REAL AF with Andy Frisella - How to Come Up With a Business Idea, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO6

Episode Date: July 14, 2015

What do you do when you have passion and a strong work ethic, but no idea or direction for a business?  How do you figure out if a product or service is a "million dollar" idea? In this episode, Andy Frisella, along with co-host Vaughn Kohler and special guest Theresa DePasquale, discuss the finer points of generating and testing a business idea.

Hey guys, what's up? You're listening to the MFCEO Project Podcast. I'm Andy Frisella. I'm here with my co-host, Vaughn Kohler, and today we are joined by a special guest, Teresa DiPasquale from Tampa, Florida, who is also an entrepreneur in her own right and has come up with a number of successful businesses. And we're going to talk about a few things. What's the MFCEO podcast about? Well, 16 years ago, me and my partner, we started a business with $12,000 that we got from painting the stripes on parking lots. And we rolled that

into a company 17 years later that does annual revenue over a hundred million dollars a year. So basically what we want to do is we want to bring a mentorship aspect to people who may not have mentors. We want to bring you guys the truth, the no sugarcoat, no bullshit reality of business. And we want to help you guys realize what can be achieved because in today's society, it is very common for everyone to be negative. And we're going to try to get you guys the tools you need to be positive and to make results happen. So I'm going to get started here on a couple questions.

Before I do, Vaughn, you were just mentioning to me that your wife is from Poland. Yeah, she's from Poland. She's an immigrant. She is. She grew up in another town, however, that has more Polish people than most Polish towns. What do you mean chicago oh yeah there you go chicago actually has almost almost more polls than like krakow and uh some of these more polls yeah kind of polls uh dollar bill polls yeah well you know the problem

they run into in sporting events in poland you know that don't you the problem is wherever you sit you're always sitting behind a pole uh no no but she's like you guys change your light bulb or your house you gotta you guys gotta do it together and stuff like that right yeah what's funny is i told her that i'm i you know i'm old enough that in the 80s all the jokes were about polish people yeah and uh and i you know i i'm probably going to offend everybody in our audience is Polish, but I love Poles. They're great. We all know you love Poles. I walked into that one. I love Polish women, I should say, or one in particular.

Teresa, you're Polish, right? One in particular. No. Yeah. Or were we just talking about you're Polish? Portuguese. Oh, Portuguese. Yes. Well, I think we should have a contest on how to spell Teresa's last name.

Why is it tricky? D Pasquale? Is that how you say it? That was perfectly accurate. All right. Well, see, like I said, I'm used to it. My wife's... That's actually a good Italian name.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, the Polish language is just a bunch of consonants thrown together. It's impossible to learn. But, yeah. No, she was flown over here. She escaped communism. She did.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah No she was flown over here She escaped communism She did Yeah Yeah Back in the 80s Ronald Reagan said Anybody want to escape communism We'll help you out She like So Jumped the Berlin Wall

She was born in Berlin Because her parents Were out of Were out of the country When she was born But yeah Yeah So there's a piece

Of the Berlin Wall In Missouri You know that right I saw that Was that you that? Yeah. You went and saw that? Yeah.

That's pretty cool. It's an awesome place. The Churchill Museum. Yeah. Where is that? Yeah. It's in Fulton, Missouri at Westminster. I saw that.

I think I saw that on your Instagram. Westminster College. Yeah. That was cool. Yeah. So, but Teresa, so you're going to join us today, huh? I am. Are you going to add pithy, insightful comments?

Hopefully. That's normally my job. So, Teresa, tell us a little bit about what you do and your entrepreneurial history. I know it, but nobody else does. Well, currently I am the founder of Bikini Boss Fitness. So basically it's an online fitness business, but we've basically branched out now. We have a couple different divisions. So I have a competitive team. I do content delivery programs. I have coaches. I

have an online store. And we've kind of started steamrolling into like almost a little multi-level business as well. So that's my current venture. And before that you owned some gyms and clubs and things like that, right? Yes. I had two mortar businesses. Yep, I had two gyms in Tampa. Yeah. She's evolved basically from very similar to how we have started with brick and mortar type businesses and then evolved into more online type businesses, which is very similar to what we do as well. So, Vaughn, what are we talking about today? We're talking about something that people have been asking questions. They've been sending questions to askandyatthemfco.com,

