REAL AF with Andy Frisella - F*ck Your Competitors and Focus on You, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO166

Episode Date: August 17, 2017

How do you stand your ground against the goliath of your industry? Should you be flattered that industry leaders are following your steps on social media or worried they are about to pounce on us? Should we wait and get business open with a bang (sort of like a Trojan Horse) or should we tease our clientele with what's common and create a buzz--but risk giving our competitors a chance to prepare for us? These are questions Andy Frisella was asked by listeners and social media followers. The MFCEO's short answer: F*uck your competitors! Why are you worried so much about them? Focus on you."

what is up guys you're listening to the mfceo project i'm andy i'm your host and i am the motherfucking ceo guys today is thursday thunder but before i get into what i want to talk about we do have our itunes review contest still going we're going to announce the winner tuesday um wait tuesday or next thursday one of the two i'm not sure but anyway we to announce the winner Tuesday. Wait, Tuesday or next Thursday? One of the two. I'm not sure. But anyway, we're announcing the winner soon. So if you haven't gone on iTunes and left a review, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast,

realize we have the contest going on where we're going to pick five winners to do a 20, 30-minute Skype with myself where you can ask me whatever you want. We can talk about whatever you want, and I'll help get you on track. All right. Thursday Thunder. Now, a lot of you guys think we have these planned out and that we are so organized and have these awesome plans all the time, but the reality of how this really works is we sit here. Tyler comes and gets me, and he says,

Hey, it's time to record Thursday Thunder. And I say, Okay. And we walk in the room, and we look at each other, and we say, What are we going to talk about? And that's how it goes. There's no script. There's no planning. It's just, let's find a topic. Let's, let's unravel it. Let's try to provide some real value and some real insight on the situation. Today, I did something a little bit different today. I thought I would go ahead and ask, um, some of the followers on my Instagram to go ahead and ask me some questions that they wanted answered in one of the posts I made on Instagram. And the response was pretty good. So that's what

I'm going to do today. I'm actually going to pick, I picked one person. I'm going to answer their question and dive into the topic and why it's important. And the guy that asked this question, his name on Instagram is Madri CEO. It's M-A-D-R-I-C-E-O. He asked me three different questions. He's definitely very, very enthusiastic about getting an answer. And I'm going to read them all to you first, because they're all going to have similar answers. So his first question was, how do you stand the ground against the Goliath of your industry? All right. And then his second question, literally one minute later was, should we be flattered that industry leaders are following our steps in social media and online marketing, or should we be weary that they're going to crush us? Third, it says, should we wait and get business open with a bang and sort of pull a Trojan horse on the industry leaders slash competitors?

Or should we tease our clientele into what's coming to create a buzz and risk industry leaders reacting to our coming? All right, I'm going to answer this in depth here. All right, fuck your competitors. Why are you worried so much about your competitors? My bet is the quality of your product fucking sucks because you're worried all about what the other motherfuckers are doing. And if that offends you, it fucking should. Let me tell you something.

You know how you get good at business? You worry about your own fucking shit. You know how you get good at your job? You worry about your own fucking shit. You know how you get good at business? You worry about your own fucking shit. You know how you get good at your job? You worry about your own fucking shit. You know how you get in good shape? You don't worry about how many reps the other motherfucker in the gym is doing. You worry about how many reps you're fucking doing. Okay. And far too many of you, and this doesn't go just for the guy that asked the question, far too many of you worry way too much about other people and not enough about your fucking selves. All right. If you're going to run a business, do you think I sit in the fucking back

room of our business and talk to my key guys about what everybody else is doing? No, I don't fucking care. I don't care what anybody else is doing. I care what we're doing. I care if we're making the calls. I care if we're providing value. I care if we're making the best products. I care what we're doing. I care if we're making the calls. I care if we're providing value. I care if we're making the best products. I care if we're taking care of our customers the best way possible. I care if we're making people become loyal to our brand. I care if we're making the proper connections in our industry. I don't give a fuck if anybody else is doing that. I care if we're doing that. And you know what? That's how you become a leader. That's how you become the industry leader because you're not following anybody else's lead. You're innovating a unique

path of your own. Is it good to look at somebody else, what they're doing and say, oh, you know what? I acknowledge that guy because he's doing a good job and I'm going to do, I'm going to take what he's doing and do better. Hell yeah. But to sit here and try to create your whole strategy of business around what somebody else is doing is a way you fucking fail. And so many of you guys do that. You come home, you've got a job, you work with fucking Bob and you come home and he bitched to your wife and you said, Oh, fucking Bob, Bob fucking did this and this and this. And you know, do you think he's like out to get me? Why do you think he's working so hard? Why do you think he's doing chances are Bob doesn't give a fuck about you. The reason Bob's getting paid more than you and doing a better job is because

