REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 761. Q&AF: Updating The Success Recipe, Forgiveness Guidelines & Dominating In Your Trade

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

On today's episode, Andy answers your questions on when it's an appropriate time to tweak the recipe after you've been patient in your process, what are some general guidelines on forgiveness and giving people second chances, and what mindset you need to have to be successful in your business.

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 and welcome to motherfucking reality guys today we have a little midweek q and af this is where you submit the questions and we give you the answers now if you want your questions answered on the show you could submit them a couple different ways the first way is guys you can email these questions into ask andy at andy forsella.com or you go on youtube in the q and a f episodes drop your question in the comments we'll ask uh we'll pick some from there as well um other times you tune in we're gonna have shows within the show we're gonna have cti that's cruise the internet that's like what we had yesterday we put topics on the screen we talk about what's going on we speculate on what's true

what's not true and then we talk about how we the people have to solve the problems going on in the world other times we're gonna have real talk real talk is just five to twenty minutes and be giving you some real talk and then we're Gonna have 75 hard versus that's where someone who's completed the 75 hard program comes on the show They talk about how their life was before how their life is now and how they use the 75 hard program to realign themselves mentally To create the life that they are now living. If you're unfamiliar with 75 hard, it is the initial phase of the live hard program, which is the most popular mental transformation program in history. It's also free and you get

it at episode 208 on the audio feed only. Again, that's 208 on the audio feed only. There is a book. The book is called the book on mental toughness's available on andyfersella.com. It includes the entire Live Hard program, 10 chapters on mental toughness, what it is, how to use it, how to use it to build your life, and then case studies from some very famous people that you know on how they use mental toughness to become the very famous people that you know. Now, one thing about this show is we don't run ads on the show. I don't want to listen to anybody tell me what I can and can't say. As you guys know, we talk about things that are not supposed to be talked about on the internet, and we're constantly dealing with the repercussions of that.

Censorship, shadow bans, traffic throttling. And so if we need the message to get out, you guys have to share the show. So I make you a deal. I don't fill your ears with bullshit ads, and guys have to share the show. So I make you a deal. I don't fill your ears with bullshit ads, and you help us grow the show. All right? So don't be a hoe. Share the show. All right.

What's up? What's going on, man? Oh, not much. Yeah? What's up with you? A little screaming freedom over there. Yeah. Dude, I popped this cherry blast, and I had a blast.

That's not cherry blast. I mean, citrus blast. Yeah. And I've been blasted. I got blasted. Yep. Is that a joke? Not anymore.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right, well, let's get into it. Let's knock these out, man. Let's make some people better. I like the Q&A episodes, man. They're always good. Always making people better.

Did you spend a lot of time alone when you were a kid? I'm just saying. You tell jokes, then you laugh. You do both parts. You only do both parts if you spend a lot of time alone, right? You're getting into a little touchy subject. I'm just saying. I mean, you know, I think.

You're supposed to do one part or the other part, not both parts. Okay. Yeah. So either. You tell the joke and other people laugh. Right. Or just listen to jokes and laugh. That's right.

Got it. All right. Let's go on with the show. Guys, Andy, man. The question number one. Let's knock these out uh hey andy i am a beginning uh longhorn rancher in missouri and i'm still trying to figure out a lot of stuff uh i get the cake analogy and take time but when do you tweak it to fit you i guess

he's referring to the recipe itself. For example, I cannot do things that people in Texas or New York do. So when do you know to start tweaking things here and there to make it fit? Well, look, I mean, you have to decide what your competitive advantages are going to be. And sometimes things that you can't do can turn into competitive advantages. Maybe you can't process the same amount of meat that they can do in Texas, but maybe you can grow better cattle, right? What is it that you, quote unquote, can't do that can be turned into an asset of your brand equity and the perception that people have of your brand, you know, in a positive way? So we just have to look at things from multiple perspectives.