and one of the common questions we get has to do with this topic of ideas, various questions that go along with that. What do you do when you're really passionate and you're willing to work hard, but you just don't have an idea for a product or a business? Or if you have an idea, how do you know if it's a million dollar idea, that sort of thing. So I just thought we'd talk a little bit about that. Yeah, man, I think that's definitely one of the most common questions that I get even through email or in person or whatever. You know, people always ask, how do I know what idea or what route I should take? And I feel like,

you know, that is, that's a very difficult question for somebody to answer because the reality is, is that that answer can really only come from the person that's asking the question. So it's, it's an introspective type question. You know, you have to be able to look at yourself and decide that on your own. It's not something that somebody can decide for you because of the reality. If somebody does that, you're going to end up being on a road that you're not sure was even the road that you picked. Right.

And then when things get tough, you're going to say, man, I didn't choose to be here. So-and-so told me to do this. Right. You know, so it's important to know that you have to come up with the answer to that

question on your own. And I guess, you know, what we could do is probably start to walk people through that process. Yeah. I think that – Why don't you just – I mean, like, how did you literally come up with the idea to have a supplement business? What was the process there? You know, my story is a little – it's almost like I don't – the way it worked out for me isn't like what I try to teach people to do.

It just kind it worked out for me isn't like what I try to teach people to do. It just kind of worked out. You know, I talk a lot about how important it is to follow something that you're passionate about and follow something that, you know, that you're interested in and figuring out how to monetize that business. And that's not how it worked for us. I mean, if I'm being completely honest, we did the same thing a lot of entrepreneurs do in the beginning is they focus on the money, okay? So Chris and I, when we were young, we were 18, 19 years old, we're like, hey, let's start a business.

And the first business idea that we came up with was tanning. And the reason we came up with a tanning bed business is because we knew somebody else who was in that business, who ironically, I'm still very good friends with today um that was doing really well and and so we said okay you know todd's doing great at tanning let's do tanning we didn't we weren't passionate about fucking having some kind of bronze tan you know i mean it's just we were trying to make money and um so we researched it a little bit and then we come to find out that you know we couldn't afford we only had twelve thousand dollars right we couldn't afford a tanning bed not even one so they're that expensive oh yeah like back then they were like

50 grand i don't know what they are now but um anyhow uh so that kind of crossed off the list for us and then what happened was we decided to open a supplement store because that was something that we were into personally we knew about that personally we were both into working out we were both athletes we were both interested in that direction in our personal lives um so although like we didn't choose that business as our first choice it ended up being the same thing i teach people which is to follow your passion and it's because what we knew about right you know um and i make you know a lot of times when i talk about this with people i make extreme examples i remember i made a video the other day talking about if you're interested in butterflies, how to make a business out of it.

It really does come down to following your passion. Excuse me for clearing my throat, but I've been sick for two weeks. It comes down to following your passion. Following your passion is a very abstract thing for most beginning entrepreneurs to put their arms around and to wrap their mind around because it's just, it doesn't make sense. You know, when you're 18 years old or 19 years old or you're 30 years old and you've got bills to pay and you're like, man, I want to start a business. And someone's like, oh, let's follow your passion. That sounds like some rainbow bright fucking bullshit. You know, you're trying to get paid. You've got bills to pay.

You've got obligations. And that just doesn't sound very practical. And you think, oh, well, I'm going to do what makes the most money. Fuck what I'm passionate about. I want the most money. But here's the thing. When you start out on the entrepreneurial journey, you're not going to make money when you first start.

The first two, three, four, five years are going to be very hard. And the reason it's important to follow your passion is for two reasons. One, during that process of it being very tough and for it to be difficult in the beginning, you're going to wake up in the morning and you're going to say, man, this sucks. I don't have any money in my bank account. My girlfriend just left me because I don't have any money. I can't afford my rent. I'm late on my bills.

But fuck, I love what I do. have any money. I can't afford my rent. I'm late on my bills, but fuck, I love what I do. Right. Okay. And that, and that passion and that caring for what you do and the excitement for what you do is going to carry you through those difficult times to where, you know, you're going to be able to withstand all the other negative aspects of being an entrepreneur in the beginning to get to the point, you know, five, six, seven, eight years down the road where you're actually making great money and you're enjoying your job. You see what I'm saying? So, you know, and then the other aspect to that is this, is that to become an expert in something,

it's very hard to become an expert in something you're not interested or passionate about. You know, if you're not interested in fitness, don't get into the fitness business. If you're not interested in butterflies, don't get into the fitness business. If you're not interested in butterflies, don't start a fucking butterfly website. Right. I mean,

it, it just, it's one of those things for you to become the expert you need to become to monetize that idea. You know, you have to be interested in it. You have to be passionate about it. Right.

