REAL AF with Andy Frisella - Entrepreneur: Are You Or Aren't You? ft. Gerard Adams, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO124

Episode Date: February 7, 2017

Gerard Adams, known as "The Millennial Mentor," is a thought leader, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and philanthropist, with a simple purpose: to inspire others to leverage their passions to create the successful lifestyles they dream of. In this episode, Adams joins Andy Frisella and The MFCEO Project crew to discuss everything from work ethic to personal branding.

What is up guys you're listening to the MFCEO project I'm Andy I'm your host and I am the motherfucking CEO bitches as always I'm joined by my co-host Vaughn the pastor of disaster what's up my man man? Things are good. I got to go to the Lou, the other Lou, this weekend. Which Lou is that? Louisville. Oh, Louisville. Louisville.

That's how you say it. I know that's how you say it. Those motherfuckers can't talk down there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was good. It was a good weekend. Yeah. Got to drive by a big statue of Muhammad Ali.

Yeah, that's cool. I forgot that's where he's from. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I know Sal's a baseball guy. Are you a baseball guy? Yeah, that's cool. I forgot that's where he's from. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I know Sal's a baseball guy. Are you a baseball guy? Yeah, I like baseball.

Louisville Slugger Museum. Pretty cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. You ever been there? No. No, I haven't been there. But the concept is cool, right? Yeah, that'd be cool, right?

Like, go look at a bunch of fucking baseball bats? Yeah. Well, you know, I have to admit, I didn't have a ton of respect for baseball players until I went there. And they have this little setup to where you can stand behind a fake home plate, and you can take a pitch. It's just insane how fast those pitches are. It's amazing that anybody hits any pitch.

I'm sure it's amazing to you. Well, it is. The athlete that you are. Yeah, well, that's true. I'm more of a basketball guy. Yeah. You look like a basketball guy. 5'2", fucking white, basketball guy. Yeah. You look like a basketball guy. 5'2".

Hey, Steve Curry didn't look like a basketball guy. He was in college. He smoked everybody. Yeah, but he was like 6'7". Okay. You're like 5'7". 5'10".

And a half. Also, you guys know who else is in the room. MC Salmon. What up, what up? What's going on? Not much.

It was actually warm enough to wear these salmon shorts today but but you didn't wear them man if you don't wear the salmon shorts we can't have a good fucking show I'm just in this you know the skinny jean mode right now I could tell it's fucking skinny jeans are appropriate for you you like looking at some fucking rainbow stickers so guys as you, if this is your first time listening, welcome. This is the MFCEO podcast. We do curse. We do tell off-color jokes.

We do offend people. But what we also do is tell the reality of entrepreneurship, core values, and values in society that will help you become successful no matter if you own your own company, no matter if you're an employee in a company, no matter if you're trying to, whatever your goal could be, we are going to talk about those principles. Today, we have something that is very special that we don't normally do. We have a guest. The guest that we have today is a very, very well known social media influencer. If you're not following them, you need to be following them. Very successful, real entrepreneur, not one of these fake motherfuckers that sells info

products on the internet and pretends to be some sort of fucking guru. We're talking about a guy who started a company, built the company, sold it for $50 million and has done things in the real world. Okay. Key point being real world. All right. And as you guys know, I don't bring guests on very often, but this is a great opportunity to connect with somebody to talk with somebody about what it takes to do real things in the real world. So I'm proud to have all my good buddy, Gerard Adams. What's up, my man? How you doing?

What's good, Andy? Thanks for having me on, bro. Listen to that voice, man. He's got a voice for audio, doesn't he? Yeah, smooth. Yeah, he was saying he doesn't like the audio. His audio isn't his thing, but I think it might be a secret superpower. Yeah, see, I have a face for audio. Yeah, you sure do. Gerard and I and his crew and Emily went out last night, and we drank quite a few beers.

I think you had what? We figured it was like seven? No, you guys had 14, so it was mostly 14. Yeah. I had 13 or 14 Stellas. Wow. Yeah. But who's counting, right?

The only reason we counted was because we were talking at lunch, how shitty we felt, but it was worth it. Where'd you take them? We went to Katie's Pizza and Pasta over in Rock Hill. Yeah. Great place. Yeah, you didn't get that invite, Bowen? Yeah, I never get the invite.

Well, I didn't get invited to your MSCO meetup, so. Well, that's true. Yeah. I assumed a no. How the fuck are you going have an mseo meetup without the fucking mseo i also assumed to know on that one yeah yeah so vaughn i threw this on vaughn at the last minute i said hey we're gonna do a podcast my boy he's in town let's let's talk about some things i think this is a great opportunity to talk about real fundamental shit that it takes to be an entrepreneur.

You know, Gerard and I spoke most of the night last night about the difference between a plan and theory and actual application. Why don't you tell people a little bit about you and about what you've done and where you come from uh before we get into some of the conversation that that we're going to get into and let people know where they can find you too yeah thanks andy um i gotta admit guys uh pounding beers with andy fucking forsella was a highlight of so far 2017 so thank you brother for having me out. Alyssa and I had a great time with you and Emily. But it was really cool to really dive in with you because I feel there is a real problem in society right now, especially with the younger generation, of who they're looking at and getting guidance from,

you know, as far as like real role models, especially in the entrepreneurial world, you know, what people are considering success, you know, for as far as like real role models, especially in the in the entrepreneurial world, you know, what people are considering success, you know, and I feel that I relate to you in an aspect that like I did grow up at a time where I didn't grow up into social grow up into social media. I grew up with, you know, hardworking American parents that like I saw work their asses off. My mom's seven days a week at a supermarket. My father worked for Prudential like to provide for me and my sisters. And I owe it, you know, I owe it all to them. But like growing up, they instilled in me very early on old school

values, right? You know, stuff that you talk about all the time, right? Work ethic. I saw it firsthand because of my, you know, because of them, right right uh you know leadership skills at a very very young age my father pounded that in me pounded that in me non-stop to be a leader no matter what i don't give a shit what you do you don't you don't never be a follower you stand up for what you believe in in life and you don't stand down to shit and he taught me that and he used to actually leave notes around my house, you know, there were famous quotes of like Marcus Aurelius, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, just like big leaders, you know, and, you know, integrity, all these values that my parents instilled in me, so I'm blessed to have that kind of foundation, and I just grew up like a natural hustler, man, I used

to, you know, shovel down, you know, if it snowed, I was getting a block to shovel all the block, you know, all the houses. You know, then it turned into like hustling, you know, tees, car parts, fake IDs at one point, like doing whatever I could. Yeah. You know, when I was younger and I was just naturally, you know, just like a hustler. You know what I mean? I think I just really. Yeah. I really.

Yeah. It definitely was in my veins. know uh just like a hustler you know what i mean i think i just really yeah i really yeah it definitely was in my veins and you know i was definitely motivated because i wanted to take care of my my parents i wanted to kind of you know i saw them what they did i was like man i want to set um go to a new level for our family and like help my my parents after everything that they've done um you know but i actually you know, but I actually, you know, I dropped out of college my first semester,

even though my family really wanted me to go that. And they told me that that was the way to, you know, to make it. And now I know it's a little more people are dropping out. And, and just like now it's the cool thing to be an entrepreneur. But back then when I dropped out of college,

it was like, I was like that as a, as a loser, fucking failure, you know, all that shit. And it was real. Like it really, really was real. Like even, all that shit. And it was real.

Like, it really, really was real. Like, even my family was disappointed. Like, everybody was like, oh, we knew Gerard was going to be that fuck up. You know, we knew that, you know, because I was the guy who wasn't the smartest kid. I'll never forget, never. Like, all the kids that I was friends with were in, like, AT classes, what they used to call the, you know, the higher classes. And, you know, even in sports sports I was extremely competitive but I wasn't

the tall bigger dude but I was a leader my father taught me to be a leader so no matter what I was like I loved pressure I was always creative and trying to create my own opportunities

I didn't wait for nothing in life I was a person and trying to create my own opportunities. I didn't wait for nothing in life. I just was like, I was a person who just did it. So when I dropped out of college, it was that pressure of my family saying to me, look, you're on your own. You fuck up. You got to figure it out. And I think that kind of pressure early on in my life taught me that it's up to me and what I do.

Nobody is going to give it to me. No one is going to give it to me. No one is going to hand it to me. Back then, there was no, I don't even, you know, info products. I guess they were made by Tony Robbins back then. I guess it was probably big. I didn't know who he was. I didn't know who any of these, there was no one I really looked up to. The people I looked up to when I was younger was like, you know,

I guess maybe I was a basketball fan as well, Vaughn. So I was like, you know, Patrick Ewing, Michael Jordan. You know, but I really, I didn't look fan as well, Vaughn. So I was like Patrick Ewing, Michael Jordan. But I really didn't look to books because I never read. I was an ADD kind of guy. But I just had to figure it out, man. And I had to go through. A lot of people ask me now to come and talk about that Elite Daily Exit. But it took me 14 years of straight hustle figuring it out. Failing, getting back up.

