REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 674. Q&AF: From Employee To Business Owner, Gain Traction In Podcast & Changing The Company Culture

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

In today's episode, Andy answers your questions on how to go from working at a company to starting your own business, the best practices to gain traction with your podcast, and how to change the company culture at a well-established business.

What is up guys, it's Andy Purcell and this is the show for the realest say goodbye to the lies and fakeness and delusions of modern society and welcome to motherfucking reality. Guys, today we have Q and AF. That's where you submit the questions and we give you the answers. Questions can be about anything. Usually they're about personal development, business, entrepreneurship, how to kick ass, but if you want to throw some in there about other stuff too, that's cool. You can submit questions for Q and AF episodes a couple different ways.

First way is... Guys, you can email those questions into askandy at andyfercella.com. Or you can go on YouTube on the Q&A episodes, drop your question in the comments, and we'll pick some from there as well. Throughout the week, we will have different episodes. Tomorrow, we will have CTI. That stands for Cruise the Internet.

That is where we put topics on the screen, we talk about what's going on. We speculate on what we think is true. We speculate on what we think is not true. And then we talk about how we, the people, need to be the solution to the problems going on in the world. Then we have Real Talk. Real Talk is 5 to 20 minutes of me just giving you a little real talk. Some of you might call it a rant, depending on how you take it.

But that's what it is. We have 75 Hard Verses. That's where someone who has completed the 75 hard program comes on, talks about how their life was before, how their life is now, and how you could change your life using the 75 hard program. If you're unfamiliar with the 75 hard program, it is the initial phase of the live hard program, which you can find for free at episode 208. That's audio episodes only. It's not on YouTube.

There is a book called The Book on Mental Toughness available on my website, andyfersella.com, which outlines the entire Live Hard program plus 10 chapters on mental toughness, why it's important to cultivate, how it can improve your life, and how it'll change your life. And there's also some case studies

of some very successful people in there as well that you're going to recognize. So you don't have to buy the book to get the program. The program is available for free, but the book will explain it nuts and bolts, top to bottom, inside out, for those of you that need to know everything about it, which I'm one of those people. So, yeah, we have a fee for the show. The fee is very simple.

It's not monetary. You'll notice that we don't run ads on the show um i don't like to be told what to do uh that's kind of my thing and uh so i'm not going to run any ads on the show because i don't want to listen to shit and the benefit of that to you is you don't have to hear 30 minutes of ads or me talking about shit that i don't even use so that uh you know i can get paid i get paid other ways in my life so i ask very simply instead of that that you help us share the show okay we're constantly battling shadow bands and traffic throttling and censorship and if you don't share the show the message doesn't get out so if it's a good show makes you think makes you laugh uh gives you a new perspective gives you some skills or some information that are helpful to you.

Do us a solid and don't be a hoe. Change show. All right. Hey. What's up, man? Happy Monday. Yeah. What's going on with you?

Nothing, dude. Just same old stuff. Yeah. You know? What's up with you? Oh, nothing much. We had a good little day Friday, this past Friday. Got to try on some stuff. You guys will be seeing that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. DJ and I got some new. You guys will be seeing that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. DJ and I got some new suits. Yeah. Fucking pimp. Yeah, they are. They are. Probably the coolest thing I've ever owned in my life.

Yeah, same. No, no, for sure. Yeah. For sure. And nobody's got that. Like, nobody's. That doesn't even exist. Dude, these motherfuckers don't have no swag.

That's what it is. I know. Yeah, people are going to shit their brains. Shit their brains? Right out? Right out their nostrils. I think they already did that. No, that's what it is i know yeah people are gonna their brains yeah their brains right out right out there nostrils i think they already did that no that's true yeah that's true at least at least 30 percent of society yeah not our listeners might be a little bit more than that but okay yeah that is what it is what's going on though man everything good about eight uh yeah dude everything's great man uh training's going good finally healthy um

feeling good you know fuck man it's good let's get it yeah feeling optimistic about the future no matter what happens uh because i don't think people are going to tolerate some of the stuff going on and i feel that's coming to a head which means that we're closer and closer and closer and moving forward the right way so So I'm excited about that. It's like the quicker we get to the shit, we can get past the shit. Yeah. That's kind of how I feel. That's a good place to be.