Exactly. It's obsession. I mean, you've done this. Tell, tell people what you think about it. No, I agree 100%. And it's funny because I was just thinking as you're talking about my journey.

Right. And I used to remember the days that, I mean, there was a point where I was a bartender. I sold new homes. And I used to think, and I'm like, what is my purpose? I have no idea what I want to do in life. I always knew I wanted something, but I didn't know what. And it's funny because I ended up taking a human biology course in college and became obsessed with health, started working out, became obsessed with fitness. It really changed my life. So I decided,

okay, well, I want to have a career in fitness. But instead of just being a personal trainer, I decided to just open my own gym, knowing nothing about business or fitness or anything. And just became absolutely obsessed with it. And so that's the thing is like, you have to have the constant desire to keep bettering yourself and like learning more and more. And then I think there's a, there's two parts of that equation. That's the first most important part. Right. I think the second part is, is like having passion is great, but you have to see opportunities as well. So it's like having passion and taking that and turning it into an opportunity, which is, and I think that's where most people struggle.

Like when we get these questions that you have here about, you know, how do I know what's right? How do I make my passion into an income? I think that's the connection that most people can't make. Right. It's how to monetize their passion. It's just like I was listening to the e-book by Seth Godin. Right. And he calls it a rift.

Right. It's like seeing that rift and jumping on it. It's like he talks about Walt Disney did it with the animation and the theme parks, and he saw a need, and he took his passion and made it into that need. So it's kind of like morphing what you're doing and jumping on an opportunity. Well, and also you've got to realize that you're not going to hit a home run every time. So let's say you're Walt Disney, right? And you're wanting to jump in and do the theme parks. He saw the opportunity, but he was already into that business before that

ever, that opportunity presented itself. So, you know, recognizing the opportunity, like if you wait until you think the perfect opportunity is there to jump into something and get into something, you're, you're too late. Cause there's already people who are in that industry that are knowledgeable and become experts. Three steps ahead. That have already seen that opportunity and probably created it. Yep.

So. One thing that I noticed about you, Andy, and also you, Teresa, is that I think a lot of people when they think of entrepreneurial endeavors, they think of innovation, they think of starting something new. But I think what you guys have kind of learned is that you don't have to overcomplicate it. You don't have to come up with some brand new product that nobody's created. You just have to do

something you like and something that you're passionate about and then make it exceptional and make it exceptional. Right. Make it better. Right. Make it better. There's two ways to innovate. I mean, there's coming up with something brand new and then there's taking something that already exists and making it exponentially better. And that's, I think a lot of people, when they think of innovation, they think of the first way, coming up with something brand new. There's very few things out there that are brand new. There is a fuckload of things out there that need to be improved. Right.

So you need to start thinking about, hey, that's good. They're doing this pretty good, but I can do it that much better. Absolutely. And I think both of us, I mean, you and I i teresa and i have built our companies off of that yeah i mean i didn't invent nutrition right you know well look at fitness is i mean it's the same thing it's saturated better right right so teresa my job in the uh in the podcast is to restate the obvious for those who were dropped on their heads as kids. But basically what you guys are saying is, you know, if you want an idea, start with what do you like?

Yeah. What do you like to do? That's where you got to start. What are your interests? That is the place to start. And so, like, I recently watched a video online of a quote-unquote, you know, mentor of the Internet. I don't know.

But it's like make your passion money. make your passion money, make your passion money, make your passion money. Look, everybody's fucking passion is money. If you're an entrepreneur and you say you don't like money and you're not passionate about making money, you're full of shit, but you have to, you have to distance yourself from the idea of focusing on the money because when you focus on the money, you make bad decisions. That's right. And the other thing is, is you don't, you only have so much focus and energy in a day. So if you focus on the money all the time, that's focused that you are wasting where you could be focusing on creating something awesome or doing a better job or creating better service or better product that will make you the money. So you have to understand, money is a byproduct of the quality of the work that you do.

