REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 682. Q&AF: Mindset Shift, Scarcity Products & Feeling Behind In Life

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

On today's episode, Andy answers your questions on how to shift your mindset from, "what happens if I do this" to "what happens if I don't," the best way to handle customers when you offer a scarce product, and how to catch up in life when you screwed around a portion of your life.

What is up guys, it's Andy Purcell and this is the show for the realest, 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 questions and we give you the answers. You can submit your questions a couple different ways. The first way is, guys, you can email those questions in to askandy at andyfussolla.com. Or you go on YouTube on the Q&AF episodes and drop your question in the comments there, and we will pick some from

there as well. Uh, this week we're going to have CTI that stands for cruise the internet. Uh, that's where we put topics up on the screen. We talk about what's going on. We speculate on what's true. We speculate on what's not true. And then we talk about how we, the people need to solve these problems going on in society. Uh, later on in the week, we're going to have some real talk. Real talk is five to 20 minutes of me just giving you some real talk. And then sometimes we have 75 hard verses. 75 hard verses is where someone who has completed a 75 hard program, whose life was a dumpster fire, and then they corrected their life path using the 75 hard program. They come on, we interview them, we talk about what they did and what you can do to get your life on track as well.

If you're unfamiliar with 75 Hard, it is the initial phase of the Live Hard program, which is available for free at episode 208 on the audio feed only. Now, there is a book. It's called The Book on Mental Toughness. It outlines the entire Live Hard program, top to bottom, plus 10 chapters on mental toughness, plus case studies on famous individuals that you know and how they use mental toughness to become who they are today. You can get that book at andyfrasella.com. We do have a fee for the show. The fee is very simple. Share the show. You're going to notice that's a big difference between this show and every other podcast is I don't run ads. And the reason I don't run ads is because I talk about

controversial things and I don't want to hear any bitching about it from sponsors. I've done very well in business. I fund the show myself. I don't need their money so they can fuck off. And I ask very simply that you share the show show for us we're constantly facing shadow bans traffic throttles uh censorship and we need you guys to share the show so if the message is good if you believe the message you stand behind the message if it makes you think if it makes you laugh gives you a new perspective teach a new skill set which you will learn on q and a f every single time please share the show So don't be a hoe. Shut up.

All right. What's up, dude? Happy Monday. Yeah. It'll be a good week. Yeah. We got a, uh, we got a special guest coming back on this week. Yeah.

2.0. Yeah. I'm excited. Yeah. That's gonna be a good show. Yeah. A lot of good things, man. Everything's good.

Yeah. Everything's good. Cool. Anything new with you? Nope. Like the hat. Oh yeah. You like that? I like the hat. Yeah. Everything's good. Cool. Anything new with you? Nope. Like the hat? Oh, yeah, you like that? I like the hat.

Yeah, I like it, too. That's why I'm wearing it. Yeah, it's giving, like, some Tom Hanks. I'm the captain now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Somebody told me I look like that guy.

I don't think they did. Yeah, they told me that. Who told you that? The guys out there. Oh, dude. Fucking assholes out there. I used to call, I had a nickname back then. Who called, nobody called you that. Yeah. Nobody me that. Who told you that? The guys out there. Fucking assholes out there. I had a nickname back then. Nobody called you that.

Nobody said that. Sweet, man. Well, you want to get into some Qs? Yeah, let's do it. You got some A's? Let's do it. Guys, Andy, question number one. Andy, you don't know me from a can of paint, but I just want to say thank you and that I appreciate everything you have done for me and my family.

You are truly doing the Lord's work, brother. So you've talked about how when faced with decisions, weighing out something when you have to act, you don't look at it as what happens if I do this, but rather what happens if I don't. And I love that. And I've been shifting my mindset towards that more lately. My question is with this mindset, have you found that you have taken on more risk over time and have become more risk tolerant? I'm sure you don't say, fuck it, let me get into anything that comes my way. But is there such a thing as taking on too much for one risk or too many risks all at once? Would love your feedback on this. Yeah, dude.