And a lot of times when people say i can't do this i can't do that this won't work for us those are actually opportunities in disguise to differentiate yourself from the bigger guy right um you know if you can't put out a million chickens uh maybe you could put out you know a thousand chickens but they're all pasture raised right like that's where all this shit comes from all these little competitive advantages these marketing tweaks they actually come from companies inability to do things other ways that they have now figured out how to market the proper way so what is it about your operation that makes you unique and

not knowing much about what you do just off what you told me, I would think about the angle of, hey, we're small American farmers trying to produce the best beef that we possibly can or the best longhorns that we possibly can. This is why we do it this way, that we're not some big mega corporation. We're a small time operation. It's run by family. Like you have to lean into the things that you are and figure out how to tell that story so that, you know, it makes sense. So the answer is, you know, once you're set up and once you know how to operate the X and O's of the business, you have to figure out, you know, what is it about you that makes you different that will resonate with the customer? And that takes some creative thinking. I don't know the answer to that because I'm not familiar with your business directly. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I, I mean,

think about it with you. I got two questions on this, man. Like, is it true that things in business, like they're, they're cycles. They're almost like trends in society, right? Like we're like back in the day, everybody wore champion. Then like now everybody's wearing champion again, are there things in business that kind of like come and go, but they're always still the same. And I accept because, you know, when you started S2, it's a retail store.

There's, there was other big wig companies out there. Right. And like, you just decided to do things that they were no longer doing. Right. To bring a new trend back. Yeah.

Now, you know, here we are 25 years later. I feel like that same trend is starting to come back of focusing on the people first, that in-person interaction. What is the truth with cycles in business like that? Well, I mean, when you're a small guy, you got to look at what the big guys should be doing that they're not doing. And you got to fill that hole. You know what I'm saying?

There's things that bigger companies can't do. Most companies don't, you know, they, they leave on the table things that are obvious because they're, they take effort to do right. They're not building great relationships with their end customer. They're not doing, uh, things that would keep their customers loyal. They're not, they're basically selling them a product and then saying, well, I hope you come back again sometime. And so there's a lot of things that these big companies don't do that as a small company,

you can do to make people feel valued and make people feel a part of your brand and to make people loyal to your brand. And if you're a small entrepreneur, those are the things you have to do to be competitive. So you have to look, what do I wish the big guys would do for me? And then you need to take those things and do them for your customers. So a great way to do this would be to analyze your competition, see what they're doing, see what it's like to buy from them, and then the parts that you don't like, you make 10 times better with your company.

So that's how we have to look at it. Yeah, I love that, man. What is the big – what's the name of the biggest ranch, the beef ranch in Texas? King Ranch. Is it King Ranch? I thought it was like three sixes or three threes or something like that i don't know i think that's from uh i think that's

from yellowstone triple or four sixes or something like that yeah i think it's a king's ranch is a real ranch yeah yeah all right i like it man uh guys any question number two uh andy you recently said uh that anyone in leadership who can replicate themselves and teach others what they know can write their own checks. Usually those people in leadership are also very driven and ambitious. Can you teach that? Can you ignite that fire or is it something that people either have or don't have? How do you look at ambition? I think you can encourage people to have ambition.

I think you can show them that they have potential. I think you can paint the picture for them, but ultimately it's up to them to have it. And, you know, sometimes people have it. Sometimes people don't have it. I personally would not hire anyone that didn't have it on their own, right? And this is the purpose of asking what their goals are, what their dreams are, what they're trying to accomplish, what their long-term end game looks like, because you want to figure out how big that person's dreams are. And if they come in and they paint

some picture of some average existence, I would stay away from those kind of people because they're going to be complacent the fastest. So it's about looking for people that have the natural propensity to have ambition, to have drive, to have the will to win on their own, and then cultivating that and helping that develop over the course of time. You could sit 10 people in a room and give them all the same information. You can give them all the same information. You can give them all the same lessons. You can give them all the same, you know, quote unquote, how to skills. And they're all going to produce different levels of results that are based around their own personal drive, their own ambition, their own goals, their own wants, their own, you

know, dreams of their life. And, you know, that's something that unfortunately people tend to have or not have to a varying degree, right? Some people are very ambitious. Some people are moderate. Some people are low ambition. And the best thing that you can do is to keep away from the low ambition people and try to fill your team with high ambition people that are that way naturally. If you think you're going to convince low ambition people to be high ambition people, you're going to waste most of your time and you're going to be incredibly frustrated.