Failing, getting back up. Having some success., getting back up, failing, getting back up, having some success, making millions, losing millions, getting back up, continuing, you know, and that whole journey over 14 years, you know, I learned, you know, what it was, I feel what it was really like to truly, truly be an entrepreneur, you know, and I grew into the social media, I grew into all that stuff, but I never gave two shits about social media. In fact, just this week with my team, I took a step back and I've been analyzing what's going on with culture right now with social media. Because it's like, it's driving me insane. There's so much lost perception in society right now.

Yeah. perception in society right now yeah and social media is this unbelievable tool that we've been gifted with you know this generation to use so that we can authentically connect yet we are now seeing more than ever it being used for the exact same fucked up reason why the media is it is today right you know people using it to tell fake ass stories have a perception get the fame they're people on bullshit. And there's becoming a lost perception. People are throwing the word entrepreneur on everything. People are trying to, you know, and I can go on and on and on about this.

But I'm taking a step back. I'm saying, again, like a leader, how do I make sure that I'm stepping up as a better leader for this generation? Because we need leaders more now than ever before like right now right authentic leaders that are going to share real fucking stories real value of what it really truly takes to truly create your own you know opportunities in life and what that means dude do you think that this is interesting I was thinking about this while you were talking do you think that there is a lack of men and women that are successful between the ages of let's say 30 and 40 which would be where you and i are um that are taking the role of where the leaders of the next

generation do you think there's a lack of that? Abso-fucking-lutely. Yeah, why do you think that is? It is huge. It is huge. I feel like when we were younger, like teenage guys, there was a lot of men and women between the ages of 30 and 40 that I looked up to in business, you know, that were willing to like write a book or, or put out, uh, you know, some sort of information or this or that, you know,

like Tony Robbins wasn't the only guy. Um, I was very, see, you're, you're not a reader. I was a very like voracious reader and like consumer of content. So I know that there was like a lot of, there was a lot of people that were willing to step up. It seems, it seems like now I feel like even though it's the obligation of people between that age to stand up and say lead the next generation you know the guys that are freaking 18 to 30 right yeah instead an example i feel like that example is not being set on the scale it should be what do you think i think

you're 100 right and you know what's the reason why is because we've never had in the history you know of you know i guess you can say the united states you know because i can't you know the world is it consumes media differently but right now there's a there's a disruption with you know the way that people connect through social media it's you know and it's being because of disruption opens up opportunity now that opportunity and like leveraging social media like technology can be used in two ways for the good or the bad and a lot of people are leveraging it to take advantage of it right to you know for for for today for the you know for those own reasons rather than being like really coming out the

people that are you know that that should be the role models coming out and leveraging it so that there's, there's the right people to look up to. Right. That makes. Yeah, no, totally. I think, I think what we're seeing is a lot of people, I think when you get any new tool, right? The, like, this is going to be a weird analogy, but you guys will know what I'm saying.

If you listen to the show before. I just kind of say weird shit sometimes. All the time. When you have something new, it's always the criminals that figure out how to fucking utilize it first. You know what I mean? They take the new tool and then run with it, and they figure out all the things about it, and then it comes back to legitimate use. I feel like I'm not saying that there's fucking criminals out there. Right, right, right.

I'm saying that there is inauthentic people. There are people who are pretending to be something they aren't. There are people that are making a living selling things that they aren't qualified to sell or talk about. And those people are not the real people. And I feel like those people figured out, you know, because like, dude, they're hustlers, right? Right, they're hustlers. How am I going to make a buck?

People will see that opportunity to take advantage. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like, you know, the legitimate people, the people who are real entrepreneurs, guys that are really building things, they're busy building their things. Right. You know, so they haven't,

the social media is so new that the real entrepreneurs are kind of behind building their things. Right. You know, so they haven't, the social media is so new that these, the real entrepreneurs are kind of behind the quote unquote criminals, you know, cartoon characters that we see on the fucking internet.

Right. So they're not having the millions of followers just yet. Exactly, right. And they're not in the game, so to speak, as much as some of these other dudes

have learned how to manipulate the system and manipulate the tool. And, you know, it is kind of scary and at the same time we have this huge younger generation right now that's right dude coming right up looking for the looking for it they're seeing these motherfuckers and they're trying to be just like these dudes and it's like dude i can't tell you how many 19-year-old fucking life coaches I see on the internet. Like, dude, bro, calm down. Let's build some shit. You know what I mean? The meaning of entrepreneurship is getting so lost that it's almost like, you know, like you said, when you dropped out of college and you say, oh, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm going to do something.

People used to look down on that now I feel like it got accepted now I almost feel embarrassed to say that again yeah but back then I got to say

I didn't even call myself an entrepreneur see people are doing things because they want to be they want to be called entrepreneurs they want to say they're entrepreneurs because they're looking

for some kind of maybe you know to prove themselves right now entrepreneurship doesn't mean no job you know what I'm saying like just. Entrepreneurship doesn't mean no job. You know what I'm saying? Like, just because you don't have a job,

you don't get to call yourself an entrepreneur and be something. Right. Like, what are you creating? What are you building? What are you contributing? What kind of value? What kind of solution? You know, who are you impacting?

Those are the things that make up entrepreneurship. Right, and it's bigger than yourself. Yeah, it is, man. And like we talked about earlier today, we were talking about, you know, there's always the plan, and then there is the application of the plan. And those two things are completely different. And the problems that you have to bridge and overcome are really where entrepreneurship skills, you know, come into play.

And like, dude, all these dudes out there selling these, these plans and these books and these courses and all this shit. And these kids think they're going to buy this fucking shit, go out, follow the 75 steps to this. And they're going to all of a sudden have this business and they're not taught any of the skills that are necessary to actually execute the plan so then they end up getting their asses fucking beat and then they think well fuck I'm stupid or I don't have it or I don't you know and they never try anything again you know what I mean and it's it's just very it's a very weird potentially damaging situation that is going on, you know? And I feel like entrepreneurship as a,

as a career deserves better representation than what it's getting. Before we go on, since we are talking about the issue of being a real entrepreneur as opposed to a would be or a fake entrepreneur, I think it'd be helpful. People knew some of the things that you've done. I was really impressed reading about Elite Daily and Founders. So why don't you give us a quick rundown of what you've got going right now? So after I did drop out of college, the first thing I wanted to do was create a solution to the very first problem that I had. And I still use that exact same method

today as an entrepreneur, right? It's that simple. And the problem that I was facing as when I was 19 years old is I wanted to learn what made companies great. I want to learn how to invest into good companies. At the time, I really was interested in the stock market. I wanted to understand it, you know, so I could, I would go online, I would look at these forums, and you couldn't, to learn from other people, but there was no sense of credibility on any of them, so I was like, well, I'm going to create my own community online, and I'm going to steal the same idea that Amazon or eBay has of, you know, color-coordinated, like, rating systems, so I would have one to five stars, each member had, had a color-coordinated, between one to five star ratings so you can click

on a member's name and know okay this guy's got four and a half gold stars that means he's ranked over a hundred times he's talking about why he he likes apple for these fundamental reasons now you know this guy's somebody i should listen to right and for me i was just trying to create a platform so that i can find i guess you would say like online gurus or mentors to learn from and um i basically would stay up till fucking three, four in the morning, literally scouring the web, going to every message boards for different companies and saying, hey, come to Stockspot and talk about this on my platform. And little by little by little, I got it up to about 10,000 members, which back then was a lot.

And I had people communicating like crazy crazy and I started learning I started learning Asking questions learning how to read an income statement learning how to balance you I became a fundamentalist of Public companies and started studying the market and eventually a CEO calls me one day He's like, you know, I want to advertise on your site and I was like, oh shit. I can make money doing this and Because I wasn't doing it for that I was doing it to kind of learn right bring value to bring community together. And I was like, all right, this is great. And then he was like, how old are you? I'm like, Oh, I'm 19. He's like, I have a company called M phase technologies out of New Jersey. I want to meet you come here. I don't think you understand the value of what you've created. So I met with this CEO and he was like, I'm going to teach. I was kind of pioneering digital media at that time to tell stories.

And the CEO was like, you can leverage this platform to be able to tell stories for companies that need exposure. And back then, what was called investor relations or public relations was done in a very traditional means. It was done with road shows, press releases, things like that. So he was like, I'm going to mentor you to teach you this, this business and you help me from a digital media perspective. So, um, he brought me on board that year. I had helped the company get, I got them written up in all types of online publications, did video marketing for him, new website,

you know, started learning the social media aspect of it back then and built them to have 18,000 shareholders, which is the largest shareholder base at any small cap company at the time. Freaking things going crazy. And what the company had was they had a partnership with Lucent Bell Labs, which was then a renowned lab, and they created a nano battery. And, you know, I loved it because I still to this day don't understand why we're charging our cell phones two, three times a day to keep up with battery technology. So a year goes by. Everything is going great. I tell the CEO, let's do our first ever live demonstration of the nano battery.