Of course, that doesn't mean just go roll the dice on every single thing that comes your way. But when you train yourself to look at things as what happens if I don't versus what happens if I do and these things go wrong, you remove a fear barrier that most people can never get through. Because most people will say, well, what if I do this? What if I do all this work? What if I try this and it doesn't work? And they convince themselves that they're going to work very hard. They're going to try all these things. It's not going to work out anyway. So it's not worth the path to go down and what they don't realize is that you can't really lose if you decide to go because you're gonna go down the path and you're gonna face obstacles and that obstacle is gonna teach you a lesson and when you

get through that first obstacle you're equipped with a new lesson you get through the second obstacle you get equipped with a new lesson third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth ninth tenth you start to get all these lessons and you accumulate new skill sets, which allow you to escalate the path much more effectively. So by not going and talking yourself out, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of never gaining any skills and never making any progress. And so I think that's one of the biggest things that holds people back. What if I do all this shit? What if I sacrifice all this effort, time, energy, money, money into this project or into this career, into this

business or into this organization that I'm trying to build and it doesn't work out. And so they don't go. And so, yeah, while there's, there's for sure, you know, you could take on too much risk for sure. You could take on too many things that are risky at once for sure. Those are real concerns, but they're not prevalent enough to concern yourself with. What you should be concerned with is what is my life going to look like if I do not do what it is I know I need to do? And the answer is going to be frustration, disappointment, regret, and bitterness over the course of your life. So you have to understand, if you don't go do what it is that you know you're supposed to do and you don't become what it is you know you can become,

eventually you're going to come to a point in life where you're pissed off and you won't have the time back to go back and redo it. So yes, of course you can do too much, but I don't think you should be concerned with that. I think you should be concerned with not Doing enough because that's where most people err. Yeah, I love that Let's flip this a little bit right because you also talk about this ladder of success Right and and everybody's goal should be you know moving up those rungs Is it easier or harder for you to say no now than it was, say, 20 years ago, 25 years ago?

In terms of? When it comes to these decisions or offerings or opportunities, is it easier or harder now to say no to things than it was 20 years ago? Well, it's easier because, one, I can identify the opportunities as if they're going to work or not work a lot more effectively. Two, I have less time for opportunities. So if they don't have an equal upside to what I'm already doing, I can't say yes. It doesn't make sense mathematically. So yes, it's easier to say no now because I have limited time, limited energy,

limited resources because what I have going on. And I'm also able to recognize when things are a good opportunity and a bad opportunity much better than I could in the beginning. But that's, that lends itself to what I was saying a minute ago, right? So if you never go and you never go down the paths ever, how can you ever learn to recognize what is good and what is bad? And so what people end up doing is they end up just falling into the trap of being like their high school or their college buddies and just kind of letting life float by. And eventually that catches up with them. You know, they get to be in their forties and their fifties

and that's when they totally give up. You know, they they're fat, they're out of shape. They're like, fuck, I've wasted too much time. And a lot of those people never recover. You know what I'm saying? And they kind of just waste their whole life away. And it's sad because that's not how we're supposed to live as human beings. Yeah. I love that, man. I love it. This second question, this is, it's a little windy, but it's a really, really good question. Let's switch focus here. Guys, Andy, question number two. Andy, congratulations on selling out your American Freedom Gear so quickly. I tried jumping on it and everything got wiped right from under me, which leads me to my question. As obviously you have experience with this very topic and it's fresh in my mind.

How do you give the best customer service to potential buyers if your product sells off the shelves as fast as you put it up for sale online and the restock won't be available for months. For context, my husband and I run a direct-to-consumer Black Angus beef business in Southern California. Yes, your favorite state. And we have limited amounts of bulk freezer beef available throughout the year. Our business has grown slow and steady and it takes about two years from start to finish to have beef done correctly to fill the freezers. And because of this slower growth, I've had time to share our story as ranchers and share a lot about the beef and cattle industry. And people love that on social media, have a great email list that connects potential buyers with our business. And they love to seem to get to know us as ranchers and having

that presence online and within the community. People are more focused about their food and where it's coming from, so we're getting a lot of good, I guess, spark, you can call it. And it's great because we have a larger audience to sell our beef to. It's a blessing and a curse, though. So when I send out an email that we're about to get ready to sell our beef, we sell out in a few hours. And this past week, we sold 11 whole beef in under four hours. And we received many phone calls, texts and emails from frustrated people who have been waiting to purchase our beef for six months to a year almost. And they are in disbelief and discouraged, mentioning that they're going to be shopping elsewhere if they cannot get their hands on our products.