So you have to look in their background for things that show that they have ambition. Have they built anything before? Have they tried anything before? Have they been on teams before? How do they perform on those teams? All of these things give you insight to the kind of person that you're actually bringing on the team. So you have to ask questions. They have to be relevant questions. And you have to look for that natural drive and ambition because yeah, you can show it to people. You can, you know, speak until you're blue in the face about the potential that someone has, but for them to get off the bench and go chase it, that's a totally different thing. So I don't think you can force someone

or really teach someone to have that hunger. They either have it or they don't. And usually when people don't have it, it's because they haven't had it hard enough in life. They haven't had a real difficult situation in life. They never actually had to be on their own or be someone who's taking care of their family or have real pressure on their shoulders. And those people have drive and ambition because they understand the reality of life. But I think, unfortunately, we have a lot of people in this country who have had it too good, too easy for too long. And for that reason, they lack the ambition and the drive because all they've ever been exposed to is the comfort. And so when we think about like, you know,

who the most successful people in the world, it goes back to what I said on Monday's real talk, the most successful people on the world are usually people that have incredibly difficult fucking backgrounds. And, and the reason that they are ambitious and they are high drive is because they had that, that window of negativity that could have lasted in their childhood. It could have lasted in their childhood. It could have been in high school. It could have been when they were a young adult when they had to really perform and step up and be reliable to themselves, which has caused them to realize that nobody's coming. Nobody's going to save them.

Mom and dad aren't paying for your shit. You know, Daddy Trump's not paying for your shit. Nobody's taking care of you, bro. You know what I'm saying? And once you realize that, because you look around and there ain't anybody around to handle your shit, you know, the hunger and the drive and all that sort of comes naturally. And so what we see is, you know, people who typically have everything handed to them, they don't have much drive. And this is funny because a lot of people in business will complain about, you know, Steve down the street, he had rich parents. Yeah, so what, dude? That's going to hurt him. That helps you. It helps you that you didn't have that opportunity.

It helps you that you didn't have the soft upbringing. It helps you that you had to struggle. It helps you that your parents didn't pay for shit for you because you understand how to be hungry when that person who had everything handed to them can never possibly understand that because they never went through it. So when we look at the things that go on in our lives and we decide how to make them work for us, one of the things that works the most for us is us understanding that we had it hard before and we understand what that's like, which automatically makes us ambitious, hungry, and driven to avoid that place of discomfort again, right? If you've never been uncomfortable, how do you know to avoid or what it's worth to avoid the place of discomfort?

You can't. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Let me ask you this. I mean, dude, you've met thousands of people, right? You've met people way up there on the ladder. You've met people that are just starting to climb, right? Have you ever, and obviously we don't have to say names, but have you ever met anybody

that, you know, they had all this ambition, like they had it, like they were fucking killers, and then it just goes away? Yeah, for sure. What comfort? Comfort. Yeah, like look, dude, there's different levels of entrepreneurs. There's people who, you know, they want to open franchises because they're a little bit scared of running their own business so they got to have you know some direction then there's entrepreneurs who work to

earn enough money and once they get comfortable they stop working and usually that leads to them getting back to the place where they start in the first place because they don't realize how long their life actually is and they haven't made nearly enough money to live the quality of life that they want. So those people tend to make a lot of money, go back to where they were, make some more money, go back to where they were. And then the people who are the people who stay wealthy, who stay winning, who stay on track, those are people who they're not even doing it for the money. They're doing it for the fucking win. Like these are the real driven championship caliber people.

