REAL AF with Andy Frisella - Are You An Imitator or Impostor?, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO164

Episode Date: August 10, 2017

If you are waiting to see what other successful people do just so you can do the same thing, you are doing yourself a disservice. It's one thing to notice what someone else does well. It's legitimate to cherry pick a good idea or best practice and apply it to your life and business. But here's the bottom line: whatever you draw from someone else should be adapted and be developed for you. Personalize it or pass on it.  You don't want to be a carbon copy of someone else.  It's less than you deserve and bad business.

What is up guys you're listening to the MFCEO project I'm Andy I'm your host and I am the motherfucking CEO guys today is Thursday Thunder which means it's gonna be more motivational based typically but today I've got some practical things I want to talk about. Before I get into that, remember we have a review contest going on where you go on iTunes, you leave a review, and then we choose five people who left reviews. And then we're going to do a live Skype for 30 minutes, just me and you. And I'll help console you, help answer your questions, help you get through whatever it is you're trying to work through. And basically just try to provide some real value to you directly. Now, recognize guys that the reviews are extremely important for us. And also if you subscribe to the podcast, it's extremely important to us and how we get ranked. You know, typically we're not

asking you to buy things or sell you courses or do all this other bullshit. And we don't really have commercials or anything like that. So if you find a value in the con in the content that we're putting out, if you could please leave us a review and subscribe to the podcast, refer a friend, those things are really helpful and really appreciated. All right, guys, getting into what I want to talk about today. First, I want to talk about two into what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about two things. I want to talk about imitation, and then I want to talk about being an imposter. Okay? I got a question from somebody I know on Instagram who asked me, she's starting a new business,

and she asked me about people who are imitating and copying her and what she should do about it. And she wanted to know if she should call them out, if she should attack them, what she should do. And I want to cover that with you guys. Not only what to do in that situation, but why you shouldn't imitate people. There's that saying, imitation is the highest form of flattery. That's bullshit, especially in business. Imitation is usually the quickest way to die, all right, when it comes to business. Now, there's always choice A, B, and C, and I know some of you guys are thinking that, right?

You got McDonald's, and you got Burger King, you got Wendy's, and you've got all these other places. But to be the dominant player in the market, those people are the leader. Those are the people that take up the majority of the market share. They're the people who win the most or the people who make up the most money. And the reality of them being a leader and everybody else imitating them is this. And this is why you don't want to imitate someone when you're in business. If you're imitating someone else, if you're trying to be like them, if you're trying to become them, if you're trying to steal their ideas, the problem with that is this. You're always waiting to see what they're doing. And by the time you see what the other

company is doing or what the other business is doing or what the other manager is doing or the person you're competing with is doing, they have already done that. You're seeing the outward effect of decisions they've made months and months and weeks and weeks ago. You're seeing the outward result of the work they've done for the last, you know, however many months or years, all right? And you're trying to copy that and in their mind, in their strategy, they're already working on the next thing, which by default puts you however many steps behind at all times. So you can never actually come up with an original idea. You can never win. You can never be first. You can only be another option. And when you're another option, you're usually not as good,

all right? So if you own a small business and you see somebody else doing something and you think it's a good idea, that's great. Recognize that your competitors have good ideas. But instead of trying to copy their exact same idea, you should try to take that idea one step further. Same thing if you're an employee. If you're an employee and you see somebody doing something well, be humble enough to recognize that, all right? You know, you have a guy in the office who's competing for the same position as you. Be humble enough to recognize what he

does well. Don't just shit talk him and say, oh, I fucking hate that guy. That's what dumb fucks do, okay? Smart people recognize what their competitors do well and then try to improve their business model in that way and then take it a step further. OK, so even if you're the guy in the office and you're competing with another guy, recognize what he does well, improve your game past his point, and that's how you're going to fucking beat him. All right. But just imitating someone or trying to be like someone or trying to emulate someone, guys, you're cheating yourself out of all kinds of things because at the core, your business could

be actually better. At the core, your skills as a person could be actually better. And when you imitate everyone, you're basically cutting yourself off from the growth that would naturally happen to help you become the ultimate version of what it is you're trying to become. And you don't know that you couldn't be smarter or better or more effective or make more money than the next guy. So by putting yourself in a role to imitate, you're cutting yourself short. Now, let's say you are the guy being imitated. All right. Should I call him out? Should I yell at him? Should I, what should I do? Should I expose them? That's our natural tendency to do those things. But the reality of it, guys, is, is that you don't want to do that.