So how do we unpack this? So I guess back to the question, how do you maintain those potential buyers when you have such an exclusive product that moves so fast? How do you maintain those? Well, first of all, you've got to do a great job with the people that are buying. Okay. And what it sounds like to me is you have a really good opportunity that you're not recognizing, which is to build your brand equity around the scarcity of your product. So ideally right now in this position, you should be working on how to scale your, your supply so that you can meet demands. But in the meantime, it's not a bad thing that you have such demand because it creates more demand and more demand and more demand.

And, you know, while people might be frustrated and while they might be angry, it only creates a scenario where people want your product more and it drives the value higher in the consumer's brain. So because you don't have the capacity to serve those customers right now, you should be leaning into the scarcity of your product to build the brand equity while you're working on the ability to scale up operations to fulfill the demand that you have. And so how would you create goodwill between you and the customers that can't get the products? There would be things that you could do to get those people engaged. And I'm not going to do this for you right now, but you would have to be creative and come up with a way to keep these customers engaged into your brand over the course of time.

A company that does this very well is Maker's Mark. I love Maker's Mark, even though I haven't had a drink of whiskey since 2018 because I get wild as fuck, all right? And it's not good for me or anybody else. But I love Maker's Mark, and if I drink whiskey, that's what I always drink. And if you sign up for their email list, um, they have a really cool email list process where over the course of the year, they send you newsletters and little gifts, like just goofy shit, like socks or a stocking or just stickers or cool shit that is like low cost

to keep people engaged with the brand so if i were running your company i would create some really strong branding like you said it sounds like you're doing around the ranch around what you do around why you do it and how you do it with a strong logo presence i would come up with you know six times a year where you either send out a Newsletter or some sticker packs or some sort of reminder like hey, we're still here I would I would create a preference program right now based around your Regular customers where they can like get preference when the when the product comes available

These are all things that you can do to make this a little bit better for your brand. But ultimately, at the end of the day, not being able to fulfill the demand for your product isn't the worst problem in the world if you leverage it properly, right? So when you continue to sell out and you continue to sell out and you continue to sell out, yes, people get mad, but when they eventually get it, how much extra happy are they you see what i'm saying so this is this is a way that you can leverage in situations where you can't fulfill the the demand uh that will actually help your company's image in the eyes of the customer yeah see i've never you know and it's funny because when i was reading this question like like but but but you get you giving this answer it kind of mind fucked me because you

would think man like you're getting all these emails and texts and it's like but on the same side we see this stuff too like even with the yeah yeah i mean dude people get pissed but like but what you're saying is that that's not necessarily a bad thing i mean it's not a great thing but it's not the worst thing in the world if you handle it properly. You know what I'm saying? Like sometimes when people are upset, dude, like people are vocal. Okay. And people that are vocal are also vocal when you do the right thing by them. So if they're pissed off, you can usually switch that around into a positive situation by over-correcting it to where they're singing your praises out in public.

So how could you do that? And that's what you need to think about. How could you take these customers who want to be customers but can't be because you can't fulfill them and make them bigger fanatics of the brand, right? How could you create more demand? How can you create more excitement? And that just takes some creative thinking. If I was able to sit down with you for a few hours I'm very confident. We would come up with an effective strategy to do this Yeah, it's funny too because I think too like scarcity There's a lot of businesses or companies that operate on just solely off of scarcity, right?

You look at like Ferrari, right like the fucking brand new car that's coming out. There's only gonna be so many Oh, yeah, that's right. And there's there's a lot of people that can yeah and they categorize their customers in three categories they have they have top vip and then regular and for you to be able to get the the badass releases like the new sf uh xx you know 90 that's coming out like bro you got to be a vip or top customer and that means you have to have history and it means you have to have been loyal and that's a way they control demand around their cars and you can do the same thing with your meat you know i i actually think you're in a really good position you know um to leverage that if you're you know you've just got to figure out a way to you know connect with those people who aren't getting so that that way whenever you scale up your ability

to fulfill the demand uh they're still wanting your product yeah i think it's important too i want to ask you this because we got to be very very clear ferrari can do that you don't see prius doing that and so the difference in the quality of that product it has to be fun yeah this typically only work this typically only works for premium products yeah you know like like it can work for gimmicky products like things that get trendy um but typically this really only works for in-demand premium products um you know there's things in history that i can think of like fucking beanie babies like these little stuffed animals people used to collect and shit that were like bullshit, right?