He's like, you handle everything. So I got the room set. I got a huge venue in New York City at a steakhouse. I had a really nice open area. I invited investors, the media, got it packed to about 200 people, and, you know, that day, I'm in the bathroom, my cue cards, you know, never did public speaking, no one's ever met me, I look like a baby, you know, I was freaking, I look young as it is, no facial hair at that time, and the CEO was like, just be yourself, so I went out there,

introduced myself, hi, I'm Gerard Adams, this is why I believe in this company, I've been behind all of the website, what you've read, the releases, all these things. And then I introduced the CEO. The CEO comes up and he's showing how the nanobattery is not using any energy. And the product was an infinite shelf life battery. And until you turn the device on, that's when it would release energy so they went to prove that concept in front of the everybody's waiting it's not showing no energy is being used he hits that button to prove out this concept and crickets doesn't work so in front of everybody in the room everyone's like what the fuck you know everything and i'm sitting there like oh my god all this hard work.

And you're going to tell me you're not prepared to make sure that this thing is going to work? So I thought my career was over. This was my first experience with failure. And I'll never forget, a couple guys came up to me in that room and was like, hey kid, I'm surprised you got me in the room. Here's my card, call me. So when I left, I was like, you know what? I can learn something from this.

Fuck it. There's got to be other companies out there that would love to use my expertise. Right. So I decided to build my first company, which was a digital media marketing agency for telling stories for small cap companies. And I'll never forget. I started, I would print out at home in my parents' basement. I would print out every public company that I found that I thought you know Met these characteristics these fundamentals had a good story

And I would literally fax the CEO call the CEO mail him a letter email him everything to give me a shot Give me a shot to help me tell your story and I finally got one company to give me a shot $750 for a month for a monthly retainer and I just fucking worked my ass off to over perform for this company because I knew if I did a good job for him this one client then it would spread and you didn't just create a logo and then you know sell it for 50 million dollars this is uh yeah this is even pre-elite daily and um that one client overperformed he introduced me to another guy that one client started the three clients i go from 750 to 1500 1500 to three grand all the way up until i was getting six so wait wait wait my mind is blown here you mean to tell me that you

put in the extra work before you were actually getting paid for it exactly no way you don't say yeah yeah still you know and that's uh people don't get it i mean that's that's what you got to do you know what i mean still to today it's like it's not it's not brain sent you can go read all the books in the world you can go and get all these info products man it's pretty simple yeah you know what i mean do more than get fucking paid for yeah period i'm curious about your website did you build that yourself so so what happened is like so i built out that agency to about 10 million in revenue i was about 24 years old and this is how it led to elite daily i started investing into the market i started traveling making documentaries on companies that were building that that i believed in and primarily

into like gold miners and stuff like that because I saw we had this national debt problem inflation so I was like you know I kind of took the Warren Buffett model I would invest in these companies to help bit a documentary on them gold mining and gold mine I used to be about I used to invest in a gold mining company yes I did really well I had like some seven-figure trades and it finally I was up twenty million dollars in the market on a company mid-20s 24 and man at that time I was living life man I was like traveling the whole country getting villas everywhere like top MGM grand like you know the G suite I had you know the Bentley the penthouse I

thought I had it all figured out I thought I was invincible man and this man I finally found out about I got my ego yeah and the market crashed if you remember the recession I lived through that my father got fired my mom ended up losing getting out of work and around that time and I had lost everything in the market I was up 20 million boom and I'll never forget my ego getting hit and I was like what the fuck am I gonna do now and I had to sell my car and all this stuff and then my mother told me a story that changed my life at that time. She basically told me how when my grandparents immigrated, that they lived in a studio apartment, that apartment caught on fire. They lost everything.

And at like 14 years old, my mom had to go get a job on Canal Street in the middle of the winter in New York, just to make a little bit of money to help my grandparents put food on the table. She was like, if I was able to do that and now you got this roof over your head, you better get out there and do it again. So I was like, shit, that was the only motivation I really needed. So at that point, I was like, well, I have a passion for content. I'm good at this. Every one of my generation is paying attention to Kim Kardashian and Jersey Shore, all these reality TV shows, but no one's paying attention to the economy. So I started doing documentaries on the economy, and I did one on the student loan debt crisis at the time, because all my friends now are graduating from college.

And they can't fucking pay their bills. They can't pay their bills. They've got student loan debt. They can't get a job. So I exposed that, got some coverage on TV, and at that time, my intern was like, hey, I'm interested in creating a millennial publication around business. So he said, let's create this website, Elite Wall Street. And I was like, fuck that. Wall Street's tainted. Let's do something bigger. If we start looking at the

market, we're like, all these publications have been handed down to us. Let's create a publication that's the voice of Generation Y for millennials, by millennials, in every vertical, from business to health to dating to lifestyle to luxury to you name it. And then that's when we bought Elite Daily for $9.99 and GoDaddy in my apartment, three of us. There were 19. I was mentoring them. I was in my mid-20s.

I told David, you're going to be the CEO. I'm going to be the president. I started mentoring David. And we weren't journalists. People fucking said, you you know who are these guys you know you don't have a degree in journalism

you know all this shit BuzzFeed's of the world were raising hundreds of millions of dollars we were bootstrapped but we didn't you know we didn't care man

we were doing it for it was bigger than anything else we were doing it because we wanted to show that like you know that millennials should have a voice

that all these publications that were being handed down to us telling all this shit, but nobody was being authentic. So we decided that that would be us. And we figured out a way to go across the nation to all these universities and get these ambassadors, which then led to writers that got us 2,000 contributing writers around the country.

And that's how we were able to keep up in scale to 80 to 100 articles per day. And then eventually, obviously, it went from three of us in an apartment to 200 employees. The culture that was ride or die. They would sleep shit in this, blood, sweat, and tears into this brand.

Everybody understood the purpose of Elite Daily. It was bigger than the publication, right? It was like making a name, like showing that this was the voice of Generation Y. if you wanted to tell your story and you're a millennial, you do it through elite daily. And, um, you know, we were able to build up to 80 million unique visitors. And then, uh, 2015, we, we got John Steinberg to join our board because we saw he left Buzzfeed and he made an acquisition offer when he joined the Daily Mail and we sold the company in uh yeah in 2015 and then and then right after that moment people are asking me to go speak about

this Elite Daily they didn't see all those years prior to get to that and then I started seeing again what's going on with the millennial generation and i'm i'm i started looking into thought now i've never at this point in time right 2015 this point time i don't even have a fucking facebook i've never had myspace i didn't give a shit about me right i only cared about my team my brands my businesses right and then what happened was when i finally sold i was like fuck man now what i sold my baby i didn't want to sell i was the blocking vote but we were looking at the industry and how facebook was there was some uncertainty how they were changing algorithms and so we did the deal

and then afterwards i took a look back that's now i'm looking at social media like looking at like who are the leaders that are millennials out there sharing stories as real entrepreneurs and all i see are these guys that are fucking that are putting you know showing all the fancy fucking cars and fucking selling people on fucking books yeah and not actually real fucking entrepreneurs building shit so i'm like not even their shit so i'm like fuck i'm i have to step up i can't let this happen right and then i saw i went to i got invited to a Tony Robbins event. I went and when I saw this guy, the number one thing I took from him, I was so taken back.

The number one thing I took was success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. That was my, this quote that just like got ingrained in me and I'll never forget. So I flew to Silicon Valley.

I got ranked in tech and stuff like that. I'm speaking in Silicon Valley and I'm seeing these ecosystems that they have there to support entrepreneurs that are starting off that I never had growing up right but I'm seeing how powerful it was and I was like damn why aren't we building those kind of ecosystems nationwide in especially in inner cities so that's when i started formulating this idea of founders to build a brand that when on when people do want to become real entrepreneurs there's a place that they can go to that's not just online shit a place they can go to to get a part of a culture and really

truly be in an environment that's gonna fucking be like picture like an an entrepreneur like military bootcamp. Right. You know, and I was like, and I spent many months, a little over six months building a curriculum of what I, if I were to go back and teach myself at 19,

20 years old, what I had learned through, through all those years, over 14 years, what would that look like? So I ended up building that in a place, you know, I built a building,

developed a building with 25 units, apartments, where there would be a live-work-play kind of aspect to this district in Newark, where my grandparents were from. And I've been building this thing out, man, like just building out this accelerator, you know, building out a whole district in Newark, and then looking to master that process process and then go and partner with leaders across the nation in their respective communities

and bring founders nationwide. Replicate it out. If you guys want to follow founders on Instagram, it's at F-O-W-N-D-E-R-S. Just thought I'd throw that out there for you. Yeah, I got the word own in the middle of it because what we do is we teach people to own it. Own who the fuck you are.