Yeah. That's a good place to be. Well, guys, Andy, as always, I got some good ones for you. All right. Let's do it. Let's dive into these guys. Andy, question number one. Hey, Andy. I've spent the last two years strategically putting myself into a position to quit my job and start my own business.

The time has come where I need to put it all on the line. I'm ready. But I know from listening to this show that my expectations are not going to be my reality. And I should be on alert at all time for mishaps. My family is willing to help me with my business and everything. My concern is that because this is literally all of my money and if something goes wrong, I will likely lose everything. So I feel as if maybe I should just do everything until I reach a point where I can afford for other people's mistakes.

What are your thoughts on this? First of all, transitioning from a career as an entrepreneur to a career as an entrepreneur is not a, it's not usually a situation where you just go from one to the other. Usually, you know, you continue to work your main income source and you take your spare time, your nights and your weekends and the time that you have outside of that and you build your business up to a point where it's making some income that will supplement the income that you're making at your primary job. Okay.

And then when it gets to a point where you can survive on the new thing, then you make the switch to full-time. So first of all, you should be thinking about that. Most people that go from one to the other and do what you're describing you want to do, they end up failing. So it's very, very important that you have some supplemental income while you're doing your business, okay? If I hadn't have had that when i was coming up i would have failed the first six years that i was in business i worked other jobs i did other things to support yeah people don't realize that six years six years i ran the store from nine to and we were back in those days we were only open till seven o'clock because we weren't busy but nine to seven um and then it got to nine to nine and then i

would go to the bar i would work at the bar um or uh do other things like things that i did to make money was i promoted concerts um i did odd jobs construction concrete shit that I could earn some money to be able to keep the business open. So that's very, very, very common. And you should not believe the people on the internet who say, go in all in on yourself today because you don't know shit, bro. Like you really don't. And you need to have some supplemental income coming in while you transition out of that first career to the second career as an entrepreneur. Second point here is you should make really sure that this is what you want to do because this is not easy. It's not simple. It's not quick. The glory stories of entrepreneurship are the vast, vast, vast minority. the truth of the matter is most people fail

and most people fail because they expect like you said in your question for it to be much easier than it really is the disparity between what reality is in entrepreneurship and how it's presented online it's a million miles away and And that's just reality. So you have to ask yourself, are you really willing to give everything to this? And that means your early mornings. That means your nights. That means your weekends. That means everything. If you're not willing to give that, entrepreneurship is not for you, dude. You will not win because there will always be people that are willing to do that. And you at your skill set cannot compete with those people who are willing to do more and

invest more of their time getting better than you will. So a lot of people hear this idea of entrepreneurship as freedom. It's not fucking freedom, dude. It's the furthest thing away from freedom. You don't get your weekends. You don't get your holidays. You don't, bro, I didn't even come home for fucking probably three, four years, but maybe once a year, I was living three and a half hours away for Christmas or, you know, you miss a lot. And this is reality, dude. And it's not talked about. And the reason it's not

talked about is because most of the people they're talking to you on the internet Don't really have a real business if you dig into it. So how would they know this right? They're selling you ideas on how to build a real business when in reality they never built one So they don't tell you this shit because if they told you this shit, they wouldn't be able to sell their shit. All right, so It's hard as fuck and you have to be real about what you're willing to give to it. So that's the second point. And the third point is, is that you should, in the beginning, go as long as possible without bringing in outside help, unless it's technical help that is skill set that you don't know. And in that case, you should not bring them on full time. You should pay them to do a specific job until you are pulling in enough revenue to justify a position in that situation that would be full time.