But people will get fanatical and there's always cases like that where there's, but still, dude, that's limited release shit. You know what I mean? And anytime you have limited release shit, it's an opportunity to create scarcity to man. Yeah, I love that.

And that's something that we go more in depth on in Arte syndicate too if you're looking for like more in-depth information on things like that um our taste syndicate is something that you guys should look at it's our taste syndicate.com i love it uh let's get to our third and final question guys uh andy question number three dear andy i'm a 27 year old that is basically fucked off their entire life with drugs and partying. Last year, I had some near death experiences and have completely changed my life since then with working out and eating healthy and staying sober. My question to you is, what advice do you have to someone that has the anxiety of starting too late? I know this is a sunk cost fallacy in a way, and I still show up to the fight every day. I'm in the best place mentally and physically,

but I still find myself with the anxiety that I am behind. I feel like I know the answer, but would really like to hear it from you. You are behind. You are behind. You fucked off for seven years. You are behind. You should have anxiety and you should have urgency and you should want to go. And you shouldn't try to run from that anxiety because that anxiety is telling you, hey, bro, it's time to get your fucking ass in gear. So yeah, you are behind because you fucked off. Happy that you recognize that. I'd stay sober. I'd get your fucking ass in shape and I'd get focused. Otherwise, by the time you're 40, you're going to be broke as fuck working at Wendy so that's that's the truth um and that anxiety that you feel

is a great driver for ambition success and creation and so many people want to eliminate every single feeling that's uncomfortable and every single feeling that you know that they don't want to live with and they ignore the fact that these things are trying to tell them something. We live in a totally fucking pussified society where every single motherfucker wants to be in Zen state all the time. Well, I'm going to tell you what, bro, these Zen state motherfuckers don't create anything. They don't build anything. They don't become anything. And eventually they have to come to terms with they fucked off their whole lives. You're lucky that you've only fucked off to your 27.

And a lot of people will say, oh, well, it's not too late. It's not too late. It's not too late, but you are behind. Okay, so it's time to get your ass in gear. It's time to get going. It's time to make whatever it is that you want out of your life, make that start happening. And that's going to require you to become the best version of you which means staying sober which means getting fit which means getting educated which means

Stopping filling your mind with mindless bullshit and start filling your mind with shit That's going to make you better And if you do these things and you go out every single day and you check off win after win after win after win You'll be able to catch up to everybody else pretty quick because while everybody else may not have been fucking off the way that you have been uh they still only go half speed so if they're going half speed and you can pick it up to actually execute at full speed you'll catch and pass those people but uh you should have anxiety uh you are behind and you need to get your shit together. That's what I would say.

I love it. Yeah. Let's do one more. Guys, Andy, question number four. Yeah. Hi, Andy. I'm a 24-year-old who recently joined my family business one year ago. We are a contract manufacturer doing about $5 million to $10 million in revenue per year.

The company has been around for 40 years. $5 million to $10 million. That's a pretty big disparity. Is it five or is it 10? It's like double the amount. It's like seven? I'm doing one to 50 million a year. Yeah. COVID, bro.

I mean, Bidenomics. But growing up, I worked in the business from the age of 12 to 18. On the weekends and summers. So I have a very intricate knowledge about how we function in our products. During COVID, the business had staffing issues and wasn't able to meet customer expectations for quality. So our reputation has suffered. Since I joined the team, my main task has been helping to organize our production, improve quality, and improve communication within the company between different departments. And we

