REAL AF with Andy Frisella - Every Business is a Small Town Business, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO17

Episode Date: September 29, 2015

Whether you operate from Los Angeles, CA or Little Flint, MO, Andy Frisella argues that the internet and social media have created a situation in which every business is a small town business.  If you want to succeed, you have to think like the owner of an old time general store.  Ben Newman and Vaughn Kohler join him in the studio.

All I do is work, work, work. Never run the sidelines, I only hustle. I'll never take a day off, I only work, work, work. I don't mess around, kid, I only care. Lordy never seems to get you. All I do is work. All I do is work. All I do is work.

What's up, guys? You're listening to the MFCEO Project. I'm Andy, and I am the motherfucking CEO. I'm here with my co-host Ben Newman. What's up, Ben? What's going on, Andy? How you doing? I'm doing great. You're looking handsome. Hey, I appreciate that. Vaughn. I'm growing the beard back out. I know that's, that must be what it is, man. Vaughn, you're always handsome. Vaughn, the impaler. I'm working on the pastor of disaster. I'm working on the Bible rap, man. You are? I'm working on it.'m gonna drop it You're up while you are Dude I would give

A lot of money To see him dance What do you think man You think we might see him tonight Hey listen Listen You need to picture Billy Crystal

Doing the white man's overbite And that's me You know it's awesome Tyler what's up dude Yeah What's up guys I'm still I'm still a little bit hung over

From our Our dinner Saturday night I'm not gonna lie Oh the one where Your wife texts me Like two minutes after you left she's like oh my god i totally forgot to pay the bill yeah we were out with tyler and his buddies and uh and we skipped out on the bill it actually felt kind of good not gonna lie well you know i had to laugh after we talked about you know half naked uh posts on instagram and here tyler is everybody his boobs. He's always showing his boobs.

Yeah. He's got nice man boobies. And he gives me shit for it all the time, but I keep doing it. Yeah. I do what I want. Yeah. Yeah. I think your Instagram following tripled, right?

After that post. It went from one to three? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, all right, look, this is, this is usually when we do the question of the day, but I've got more of a statement. We have some special guests in from out of town. If you follow me on Periscope at Andy Frisella, you know that I'm always on

Periscope doing little mini episodes of the MSCEO Project. And one of the things I did recently was I had a contest to actually bring people in from out of town, let them sit in. We're going to talk about business a little bit later on and spend some one-on-one time, go hang out, go get some dinner and spend the day with. So we have in studio today, we have Wesley from Baton Rouge. We have John from Charlotte, North Carolina, and we have Kathy from Spokane, Washington. And we got talking about the question of the day and what it was going to be because believe it or not, we don't schedule that out. It's just something that we come up with on the spot. And we didn't have one. And we started talking about what it means to basically stay motivated or stay into your business through the different seasons of your life.

And it's not really a question, but I have to say, man, you know, when you think, I was thinking about this today, honestly, driving down the road, because when you're first starting in business, it's very easy to stay hungry. It's easy. It's easy to be hungry. It's easy to be motivated. It's easy to be on top of your shit whenever you don't have anything. You know what I mean? It's easy to say, dude, I'm so hungry. I want this. I want this. I want this. And then when you start to actually have a little bit of that success, you know, most people, their hunger goes away a little bit. It's a natural reaction and they don't work as hard. They don't do the little things as well. And they don't stay motivated the way that they were when they were, you know, starving.

And what impresses me about true entrepreneurs is people who keep that hunger from the day one all the way to, you know, the end of their life, really. Because I believe that a true entrepreneur never really gets to a place where they say, oh, I'm done. You know, it's a journey. It's something that you make a part of your life. It's who you are. And it becomes not about money, but it's about fucking winning. You know what I mean? So it's interesting to me. And I guess instead of a question of the day,

it's more of a statement that I'd that hunger versus certain people's, you know, ability to get complacent. You know, once they have a couple little things like, you know, they might drive a nice car, they might have a boat, they might have a house, they might have enough money in the bank to do whatever they want to do. And that becomes the end of their, you know, aggressive. And what do you think the difference is between those two groups of people? I mean, for me, I think it's when you identify and you surrender to a purpose that's bigger than you. It becomes about tradition.