So that's my answer to that question. It's three parts. My main thing here is, dude, really be honest with yourself about what you're willing to give. Are you willing to give up your life for the next 10 fucking years to do this? And if you're not, you shouldn't do it. Yeah. So I want to clarify, you're saying that, because it sounds like this person is basically like two years,

maybe he saved up a nest egg in the last two years, and he's just trying to leave this and go straight. I understand. And you're saying it's better to just make this more of a gradual transition. Yeah, I understand he has a nest egg, bro. But like when you start opening a business and there's all these different expenses, especially when business owners are inexperienced

at marketing and advertising, this is where they usually fuck up because they think that they can spend a whole bunch on marketing and it will bring them all kinds of business and they don't really understand that when you start to advertise or run ads or however you're going to do it, it takes multiple impressions for people,

whether that's television, whether that's radio, whether that's print, whether that's digital, it takes multiple impressions. And if you go out and think that you're going to and this is just a fundamental reality of building a company from bootstrap level now now if you were able to get 200 million dollars and raise cash this is a different fucking story but i'm talking about this situation specifically the the way that that people mess up their businesses in the beginning is they think that they can go out and gather a thousand customers in one ad campaign. And that's just not really how it works, dude. You need to be thinking about building your business literally one customer, one relationship at a time. Because if you build it one customer at one relationship

at a time and you do a great job, the exponential effect of that, of gaining multiple customers is much quicker than you trying to go out and it's much more profitable than you trying to go out and get like a thousand customers with some big ad campaign. Because dude, here's what happened. That guy has this big nest egg and he goes out and he runs this ad, and it doesn't work and he's like okay the copy was wrong so he goes out and he runs another big campaign and it doesn't work okay the copy was wrong now they start saying you know he's running out of money right and because the problem really is they're not getting enough familiarity and they're not getting enough impressions to become uh intrigued enough or interested enough and you don't have the word of mouth out there working for you,

so it takes even longer, all right? So what these guys do is they go out, they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the business actually works. They think they can blow their business up with ad campaigns, and then what ends up happening is they don't work, and then the reason they don't work, they're completely missing. They don't understand. It takes all these impressions to get familiar and so they change their copy from here to here to here to here and they change their branding from here to here to

here to here and what happens is the familiarity can't happen because they're not consistent in their message or their brand so they suicide themselves by going through all their cash. And that's what I'm trying to help this individual avoid. Yeah. And I would also imagine, too, you know, like, you know, when you guys were started, there was probably a bunch of, like, hidden costs that you didn't even know. Oh, of course. You know what I'm saying? Like, phone bills or, you know what I'm saying?

So it's like, you're trying to put this money into a business at the same time. Wait until you start figuring out how much tax they take from your business wait until you figure that out yeah that'd be a lesson for you yeah people think you know oh you buy this for nothing and sell it for a lot and you just fucking rolling in dough and dude you don't understand how hard they the government makes a business to actually scale if they actually remove the tax restrictions on businesses the economy would go fucking crazy but they don't want to do that because you know they want us to be suppressed because as people get wealthy they get more leverage they get more

power and uh they don't like that yeah so yeah it's real shit man man. I love it. Let's get to question number two. Hey, Andy. Andy, I just started a podcast and I've been doing it for almost a year now. I post four episodes a month. The problem is I'm not seeing any traction. How long should I go on this before I call it quits? I know the space is super competitive and i see other podcasts popping up and becoming overnight success why isn't this working for me because you probably suck you probably ain't good enough to do it okay like here's that's the answer the answer is

the market dictates the result and if you're good the market responds and if you're not good the market does not respond and i would say that that most likely, if I'm guessing, you probably haven't done anything. You don't have a crazy story to tell and you don't have lessons to tell. And people are honestly tired of just these regular people having conversations with a microphone and fucking headphones. Everybody thinks they can podcast and everybody can podcast. But having a successful podcast is pretty fucking rare it's the hardest platform to win at and uh it's not for everybody so you may

not have the skill set to do it now could you develop the skill set to do it for sure but what i would recommend is that you go out in your life and you build something to be incredibly interesting around look at the guests that people have on shows they all have an interesting story what's your story what's your position of authority what are you an expert at what what why should people listen to you just because everybody has a microphone and their fucking social media and headphones bro it's it's become a joke real talk like if i like if i wish they would price microphones and headphones like like ten thousand dollars each just because dude like the shit's absurd everybody thinks that if

they do a piece of fucking content with a microphone and a headphones they're going to get millions of views yeah dude it comes down to what you say it comes down to your message it comes down to how you deliver your message and it comes down to the credibility you have. And so podcasting is very competitive. And to be great at it, you either got to have a great story, you got to have done some real shit, or you got to be really great at having conversations. And you got to have a personality. And, you know, a lot of this stuff that we see online with podcast is, you know, it's gotten really hot. But, you know, yeah, it's it doesn't get traction.