have really stepped up our game in a short amount of time. Now that we have finally gotten to a better place, what is the best way to rebuild our reputation with old customers who stopped working with us because of previous negative experiences? Also, what is the best way to facilitate new business to business relationships? I do a lot of cold calling and emailing, but I have little success and usually don't get a reply. Is there any strategy in the way I can present the company to potential partners? So two part question here. Well, first of all, yeah, you should call those people up on the phone and say, Hey, I'm Steve. I'm the C I'm the president of the company. I wanted to apologize for how we handle business during COVID. We had this issue, this issue, this issue. We were battling these things. And I wanted to talk to you to earn a chance at getting your business back. Please, let's have a meeting or let me

call you or let's have a discussion. But I want to, at the very least, no matter if you come back to us or not, I wanted you to know that we're better than that and we're going to do better than that moving forward. And you own what you did, and you tell the truth, and you try to earn the business back one by one. There's no fucking big, there's no one big move you can make to correct that. You have to correct those relationships one by one by one. It takes effort. It takes authenticity.

And unless you're willing to call these people and genuinely own and apologize, I wouldn't even do it. Because if you do it half-assed, they're going to think even worse of you. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that typically B2B business is referral business. So what that means is however you're servicing your other B2B customers, you're going to need to do so in a way that completely exceeds their expectations so that the service is so good whatever it is what did he say he did he even say a contract manufacturer okay they that you do such a great

job with those companies that they are willing to either talk about you or share a story or do a testimonial about you to help your business. So stories sell, bro. And the best stories that sell that bring business are stories of exceeding expectation and going the extra mile and doing things that a company typically wouldn't do. And if you're not willing to do those things, you're going to lose to someone who is. So that would be my answer on those things. You know, make sure that you call those people, get them on the phone. Don't just send them some mass email. Don't send them some mass texts. Don't send them some mass mailer. This is how a lot of people fuck this up, dude. I bought my first Rolls Royce in 2014 and they sent me a pre-printed thank

you card with a fucking signature stamp on it and it was a 450 000 car all right and had they not sent the postcard i wouldn't have thought anything i was just like cool i got a rolls right but because they sent a postcard to me and it was such a fucking like we don't give a fuck thing it actually made me angry you see what i'm saying and now i love rolls and i still own a couple but it gave me the perception that they didn't give a fuck yeah and it was it was it was kind of like a letdown because i had worked very hard to get to that point to be able to buy that you see what I'm saying? And I would have been better off had they just not sent me anything or acknowledged anything because I was happy in the first place.

So if you mass email these people or mass text these people or mass mail these people and do so in a way that shows like you're trying to basically just fucking half-ass it, you're not going to get those people back. Okay. Remember value comes from inefficient action. And when you take inefficient action, people value it because they understand it takes time, energy, and resources to make that happen. So I would sit my ass down in my fucking chair and I would call every single one of those people and say exactly what I just said you should say. And that's what I would do. And you're going to get some no's. You're probably going to get some fuck you's, but I bet you're going to get some yeses too. And that's going to be important for the business. I bet you're going to get way more yeses than you think. People do not take

ownership. People do not do these kinds of things anymore in business. And when you do them, people will value them and appreciate them. And that's how you do business long-term. You build relationships. Now that's a lot easier to do in a business to business situation like these guys are in than it is in a direct to consumer situation like my companies are. But we still do things like that in our direct to consumer business when we fuck up up if we fuck up and we have a situation where five six hundred customers are affected which happens by the way that happens okay because we're putting out thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of orders and sometimes there's like sections like within those order streams that get fucked up okay then we get the

wrong tickets or we get something happens or and that that happens. And you know what we do? We call those people up and we say, Hey man, your shit got fucked up. We're sorry. We apologize. Here's what we're going to do to make it right. And we do that one by one. And we do that. We, I promise you, if you're in B2B, we're doing tens of thousands more transactions

than you on a daily basis. And we can do that. So I know you can do it too. Yeah. So you touched on something you know with the rolls royce uh story is that because i never really thought about it like that but i guess there is like this preconceived like expectation yeah of the cut like of the company that the customer will have depending on the quality i guess that's right and like i never

even i never was yeah if you're a product, you better back this up with premium relationship building. Start to finish. Everything has to be premium. Yeah. Okay. And that's, that's a big deal for you to think about with your business. Do you have a premium product and shitty service like most people do? And they think that their product's so good that they can have shitty service.