Own what you've gone through in your life. it whatever it is own it so like dude that's a good that's actually a good segue into you know when we were talking earlier about you know what it takes to be successful and be a real entrepreneur and you just said own it um and we talked about how many people want to be an entrepreneur and and they so they instead of like becoming an entrepreneur they become what they think an entrepreneur should be yeah and ruin the the authenticity of themselves which is actually their greatest competitive advantage if they ever ask themselves the hard questions. What would you say to entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs who are struggling to figure out what their voice is and how they want to be heard and how they want to brand themselves in regards to owning it. Stop following.

Look, I get it. There's all these people out there that you can keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, analyzing what everybody else is doing. And there's got to come to a point where you look yourself in the mirror, you stop fucking scrolling,

dig down deep inside of yourself i always say like most entrepreneurs the problem is that they focus on the external you know they're looking at everything else right they got to start looking internal you you know i challenge you stop following everybody else stop thinking that anybody's going to give you the answers they're not everybody has their own strategy everyone's figured out in different ways. We all have a story. I look at entrepreneurship as like, I have a passion for also art. Like I feel like, dude, it's your life. You know what I'm saying? You got to fucking paint your own picture. You're going to have to learn. You have to figure this shit out. There's no perfect right path. So it's like, I would tell you,

if you're a young entrepreneur out there, you know, stop looking at everything else around you as what you think success is and trying to replicate and start being authentic to who you are, what you've been through, what you want in your life and, and start, and then just start fucking taking action. It's that simple. Start putting it into play. Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks. Stop looking for, you know, looking for everyone else's opinions or anything. Just start doing what you want to fucking do. And literally, I would tell you, also focus. Like, we as a generation have a problem with focusing.

Everyone wants to, you know, all over the place. And there's procrastination because of it. Starve your distractions. Feed your focus. Do one core fucking thing right and do that consistently over and over and over and over again and don't fucking stop and don't fucking look back dude i think what you said is super, super important regarding the focus aspect. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, Vaughn, on the Millennial podcast that we did. And I'll just bring you up to speed on what I was saying.

We actually talked about this at lunch a little bit. Simon Sinek did an interview regarding millennials. And we kind of dissected that and did a podcast around his remarks on that. One of the things that he says that I don't agree with is that, you know, they have short attention spans and they have this and they have that. And he was saying it in a way that it makes millennials sound like as if there's something wrong with them but you have to think about it like this you and I have been brought up and Vaughn you too uh and Tyler you too everybody in this room has been brought up in the pre-social and post-social era we kind of grew through both of them and we know that not everything is instant i remember having a fucking beeper i remember i remember not having a fucking cell phone i remember when cell phones came in a fucking bag okay and then they

had car phones which were attached to your car my dad yeah dude and like we remember all this shit right like that's the innovation of of communication like you and i and all of us can remember those things the sound of logging on to the internet exactly netflix dude but these kids don't remember that dude like they've been grown up with high speed they've grown up with every single thing they need on the touch of a screen of a fucking six inch device that's unbelievable if you really think about so it's so like powerful when you think about patients and what is required for you to build patients they have had that really kind of limited from their scope of development just by the way that the world is so is that their fault because they have a hard time focusing or they have a hard time missing patients? I don't think so.

Because how the fuck can you blame somebody or expect somebody to have something when their entire environment doesn't provide that? So when you say like just what you just said about focus, it's so important. And this goes for older people too. But it's so important to realize that like, dude, it's not about trying to do 10 things or 12 things or three things or two things. It's about doing one fucking thing. And it's about doing that thing better than fucking anybody and doing that one thing long enough

to where the rest of the people who are trying to do that one thing get their fucking asses beat by you and quit and then guess what you're fucking winning but people don't do that they think the entrepreneurship is about three ideas six ideas ten ideas oh dude I got all these ideas bro that doesn't impress me does that impress you hell fuckin fucking what's what impresses you yeah man someone who's able to say i'm going all in like all fucking in 110 no matter what the fuck it takes yeah just on this on this vision this is going to work and like dude like when i talk to people who are successful

and i talk to my friends who are successful and like him and i sat down and drank a bunch of fucking beers last night but no matter how many beers we drank, did we ever think, oh, we're going to do all these ideas? No, we continued to talk about his founder's project and my fucking project. Okay. We talked about first form. We talked about our podcasts, obviously, and our content, but everything revolved, you know, we didn't go off of these fucking wild paths. Like, dude, you need to realize, and Gerard's been through the fucking shit, so he knows this,

but dude, that one idea that you're trying to consider as an option is going to take all of your fucking effort, all of your heart, all of your energy forever to make it succeed. So why the fuck are you trying to do three of them? Because if you do three of them, you're cutting your energy into thirds, which means you don't have enough to make any of them work.

And you're going to get fucking beat. Dude, there's no question. Because the ones you're competing against, you have three things, and each of those three things have competitors. Those motherfuckers are going all in like it's their only way to survive and you can't beat somebody with 30% energy

who's putting 100% into it. It's just the way it is. There's all kinds of other factors too. Dude, zero option mentality. Like, dude, when you don't have any other options, guess what? You'll figure out creative ways to make shit work. You know, it's...

That's what being an entrepreneur is, being resourceful, pivoting. Solving problems as they come. Being the fucking captain of a ship that is in the middle of a fucking storm, dude. You know, like Captain Ahab with the fucking... Or whatever, Gordon the Fisherman. Fucking fish stick Gordon. Like, we're on the motherfucking boat, bitch. I think that's what makes fucking entrepreneurship so great that is the that's

that's we talked about this remember just fucking driving when it's all fucking money it's the little bitty victory it's it's it's seeing that fucking iceberg coming at the ship yeah and missing it by a fucking hair and be like, fuck you, Mr. Iceberg. You know what I'm saying? Dude, you can't understand that unless you've been through it. And I think what you're saying is so cool because, and I agree with it a thousand percent, which is no surprise because we've talked about this before, but it's such an internal, it's an internal to external process. It's not external to internal process. It's not an external to internal process. Like a lot of people say, fake it till you make it.

So they go out and they put a fucking suit on, and they try to get the nicest car they can drive, and they post a picture of fucking 10 grand on the fucking internet. It's all the money they have. And it's like, dude, you're not, that's not what this is about, dude. It's not about what you wear, what you drive, or how much cash you fucking show it's about who you are on the inside letting that develop and become something yeah

that resonates and using that to connect people in a way that somehow is going to create revenue streams yeah for you and other people around you yeah i mean we talked about it too it's like money doesn't lead it follows man and you focus on, I mean, we talked about it too. It's like money doesn't lead, it follows, man. And you focus on... Dude, say that again. Money never leads, it follows. And explain that, because that needs to be... Yeah, man, it's impact over money.

You know what I'm saying? For me, it's legacy. So, dude, when people hear that, though, when people hear a kid who's 22 years old who wants to fucking be rolling around, balling, he wants to be like you were when you people hear that, though, like when people hear, like, a kid who's 22 years old who wants to fucking be rolling around balling. Yeah. You know, he wants to be like you were when you were fucking 24. Yeah.

Killing it. Like, when they hear that term legacy or they hear that term impact, like, dude, dig into that. Yeah. Because these kids need to know what that means. I know exactly what you mean. But these kids, that shit goes like this, dude. In one ear, out the other ear, and then they want to say well when are we gonna talk about the money yeah so let's talk let's let's dig into that man you know for me it's like how i look at it is like for instance

with founders right you know for me it's like a legacy play but let's go into it as from a business perspective for a second what i do is right now what i'm focusing on is 2027 you know people are talking about new year's resolutions 2017 I'm thinking about 2027 I'm talking about 10 years so again when you get that focus where's where's that idea what is that vision you need to be a visionary where do you want your business to be in 10 years and then you need to reverse engineer that back all the way down to the to the exact values you stand for and implementing and executing on a daily basis for the next 10 fucking years. And every business that I've ever built, I don't even take a salary. I eat shit.

It's completely everybody else around me in the business first. The people that I'm serving, okay? So for founders, it's the entrepreneurs, right? The communities that I'm serving, okay, so for founders, it's the entrepreneurs, right, the communities that I'm in, right, the city that I'm in, which is Newark right now, and all it is is how to make sure that I can bring the very best value to those entrepreneurs, to that community that I'm in with founders every single day and continue. And look, it's a process. So I'm consistent. The curriculum that I built for my first cohort of entrepreneurs to the curriculum I'm now going to launch in February 20th for the next 12 weeks is different. It is improved. I have new mentors coming in. I have, and this core, Andy fucking Vercela is going to be coming and speaking. Like there's new people like I bought that will come in and speak. Each time it gets better and better and better and better and better. And you continue to add and you continue to fucking execute. Bring

better people. Sacrifice for your team. Make sure everybody understands the values that you're all standing for because it's bigger than any one of us. And it doesn't matter if you're just, if you're the person that's, you know, doing whatever. You could be the janitor to the fucking CEO. Everyone lives and breathes those values. How are we going to bring that value to impact whoever it is we're serving? And you do that consistently. And you will probably start to see the real tangible results in three years.