It becomes about legacy. This past Saturday, some of you maybe saw on Periscope or saw on other, you know, Instagram, I had the opportunity to be with the North Dakota State Bison. And this is a football team that's won four straight national championships, but 12 national championships in its history, 31 conference championships, and the second most wins in the history of college football. Well, how do you explain that, right? It's a consistency of tradition tradition when somebody puts on that uniform they know the uniform they know the responsibility and it's a commitment to excellence and there's two doors

if you guys can picture this and i put it up on instagram if you check it out at continued fight there's two doors that say if you stay you will become a champion so that's an expectation for anybody that puts on that uniform so i think when you set an expectation and a standard, then you're going to continue to work for it no matter how many times you get knocked down or even if you have one bad season. Yeah, I would just add that I think the people that excel long term are the ones that know deep down the things that really satisfy in life. So in other words, if your whole motivation from beginning to end is to make money, once you make money, then you lose motivation. But if deep down your motivation is to do something big and to build something really special, that's going to satisfy. And that's going to continue to satisfy in a way that money can't.

So I think the people that succeed long-term are the ones that know deep down the things that really satisfy. Yeah. And even though I posed the question, I want to add my two cents on it. To me, a real entrepreneur, an entrepreneur is someone who is genuinely in love with the process of being an entrepreneur. There's plenty of people that claim to be entrepreneurs or they're an entrepreneur and then they sold their business and they do nothing. I don't consider those people entrepreneurs. I just don't. I consider those people business people who accomplished whatever it was, you know, whatever their end game was, they accomplished that, that's great. But that's not an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur

is somebody who cannot sit still, who cannot keep moving forward, who cannot keep progressing, who cannot keep improving. It's in their blood. It's part of who they are. They do it for the win. They don't do it for the money. And when I say the win, that's going to be the purpose. That's going to be, you know, and the funny thing is all this shit goes together as a big web of, like, what creates success.

Because when you define your purpose and you're aggressive against your purpose for years and years and years and years, first of all, you don't get burned out. Second of all, you get people following you because it develops a tremendous culture. Okay. Third of all, you start providing the solutions with passion that you're looking to provide. And fourth, the money comes automatically. So, you know, when people say, you know, how do you keep the motivation through the different phases of your life? I think a real entrepreneur is going to automatically have that as part of them, no matter what. And certain people

do business because they need a means to an end. I think a real entrepreneur is just an entrepreneur. They're just going to always be minded that way. You know, it's always about putting the puzzle pieces together, solving a problem, building something, creating something, moving forward. And, you know, and rarely have I met an entrepreneur that focuses on the money. You know, they just don't. They focus on the process. They focus on the passion. They focus on the problems that need to be solved.

And the money comes automatically. You know, that leads to a related question that I'd be interested to hear what you have to say. That a lot of people are lured by the idea of starting their own business because they rightly conclude that there's probably a good chance that they're going to make more money working for themselves than working for somebody else. But what you're saying is that one of the questions to ask yourself before you do that, are you the kind of person that is really wired to enjoy the pursuit of success? Or is this just about money? Because if it's just about money, you're not really an entrepreneur at heart. I always weed those people out by people

that talk to me in terms of this. I want to retire at the age of 35. I want to retire at the age of 40. Retire and do what? The fuck are you going to do all day? You're going gonna sit around, watch fucking A-Team, fucking beat off to internet porn?

Get the fuck out of here. You're not an entrepreneur. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Dude, an entrepreneur is fucking, it's not about selling out. Sure, you may sell a business and move on to another business

and use the skills that you learned in the first business to create a second one. But the idea of, I'm retired or I'm gonna stop. Dude, my dad sold his business and use the skills that you learned in the first business to create a second one. But, but the idea of I'm retired or I'm going to stop, dude, my dad sold his business and he retired and he's been miserable ever since. You know why? Because he bought into the idea of retirement and dude, you know what? If you want to check out some, somebody who has a cool perspective on retirement, check out Tim Ferriss, um, the four hour work week. If anybody's read it, he's got a really cool perspective on retirement and it's like deferred retirement over the course of your life.

You know, the whole idea that you're going to save up enough money by the time you're 35 or 40 to live the rest of your life is ridiculous anyway, based on the inflation and, and currency in the first place, you know, your currency that's worth a dollar at 40, it's going to be worth 30 cents at fucking 70. It doesn't make sense. So the same quality of life cannot be bought with the same amount of money. So his solution is to spread retirement over the course of your life in short bursts. It's cool.

It's not how I do it, but you know, my goal is just to keep doing shit, but it's definitely a different perspective that makes more sense than trying to like quit. I mean, how many beers can you have on the beach? How many fucking, you know, margaritas can you drink? How many cigars can you smoke? You know what I'm saying? It also assumes that laying around on the beach doing nothing is actually more satisfying than building something or creating something special. Dude, it's.

I have a hard time sitting still on a Saturday afternoon, much less, you know, at 36 years old saying that I'm just going to sit on a beach for the rest of my life. That's what I'm saying. Smoking a cigar. If I go on a vacation, which is rare, like once every two or three years I go. I mean, I could go on vacation once a month, every month, like, and it wouldn't affect my business. I go once every two or three years. And by the third day, I want to come home.