You know, these guys are getting 30, 40 listens on their podcast. And that's OK if you're going to commit to it for 10 years. I've been doing my shit for nine years, dude. You know what I'm saying? Rogan's been doing it for like 20 years. All right. You've been doing it for one. Right. you know what i'm saying rogan's been doing it for like 20 years all right you've been doing it for one right you know so you know it took me a hundred episodes to even get like kind of okay

so i you know that's another thing if you do have the skills and you do have a story let's say you built a company i don't know if you did or didn't i don't know enough about it but if you did uh or you did something crazy or whatever your podcast is about, you know, you may not have been doing it long enough. You just may not. Yeah, a year is not a long time. No, it's not. And your skill set may not have developed. Like, this is like anything else.

Reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, and you're going to get better and better and better and better. And so if you're dedicated to it, I would figure out how to become interesting. And the easiest way to become interesting is to go out and build something in real life that people want to know how the fuck you did it or at least put you in a position to speak on things like i didn't just come on here and start giving fucking entrepreneur advice i had built shit before my you know my company was a

hundred million dollar company before i ever did a fucking podcast you see what i'm saying you got some stuff to say yeah so like what the fuck are you doing what gives your fucking credibility and that's that's where that's what people miss bro just because you you think you got shit to say doesn't mean anybody's gonna listen to it unless it's really good shit it's like the guys that you see that are out there doing podcasts at a high level that people are listening to and they haven't like really built anything but their podcast. They're fucking funny or they are great at conversation or they're entertaining and they make people fucking laugh and they got personality. And what I see is a bunch of you guys getting on there and going like this. You got to work hard and be tough.

And it's like you got to do the thing. Yeah, you got to do the work, man. And it's like, yeah, you might be saying similar shit. But the way you say it sucks. You don't have it. Right? Like, dude. These are real variables. Yeah,'s it's real and like dude

you have at the end of the day you have to be good there's you're not entitled to a fucking top podcast bro you're not entitled to a successful business you're not entitled to a great fucking career you have to be good and it doesn't matter how much work you do if you don't develop the skill set. So, like, you could do your podcast for 10,000 episodes the way you're doing it. It's probably never going to catch because you're not good. Yeah. Okay? And maybe you are good.

Maybe you're the fucking best ever. I'm not trying to discourage you. But you haven't been doing it long enough. You need a fucking story. You need some unique competitive advantages that make you different. And I would say another thing. A lot of you guys are afraid to be authentic. Like you're really afraid of it.

Like your best you is that's the product. Like I don't come on here and pretend to be something else. And I know some of you guys do because when you meet people that know me, they always tell me what you ask. Is really like that yeah motherfucker i'm just like this in my life true or not true it's true is that true yes that i'm this is me you guys get me you don't get some fucking bullshit toned down version of me and i believe that's why a lot of you guys like to show so be authentic be who you are Tell them tell people what it is like how what what do you really think you know what I'm saying? What do you really what do you really think man? How do you really feel you know and like?

Just let it rip dude. Yeah, let me actually this because there was a part of this question I'm curious as he you know because obviously you obviously, you know, you talk about, like, listen, there is a journey. This is going to be long. You talk about how hard it's going to be. And even still with that, there is a possibility that it still may not work. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

But there's this concept, this idea of this overnight success. Bro, that's bullshit. Let's talk about it. Yeah. This guy, like what he said, oh, I see all these other podcasts. who who where's you know yeah there's exceptions bro there's like it looks like it looks like overnight success okay but like busing with the boys will compton will compton has done a ton of shit and now he fucking finally got to a point where it's great and everybody loves it He's been doing it for years and years and years. Uh, you know, bobby altoff super popular

Okay, you know why because it's unique the way she does it is unique. Okay, it's nobody's doing it like that So it catches and she has amazing guests. So You know, dude, what is your fucking unique selling proposition? What is that? Like, what are you? Who are you? What do you think? What do you say?