That's from my experience, about. Five years, you start to really see how you can scale to a much bigger company. And then, you know what? And for, for, for founders, our goal is we want to impact a billion lives. You know, I I'm aiming 10 years. Well, who knows? Maybe it's 12, maybe it's 17 like you, Andy, maybe it's fucking 30. I don't give a fuck until that happens, but you know, you need to have that vision, know 10 years out what does this company look like where is it and then it's just you know impacting reverse engineering that through impact on us every single day every choice you make in your business is around those values is around making that impact and that's it you do not waver around that regardless of whatever the fuck money or whatever you know it doesn't matter so it's so i think an interesting thing here which people need

to pay attention to is that look at no point in time that he say we're trying to make x amount of money and no point in time he say we're going to make a billion he said we're going to impact a billion lives all right and when we talk about when we talk about impact, we talk about legacy and we talk about all these things that you people who are listening, put like arbitrary value into when you think and hear, and you kind of ignore those terms. You have to realize that things like impact things like solution, which are the words that he used. Okay. Those, when he says the money follows, he means that the money follows the impact. The money follows the solution. The money follows the help. The money follows the quality of whatever product you have. The money always

follows. It's not in front, it's it back. And so when we're talking about being impactful or building a legacy, realize that we're doing so with the understanding that if we do those things, we are 1 million percent certain that the money will take care of itself. 100%. So you kids listening and you adults listening, you know, who are confused as to why you have a hard time finding yourself in an abundance of money. I'm going to tell you why. Because that's not success. Well, not only that, you're thinking about the fucking money.

Like, dude, you're at fucking work. I don't care what job you're at. You're at work thinking about, you know, if you're a salesman, you're thinking about how much you sold. If you're working in a warehouse, you're thinking about how much you make an hour. If you own a business, you're thinking about your numbers for the week. Look, think about these things instead. Think about how much solution did I provide for my people? How much extra go, how far over the top did I go for them? How much of an impact did I make for them how much easier did I make my boss's job how much easier I make my manager how you're transforming the lives of

everybody that touches your brand yeah and your brand which is you yeah you know and you guys have to stop thinking about the fucking scoreboard and start thinking about the quality of the product that you're putting out. And that product could very easily be yourself. You know, we've get so many people and like, dude, I'm guilty of it too. Right. I show my fucking Lambos. I show my fucking roles. I show when I fly around private. Yeah. You know, I floss a little bit on the internet because you know what? I fucking earned it and I like it. And you know, if you don't like it i don't give a fuck but here's the thing 17 fucking years not two years not fucking 12 months i was living in my mom's basement and all of a sudden i'm a millionaire 17 fucking years okay so when you see the shit that i post that's not some rented shit that's

not some fake shit. That's my daily shit. Yo, also, we talked about it. Maybe, Andy, you should talk about it a little bit, right? But it's more about, it's not about even those things. Those are things you love, but people look at it because it's a material thing. But we talked about this yesterday. It's the feeling of accomplishment that you're treating yourself, you know,

that has more meaning than the actual car itself watch itself because i went through that when i bought my first ferrari right you know when i burnt my bought my first ferrari and i went in there yeah you know they thought i was a drug dealer yeah and they were like fuck this kid yeah and i was like and i should have fucking said fuck you and walked out but i was like i'm here to buy a fucking ferrari yeah and you're either selling to was like, I'm here to buy a fucking Ferrari. Yeah. And you're either selling to me right now or I'm never coming back.

And they were like, well, you know, I had to. So one of my good friend's fathers said, if you buy a Ferrari, finance it. Because what happens is you can then, Ferrari's always updating new cars and it's like a club. And he's like, you got to join the Ferrari club. It's like getting accepted into that club, and then you continue to always update your Ferraris, or if you're blessed, you can collect them, right?

So I was like, all right, I'm going to do that. So I got my first, I went there, and he was like, well, look, the finance department's closed. So I was like, well, I'm here to buy a fucking Ferrari. So he's like, the only way that you're buying a Ferrari, kid, is if you fucking pay for the car all up front. And he thought, like, that was not happening. So I was like, I'm buying this fucking Ferrari.

I came here to buy a fucking Ferrari. So he's like, well, I have dinner with my wife. I said, well, I'm telling you right now, you're coming with me to the bank. Otherwise, I'm never coming back here. So I took him. Now, in that time, it was on a weekend. My bank was closed on the weekend in Jersey.

So I drove him, the salesperson, all the way to Manhattan to the bank took out a fucking certified check for I think it was $325,000 it was the best fucking feeling in the world and he looked at me he said no in all the years I've been selling fucking cars no one has ever fucking taken me all the way to fucking a bank in Manhattan to do some shit like this you're fucking nuts went back to that dealership it was the best feeling in the world and I left there fucking with so much I felt like so much pride like I earned this thing it was more about the fucking car yeah I fucking worked my balls off yeah you know for fucking so I think it was probably like 10 years it was like 2010 when

it was when the 458 Italia just came out. It was right before I had the fucking, that stock thing happened. But the best feeling was driving down that fucking highway, gunning it down that highway, that fucking feeling of thrill and fucking accomplishment, and I earned this. It was a dream that came true. You know, I didn't give a fuck what people thought of me or the pictures and the likes.

No, it was more about for me. You know, that feeling. And then I drove right to my fucking parents house you know what it felt like to pull in the fucking driveway actually i do yeah but that's what people don't realize yeah it's not like you're showing off man those are fucking things you put in the fucking sweat and you earned it right i don't care it could be anything it could be anything do whatever meaningful to you yeah right yeah you know so and dude when i was young i was and i still am motivated by material shit like there's nothing wrong with that like a lot of people like to shit on that idea that like there's something wrong with wanting material things there's nothing wrong with that what what where it becomes a problem is when you start putting those things in front of everything else

yeah you use that as like your way of showcasing what success is that's not right that's that's a you know like we talked about right you know i find i find that uh you know the older i get the more i start realizing that you know i really don't give a fuck about that shit like i like it but like it doesn't it's not like it was when i first started getting into it you know it's like you get used to everything a little bit. You know what I mean? Except for that new Ford GT that's coming, bro. Yeah, that thing's going to be sick. That one's going to feel good.

Don't tell the color on the show. I won't. It's top secret. You're the only person I've told the color to. Wait till you guys fucking see this car. I've never seen anything like it in my entire life, and I'm a car guy. Would you lie to me when I fucking asked? No one knows the color.

He's the only one. Oh, that's bullshit. I got that one. I got that one, yeah. I got to ask questions. Sure. You've been talking a lot about it. It's been bothering you over there, hasn't it?

No, no, no. You're like, he's fucking twitching. I got to get this question. I think this is a huge question, and you've been talking a lot about providing value. Andy, you talked about leaving legacy. You know, I've heard a lot of people say that money doesn't change you. It just brings out the kind of person you are. What's clear to me is that prior to getting money,

both of you guys were quality human beings. And the money, over time, you realize that the money ultimately wasn't going to make you happy. It's all the things you could do with it. And yes, you agree that you said that material stuff isn't bad. But you also referenced the kids that want to just be ballers.

What happens if a person like that, they're just not a good person. I mean, how do they become, in your mind, how do they become a good person to therefore be, how do they become, in your mind, how do they become a good person to therefore be motivated by the things that you guys are saying? Because I feel like you guys can talk all you want as long as you want about, no, you got to be motivated by legacy and you got to be motivated by value

and solving people's problems. But reality is there are people out there that are just D-bags. Yeah, I mean. You know what I'm saying? What if somebody here is listening and going, Okay like you're familiar with like the concept of natural selection of course okay right yeah all right so and i definitely gerard you give your take this is my take yeah okay it's like natural selection okay when you're a fucking douchebag and you're in it for your selfish reasons you're in it for yourself you're all about the bling bling and that's fucking it you don't give a fuck about

anybody it's very hard to build success because to build success you can't do it on your own you have to have people who are genuinely interested genuinely committed genuinely engaged in what it is you're doing and if you're a fucking dickhead all the time and people are going to be even not all the time even if dickhead all the time and people are going to be able, even not all the time, even if you're good at hiding it, people are going to eventually see you for what you are and they're not going to want to work with you.