Absolutely. You know, so making your passion the money is probably the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. It's coming from somebody that I, it's clear through my observation. I just don't think that it was good information to tell somebody. Right. You know, and you have all these guys online selling these online, how to make money, fucking observation i just don't think that it yeah it was good information to tell somebody right you know and you have all these guys online selling these online how to make money fucking quick and this

and that and all this shit and the reality is that there is no quick way you know if somebody tells you i went from zero to a millionaire in 12 months dude they either inherited that shit or they're lying or they made it by selling you a story about that yeah you know it's just it's it's not realistic you know and most people jump from idea to idea to idea to idea their whole entire lives instead of just sticking into one becoming a true expert at it one of the best in the world and and and putting in the work and then letting the rewards come to them you know after after they've invested that time. And I'm going to tell you, and any legit entrepreneur will tell you,

you have to put in the fucking work, you've got to be consistent, and you have to be willing to pay your dues. And if you do that, you'll build a viable business. I mean, I just watched a really cool episode of Ask Gary Vee. And you guys, you know Vaughn, I love Gary Vaynerchuk. He's one of my favorite authors. I think he's awesome um but he talked some guy wrote him a question about like hey you know how do I monetize being on the internet and and just uh hang out on the beach all day and like smoke weed he literally asked this question is he from Colorado dude I don't know but like the point is it's like that's

the fucking mentality that mentality is that there's these secret ways to make money. And his answer was perfect. He's like, man, there's out of 1,000 people, there might be one guy who did that. And that guy probably put five or six years of hard-ass work to figure out how to do that passive income. You know what I mean? And then on top of that, he's probably selling you the program and making a lot more money. It's not a realistic thing man so you're better off just saying hey all right you know what am i what am i interested in i'm interested in x i'm going to become an expert x

i'm going to figure out how to monetize x right you know and you know that term passive income even oh it's bullshit well that i mean doesn't – I understand the use of it, but it doesn't account for how much work went into getting to that point. That's what I'm saying. Or even maintaining it. No, that was the point of what Gary said on his thing. Yeah. It's like it's not – it didn't account for, you know,

the years of expertise, studying, work that went into figuring that out. And these guys, they get online and they, they sell these kids, these kits like, Hey, buy my kit for $200 and I'll show you how to fucking, you know, make this much money. It's like, dude,

you're making all your money off selling the fucking kit. Right. You know, I don't know. I would just hope that people listening to the show will listen to me, listen to the people that we bring on the show. And then the fact, and we're getting a little off track, but the point is, is like,

dude, invest yourself now in this passion, you know, learn about what it is you're interested in, become an expert, right. You know, and by the time, you know, five, six years from now, you know, it took me a long time, but you got to remember, I built my business before the internet was really some like a huge thing, right. You know, So it took me longer. Now you have more opportunity to go quicker because there is other tools. There's instant access to everything now. So where it took me 10 years to buy my first Lamborghini, it might take you five because technology is different now.

But fuck, five years, that sounds like a good deal to me. Five years and then do whatever the fuck you want? We talked a little bit about passion. You've got to be interested in it. Teresa, you even said, you know, that's what you became obsessed with. I know you're obsessed. You still yell at me. I want to add something to it.

Every time you see me drink a Diet Coke, she yells at me. Oh, yeah. Because there's so many chemicals in there. I'm like, fuck, I'd be dead anyway. I don't care. I think there's a third point that we didn't talk about with that, too. What's that? I kind of want to touch on.

I think like when you're backtracking. Just for like a nanosecond. Because I think it's super important. Okay. As you know, like whenever you're starting any kind of a startup, unless you're like massively funded, a big part of it is getting people to believe in you and selling your X, whatever it is, your product, your service, your business, whatever. And the way that you can successfully sell that is by believing in it a hundred percent. And you don't, you're not going to believe in it and be able to communicate that passion or that, you know, belief unless you are passionate about it. And it's like, they say basically sales is the, you know, I guess transference of emotion and

passion. And that's exactly why people who are like uber passionate and obsessed with something can sell it so great. And you can get people to believe in you. And that's how you can really build a great company. At least that's how I've been successful. No, no, no, I agree. That's how I've been super successful because I'll tell you, nobody gave me a big check to start businesses. It's about getting a team of people that really believe in you. And it starts with you believing and loving what you do.

A lot of times those people work for you for free. Absolutely. That's what I'm saying. Because they believe in you. But you believe in yourself and what you're doing. You love it so much. Dude, I've got guys here. I have guys here in this office in this building that's

such a great point but i have people in this building including my brother who left his job at johnson and johnson a fortune 500 company he was the number one salesperson on earth in their company for three years straight left his job took a 50 pay cut to come work at first form because he believed in it absolutely because you believed in it right and there's people in this building there's other people in this building who have worked here for 10 years and you know now they're they're getting paid you know what they should get paid but you know they work for a long time for less than that because of what you're talking about absolutely and i And I'm not saying that because you want to take advantage of people. No.