And most of the time when I go on vacation, I fly home early. That's the truth. You know what I mean? Because, dude, you have to come home. And most of the time when I go on vacation, I fly home early. That's the truth. You know what I mean? Because dude, you have to love what you're doing. And if you don't, you're in the wrong spot. I don't know. Yeah. It's an interesting topic. It is. We could stop now. Yeah. No shit. You know, we really could talk about that all day. We could talk about, you know, what drives people, what keeps people motivated, this, that, the other. And the reality is it doesn't matter.

You know, if your goal is to make X amount of dollars so you can live the rest of your life doing whatever, I'm not judging you or saying that's wrong. I'm just saying I don't consider it to be an entrepreneur. I consider it to be a problem solver who is a means to an end type of business owner. But you better make damn sure that whatever amount of money it is you sold your business for is enough to cover the amount of currency fluctuation that's going to happen over the course of your life. Most people don't think about that. But when I think about when you talk about success being reaching your true potential in your life, I mean, you just stop at some point in time. You stop reaching your potential. There's no purpose. How many I know, 10 people off top of my head, I can name them, sold their businesses. They're fucking miserable. Then they have all the money that they need. You know what I mean?

That's why you read this shit about people who are like, oh, dude, the guy's got all the money in the world, but he's so depressed because he has no purpose. You know what I mean? And that's what your dad talked about when we had the episode. He talked about there was just no purpose as soon as he sold the business. Right. And you don't realize that when you're in it. You know what I mean? So.

Well, I know that this is not the topic and that if you want to go get the show notes for this episode, go to themfco.com forward slash p17. And are we announcing some other things on the website right now? Some things that we might be wanting to announce it? Yeah. Well, you go ahead and announce it. The pastor of disaster. Well, the Do It Anyway Tour is now live on the website.

And if you go to www.themfceo.com forward slash do it anyway, that'll take you right to the page where you can buy tickets for the tour. And, Ben, you want to run down just – you don't have to go through all of them, but just a couple of the – Tell people what the Do It Anyway Tour is. Oh is oh yeah that's a good idea yeah so andy and i got together and i think it was really the connection we first shared the stage at summer smash and really when vaughn you first connected the two of us and it was this deep connection to not candy coating things giving it the right way exactly what you're getting right here as you listen to the mfceo project podcast

and to go out and to be with the listeners live and to help you really dig deep on what you want in your life, but like the real things that you want in your life. This is not a, you know, Andy's going to pump you up. I'm going to pump you up. This is like something you have never seen before. This is substance. This is a plan. And you are walking away with a deeper sense of purpose, where you want to go and a clearly defined plan as to how you're going to get there. And with each stop, we're going to have a special guest speaker. So this is going to be like nothing you have ever had the opportunity to be a part of.

And Andy and I are fired up to take this all across the world, starting with the kickoff November 6th at Bush Stadium here in St. Louis, Missouri. And then we'll be headed to Toronto, Canada, January the 15th. And then Miami, February the 6th, Orlando, February the 7th. And then that takes us through the 12 dates, finishing in August with a huge exclusive event in Las Vegas. Yeah. So you can go to the website. You can either go themfceo.com forward slash do it anyway, or you can go to the website, just click on speaking. There's a dropdown box that says do it anyway tour 2015. Click on that and it'll, I mean, it's a very simple process to purchase your tickets. So.

Yeah, let's move on. Let's get to the topic. You know, we've been sitting here kind of bullshitting enough. Guys today, look, we get tons of questions on the Ask Andy at the MSCO email. We have tons of things that, you know, we could go through. And usually we take a minute or two to talk about certain little aspects of business and we bullet point them out. Today, I'm going to change it up a little bit. I'm going to talk about big picture things. We're going to go macro. We're going to take a 10,000 foot view and talk to you about why people buy and how people buy versus what you probably think the reason are why people buy. Okay. And it's all going to tie into what I always talk about is the do the right thing economy.

Okay. We talk about doing the right thing creating value creating a situation where you provide solutions and the money comes and if you do that with integrity things take care of themselves okay and we're gonna talk about exactly the science the scientific empirical process of why that is okay if. Um, if you watch me on Periscope, I've Periscoped about this a number of times, but, um, we're going to do the podcast basically on, on, on why people buy and why it's important for you to focus on your own brand, why it's important for you to understand influencer marketing, why it's important for you to do the right fucking thing. All right. So, so when you say a big picture view, are you talking about like you're, we're going

to tackle like a whole philosophy of how you run your business? Pretty much. So basically guys, here's the rundown and try to follow along. It would probably be easier if you were looking at me, but, uh, cause I talk with my hands. I tend to do all this weird shit, but follow along with what I'm saying. Okay. So back in the 1800s, when business was first, you know, let's say the United States was just getting started. Things were just getting going.