They're not going to want to help you. I have like a little analogy I use for it that like climbing the ladder of success, right? You could only get so high before the people that are genuinely belong on the ladder of success will kick you down the fucking rungs for being the wrong kind of person and dude i've met a lot of fucking successful people and i know you have too a lot like a lot and almost all of them understand the concepts

that we're talking about of providing a solution providing quality providing value so to speak you know and doing that not only with their customers but with their employees i just the way they live their lives dude all the self-made guys none i don't know anybody that is self-made that is a selfish sob because dude the problem is well not the problem the the truth is is that back in the day because there wasn't social media and there wasn't transparency and there wasn't all these easy ways to access people people could create this alternate they could be dicks and still be successful because nobody saw them right but nowadays like you posted about this a week or two ago do you think it's possible to be successful without social media yeah i think you can but it's

going to be limited right it's not going to be on a global scale or even a national scale anymore because people want to buy from fucking people and if you're a dong bag and you can't fucking you know you don't represent the right shit you don't have a good heart you don't treat people right you're all in it on your own it doesn't take 20 years for people to find out it takes fucking 20 days okay so my follow-up question for that though is of all the people that you know that are successful that are these quality people did any of them start out yeah as horrible people and have that moment where their conscience was pricked and they're like yeah oh i need i just think it's like a learning curve like i think it's

what's called new money i think if you're like that you're new money like i was like that when i made my first money when i was new money i was a fucking i thought i was i thought i was like this you know i was a little schmuck you know i saying? I thought I was too cool for fucking anything. I had all this money I wanted to buy things for the wrong reasons, for showing off. That happens.

I think when people, you see people like that, to me, I just look at them and I just kind of nod my head like, man, you're just new money, bro.

It's coming, bro. That's what I think and when I say it, I mean fucking karma because it's going to smash your fucking face in. Yeah. We talked about that

last night too. Yeah, for sure. And I would challenge them like, why don't you, for once, instead of going and doing something for yourself, I challenge the person that's listening to this, if you're like that kind of person, the next time you want to do something,

do something for somebody else that's in need. Like, for me, it's like, see how it feels for a second, not to put yourself first and take somebody else that actually maybe needs that mentorship. It doesn't even have to do with money. And actually put some effort into trying to transform somebody's life genuinely. And when you do accomplish that, let me know how you feel then. And then compare the two. That's what I would say.

Because I think that's when you realize, holy shit, again, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I think when you start to actually truly impact lives and not worry about just the money, there's a sense inside of real wealth. So many people think that it's one or the other. It's money or it's making an impact right when in reality it's impact first then money and people don't get that like it's not i think that comes from like people thinking money is morally wrong right you know what i mean you think so absolutely yeah like like like it's not this it's not this or that you can have both. Yeah. And nothing is cooler than having both.

Because when you have the means, you can fucking do some pretty badass shit for other people. Fuck yeah. You know? Absolutely. No, good thoughts. Good thoughts. So I had this conversation. Fuck yeah.

Fuck yeah. I had this conversation. He loves the Ford GT video. Oh, cool. Best fucking video of 2016 is Andy Vercela the Ford GT video oh cool best fucking video of 2016 is Andy Vercela's Ford GT video to Ford

the application video Ford if you're listening to this you need to sponsor I told him that we did that in like an hour even though like from like a filmmaker standpoint like a lot of things

bug me about it because I couldn't put more time and effort into it but dude that was rockstar for like an hour or two like I'm okay with that we're gonna put that in the Leaders Create Leaders episode

that we did with Andy here. Everyone, listen, we got a real thank you again, Andy. Yeah, tell people about how they can follow you. Sure, brother. And watch your show and your social and everything like that. So I launched a series. I wanted to differentiate myself. I always want to do that as a leader.

So I started looking at everybody, and I was like, all right, everybody over here I see is vlogging and stuff like that. How can I use content a little differently? So I came up with a series. It's 12 episodes. I did season one, and now we're on season two, and it's about interviewing all the modern day leaders

of our generation. I traveled the country, meet these leaders and I deep dive into their world. So I tell their whole story from coming from the bottom, what they went through to get to where they are today, but then also show it, right? Like I think that we live in this world of like thought leaders.

And then I looked at it from the outside. I was like, fuck thought leaders, man. Like we need more show leaders. We need people to see real entrepreneurship, not just fucking read about it. You know what I'm saying? In theory. So that's what this show is about,

is showing people the true entrepreneurship, true entrepreneurs. So Andy is in this season. It'll be coming out shortly. You can follow me on Instagram at Gerard Adams. And then the show goes on my YouTube channel, Gerard Adams TV. That's awesome, man. Nice.

Yeah, we did a really cool show today. That's awesome. If I don't say so myself. Yeah. So two days ago, I had a conversation with somebody in a coffee shop, and I started telling them kind of about what I was doing with Andy and everything. And I was telling them about Andy's emphasis on hard work, execution, that sort of thing. And they got kind of a smirk on their face.

And they're like, well, yeah, I mean, you got to give people hope. And I was like, well, what do you mean by that? And he said, I would almost guarantee that Andy Frisella is way, way smarter than everybody else. But in order to give people hope that they can do what he did, he just says stuff like, oh, work hard, be all in, have a lot of work ethic, that kind of thing. Wait. Gerard, let me – No, no, no. Listen.

So Gerard, my question is this. Can you honestly say you're not smarter than everybody else? Because that's what this guy was saying. I don't understand what the fuck he was saying. What he was saying was that people like you guys who are successful are actually a whole lot smarter than anybody else. They just fucked up enough. What you tell people is just work hard. There's no secret. Have a strong work ethic and be all in, and you too can be successful.

In other words, if people knew how really smart both of you guys were and that's really the secret man i'll tell you what if i'm if i'm fucking on that level of smart i sure as fuck don't know it so so speak to that gerard because i mean can you can you say with a clear conscience in you know in front of god and everybody you're not smarter than everybody else oh 100 i mean the moment you think that that's the case you lose man you know it's we're all students of this game entrepreneurship

it's a constant evolution a constant learning constant putting yourself today I learned a shit ton from Andy it's just about that sharing

it's like that man you gotta continue to build out that circle of influence building relationships learn from others I'm a mentor to millennials but I'm the reason where i got to where i am today is because i'm a mentee i'm a student i'm constantly looking for mentors in my life to help guide me build long lasting relationships which is another thing that i think that you know everyone needs to

realize it's about building real relationships not just just through social. That's why I try to get out and really put out impromptu meetups together or go and meet like with Andy and real entrepreneurs. Um, and it's constant, constant, you know, learning, you know,

but I could, I could say that, um, at this point I do feel like I have a master's degree at least at entrepreneurship at this point, if, if, if there was ever a degree for it,

but I'm constantly pushing myself to, to grow grow and learn it's just amazing how many people think there is some sort of secret or that you have some edge that's a fucking excuse man that's an excuse that's something that people tell themselves because they don't want to see the truth the truth is this you don't have to be the fucking smartest guy you just have to be smart enough to not do the same things that are wrong over and over again and then you've got to be the fucking smartest guy. You just have to be smart enough to not do the same things that are wrong over and over again. And then you've got to be willing to get the fuck up off the floor when you do those things wrong.

And if you keep making mistakes, learning from those mistakes and moving forward, eventually you figure the shit out. Yep. It's really that simple. But so many people either a don't want to do the work or B aren't resilient enough or persistent enough to push through the shit that sucks, which is a lot of it, that they just don't get there. And you know what?

Not everybody has to be there. You know what I mean? But to say that you've got some shit that nobody has or I have some shit that nobody has is inaccurate. Like there's lots of dudes out there. I learned from everybody. And I think the difference between people who are perceived as intelligent and they're, I mean, there is dudes who are legitimately fucking genius, like Elon Musk, right?

But like guys like me, I'm not fucking like that. Like you're not like that. No offense. You know, we're regular dudes. And like the thing is, is that i think what separates i think what separates maybe us from this guy right is that we are willing to always learn we are willing to always listen and as much as i fucking talk i listen a hell of a lot more you know what what I'm saying? So it's being a conscious, engaged student, like Gerard said, all the time.

And figuring out what works, what doesn't work. How can I learn from his mistakes? How can I learn from her mistakes? How can I avoid those mistakes? And it is about being savvy to a point. You know what I mean? Like there's some smoothness that you need to have, but that all comes along.

You develop that. I didn't have that shit when I started, but dude, now I'm, I'm constantly looking at what everybody else does. And I'm like, I make notes. I'm like,

I probably shouldn't fucking do that. Yeah. You know, or like, you know what I'm saying? Like this guy fucking loses his whole company. I probably shouldn't have done what he did. Yeah. i'll be trying to avoid that like it's it's got like to me yeah it's it's not i don't know man like i know like build your discipline bro i

know like i'm on the other end of the spectrum right like i'm not at the end i'm somewhere in the middle yeah right and like to somebody who's listening from the beginning of the spectrum and they're just trying to get started they're listening like oh bullshit you've got all these skills i have experience yeah that's it you know and you have experience and as we gain experience from actually doing real shit in the real world we learn things you learn new skills you learn how to operate yeah it's like wisdom dude it's it and it's it's just you you know it's it's no different than when you touch the hot stove when you're fucking two years old you don't touch the motherfucker again you know what i mean like and one thing i would say too is that like it's

entrepreneurship you know from you know all around is is that like it's entrepreneurship, you know, from, you know, all around is about testing. It's about trying. It's like, you know, you got to constantly do that. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you got to get burned. You got to do, you know what I mean? If you haven't made, I always say if you're not making mistakes, you're not moving forward. No. You got to fucking make mistakes.