Like they're not showing Elon Musk and showing up to make money. He don't give a fuck. He's changing the world. Okay. Like I don't show up here to make money. I don't even take a fucking paycheck from this company. You know what I'm saying? I'm here to fucking build something cool.

Real consistent long-term winners are not playing the game for money. They're playing the game for impact. They're playing the game for purpose. They're playing the game for creating something that hasn't been created before. And because those people play that game for that reason, money's never an issue for them. So they don't go back and forth. They just continue to build and build and build and build and build you know but yeah that's pretty much the three classes of how it works yeah

i love it man um guys any question number three andy what are some general guidelines on forgiveness and giving people second chances. How does Andy do it? And what have you learned from it? Man. Oh, that's a deep question. Yeah. You know, I don't know that I have this part figured out, if I'm being honest, because I tend to give people chances that end up showing me later that they never deserved a chance to start with.

You know, I can't tell you how many people out there that i've helped or that i've stood behind or that i've done extra things for That end up fucking me over and acting like I never did shit for them. I mean bro. It's a lot of people There's a lot of people that go on the internet and pretend like I never did shit And I never helped them and I never fucking was there for them that I've literally been there for in their worst fucking moments. And so I get taken advantage of because you know, to this building and build and create and do things with people that are cool and good people and creative people and high skill people that actually care. I think that's the trade. I think the trade is, is that when you have a good heart and you forgive people and you're willing to work with people because you believe in people,

yeah, you're going to get fucked over by people for sure it's going to be part of the process but dude karma usually handles those people and the end result is that you're surrounded by the highest quality people all the time anyway right so i don't think it's um i think it's the juice is worth the squeeze so to speak uh and it's just the collateral damage that you deal with from being a forgiving person but in terms of like where the line is you know typically how i think about it is is this did this person you know do something wrong because they thought it was the right thing to do that matters right like was this just an honest mistake yeah what was were they trying to do something good just didn't work out uh was it a moral issue or a character issue? You know, if so, you know, that's something that I really don't try to forgive, right?

Like if it's something that's outside the line of cultural values that I agree with, like let's say stealing or doing something like that, you know, I don't forgive those things. But if it's something with good intent and that's truly what it is, you know, I don't forgive those things, but if it's something with good intent, uh, and that's truly what it is, you know, I try to try to look past those things and look at those things as a, as an investment in their education. So, um, I think, you know, every scenario when it comes to forgiveness is independent. And I think there's a fine line between looking the other way or giving someone a pass and letting people walk all over you um and and sometimes you're going to feel like you're erring too far on one side or the other but i think at

the end of the day you know uh you don't want to be polarized in that position because if you're polarized like i don't forgive people or i forgive everybody the result is going to be bad either way that's bad karma on each side. Yeah, right. So you've got to just walk that line the way that you think is best, and it's a case-by-case scenario. I also think about things like how many deposits has this person made in goodwill

versus how many withdrawals have they made? If you work with someone for 15 years and then they make one bad withdrawal against all the good positives they put in. Is it really fair to fucking crush their whole life because of that? You know, because as the owner, as the CEO, you have the ability to do that. You have the ability to fucking take and give. And, uh, you know, I think that's a responsibility that comes with, um, it should come with a lot of consideration for that person's situation

and thought. And I think, you know, when you really care about someone, those can be hard, hard decisions to make because sometimes the right decision is to move them off the team because they're holding the rest of the people back, right? Like you got someone who you like, who's a good person, who's just incompetent and can't do the job. Well, okay, that's cool. But like now you're hurting everybody else by being here job. Well, okay, that's cool. But like now you're hurting everybody else by being here. So that's another way you have to look at it. So there's all these different ways that have to be weighed out from an individual standpoint when you're making decisions about who to give a pass to, who not to give a pass to.