Free market enterprise was really capitalism was, was starting to become the thing. Okay. And, and small town USA, you had Mr. Forsella's general store. All right. And in Mr. Forsella's general store, he sold all the goodies. He sold guns, he sold tack, which is saddles and things that have to do with horses. He sold all the candy, he sold, you know, bullets, he sold powdered milk, whatever you needed to get along with your day back then, okay?

And you would go into Mr. Fursella's store, and you'd say, hey, how you doing, Mr. Johnson? It's good to see you. What can I help you with? Well, you know, I need this special sort of, the special sort of bullet for this gun. Oh man, you know what? We don't have that. We don't, we don't actually have that. Let me see if I can get that for you. All right. And Mr. Frisella goes back and he looks at his catalog and he says, you know what? I can get that for you. It's going to be a couple days. Mr. Johnson says, hey, thank you very much.

You know, I'll come back in a couple days. You know, there was no internet. Couldn't call anybody. There was no instant gratification. You had to do it that way. That was the way that it was. Okay? They shake hands.

Mr. Johnson goes home. Two days later, he gets a knock on the door. It's Mr. Frisella with this box of special bullets that he didn didn't have in stock So he decided to bring to his house. Okay, and he says hey, Mr. Johnson. I brought you your bullets I know that uh, it took me a couple days. I wanted to get it sooner, but i'm sorry But I got as fast as I could Here you go Well, I didn't expect you to bring it to the house. Well, no, it's okay It's the least I could do, you know, I didn't have it and i'll stock it for you from here on out

Okay, they shake hands It's okay. It's the least I could do. I didn't have it, and I'll stock it for you from here on out. Okay? They shake hands. Mr. Johnson's blown away by the service that Mr. Frisella gave him. Okay? He says, man, that was great service. Not only did he order what he didn't stock, he stocked it. He brought it to my house. What a good guy.

I really like that guy. Okay? Shook my hand, looked me in the in the eye said thank you very much for the business and what happens what is what is mr johnson talk about when he meets up with his neighbors on the fence line when he's out repairing the fence man you know what that frisella dude he's a good guy he went and he he uh he did this and this and this and you know i don't know where you're getting your stuff at but but you need to check them out. You see what I'm saying? Absolutely. So what it does is it creates what you're talking about is old school word of mouth marketing based on problem solving based on great

customer service, which creates retention and creates word of mouth. All right. That's how business used to be done. That was the only way it could be done. You couldn't, there was no fucking TV. There was no radio. There was no internet. Okay. All there was, was you do a good job and people talk about you. That's how businesses, that's how all businesses started. Okay. It was all relationship.

It was all influencer marketing. And when I say influencer marketing, Mr. Johnson's an influencer. He knows his network of people. And obviously back in the 1800s, it was much smaller than what it is now. You know, you might, instead of knowing a thousand friends on Facebook or a thousand friends on Instagram, you might know a dozen people. But when those people have a conversation about where to buy their shit, who do they talk about? They talk about Mr. Frisella's general store. Okay. And that's how business started. That's how companies

grew their business. That was the only way to grow your business. Okay. And because it was a small town, word traveled quickly. Exactly. It was the only way there was no way to, there was no other way to do it. You couldn't do it any other way. All right. So what would happen if Mr. Frisella decided that he was going to try to overcharge Mr. Johnson or he was going to try to sell him shit that he didn't need or he was going to try to take advantage of him as a customer, he would tell his friends, right? Mr. Johnson would go tell his friends, hey, man, I don't like that guy. That guy's always trying to sell me extra shit. He's always being pushy. He's always telling me that I need stuff that I don't. And instead, the conversation that happens amongst Mr. Johnson and his friends

becomes a conversation of negativity. You see what I'm saying? All right. So that is how business used to be done. In the mid-1930s, we had a couple of cultural changes happen in the United States. We had television advertising. We had radio advertising come about, and we had print advertising, which was a few years old at that time, but started to all come

together. Those are the big three. All right. And what happened was companies started companies that could afford to advertise and could afford to put ads in those mediums. They, they grew like crazy because it was so they can reach so many more people. All right. And then what happened was the prices went up because these companies were buying them up and the companies that grew, that were the first in, grew to massive sizes and basically became the only companies that could afford to advertise in these mediums. Okay. You guys follow me? Yeah. So basically they controlled the conversation? Sort of, yeah. Yeah.

On a large scale. Yeah. Instead of relying on only Mr. Johnson's 12 people, they could talk to thousands of people very quickly. All right? And what happened was the prices of these mediums went up, and they boxed out the small business guys. So Mr. Frisella now, because he didn't invest in these mediums, now he's in a problem. He has a problem. All right?