You got to get out and try and experiment and do like and again and again and again and some things will work and you double down and you act quick and you and you double down you keep pushing forward some things don't work and you just say fuck it move on try something new keep going now that's that's a good point to bring up too now like how like dude a lot of people when the things don't work instead of being able to say fuck it and move on they get hung up on those things yeah you got to know when to dude you got to have a short memory man and that's for good or bad things like dude don't toot your horn like we just did a toot your horn fucking episode like nobody's gonna talk about you unless you talk about yourself that's true

but don't toot your horn for too long because dude you you know you got to keep your eye on the fucking ball and don't just just like don't brag about yourself or think you're shit for too long when you do good stuff yeah same when you do bad stuff let it go you know dude i couldn't even i could not literally list the amount of mistakes that i've made and how much money i've lost me too like me too millions millions and millions of dollars millions and millions of dollars for me as well just being stupid yeah like do a dumb shit dumb shit yeah and like people don't see that though yeah right like i'm not on the internet being like guys be dumb as fuck and lose millions of dollars i mean it's it's about the war right i haven't lost 20 million dollars at once but i bet i've lost that cumulative yeah over a bunch

of dumb fucking shit you know and like dude but that's the cost of the education like you said you have the master's degree you know and that costs money yeah it costs time it costs experience just like you're just not paying it back on a back-end loan you're paying it as you go yeah you know curious andy was most of your money lost out of ignorance or impatience impatience for sure yeah for sure for sure i can see that yeah like it's a good mix of both it's like peanut butter and jelly you know what i'm saying like dude that's probably now that i would say patience probably because i can my hardest lessons were because i was impatient and i wanted shit now and i saw opportunities i thought i could make money quick that's the same with me

yeah and then and then they never worked. Ever. Never. I've never had one work. Nope. Never have I had one thing work where I thought, like, oh, dude, this is going to work. It's going to make it quick. And I start doing the fucking, you know, the entrepreneur math.

You know what I'm talking about? Like, you get your calculator out. You're like, 12 dudes times 2,000 times 50,000 times this. You know? And then you're like, that's $50 million in one month. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. anytime i've ever done that shit i fucking lost like i've lost like i think it comes down to i'm not gonna pretend i've never done that everybody does that shit like dude i know you do it because we talk about it here you're like dude

all you need is 12 people to do this or that i'm like no friend carry the one let's let, let's stop that. You start talking like that. We fucking lose. But dude, you know, it's, it's just, I think to wrap this all up, you know, we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours, but what would you say? What do you say to the millennial, not just millennials, to any entrepreneur or want to be entrepreneur, what is your number one, and I know number one is going to turn into number two, three, four, or five, because you and I are kind of the same guy here, but what is your best piece of advice to someone who really thinks that entrepreneurship is the route they want to go in life? What would you say?

Look, man, like, look, bro, I know you think this is the right thing for you, but let me give you a piece of advice. Yeah. How would you fill that in? I would tell them, I would say first and foremost, prepare for absolute war. Know that it is going to be a long, long, long, long journey. And it is going to be the most fulfilling journey in your entire life but go like i would tell them like be ready to go into the storm be ready to just go all in on on them on themselves like really really you know go all in on themselves and um i like we talked about i

mean we talked about a couple different things um Um, this was an amazing podcast, but you know, don't focus on the money, you know, focus on looking deep down inside yourself. Before you stop, people will say, you said, don't focus on money.

How am I supposed to survive? Look, obviously you got to fucking survive. Yeah. All right. So, so take care of survival. But then after that,

yeah, don't, I mean, look as entrepreneurship is definitely business, right? So you have to be smart, and you definitely have to, like, getting into the business, you do need to think about, you know, your strategy,

your business model, and all these things. But if I were to give you the one main piece of advice, is that what makes an entrepreneur great is not how good you are at accounting. It's not how good you are at, like, writing the best business plan. It's not how good you are at like writing the best business plan. It's not how good you are at, you know, calling yourself a CEO. It's how good you are at being a fucking

badass leader. It's how good you can find that leader within yourself. Know that you're willing to go through a fucking brick wall no matter what stands in front of you, you're willing to fight through anything for what you believe in, in your life. And that you need to learn how to also care more about building a team. You're not going to be able to do it alone. So you need to be able to be a good leader to the people around you. Empower them to become the best leaders inside of your organization, inside of whatever it is that you're looking to build because you can't do it alone. You need good people around you in all aspects, both personally and professionally. So you need to attract good quality people around you, understand what you're great at, go all in on that, be the best leader that you can possibly be,

fight through it all and surround yourself with other people that meet your values meet and share that same fucking passion and drive and that are going to fucking ride or fucking die for for what you believe in and you need to just and then it's and then it's just about man taking action and that's it battling when you get knocked down get the fuck back up i think that's great advice man i think the last sentence was the best advice. Like, dude, just be prepared to get shit knocked out of you. And when it happens, know that there's nothing wrong with you. That's part of the deal.

And get back up. You know, it really doesn't get any more simple than that. And I feel like people want to create problems. They want to create and make it harder than what it should be in their mind. So that way, when they fail or when they quit, it's justified. You know, the reality of success is that it like your friend at the coffee shop doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about because i know the path i've been on and you know the path that you've been on and nobody knows your path but you you could tell it all day long but nobody was there on the fucking nights where you wanted to fucking kill yourself or the nights

where you wanted to fucking give up or the nights where you wanted to fucking give up or all the bad news you've had, all the bad relationships you've had, all the tough decisions and sacrifices. Yeah, nobody knows that shit. So it's real easy from the outside to point at anybody and say they have something special when in reality, probably the biggest thing they have

is the ability to just keep fucking moving you know it's not about you know their brains or their smarts or their parents or this or that or any other thing really it's about their fucking grit it's about their ability to fucking persevere it's about their ability to move forward while getting punched in the fucking face four days out of the seven for the rest of your life. Yeah. You know, and that's what entrepreneurship is. So, like, when I hear people say, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur, not everybody's cut to be an entrepreneur.

You know, and can people be successful and make some money? Sure. Can people run some ads on Facebook and sell some fucking products? Sure. But very, very, very few people have the grit to truly pursue that path long term. So while not everybody listening may be a true entrepreneur, you could still take the entrepreneurial values and lessons and skills and ideals to benefit you in your career path, mainly being

focused on the quality of your product. Whether you're, when I say product, I mean whether you're solving a problem, providing a service, making other people's job easier. Your product is you. And if you focus on the quality of your product, you will not have to worry about the scoreboard and it's going to take time. It's not going to happen. People don't notice you because you swept the floor extra good one fucking time. How about this? How about try it for a year? How about try, uh, you know, doing the extra shit for a year straight and see where it takes your life you know thinking like an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to be an

entrepreneur but thinking like one is a pretty good fucking idea yeah 100 and that's why we're teaching entrepreneurship to the local middle school in newark to kids you know because no matter what those are skills that you need to carry that's right throughout your whole entire life no matter what how many people i mean you have a awesome team of people not every single person that works for you is an entrepreneur right they're they're pieces of the puzzle that are extremely extremely extremely valuable yeah and and you know getting them to think on their own autonomously to act and find solutions and think like an entrepreneur on their feet makes them fucking valuable so like dude if you're listening to this and you're not the guy you're

not the ceo don't feel like this doesn't apply to you because it does like these same principles apply to every single fucking person listening every single person no matter if your job is literally to cook the fucking french fries cook the best motherfucking french fries that people have ever tasted in their fucking mouth you know what one day you're gonna get recognized for it and you're gonna get an opportunity for it you know it's life is not that hard man people just make it hard yeah you know they try to make it like vaughn's buddy at the coffee shop. They try to make this ulterior path that is more complicated than what it really needs to be. It's the shit our dads taught us.

Like, dude, work hard. Do the best you can. And document it authentically. Don't try to be someone you're not. Yeah, from the inside out. Be who you are in the heart and show that as opposed to throwing all this shit on the outside and trying to paint, you know, a polish a turd. You know, a fucking polished turd is still a fucking turd, man. You know what I'm saying?

Like, dude, it doesn't matter what car you drive, what watch you wear, what this, that, this, this. No one fucking cares. What people are attracted to is authenticity the reality the journey the struggle the true stories yeah you know not the fucking glory man everybody's telling the glory story yeah tell the fucking hard story yeah and i mean trust me we need more of that we need more leaders let's talk about that i was going to wrap this up but i want to talk about that because dude you are very very smart and intelligent about personal branding. Yeah.