Bob worries about fucking Bob. All right, you guys, and this goes for anybody working a job, building a career, building a fucking company, it doesn't matter. When you spend your energy focusing on what other people are doing instead of executing on your own opportunities, you are setting yourself up to fucking fail time and time and time again. And this goes against what society is, right? Society is all about gossip. It's all about talk. It's all about who's doing what. And this goes against what society is, right? Society is all about gossip. It's all about talk. It's all about who's doing what. And it's never about worrying about what you're doing. Go to a fucking bar. What's everybody talk about? Oh, what their company's doing, what their boss

is doing, what their coworkers are doing, what their aunt's doing, what their mom's doing, what their dad's doing. Nobody fucking cares and it doesn't fucking matter. That's why you don't see successful people hanging out with people like that. Because they worry about their own shit. They worry about their own actions. They worry about what they execute on. And they worry about how they can get better at it. And that is how you build a company.

You don't strategically worry about every little chess move you're going to make. Your fucking competitors probably don't even fucking know you exist yet. If they're following you on social, cool. They're probably just trying to be aware of what you're doing. They can't stop you from doing what you're doing. Okay? You guys fucking worry about the end game before you even took the first fucking step how about being relevant how about this how about you make a better product how about you provide a

better solution how about you provide a better service and then let that competitor that you're worried about worry about you it's not about what people say. It's about what people fucking do. And you guys worry way too much about what other people are doing, what other people have, how much other people are making and the moves other people are making instead of worrying about how you can sharpen your ax and how you can get better at what you've got to do and how you can become more valuable in your role and how you can grow your company and how you can build your team and how you could become a better leader. How about you take the time you spend gossiping and talking about and worrying about other motherfuckers and put that same time into developing yourself. Do that for fucking three years

and then come tell me who the industry leader is. Because it ain't going to be the motherfucker that you're worried about right now. You guys have got to get this through your head. I cannot communicate this clear enough. I cannot explain this clear enough. The people who worry about other people in business always lose.

The best they can ever be is second place. And in our economy these days, where there has typically been an ABC choice, it's becoming more and more and more and more and more where there's dominant players. Look at Amazon. Amazon's fucking destroyed big retail, taking companies from multiple billions of dollars down to barely making a billion dollars. Okay. Let's look at some of the numbers here. 2006 Sears, $27.8 billion. 2016, $1.1 billion. JC Penney's $18.1 billion. 2016, $2.6 billion. Nordstrom, $12.4 billion in 2006, $8.3 billion in 2016. Kohl's, $24.2 billion, $8.8 billion in 2016. Macy's, $24.2 billion in 2006, $11 billion in 2006, 11 billion in 2016. Best Buy, 28.4 billion in 2006, 13.2 billion in 2016. Target, 51.3 billion in 2006, 40.6 billion in 2016. Amazon, 17.5 billion in 2006

In 2016, $355.9 billion And you know what? All those motherfuckers that same exact time If they had not worried about everything Amazon was doing And said, hey, let's look at what they're doing and do it fucking better Wouldn't be in that shape They're sitting there worried about their competitors. Oh,

retails die and retails dead retails. This retails that what, what if they would have taken the fucking things that Amazon was doing right that whole time and start doing them themselves. Now we're seeing it, but it's too late, right? We see companies who are doing grocery stores who are doing now same day

delivery and companies are trying to do same day delivery to combat the shit that Amazon has put in place. But dude, by now, Amazon has fucking gained so much ground that people are accustomed to going to Amazon out and just clipping by. They've trained their customers all because these motherfuckers who were fucking, you know, big players back then were so worried about what Amazon was doing instead of actually focusing on themselves and how they could get better and improving their fucking model. They sat back and watched it happen. They sat back and let it happen.

And that's what you do when you focus somewhere else. That's what you do when you look at someone else. That's what you do when you're focusing on how the other company's doing and why they're doing so good and you do when you look at someone else. That's what you do when you're focusing on how the other company is doing and why they're doing so good and you do nothing about it. Worry about making your own shit good. Worry about improving your own model. Worry about improving your own shit.

Take it, you know, be aware. I'm not saying ignore people. Be aware of the good shit other people do. Be aware of the good shit other people do. Be aware of the good shit other companies do. Be aware. But take that shit and do it fucking better. Take that shit and add a step. And then you don't have to worry about your competitors stealing your idea.

Because if they're stealing your idea, they're stealing what you're doing now and you're evolving. But see, I guarantee you most of you motherfuckers don't even even understand what I'm saying because you guys are so accustomed to following somebody and fucking ripping off ideas and stealing ideas. And that's how you survive. But I'm going to tell you right now, surviving and thriving is two different things. And if you want to fucking thrive, you're going to have to become an innovator by thinking on your own, by focusing on your own, by taking ideas that other people do well and adding to them plus one, plus one, plus one till you're three fucking steps ahead. And you don't do that shit by worrying about what the competitor is doing

when you haven't even launched your motherfucking business.