He can't reach the people that these other stores can reach. And what happened? He ended up going out of business. Okay? But here's what happened. Those companies grew so big, the companies that were able to afford to advertise, that they started getting really fucking greedy. All right.

And they started doing this because they realized something. They realized that the consumer that bought their product had no recourse to affect them. So basically they could reach thousands and thousands of people, but those thousands and thousands of people still only had their 12 people that they could talk to. You guys following what I'm saying? Absolutely. They didn't have the power to come back and say anything negative or call them out for being dishonest or anything. So what happened was is you had very large companies develop marketing teams.

Okay. And these marketing teams developed marketing agendas. All right. And what marketing agendas were were fucking lies. All right. And what marketing agendas were, were fucking lies. All right. So you had people who went in the back room of a, of a multimillion dollar or billion dollar company. And they said, Hey guys, guess what? I got this idea. We could tell people that this water, it cures this disease and we'll sell tons and tons and tons of it. And guess what? It won't matter if it actually works or not because what are they going to do?

They can't tell anybody. Right. You see what I'm saying? By the time they figure it out, it'll be too late. We'll have made our money. Yeah, right. Exactly. Or this product, you know, this tire will never go flat.

Or this spoon is a magic spoon to help you lose weight. I mean, how many fucking scams have we seen over the course of our history? I mean, I can count. Dude, I can remember a fucking multi-level marketing platform, and I'm not going to name it by name because I think they're still around. They used to claim that their fucking juice, their acai berry juice cured cancer.

How fucking immoral is that? Okay? So you, and consequently, guys, if you want to know where the idea of um money is evil comes from this is where it comes from because in our parents generation and and your grandparents generation they grew up in a situation where to be successful in business people fucking lied okay so when you when you hear people say money evil, it's not that they don't understand money. It's that they were conditioned to think that

because the way business was being done. You guys following me? Absolutely. Can I throw something in if I follow you correctly? So the other thing, and maybe you're going to get to this, but the other thing is obviously there's this population explosion and the country's getting bigger. And because the communication system is dominated,

they could screw people over and sort of hide they could be anonymous there's everlasting you know there's everlasting new customers right because people can't communicate amongst each other right so like if i get if i get screwed over by a company or i get a product that doesn't stand up to what i think that it should it's very hard for me to talk to my friend in new york and and i probably didn't get screwed that bad where I'm going to pick up the phone and call him up and say, Hey Fred in New York, man, I bought this fucking product and it sucked. Don't buy it.

That shit didn't happen because dude, it's just inconvenient. So, you know, you got screwed, you know, you fought with them about a refund that you probably didn't get. And that was it. All right. Right. So that went on for years and years and years. And companies came to not care at all about the solutions they provided.

They came to provide a solution based on a story slash lie that it didn't matter was true or not because they could. Does this make sense? Absolutely, yeah. Because sometimes I ramble about it. No, no, no no it's

making total sense yeah so so then something happened okay in in the late 90s uh there was an invention okay the invention was called the internet everybody knows al gore invented the internet right right thanks to al gore for inventing the internet we appreciate your brother all right without you where would we be where would we be? Where would we be? I mean, dude, Al Gore. I mean, fuck. So in the late nineties, Al Gore vets the internet, right? And if you don't get it, we're being sarcastic or you're too young to know what we're talking about. But anyhow, um, the internet comes around. All right. And this is when I started my business. I started my business in 99. The internet was still around,

but it wasn't like really useful for business, for most businesses, so to speak. You know, we could do email and things like that. It made things a little more convenient, but it didn't give us any real tools. But as the internet evolved, certain things started to happen, okay? Things were invented.

Things like My space came along, then Facebook, then Instagram, the Twitter. Okay. Not in that order. Now you have Periscope. Now you have Snapchat. Now you have, um, instant communication where it used to be. You had to write a letter. You could write an email. Now you could post a status on your Facebook and let everybody know every little thought or Twitter. Okay. You have things like Angie's list. You have things like Yelp. You have things like TripAdvisor.