Let's talk about that for a second because we just talked about this on my podcast. Fucking fuck. It's unbelievable how powerful. I mean, since I started about 18 months ago, because I did it because I really genuinely thought, you know, we really need better role models, mentors out there that are real entrepreneurs. But holy shit, the power of what I call social currency had trademarked this term because I'm like, this is a real tool, what I call social currency. I mean, I've been able to, it has opened up unbelievable things.

Leaders Create Leaders, for instance, right? Got me to meet you, Andy. I've built relationships with some of the greatest real entrepreneurs because of my social currency now. And things have opened up. You know, like I couldn't even tell you. I mean, shit, it's helped me build even my business. Like I think that when you build, a lot of people are building social currency for the wrong reasons.

For the fame, to be cool, to be liked, whatever the fuck the case is. You know, for me, it's for making impact, making real relationships, being human, and for something bigger than me, which is founders. And it's allowed me to get aspiring entrepreneurs from 13 countries. This last cohort, we had over 400 people trying to get into this last cohort. It's helped my business thrive. And I think it's extremely powerful. I mean, I've been able to go across the, I have been able to, you know, travel with the social currency, speak in different places because of it, you know, and meet great, amazing people. And I have been able to leverage that to impact more people. So, you know, I think it's important.

I just think you got to leverage it for the right reasons, not for, you can't, again, you need to not just be, use it for something selfish. See how you can build that social currency to build a real community, you know, or real business or brand, something that's bigger than you and leverage it so that it's another tool to communicate and impact, you know, and that's, and, uh, and that's what I've been working on. And I've been basically using the same strategy that I've used for all of my brands that I've built you know with content and I just started implementing that strategy on my own personal brand and it's been one of the most powerful things I've done for me for building relationships and you know and now building you know founders and allowing it to be you know impactful yeah I mean it's a real thing man you know uh a lot of people turn their nose up at social media and they think especially like guys who have been successful before social media dude this is you've heard this before too i'm sure like dudes who have been ultra successful and then they don't take their

social seriously yeah they're like oh i don't i don't fucking need that well you know what you may not have needed it 10 years ago when you were fucking doing your work that has made you the money you make now but don't fucking confuse that if you don't do it for the next 10 years you won't be making the money that you're making now no fucking shot no no people are now consuming we like you as an individual you are the media platform trust me trust me you take it from someone who's built a real you know publication people don't want to read the news like the news is filled with fucking shit people don't even want to watch the news anymore people want to get you know they want to be they want to uh you know get the information from people they're building you know they're they're it's it really is it's it's

amazing the influence peer-to-peer i mean look at think about your community right now listening to this you know what i'm saying how powerful has it been for you, Andy, with MFCEO? It's exponentially powerful, period. I mean, it's opened up doors for me that I wouldn't have even thought were even open two years ago. It's crazy. It's even hard to put in words. Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's totally life-changing shit.

And for your business, too, not even just for your relationships. We're fucking in LA. I walk out of the hotel, and you've got fucking 10 dudes standing there and they're all like, motherfucking CEO. And I'm like, who the fuck are these kids? Like, you know, it's weird, dude. Like, it's like, you know, people say, oh, these Insta famous. No, motherfucker.

It ain't Insta famous no more. It's fucking famous. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It's people, you've got to start taking your brand serious yeah it's not this is a tool it's it's yeah it's a way to truly have leverage yes man it's a way to communicate communicate on an exponential level that never existed before and this is just the beginning yeah like say you only have 500 friends on Instagram right now.

That's okay. We all started at zero. Yeah, dude, and we're in the beginning stages. Like, don't think because you only have a couple thousand or a thousand or less than a thousand followers that you're somehow left behind, dude. No, this is the fucking first two or three years of TV. We're still in the first round.

First two or three years of radio. Yep. Imagine if The Rock didn't have social media. Would he have the career that he has now? No, there's no fucking way. No fucking way. Yeah. If The Rock didn't have social media,

I just don't think social media would exist. No, no, no. Yeah, exactly. So, dude, if The Rock didn't have social media, he'd still be doing movies like Walking Tall. You know what I'm saying? That one he wants to forget. But you can't help but watch it when it comes on. I love Walking Tall. I know what I'm saying? Like, the one he wants to forget, you know? Right. But you can't help but watch it when it comes on.

I love Walking Tall. I love it, dude. I mean, I'm just saying, it wasn't the best movie. Yeah. Like, it was just okay. While we're on that topic, we do have people who listen to the podcast that inexplicably are unaware that you actually do short videos on your IG, so why don't you, once again, share your connection.

Guys, I do, if you guys aren't following me on Instagram, I do like little mini podcasts there almost every day. So it's at Andy Frisella on Instagram. That's where I do most of my content. And if you're liking the podcast, if you don't have an Instagram, fucking create one and follow me, and I guarantee you'll get content out of it.

So yeah, man, uh, what, I mean, what, what else do you have going on, man? Like what else, what else you want to talk about? Fuck man. I'm focused, dude. Like I'm focused, man. This is it for me. So it's just like building out my community. I think it's interesting How focused and all in You are on one project When there's all these dudes Who have never built Fucking anything Yeah

You know like dude Doesn't it like It's almost It does kind of It really does fucking hurt me It does Because it's almost arrogant It's like bro

Who do you think you are That you can do five things Yeah You know when it takes all of me And I build shit To do one thing So it's like part of me Gets pulled in a direction Where it's like part of me gets

pulled in a direction where it's like fucking like i'm concerned yeah like again i'm concerned about you know the influence and in which the next this gen our generation this next generation is coming up and what who they're who they're being influenced by and then on the other side it's like okay you know like i always said pressure you know pressure is a privilege you know, like I always said, pressure, you know, pressure is a privilege, you know, so it's like that puts more pressure on guys like us, you know, and all the all the all the men and women out there that have actually really, truly built something. It's like you have a responsibility at this point to step up, you know, to start start building that social currency, start getting out there and spreading your story, talking about it, spreading those lessons. We need better leaders out there. We need better role models out there. And shit, hit me. I'll help you.

I mean, I will help you. If you're a real entrepreneur out there and you're like fucking, oh, man, I don't know, and you're questioning, listen, I'll help you. Hit me up. But it fucking irks me that there's so many people out there that are leveraging social media for the, you know, for, for selfish reasons, for the wrong reasons, but at the same time, it's like, it's opportunity, and it's a, it's a, it's a privilege that we have

the opportunity to go out there and, and actually represent what real entrepreneurship, what real, if you want to call it success, you know, what that really means, you know, everything from the way you live your life. I mean, shit, I talk about my, I get asked a lot about my relationship being, you know, you know, still, you know, you know, a young hustler out there and having an amazing girlfriend who, you know, supports me and what's that like to have a real relationship? You know, Andy, we were so inspired by you and Emily and your wife and how yous hold each other down. Last night it was just like, to us, man, we love that, dude.

Like that needs to be shown more, man. Like success is business, but, man, it's like you need to have that support system. You need to have that person that's in your life that's going to help you, support you, love you, fucking like want to build an empire with you family all that shit you know that matters we need to see more of that shit you know what i mean so i don't know i'm i'm excited for for the opportunity to to help be a better role model man and and and i'm blessed to have relationships like you bro well dude likewise man loved having you on the show for sure.

Loves the energy, man. It's got good energy. Yeah. I got to ask one content question. What's that? So, Gerard, you're putting out content that's very, very high production value. So I'm curious,

is that something that people absolutely have to work toward in your opinion? Or tell me your approach to no absolutely not I mean I take a you know obviously I take a lot of private look this take this take this has taken me I think I did my first documentary I've been writing since I started my career but I did my first videos and documentaries back in like 08 you know what I'm saying like close to close to 10 years you know what i'm saying so it's taken me a long time and um and like being getting to the ability of having a good team that

can put out that kind of production value but no you don't need that you know you for now man i mean with the iphone today you can literally that that thing this thing like if i had this thing when i started like when i was fucking 19 years old 18 years like if i had this thing when i started like when i was fucking 19 years old 18 years old if i had this smartphone and fuck are you kidding me like man i'm excited to see what this gen z is gonna fucking create i mean they have the fucking everything in their fingertips like it's a powerful thing you don't need to have you know the best fucking camera anymore you know all this crazy equipment you know, the best fucking camera anymore. You know, all this crazy equipment. No, just authentic content.

Yeah, it's got to be fucking real. Which is real easy to do. It's just taking the courage to be yourself. You know? Yep. Cool. Well, guys, make sure you're following Gerard. Hit up with the Instagrams.

Gerard Adams. Okay, at Gerard Adams. G-E-R-A-R-D-A-D-A-M-S. He's putting out quality content. Dude travels the world. He's always doing cool shit. Like I always tell you guys, if you want cool social media, go be fucking cool in real life. And this motherfucker's as cool as it gets.

So thanks for being on the show, brother. Thank you, brother. Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate you coming on. All of you. Thanks, Gerard. Thanks for having me.

And we'll catch up with you guys next time.