But ultimately, I think most of the time it comes down to how many deposits have they made versus how many withdrawals have they made? How many good things have they done versus how many bad things have they done? What was the nature of the thing that they did? Was it an honest mistake or was it bad intent? Were they trying to be malicious? If so, it may not matter how many deposits that person made. So there's just all kinds of things. And I don't think there's a set answer that says, this is when you forgive or this this is when you give a pass, and this is when you don't. You have to evaluate all those and you have to look outside of you just simply liking the person, you know, and we have to redefine what liking even means. Like when we're in a business

context and that person that you like a lot is coming into the office and making your life super fucking hard. Are they showing that they care about you or like you? You see what I'm saying? So like just because you could say, oh, we're friends and we can joke around and we could tell jokes. If you're making my life harder, bro, you don't love me the way you say you do. You see what I'm saying? So we got to be like that too and and look at actions not just words so i ultimately i think you know um this is a nuanced skill set that you derive over the course of time i don't think that you

ever truly have a solid set in stone rule um and i think you evaluate these situations as they come one at a time and you make the best decisions that you can. And, and over the course of time, you've become much better at making those decisions. Um, but they never get easy. It's never any, it's always a stressful thing because as the operator of the company, if you, if you're not a shit bag, you realize that they, they have, you know, what if they have a family? What if they have kids?

What if those are things that people don't realize that true entrepreneurs that give a fuck about their company think about like, bro, I come in here, dude, and I got the backs of everybody's fucking job and everybody's family and all their fucking kids. I got it all on my back, bro. Every single fucking day. That's real shit. And I take that real serious. That's why I come here every day. That's why I don't, you don't see me in fucking Florida on a fucking boat or whatever, right? Like I'm here every day because I care about what the fuck we're doing.

I care about the people we have. I care about their families. And yeah, we're a high performing team. Yeah, I'm going to ask a lot of you, but there's also a lot of opportunity as well. Yeah, for sure. So I think one thing too that I love your outlook on is because I feel like, you know, it's a lot of times it's just people's expectations are kind of skewed.

And I want to I want you to touch on this a little bit, because it's like I feel like a lot of people have this like fear or like unrealistic expectation that either nobody's supposed to like fuck them over or like, you know, do anything like like do anything bad. Or they have the opposite fear of like, you know, of doing anything because of that fear. Does that make sense? It's like, how do we get rid of this? Like this expectation that like, nobody's going to fuck you over. Well, I mean, that's your, that's your ego. You're, if you think that everybody's just going to operate and play nice with you and, and do good because, you know, because you're you,

that's just you overvaluing yourself. People in, you know, in nature, people do things that aren't even about you. They'll do things that are about them, which is usually where the quote unquote fucked over part comes from. Usually people don't fuck people over because they hate the other person. It's because they're doing something selfish that serves them and not the other person in an environment where we're supposed to be serving the team. And so, you know, when we think about what this actually means, what it actually means is, is that, you know, we have to lower our own perception of ourselves to make ourselves realize that like, bro, like, you know, these are normal things that happen to every single person. They're going to happen to you. They're going to happen to me. They're going to

happen to everybody. And we have to chalk them up to the cost of doing business. And if we do business long enough, you're going to have people do wrong by you. If you are in business long enough, you're going to have family, not believe in you. You're going to have friends laugh at you. You're going to fall on your face and be embarrassed. You're going to make mistakes that cost a lot of money. You're going to lose friends. You're going to lose partners. You're going to lose boyfriends. You're going to lose girlfriends. You're going to lose the belief of people when you fall down. Like these are all things that happen as a normal part of the journey to success, especially in entrepreneurship and business. And to think that

you're going to get there without that shit is fucking delusional. It's delusional thinking. And I don't know, you know, a lot of people won't even go down the path because they're afraid of that stuff happening when that stuff is going to happen. Like you can't avoid it. You cannot avoid looking stupid. You cannot avoid being laughed at. You cannot avoid making mistakes.