Well, that's a pretty fucking weak ass way to think about your business because what if you had great service what if you had great relationship building how much better would your company actually be but a lot of motherfuckers are just lazy they're just lazy operators or their second generation or third generation operators that don't know what the fuck they're doing they don't value what they have they don't feel personal responsibility for their employees so they're they'll say well you know our products are so good you know you can just fucking wait and bro eventually that sizzles out like eventually people get sick of that shit which is why in the first question with the state people you guys need to be fucking

making sure that you could scale up to meet that demand that scarcity thing that will not work forever eventually people will go somewhere else because food is a commodity bro like i don't give a fuck if i'm eating western sizzler or fucking you know debraga's from fucking i mean right i'm gonna eat either way and if i can't get your shit i'm gonna eat something else all right so the scarcity thing will only work to propel your brand to a certain level and then you better scale it up to fill that or you will lose the opportunity does that make sense absolutely absolutely let me ask you this too on the b2b side you know because i feel like every single city uh has that group right of like the entrepreneur

business groups right like all the guys that go to the same bar together They all know each other's business and what companies they run. Mm-hmm Is this something that you get you know, I mean is that would that be a recommendation to like maybe try to get into those? Those fucking patio bars. Well, it's always good when people know who you are Because their friends might need a contract manufacturer somebody they So yeah, getting to know the local entrepreneurs or the competitive entrepreneurs across the country or across the world is a good idea because dude, there's always opportunities for collaboration or emergency situations where people need help. You know, know in our situation like we do

manufacturing but we can't always take manufacturing so we can we can you know we have to fucking say no a lot right but we'll say hey what about you can go over here to this guy you can go over there that guy you can go over there to this guy and you can do these correct yeah yeah and so it's always a good idea to have good relationships with your competition because eventually you'll be doing business together Now I'm sure some of those circles though like I know I don't know about every city, but like I feel like I feel like for me That would be difficult because I feel like you know with this city

There's some like I'm not gonna call it snob mentality But like it's the khaki pants with the fucking like I just don't know if I could fit that crowd We mean like that like you couldn't fit a a crowd it's gonna make you millions of dollars okay yeah no right you need to start thinking different yeah yeah right and by the way you don't have to fit in with the crowd bro when you walk into the fucking crowd they should be asking how they're gonna fit in with you okay you shouldn't be trying to be like them you should be who the fuck you are and let them wonder why the fuck you're so different. That's the whole thing.

That's the whole play. That's why your social media sucks. That's why you suck. That's why nobody knows who you are. No one gives a fuck who you are. Not you, but anybody in general. Like, you guys are too afraid to be authentic, and you want to be like everyone else. So, like, what you're saying is, oh, the khaki pants and fucking polo.

You know the khaki clothes. I do, yeah. But the point is, is that, yeah, I don't give a fuck. I'll show up wearing whatever the fuck I want. And if they don't like it, I don't give a shit. You see what I'm saying? And then that makes them say, why does this guy like that? Why is he like that? He's not wearing his dickies. He doesn't give a fuck. That guy's cool. Well, how can he not give a shit? How can he not care? I want to be like that? He's not wearing his dickies. He doesn't give a fuck. Right. That guy's cool. Right. Well, how can he not give a shit?

How can he not care? I want to be like that. Right. It's an authenticity is an attractive trait. And so like, you shouldn't be looking at these groups. Like, how do I be like them? You should be looking at it like, Hey, I could build relationships with these people and build friendships with these people, but it doesn't define who I am or what I wear or

how I behave. I'm still me. You know, I think one of the things that makes me, me is that people come in here and they hear me talking plain language and they see me wear plain clothes and they're like, how the fuck did this moron fucking do this? Well, maybe I'm not a moron. Maybe you're just making preconceived judgments based upon my appearance and my vocabulary, which is quite high. I just choose to dumb it down so everybody can understand me. I love that. Yeah.

I love it, man. I love it. Well, guys, Andy, that was three. Yeah, that was four. That was four. Don't be a whore. Went from sleeping on the floor Now my jewelry box froze

Fuck a bowl, fuck a stove Counted millions in a cold Bad bitch, booted swole Got her on bankroll Can't fold, just a note Headshot, case closed Outro Music