I'm saying that because it's fucking necessary for everybody to sacrifice to build something great. That was my point is I just think that's such a huge component. No doubt. Because people could have a great idea and be passionate, but if you can't get a team of people to help you, unless you have somebody literally writing checks to you, it's going to be hard to make it on your own i mean you have got to rally these people you have to inspire them they have to believe in you and they have to know you have an unrelenting passion and desire

to work and if they believe in you exactly from passion and they can read it if it's fake too oh yeah if it's not genuine no one's gonna do anything that no one's gonna buy in no so it's just to me like no in six months from now you'll see that dude at dinner and be like what happened to that idea oh it didn, it didn't work out. Because the passion was probably because they thought they could make a buck. Exactly. Right. Right.

I mean, I wrote an article about you, and here I am. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. There you go. I mean, the thing is, is that, you know, anybody who says the passion's not a big aspect or a starting place for an idea, they're not getting the concept of true entrepreneurship. Right. That's it. I mean, you have to take what it is that you love and you have to figure out how to become an expert at that, which if you love it, that's going to be easy because you're probably already an expert.

And a lot of people get hung up, I think, because they know so much about something, but then, and there's two kinds of people, know there's there's people who you know they know so much about something but refuse to accept the idea that they're an expert they're like overly humble and then there's people who don't know very much and think they're an expert and you know so you have to be able to differentiate yourself and and step of your own body and become self-aware of, like, where do I really fall and how much do I have to learn to become one of the best? Right. You know, so, I mean, that's an important aspect. But I think, you know, most people in this position, okay, like, let's say, all right, they've been listening to the podcast.

All right, I'm passionate about, you know, X. How am I going to turn that into a business? Because some things that people are passionate about, they're difficult to turn into a business. For example, I take guitar lessons. I've been taking guitar lessons since I was 30 years old. My friend who has become a really good friend of mine, he's a guitar teacher, he makes his money teaching guitar lessons. Over the course of time, we become good friends and we talk. And a lot of times we talk more than we practice. And we end up talking about business because he's interested in becoming a real business, not just him teaching somebody. Right. And so we talked, and over the course of the last two years, we've come up with different

ideas and this and that. Now he's got a website that people subscribe to that he teaches people from all over the world in groups. It's like at groups at a time. Wow. And he's doing really well. And he's able to do that even though he can't do that you know in person with the tactile type stuff no no yeah he doesn't wow

and then he's got courses that he sells now and he's got he's all these uh all these different things these products that he's created out of his perfect exactly yeah that's perfect right and that's when i think of like because and the reason i bring that example up the reason i like that example is because like when he first said man man, I don't know how to make this into a business, like a real business, I didn't have an answer for him. I'm like, I don't know. And we just kind of worked it out over time. But it's great because when you hear a guitar player, you don't think entrepreneur. No.

But that's exactly what he did. Right, exactly. Yeah. And so the example I used, I made a YouTube video the other day, and I talked about, I used butterflies as an example. Because how do you turn your passion about butterflies, how do you turn it into a business? I mean, I can't think of anything that would be tougher than that. Like, I'm going to fucking make a business out of butterflies. But here's the way it works.

The way it works is this. You're passionate about butterflies. You know everything about butterflies. You know their weight. You know their origin. You know where they live. You know their weight. You know their origin. You know where they live. You know the colors. You know the patterns.

You know every different type. Okay, you're probably a top 1% of people that know butterfly stuff. All right? How do you turn it into a business? You know, so that's the question. I have the best example for this because every time I watch, it just astounds me. Do you ever watch, like, what are those TV shows tv shows like the reality the pawn stars or whatever the when the people come in to like value the stuff it's like the expert of weaponry from like so and so it's like

who who is this person and he they get paid a ton of money to do this it's like the most random insignificant that you would never even know and they're a complete expert that should pay them tons of money to come in and like appraise these things. I'm like, he turned it into a business. His obsession with whatever it is. So that comes from the idea of the masses. Okay. So like people think that they have to have the attention of the mass majority of people to make a successful business. You don't. You're far better off following a small niche. We talk about this all the time. But with the butterfly thing, like I said in the video the other day, it's like, okay, you start a website. You start a blog about butterflies.