How are you different? How are you different from the fucking millions of people that have bought a fucking microphone and sit on their fucking, they make reels with their fucking headset on and it's probably not even plugged into no shit and they're fucking doing fake. Like, what makes you different than that and by the way stop doing that bro like find a new way to do it like real talk like a lot of you guys like the shit's overplayed man and i i know that sounds weird coming from me because every single clip you see it we don't have headphones though dude every clip everybody's ever seen of me

is the exact same. I'm bitching about it. I know I sound like an asshole, but I'm just being real, man. I don't want you to waste all this time and never get anywhere. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Can you take us back to the first MFCEO episode? I mean, what do you want to know about it? I mean, the first episode. It's terrible. It's you at? It's terrible. Yeah. It's fucking terrible. It's terrible. In fact, that's why I leave up a lot of the old shows,

because I'm like, you know what? People should go back and listen to how bad I was. You know what I mean? Yeah. Nine years ago. Yeah, it's terrible, dude. Yeah. And that's the thing.

That's why I said it took 100 episodes. It took 100 episodes for me to get even decent You know I'm saying I got almost a thousand podcast episodes under my belt a thousand. That's a fucking shit ton 2003 thousand and three Good guess and it was almost a thousand. Yeah, I looked at it yesterday. Yeah, that's fucking crazy. Yeah a thousand Okay, like you got fucking seven that's why you suck it's real shit though man i love it i love it man guys let's get to our third and final question andy question number three so a little back yeah what do you say what do you say one episode a week

uh four episodes yeah one yeah so that's 52 episodes. Yeah, bro. No shit. You suck. Real talk. Yeah. Real talk. Just based off of numbers here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would keep, if I were you, I'd do two a week just so you can accelerate the process of improvement.

And fuck if they don't listen. If you're that committed to it, fuck them if they don't listen. You're going to improve your skill set and eventually another thing you could do do to start start you know when you get good enough start having guests on that have other podcasts and and collab with that you know what i'm saying very few people can like just hold a show on their own you know what i mean it's not and they don't have to be famous they don't have to be they got to be interesting right you know what i mean all right i love it guys uh any question number three or third and final question andy a little backstory i went to prison when i was 18 years old a mix of poor decisions and surrounding myself with the wrong crowd anyways fast forward

i get out as a 25 year old man by 30 I was a low-level manager at a demolition company. That's when I found the MFCEO podcast and eventually 75 Heart. I want to thank you personally because 75 Heart changed my life dramatically. I went from $60,000 a year low-level manager position to a project manager position

shortly after my 75 Heart journey, making six figures. Now, I am 33 years old and I've worked my way up to be part of the ownership group at the very same demo company I started that. We've been around for 20 plus years and are currently an eight figure business. My question is, how do I approach changing the culture at a business that has been doing things a certain way for so many years. Recently, there's been some employee turnover, all stating a quote, toxic work environment that doesn't care about their employees. Personally, I don't see this to be true, but I want to help turn my company into the go-to place of employment for anyone that wants to work in the demo space. I'd appreciate

any advice you have for me. For sure, man. First's that's awesome dude like that's what it's about nobody's perfect people make mistakes people fuck up their lives the goal is to not fuck it up again the goal is to be better afterwards and so i just want to say that's awesome i respect the fuck out of that and i actually kind of respect that more than someone who never had to do that because like, that's an incredibly difficult thing to go through. So congratulations. Short period of time. Yeah.

Congratulations on that. That's cool. Just make sure you don't go back. Yeah. So, so, so yeah, dude.