Okay. When I go book a vacation, which I mentioned before is rare, I still go on TripAdvisor to see which because I don't want to mess up my whole trip. You know, I want to make sure this place is going to go if I'm only going to go once in a while. So, um, the point is, is there was a new power given to the average person to have a platform, to voice their opinion instead of reaching 12 people. Now, now you're reaching your thousand Facebook friends or your, you know, your whatever, how many you have on Instagram, whatever, every single time. Okay. So now you create a situation that is the exact opposite of what was going on the previous 70 fucking years, which is the people that you are selling products to now have a voice and you can decide to embrace that voice and love that voice and use that voice to grow your business by having

tremendous products, tremendous solutions, and creating tremendous experiences with your customers so that now instead of them going to the fence line and having a good conversation with their neighbor, they're going on their Twitter, they're going on their Facebook, and they're talking to every fucking person they know about the interaction you just created. Okay. Now companies that decide they want to fuck their customers and screw over their customers have a situation where the minute they do that, the day they do that, the day you ship a terrible product, the day you lie about your product, that very day you have immediate backlash amongst the community okay immediate posts on instagram media posts on twitter the saying dude don't buy this product

i bought this product was a scam everywhere you see it all the time with travel when the when the airlines are not honest you know with delays and things of that nature it's like immediate you know it's at this airline here Here's what they did. And then, you know, people start retweeting that and they see what it is. Right. Dude, look. Can I make a point just to,

for the younger people who are listening to this, I don't think they realize what an absolute sea change there has been in our culture because I'm old enough. I'm 42. I'm old enough to remember that there was actually a show. It was on one day a week and it was a show called Fight Back with David Horowitz. And the whole

point of the show was that he would take one or two situations where some company was screwing somebody over. Dude, it was the norm. But even that, even that was run by a major network. So, you know, had to play politics. And what they realized is that at that time, you guys aren't that much younger than I am. I remember the show, Vaughn. You remember the show. But the point is that there was so little that we could do in Recourse that the consumer could do in Recourse. And now it's completely different. I mean, I think John Stossel made his whole early, early broadcasting career, like exposing,

you know, different things. But now it's power to the people. Yeah. But here's the thing you have to understand. A lot of these companies that are gigantic fucking corporations were built during that 70 years of screw the customer mentality, and they still haven't adapted to the new one. And a lot of people who own small business

were brought up in that situation. They still don't understand it. You know what I mean? So what we want to do is we want to make you understand that there was the way it was done in the 1800s. Then there was 70 years of bullshit. Okay? Now there is a new situation

where it's back to the way that was in the early days of business it's back to the days where the customer matters the product matters the experience matters the solution matters people matter okay we're back to that situation because now they have the tools we all have the tools to tell the truth about products, goods, or services at any time. And guess what? We do do that. I just said do-do. You did.

Yeah. But the point is, is that's what we do. We, as a culture, have created a society of, dude, we spread good word of mouth and we spread bad word of mouth. Okay. And it's your decision as a business owner to decide what that's going to be. And if you're smart, you're going to understand that it's not about today's sale. It's not about how much profit you made today.

It's not about how much you sold the person today. It's about the lifetime value of that customer. It's about the conversations they have about your products, goods, or services. It's about the conversations they have about experience of dealing with you or your company or your team, okay? And your job as a business owner is to own that conversation 100% of the time. If you own that conversation, you will own the market share period. That's it. There's nothing more to it. If you can grasp the simple idea of taking

care of your customer, providing an awesome customer experience, making sure through follow-up that the product service that they used worked for them, you will own the conversation. You will create trust. You will create loyalty, which insulates you from your competition. Now, with that being said, guys, this isn't an either or situation. This isn't, okay, I could choose to advertise on TV and the paper and I can, I can do it the way Andy's talking about. No, the way Andy's talking about is the only fucking way anymore. Isn't the underlying principle you're referring to just do the right thing.

That's right. That's right. But, uh, have integrity, do the right thing, take care of your customers, be what you say you're going to be. And if you do that, you'll find success. If you don't, you will not. It's interesting. When I was in the insurance and investment business, I had a mentor of mine, and Andy, you'd love this guy. The guy's owned over 80 high-end cars and wildly successful in his life. He'd kill me if I mentioned his age, but he's knocking on the door of 60. And I learned so much from him. But I remember when I first did business with him, and he started selling in his 20s I said hey can I come by your house and can we just sit down and talk I want to learn from you I want to ask you questions kind of

like an interview he said absolutely come on by I said what is the one thing that has made you successful and I think this is a principle that with a guy like him who's come through all these periods of time except for the 30s that you're talking about I said what's the one thing you've always done he says you always have to have the ability to go back. He says, when you do the right thing for people, you can always go back. If you screw somebody, you can't go back. You can't go sell them again. If you treat somebody right, I can always go back, have a conversation, build the relationship, and continue to grow with them. And he has been wildly successful through all these periods of time. This guy sells $30 million a year in women's

shoes. You cannot go to big corporations as one of the top shoe salesmen in the world by screwing people over and when you do the right thing it makes all the difference in the world so let's take it a step further let's take it a step further than that what if you do the right thing and go above and beyond so much that the the shoe distributors and the big companies won't buy fucking shoes from anybody else ever. That's the way it's been with him. They look forward to this guy coming to New York to get the hotel room and they are banging down his door appointment after appointment after appointment.

