kind of like the business you know and what i like about it is that you know and i started naming some of the names of the people who had like lost like 100 200 pounds and changed their whole lives and i said dude what about this guy what about this lady what about this like these people because because dude we were bad sales people we didn't know how we were doing but every once in a while because we didn't have many customers we would actually take the time to talk to people and spend time with them because we were bored and and dude i know this sounds shitty but we were young kids bro we just didn't know any better and um and through those actual conversations that were genuine, we got to meet some cool people and we would go through top to bottom how to help them and how to change, you know, what they've got going on.

They come back in five, six months later, down 100 pounds, fucking crying, giving you a hug, saying thank you. And dude, that was awesome. And that's what we liked about the business and so we we made a conscious decision we said all right if we're gonna keep stay in business let's focus on producing that result let's not let's not do it this other way let's do it this way and so we changed our entire mentality and we said okay no more of this sales we're just gonna try to help people and we did that on the next five years we grew a hundred we grew a hundred percent in a row for five years straight and this is that straight line of progress yes and that's what allowed us to do first form that's what allowed us to fucking

do all the things we're doing now I mean that's that mentality shift is a huge shift so if you're a salesperson or an organization, that's the shift that you have to make. You have to shift from sell to help from what can I take from this? How much money am I going to make from this to what can I do for this person? And how can I solve their problem? And how well can I solve their problem? And can I sell it well enough to where it's very obvious that I solved their problem to everybody they know, because they're going to tell them that's the goal. And if you do that, you're going to feel great. They're going to feel great. They're going to feel great about being your customer. They're going to brag about being your customer. They're going to tell all your friends about being your customer and you're not going to have a

problem with sales anymore. And that's how it works. It just takes time to materialize and compound. So you have to be patient. You have to work that plan. It has to be part of your cultural identity as a business or as a salesperson. The most effective salespeople I know that I do business with are 100% that way. They will pass on shit that they know that I don't need. They will tell me the truth. They will say, you don't need that. You don't need that. Let's do this. Cause you're going to like that and this and this. And bro, the relationship is very, very much appreciated on both sides. So, you know, don't believe this shit that you see on the internet, bro. Like real talk. If you look at any of these coaches and they haven't very clearly built something real, like very clearly, like you

can't order their product. You can't see their company. You, like very clearly, like you can't order their product, you can't see their company, you can't buy from them, you can't whatever the fuck it is. If they don't own a company or they haven't sold a company that you can go look into and they haven't built anything, you should not fucking pay them a dollar. I'm sorry. You just shouldn't.

Yeah. That's ethical, man. Yeah. It's not ethical. It's fucking common sense. Yeah. How the fuck are you going to pay someone to tell you how to do something they've never fucking done? That makes sense, man. Yeah. It's not ethical. It's fucking common sense. Yeah. How the fuck are you going to pay someone to tell you how to do something they never fucking done? That makes sense. Yeah. Doesn't make sense. I love it, though.

Guys, Andy, our third and final question. Let's get into some some personal development. Let's talk about some mentorship a little bit. Andy, in October of last year, I decided to commit myself to starting a contracting business. I spent the previous three and a half years in roofing, and I knew I needed to learn a lot more before I was ready to start my own thing. So I started working for a general contractor in my area. Let's call him Rooster, only because I've shared the show with him. He may be listening. I've learned a lot from Rooster over the last six months,

and unfortunately, some of them are not great things. I noticed Rooster cutting corners with his work, using the cheapest materials possible, which results in multiple go backs in the time that I've worked for him. And overall, he doesn't seem to have much drive or hunger to grow his business. And while I somewhat understand the nature of work on a small contractor who hasn't been in business for very long, it may at times be low budget patch jobs. I also understand that I don't know shit about starting a business. That brings me to my point of that. I just feel like what I'm learning is teaching me to do things the wrong way.

And I know that when I get my skills to a point where I am as close as ready as I can be to go on my own, I just want to make sure I'm going into my business with a real edge and not constantly fighting go-backs and mistakes like my boss currently is i know i can cook him and every contractor in my area i'm hungry and determined to do so i just need to know if i need to find a new person to learn from or continue to help rooster grow his small business and potentially learn to do things in a small way what's your what's your what's your take on this you got a mentor it sounds like you're learning anyway it sounds like you're learning what not to do okay learning what not to do is just as important to learn what to do like if you can learn from all the other competitors and you see where they're cutting the corners and you see where they're vulnerable and you see where their weak points are and you go build something that's

strong in those points that's a huge competitive advantage something that's strong in those points, that's a huge competitive advantage. So that's how I would look at that situation. But I will say this with an asterisk. Like you said, you don't know shit about business. So you might not be able to see on the back end. Like, dude, everybody thinks that everything costs a dollar and you sell it for a hundred dollars right like they don't understand like shit costs money right yes uh that guy might be using cheaper materials but what's he charging the customer does he fall in the good in the better or in the best category is he making premium homes and then putting cheap fucking construction materials in it because that's a problem or is he building cheap homes and putting cheap materials in it, right? That's how they're supposed to be done because that's what makes them cheap cheap materials make a cheap product great materials make a great product That's how it works

So I don't you didn't explain enough about like what the business model is and this person needs to dig in and kind of figure Out and think about this. Are we building, you know, very affordable entry level homes or are we building at the opposite end of the spectrum castles for fucking billionaires? You see what I'm saying? And those two things are complete different things. So the, the,

if you're working for a typical little construction guy and he's just working on, you know, entry level type housing, of course the materials are going to be cheap.'s understood because that's what's required to build the business so that doesn't necessarily mean he's cutting corners um that's a great point but things like go backs and you know having to fix things later those probably are corner cuts and you're learning not to cut those corners so i'd say by working for this guy you are probably learning

everything that you need to know. And I think you're being very aware and very astute in observing how things are being done and taking notes and working out a plan in your head about how to do it better. That's exactly what we did. When I sat in a supplement super stores for the first eight years that I had the company, we sat there and we analyzed all the other brands. Like before first form. Before first form was started, we sold everybody. Like, dude, we're one of the biggest customers of everybody else's products. People don't realize that.

We have all these stores. We sell everybody else's shit. I'm friends with every other guy that owns all the other companies. I love the guys. It's a pretty tight community. Everybody's cool as fuck. But back in the day that the culture is different in our industry now everybody's trying to do good now back in the day it wasn't that way

and plus the internet wasn't around so there was a lot more room for people to like fuck people so we got to sit there in the stores and we we observed the companies who did it right we observed the companies who did it wrong we got to have conversations for years and years and years when we couldn't afford to start first form and say, hey, if we ever started our own brand, this is what we would do. We would do this. We understood the little nuanced ways that they took advantage of their retailers. We understood the little ways that they did things that hurt the customers or didn't serve

the customers properly. And we took notes of all those things. And then when we built the company our way, we attacked all those things and made sure that we were strong as fuck in all those areas. So I think you're working for a great guy to learn from. It doesn't mean he's a bad guy because we don't know the ins and outs of his business. And I would keep continuing to pay attention until you feel like you're at least somewhat ready because you're never going to feel all the way ready to go and start your own thing um and then when you go start your own

thing make sure that you build it uh with those weaknesses and strengths in mind so that you could be competitive against those guys locally yeah well guys andy that was three all right guys go pay the fee.