So like Vince Lombardi has a famous quote and it's very simple. Leading by example, isn't the best way to lead. It's the only way to lead. And if you, as an entrepreneur, which is what you are, would like to change the culture in your environment, you have to start with yourself. So you have to start behaving how you would like the culture to be. And if you're having an environment where people are saying it's toxic, that means you're going to have to correct to where it's positive. And it's, it's not that. So you got to be the

opposite of that. And you have to assert yourself to build relationships with the people in your company to make them feel, because I guarantee if you're having all these people say the same thing, you probably got a real problem there, even if you don't see it okay because it's a commonality dude so and by the way culture goes up and down culture culture once you set it in place doesn't always stay at a high level it goes up and down in proportion to how much effort you invest in it like everything else so if you want the culture to change dude you gotta you are gonna have to put in the work and you're gonna have to put in the work in a way that it's noticeable so what that means is you're gonna have to be fucking awesome you're gonna have

to lead you're gonna have to coach these people you're gonna have to make them feel you know wanted and important and recognized and seen and eventually what will happen is your other partners in your in your group will say you know what's the guy's name to say don't say okay steve all right they're gonna say they're gonna say steve um what do you dude you're doing awesome man you're kicking ass blah blah blah and then what that what that's going to do is give you an opportunity to sit down with the guys and say all right guys look here's the deal i wanted to do this because we were getting this and this and this and i want to transfer form the company into the best place of employment that we can possibly be and to do that i've had to put in all this work and so what i'd like to do is to formalize a positive culture

and i'd like to sit down with you guys and come up with, uh, you know, a mission statement, some core values, and then really go through some leadership training together so that we can maintain this culture that I've got going because it will help us grow the business. It will help us avoid turnover. It will help us have more enjoyment and more fun doing what we do. Uh, I don't know, but blowing shit up sounds pretty awesome and tearing shit down. I like that. But the point is, um, you're going to have to kind of build it on your own and then bring it to the other people. You could always bring it to other people and then get them all to build it. But that's less of a convincing argument because they're not seeing what you've

already done. So like a lot of times mid-level leadership or you know even just not the main shot caller in the business will bring ideas to the main shot caller in the business and that will get shot down because there's nothing you can really see so the better you know like uh what's that saying it's better to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission yeah this is one of those situations where you want to go do it and then bring it. Because that way, when they notice how great of a job you're doing, you've already proven the concept to them and it's going to be easy to get their buy-in and then you can formalize the culture of the company.

I love that. Let me ask you this. So as a leader in an organization, as even a shot caller or maybe just a high-level executive, whatever the case is, when it comes to addressing issues or things that are being brought up, how exactly do you know when something needs to be addressed? Is it one employee saying, like, hey, this might be a problem? Is it two or three? Like you mentioned, if you've got a couple of employees saying that they feel like it's toxic. OK, well, probably might be an issue. It depends on how big your company is, too. OK, like if you have, you know, 500 plus employees.

You're going to have some buzzing that's not good all the time because you're dealing with people and people sometimes, you know, they become unhappy with their lives in some way, and they start to feel like they need to change their lives. And they actually end up blaming their career for their unhappiness when their unhappiness comes from other areas. And then this is a big, this is a lesson in the lesson. Yeah. A lot of people fuck up their lives like this because they leave great careers because they're unhappy in other places and they blame their career. And then they get outside that career and they're like fuck i fucked up okay so you need to make sure um that you understand that if you have a big number of employees you're always going to have a few people that are upset and it may not even be a real thing it might that's just the numbers game right um but you know when you

when you start to have like if you have a smaller company and you have you know three or four people that are saying that it's probably a real thing yeah you know um and by the way when you have a big company and you do have only two or three people that doesn't mean ignore them because they might have very valid points uh so it's just important to listen it's important to judge those things i have a little thing that i teach my leaders uh and sal teaches his you know our leaders um there's a difference between bullshit and real shit don't ever bring me bullshit if someone's just bitching to bitch don't bring that shit to me real shit bring it to me or handle it right if you want to be really good handle it on your own uh but if you have to you bring it to us we

fix it so those are you know that's a good rule to have what's bullshit and what's real shit and you need to become really good at figuring out which is which yeah i love it man yeah i love it well guys that was three. All right, guys. Let's have a great week. Don't be a hoe. Show the show. We're from sleeping on the floor. Now my jewelry box froze.

Fuck a bowl. Fuck a stove. Counted millions in the cold. Bad bitch. Booty swole. Got her on bankroll. Can't fold. Just a note.

Head shot. Case closed. Closed.