I'm talking the DSWs, the Nordstrom. They cannot wait to see this guy because he takes care of people. It's all he's ever known. Dude. And that's as simple as it gets guys. You have, I'm trying to get something across to you is that your job is to create loyalty. Your job is to create brand loyalty. Your job is to do that by doing what we're talking about, focusing on the lifetime value, providing solutions, providing ridiculous experiences, providing a dude. We have a thing in our company that if you, if you did not create an experience that you think that person's going to leave

and immediately go right on their social media about how awesome it was, you did not do your fucking job. Okay. That's what you have to focus on. You cannot focus on the dollars and cents of today's sale. You've gotta focus on controlling the conversation and creating good word of mouth by doing the right thing every fucking time. And if you do that to a level, you could, there's different levels to this. You know, there's levels to this shit.

You know what I'm saying? All right, there's different levels to this. You could do this at a minimum level and still be somewhat successful. But if you do it to the maximum level, you're going to create loyalty, which insulates your brand for competition. OK, when you're when a customer goes out and gets a fucking tattoo of your company's logo on their arm, like like millions of people do for harley davidson chances are they're probably not going to go buy a fucking yamaha you see what i'm saying absolutely now instead of having to fight yamaha in the media or for advertising space now you get the business no matter what so the better

you handle these experiences and the better you handle providing solutions you end up in a situation where you don't have to fucking spend money dude buy a show of hands of people in this room and you guys could play along listening when was how many when was the last have you bought anything in the last six months off of a fucking radio ad or television or print ad okay no hands in this room i don't even know if i've done it in the last six years. Okay, what's that tell you? Yeah. It's fucking irrelevant because people do not believe companies. You know who they believe? People.

Right, which is why, by the way, for those who do radio and podcast ads, nine times out of ten, they will tell you, by the way, we're not going to do a prerecorded thing. We just want the host to actually commend it because people take the word of somebody that they trust. Like, you know, like in your case, if you were to do a, uh, an ad for the podcast, it's always like how we talk about dollar beer club. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Right. And you should buy it because it's great. Right. When I grow my beard out, the oil does a nice job. Yeah. And the point being is that that, that whole, it really is a great era. I wouldn't fucking recommend it if it wasn't, by the way.

I just wouldn't. I mean, I think those guys are geniuses in their marketing, but that doesn't mean it's a good product. You know, when I use their product, I loved it. I use it every day. And, you know, we're using this as an example, and I agree with you. Yeah. But I just want people to know that really is a good product.

No, you're right. But the point being is that we don't run canned commercials. We run you talking about how much you like it. Because people don't believe them, dude. Right. They don't work. Can I put them on? I'm going to put them on my...

Whatever you want to do, no. Stop it, Vaughn. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to put on my Captain Obvious hat again because I know that we've got some viewers who sometimes tune out or maybe they're like me, they're a little slow on the uptake. You've been talking about, it's all about this thing you've been banging the drum on. It's doing the right thing, creating value, treating your customers well. But I don't want them to miss

your earlier point, which was before you do anything, you have to think right about your business. And if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is, no matter if you are running a business from the middle of San Diego to South County, St. Louis, or wherever. It could be off in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. It doesn't matter if you own a fucking lemonade store. Right. What you're saying is, you have to operate. You have to approach that business like you are a small town general store.

A hundred percent. So I want people to understand something here too. This is a real good point to put in right now. Okay. The point is, is that a lot of people use social media, the internet and everything to create a more efficient non-personal experience. Okay. They could send automated thank yous. They could send,

um, you know, little reminders. Hey, it's time to reorder. We haven't seen you in a while. We miss you. Oh, you miss me. Your computer sent me a fucking email. Wow. You must really fucking miss me. Okay. We, that is not how you use these technologies. You use these technologies to create more value by being more efficient at being inefficient. Okay? You could create situations that make people understand that they are valued customers. Notice I didn't say make people think they are valued customers because that would mean that you're manipulating them. The idea is they have to be valued and you should use the technology to create situations that they know took time and effort for that to happen and so that they feel valued you see what i'm saying

absolutely yeah so quit trying to automate everything like oh we're gonna automate this we're gonna do this we're gonna do that is it easy to one click ship on amazon fuck yeah man it's my own worst enemy every time i drink fucking beer, I end up with some crazy shit on my front door. Dude, you know those bug zappers that fucking glow and zap bugs? Dude, we were having a conversation when I was drinking, and me and Sal were talking about my brother. We were like, dude, remember those bug zappers we were kids? Dude, next Wednesday, I had like 19 bug zappers show up at my house.

I'm not fucking lying either. They're still in the box out of my farm. Okay? So I love the conveniences of technology. But don't just look at it as like, hey, how can we make it convenient for people to buy? Look at it as how can I make people feel fucking valued? All right? Absolutely.