Other people who are not as knowledgeable about butterflies but want to learn about butterflies come to your website. All of a sudden, you've got enough traffic to where you can start selling some ads on your website. All right? Now, you decide you want to make butterfly can koozies, and you can make the can koozies because everybody who loves butterflies wants butterfly can koozie. Right. You know, of course. Duh, who doesn't want one of those?

Of course. Right? Then you can make, you know, car covers for your garage. So when you open up your garage, you've got like two butterflies in your garage. Right. You know? Then you can, you know um make butterfly snuggies you know so that when you lay on the couch you can sell all this shit on your website all of a sudden you got a business

you know that's how it works so like what people think like they come and they say andy i don't know where to start and i say what are you passionate about that's what i'm talking about you can literally turn almost anything into a business. It's just connecting the dots from A to Z. And that's what I hope that you guys could take away from what we're talking about now. It's not necessarily that, you know, you don't have to have something that every single person you know is going to buy. If you're interested in it and you love it, there's other people just like you that love that same shit. Guaranteed.

Guaranteed. And that's all you need. You could build a hell of a business like that and you just you know will you ever be microsoft no but you might be able to you know you could easily earn six figures a year doing absolutely a niche business like that right so we've been talking about principles i i'm i'm i'm would be very interested to hear about method, okay? Because I know you read a lot. I know you probably think a lot. You mean like coming up with ideas? Yeah, like literally. Am I jumping the gun here? No. Because I've been reading a lot. I mean, probably the best compliment. Well, Teresa, when you started the Keating Boss Fitness, I mean, how did that come from

passion to idea to business? Oh, gosh. Well, when you were just talking, I was actually thinking about it because it's funny. I think another trait of a successful entrepreneur is even if you have an idea and you try it and it doesn't work really well, you adapt right away. And you figure out what works to turn your passion into a business. Because you may start with the one thing. It's a constant process of testing. Exactly, of figuring out what works.

And so this is kind of like I ended up having my gyms, and to be just perfectly honest with you, it was way too much work. I had two babies in between, and I had the baby on the loose at the gym. It didn't work out the way that you wanted to, but how much did you learn? Oh, a ton. And honestly, well, that's a whole other podcast about failing and how much you learn from it because I could never be where I am today without that.

Exactly. But end of the short is I ended up learning a ton, exactly. And taking about a year off, I wanted to start another business. And I kind of fell into this because it's so funny. When you're talking about back when I used to not know what I was going to do, I was obsessed with fitness. I owned the gyms. It was great, da-da-da-da.

Well, all of a sudden, I started becoming popular on social media and I became this fitness person that everybody came to for advice. So I started, I'm like, okay, well I should really start turning this into a business now because people are coming to me for advice. I can create programs, I can do online training. And then what I found is it's kind of like where I'm at the process now is even that's evolving.

So people are getting tired of the online training, so how can I fulfill their needs? What's missing? Taking a look at, how can you make it better? How can you be exceptional? And that's kind of where I'm at now. So it's always, always, always a process. And you start at one place and you could end up at a completely different place. So you think most people think of the process is almost like it's being on a train and you just have two tracks that you have to follow. Whereas it's really more like a dune buggy.

I think a lot of people do. And that's more like hop in, go. I agree. They're just like, oh. I agree. I don't know what to do. Instead of just starting, they overanalyze, and they think they have this perfect recipe. The best thing you could do in entrepreneurship is fucking just do it. Yeah, absolutely. Figure it out.

Look, nobody knows what the fuck they're doing when they start. No, no. When I started supplement superstores in 1999, I can remember, like, this is weird, but I can remember, like, actually customers, like, legit transactions that I had. And I remember one of the first two or three days, you know, we didn't have much people, many people coming in. I had a guy come in and ask for a product. You know, it was called Celltech, and it's made by a company called MuscleTech. And this guy comes in, and he's like, well, what's this for?

I didn't fucking know what it was for. It was just there. So I took the product. I started reading it. I'm like, well, here it says, it says this, this, this, this. You know what? The guy bought it.

And you know what? The next time somebody came in, I knew what the fucking shit was for. Exactly. Experience. So I didn't know anything. And now, depending on who you ask, I suppose, I'm probably one of the biggest experts in the world on this industry.