You cannot avoid your family making fun of you. You cannot avoid your friends deciding that you're a loser because you work all the time and won't go out and fucking party with them. You can't avoid your girlfriend saying that you're a loser because you're not making any money, right? These are things that happen. That's a normal part of business. That's why you have to build yourself into someone who is resilient enough and mentally tough enough and has the fortitude and the grit and the belief and all of the things required to push through these difficult times that most people aren't even willing to go through.

There is nobody that you look up to that became that person without a tremendous amount of hardship. There's nobody that you look up to that became a successful inspiration to you without going through a lot of hardship. There's nobody that you look up to that became a successful, you know, inspiration to you without going through a lot of pain. When you think of the stories and the people that inspire you, the reason they inspire you is because what they went through to get where they are, not because of just where they are. All right. And that's you too. You have the ability to make an incredible success story, but you're not making it because you're afraid of all these things that are going to happen no matter what happening. And that's making you freeze up. And bro, there's all these

people that have all this potential to be successful, to contribute, to create, to build that we don't even know what they were supposed to do on this earth because they were too afraid to go. Think of all the amazing ideas. Think of all the cures to disease. Think of all the inventions. Think of all the entertainment. Think of all the music and all of the art and all of the things that would have been created if the people were just courageous enough to go down the path and they never did. We've lost more amazing things than we have available to us because of that fear over the course of human history. You see what I'm saying? So we have to really understand that like, bro, these people that you think are great, aren't great because they're great. They're great because they went

and you're not great because you won't go. And dude, the things that you have to go through, those are all character building things. These are things that make us like every hard shit that i have had to go through everything that i've had to deal with getting stabbed in the face being broke multiple times getting laughed at getting made fun of being told no a million times being told i'm never going to be able to do that having nobody believe all these fucking things bro i'm glad they happened to me because they made me who the fuck i am now and you guys listen to the show and you think I got some sort of superpower I'm superpower bro I just show the fuck up every day and I don't

let shit stop me and that's that and if you do the same you're gonna become an inspiration the people around you at whatever level you want to take it to I'm a firm believer in everybody's potential being virtually unlimited now is DJ gonna become LeBron James no but when we talk about you know it's a start firm believer in everybody's potential being virtually unlimited now is dj going to become lebron james no but when we talk about you know it's a start right yeah right yeah you know but like there's limits right yeah but there's also way more areas where there's no limits if you're willing to put in the time and you know basically do do the fucking two things that need to happen, which is one, you need to be able to learn from your mistakes the first time or the second time you make them

at the latest, ideally the first time. And second, you have to be able to go through and deal with all the shit and not quit. And if you could do those two things, you can improve your skillset and you could push down the path. It's impossible not to win over time. It might take somebody a little bit longer because they started in a little bit lower place, but that's reality. If you started out with nothing, guess what? You're going to have to go further. That's the reality. We can't artificially set the start point and the end point. That's not how it it works if you started off with not much you're going to have to go further and that's what you have to accept but you also have to understand that you have things that the other people don't have like i mentioned earlier if you started out

at a low place in life you're going to have the hunger to stay the fuck away from there much longer than the person who grew up in the fucking middle upper class or the upper class and had everything fucking handed to them they're driving driving a Porsche and they're 16 and shit. Like those people don't have the hunger. They're fucking soft. And you asked me before, like what makes people not go? It's comfort. So if that person's been comfortable their whole life, what the fuck are they, what do they have by going anyway? They're not, they're not going to ever go. So you were blessed to be born in a shitty situation because you know what it's like to have a shitty life and you're willing to work and fight and claw and scratch and do anything required to not be

that. And dude, so like if you're someone who's sitting there and you're like, oh, it's not fair because I don't have this or that, bro, you're missing the fucking point. You were gifted the best possible gift you could ever have, which is the experience of a life that you don't want, which creates the desire and the drive and the hunger for a life that you want that the other people you're competing with will never have because they never experienced it. So I quit bitching about it and quit crying about it and start recognizing what a massive advantage that is over everybody else. I love it. Guys, Andy, that was three. Yep. Let's go out.

Pay the fee. I'll see you guys on CTI.