Because when you're the leader, you have the most light shining on you and you try to expose them, first of all, nobody fucking cares. Second of all, how many of the people that follow you or look at you or customers of yours are now going to know about this other person? And they're going to say, well, fuck, maybe I'll give that person a shot because this person, the person who's leading, sounds very bitter about the situation. Maybe this person has something good to offer. You're better off ignoring it. You're better off letting it go. All right. The person who's following you, the person who's copying you, they likely have no fucking clue what they're doing. And they're looking at the shit that you, you know, made for the last two years and not the shit that you're making for the next two years. And they're always going to be behind you. So not to worry about it. All right. It's a stupid thing to worry about. So guys, don't worry about people

imitating you and don't be the person imitating someone. It's the quickest way to fucking basically struggle in business. All right. If not completely kill it. Now, with that being said, I want to talk about something else. There's something out there, guys, I get a lot of questions about, all right? And it's about, it has to do with what we've talked about before. We've talked about permission. We've talked about, you know, feeling like we need other people's permission, feeling like we need our parents' permission, our school teacher's permission, our, you know, other peers' permission, people who are higher up on the ladders permission to go out and do something. And you feel like naturally, because you don't know enough and you

don't have enough experience that you are not qualified to, to move forward without someone's permission. But guys, here's the thing that permission never fucking comes. And so when you're, when you're in a situation where you're trying to grow, you're trying to improve, you're trying to progress and you feel like, you know, maybe you're not good enough or you're not qualified, even though you've had some real success, you know, and some people go, some people go their whole lives, never feeling good enough because no matter how much success they have, because they never are able to validate internally what their success is. There's actually a real syndrome for that. It's called imposter

syndrome and you can Google it, but it's basically people who can never feel like they're the real deal and they're always in fear of being exposed. And guys, everybody has that to some degree or another. Everybody, everybody feels like, you know, the next guy's better than them or the other company's better than them or they know something or more of an expert or they're more of this. And guys, you have to realize, and this goes, the reason I put these two subjects together is they kind of go hand in hand. Instead of imitating that person that you think is better, you have to give yourself permission to go out and fucking be better. All right. So many people freeze up in the entrepreneurial journey and the entrepreneurial journey guys, that's an actual business ownership and also

in progression within a company because you should be thinking like an entrepreneur. The entrepreneurial journey gets frozen up guys, because people think they don't have what it takes when they look themselves in the eye, when they look themselves in the fucking mirror, they feel like they're a fraud and they're, they live in constant fear of people exposing them or showing that they don't know something. And guys, I'm gonna tell you the quickest way to fucking get over that fear is this, admit that you don't know everything. All right. It's okay to not know everything. The best fucking phrase I ever learned to say is, Hey man, I don't really fucking know that. You know what? If you're man enough to admit that you don't fucking know, but you're willing to go out and find the answer, that's a thousand

times more valuable than it is to be the guy who fucking knows everything. Not knowing everything is a lot more valuable than the guy that knows everything guys. Okay. Being, being ignorance is not, is not not knowing. Ignorance is knowing if that makes sense. You know, we all know the guy that knows everything, guys. Okay. Being, being, ignorance is not, is not not knowing. Ignorance is knowing, if that makes sense. You know, we all know the guy who thinks he knows everything. You don't want to be that guy. Be the guy who looks at a situation and says, you know what? I don't really know what to do here, but I'm going to go fucking find out. You know what, sir? I don't know the answer to the question that you make about our product, but I'm going to go find out right now for you. What's more valuable? What's more valuable? The guy who can answer the question on the spot

or the guy that shows he's willing to go way out of his way to get him the right answer. Think about that. Think about you calling a customer service or calling a company or, or having an employee in your office or being, uh, talking to your boss and the conversation comes up and instead of him having the right answer, says you know what I'm not real sure what the answer is but I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna find the answer I'm gonna find the right answer for you and I'll get back to you right away what's more valuable to you him actually knowing the answer on the spot or you actually going out and going out of your way to fucking track the answer down now guys a lot of people are gonna say well knowing the answer on the spot shows he knows what he's doing and he's qualified for a job. Bullshit. It's about

creating value and going out of your way with effort is a lot more valuable and people recognize humility. That's a lot more valuable than knowing everything. So guys, don't be afraid to say you don't know, because if you say you don't know, it lets you off the hook for being exposed as a fraud because you fucking know you don't know everything. So guys, you know, I think it's real natural for us to like, you know, feel like we need people's permission, but nobody ever gives that permission. Your parents aren't going to give it. Your spouses are going to give it. Your bosses are going to give it.

Your peers aren't going to give it. Your competitors aren't going to give it. The people who you admire and aspire to be like aren't going to give it. It's aren't going to give it. The people who you admire and aspire to be like aren't going to give it. It's never going to be given to you guys. So you have to quit fucking looking for it and you have to look internally to yourself to give yourself permission to say, hey, I don't know everything, but I'm doing the best I fucking can. And when I don't know something, I can learn. When I don't know the answer to something, I can find it. When I don't know how to do something, I can figure it out.

And guys, when you do that, nobody can ever expose you for a fraud because you're already admitting that you don't fucking know everything. You know, the biggest problem with this is people's ego. They let their ego get so fucking big and so fragile that they can't let anybody know that they don't fucking know. Well, guess what? Nobody fucking knows. I don't know. You don't know. Nobody that they don't fucking know. Well, guess what? Nobody fucking knows. I don't know. You don't know.

Nobody listening to this podcast fucking knows. There's all shit. There's a ton of shit that none of us know. We're trying to figure it out. We're all doing the best we can. And the best way you can become effective at that is letting yourself off the hook for having to have all the fucking answers.

Rafa No! the fucking answers