That's the key. And I would also mention,, that your, your example is most of the people listening to this podcast are going to be small business people. Okay. So you're not, you're not going to be an Amazon giant of a company. So, so what, you know, yeah, they get away with a lot of the automated stuff, but that's not reality for 99.9, you know, percent of the world. And making it inefficient or efficient. You know what I'm saying? Making it convenient to reorder, awesome.

Sending me an automated thank you that says you missed me because I haven't ordered in a month, not awesome. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So. Is there a major company that you know of, like a really huge company that you know of that still does that sort of high touch um interaction with the their their customers dude i think zappos does man yeah you know i order from zappos i mean not all the time because i'm not really into clothes i mean i have like this is no bullshit i have shirts that are free that i got from my company and i have shorts

that i bought at fucking gander mountain and i have jeans i bought at chuck's boots which is a cowboy store here in st louis uh and that's it yeah so i don't really buy that many clothes but when i do decide that i think i'm going to be fashionable i buy some shit from zappos that i never wear they're very nice and they send me like a personal email from a person you know all the shit they do is like real it's high touch like you said i like that term you know it's it's it's because you guys have to think about it man we're in a world of we're in a world of everything is so not people oriented okay we're in a world of

text message we're in a world of email we're in a world of social media we're in a world of text message. We're in a world of email. We're in a world of social media. We're in a world of video games. We're in a world of, you know, all these things that make it super easy to communicate, which makes the personal interaction, the reaching out, the shaking the hand, the looking at somebody in the eye and saying, dude, thank you so much for your business. Or however you could create that without actually being in person, a handwritten thank you card. There's tons of ways to do that. You're making that more rare, which makes it more valuable.

So a lot of the younger people, and I call them young bucks listening to this, you guys have no fucking clue the kind of opportunity that you have in front of you. When I started in business, man, we didn't have a fucking internet. have Facebook ads. We didn't have Dark posts we didn't have Instagram advertising. We didn't have influencer marketing, you know targeted influencer marketing Most people influencer marketing. Do you know what that means? That means you it's controlling the conversation with that person's people okay influencer marketing being able to go to somebody on the internet and say

hey dude you've got a nice following you have a nice content on your page i would like for you to try my products and see if you're willing to work together let's work together and i'll pay you x amount for this or that that person posts organic posts all of a sudden you own their conversation you couldn't fucking do that. No. Unless you were a celebrity. Dude, you couldn't do it. You had to be a celebrity.

You couldn't do it because when do you see the celebrity? You never fucking see them. Now you see them on their social media. Now you see them on Twitter. You see them everywhere. You know, dude, the opportunities to grow a brand with little or no money are a million trillion times more than they were even fucking 15 years ago. It's unreal, which is why when people say,

how do I start a business with no money? I want to slap them in the fucking head because it's like, dude, could it be any fucking easier? You know what I mean? All right, Andy, I'm going to bring the horse into the room and I'm going to ask you to beat it until it's dead. Because as Ben knows, in public speaking, you, well, at least one of the old Maxims was, you tell people what you're going to tell them, you tell them, and then you tell them what you told them. And I just, this is an important point, so I want you to just drive it home.

So how would you summarize everything that you've said up until this point? The thing is, is you guys have to understand, I'm not against business plans. I'm not against strategies, but when it comes down to it, guys, the key in today's business is not strategy. Unless of course your strategy is to have some fucking integrity with how you deal with people. Okay. So that's point number one, you've got to have integrity. You've got to make it a priority and you've got to make it not a priority. You've got to make it priority number one. So do the right fucking thing. Okay. Social media has made every business a small town business. So more than ever, people are not going to give a shit what you sell unless they first trust who you are. All right. That's point number two. And point number three is look every day you go

into the office, you should repeat to yourself. I'm Mr. Frisella. I run a general store. I'm in the middle of Missouri where nobody fucking cares. And I've got to do a good job with every single customer. Nobody's going to shop with me. Okay. You have to think of yourself like that. You can't think of yourself as Walmart or Kmart or target or Best Buy, who all are fucking hurting, by the way, because they're losing market share to people who actually fucking care. You want me to beat the horse? I'll beat the horse. You know, the reality at the end of the day is you've got to be a good person. You've got to be good to people. You've got to be good with people you've got to have a great product or service and if you do that you're gonna fucking kill it amen PS fuck you kill shit bottom line period that's it there's nothing more to it and that's a perfect

place to end thank you all for joining us and thank you to to, John, and Wesley, our Periscope winners. Guys, it's been a great talk. I'm done. We're out. I don't mess around, kid, I only care. But he never seems to get you. All I do is work.