You know? I mean, I'm not tooting my own horn, but it speaks for itself. I think people think they need the plan when they just need a plan. What you need is you need to fucking start. Yeah. Exactly. And then what you need is you need to keep going. Keep making mistakes.

Yeah. And realize every time you make a mistake, that that's a part of your education. Right. You know, instead of like going and getting a fucking PhD in entrepreneurship, no, make a lot of mistakes because that'll get you your PhD in entrepreneurship. And that's where people don't, they don't get it. They think like, oh, I made a mistake today that cost me a hundred dollars. Well, dude, you know what? That same mistake at 10 years cost you a million or 10 million. So be glad that you

learned and don't do it again. And once you make enough of those mistakes and you do enough shit wrong, eventually all that stuff compiles together and it works. Yeah, exactly. So Teresa, going back to you though, in terms of just real nuts and bolts, I'm curious, were there times where you literally sat down in a Starbucks or wherever and you had a notebook and you just wrote out all your ideas? Andy, how did you do it? I mean, how did you – what's your thought? How do you work out your thought process? I actually think this is good because I think her and I do it different.

So this would be a good thing to bring up. For me personally, like ideas come from, I read a lot. I read a book a week. I've read a book a week since I started in business. I get a lot of ideas from books. So like for me to get my idea, you know, juices flowing, I read. Okay. Do you usually have a pen in your hand or are you just mentally interacting?

I actually put my notes in my notepad on iPhone. Yeah. juices flowing i i read okay you usually have a pen in your hand or you're just mentally i actually uh notepad my notes i do i do that on iphone yeah um but i get you know i get my i get my juices going i read i take things that people have done in other industries and i figure out how they can apply to our industry um and that's how i come up with my ideas you know i i look for problems that need solutions and and i look for opportunities to do things better constantly um you know like when i go to dinner you know if we go out to dinner um and a restaurant does something that i don't think is right i i i take note of it you know i it's annoying it's kind of annoying to go to dinner with me you know but like because i'm always pointing out like hey they should be doing it they could be more efficient right they should be doing it like this right and i make that that's a part of who i am right

because i've been doing it for so long yeah so like anytime i see something that can be done better i automatically like look at that solution even if it's not in our business right so i i think you know as far as like idea generation you know i'm just constantly filling my mind with thoughts right and it just keeps it right moving well but that what's funny is that there's this i brought this in today it's a technique for producing ideas there there's like millions in print uh it's guy by a guy named james webb young you just actually articulated his first point, which is just constantly be gathering data. Right.

Constantly be like gathering material in your mind. And I think a lot of people, you know. Reading. A lot of people are looking for this thing. Like, I'm going to come up with this idea. And I'm going to execute this idea. And I'm going to start this business. I'm going to do this.

And everything's gonna work out and then the rest of the time they're gonna go play video games yeah it's just not how it works yeah i mean if you're not gonna immerse yourself in the process of being a business of being an entrepreneur you were not you're not an entrepreneur yeah and you never will be yeah you know you either are you aren't and if you think that this is going to be like a quick little journey down the fucking railroad tracks, and then you're going to find the pot of gold, dude, it's not like that. It's constantly learning, constantly evolving. Knock down, stand back up.

Yeah, dude, you get knocked down every fucking day. Even when you're on the ride and everything's going great, then it's like, douche. Right. But I love your statement just about reading. Even when you're like on the, you're like riding, everything's going great. Then it's like, yeah. Right. But I love your, uh, I love your statement just about reading. And, uh, I know Jeffrey Gittemer had a, um, the sales guy. I know you like his, some of his stuff. He had a great post on social media on his Instagram the other day.

It was, uh, if you want to be wealthy, you have to have a wealth of knowledge, you know, and just the importance of reading. Although Kim Kardashian is an exception to that, and there are some. Or a sex tape. Yeah, yeah. Slash sex tape. Right, right. So Andy was saying that you do things differently, Teresa. How did you process the whole idea?

Well, to be quite honest with you, I'm actually very similar to him in nature as what you're talking. I thought you were talking about more the second step, which is after you have an idea, like how to actually bring that into fruition. No, I'm actually talking about, you used the example, or the, excuse me, the phrase idea generation.

Yeah. Oh, I'm very similar. In fact, it's funny because sometimes I get, I almost have to stop reading books because I get so many ideas. I can't even, I have to like shut it off. So I do the same thing. In fact, I was just doing it on the airplane is like, and it could be for my business. It could be for a new business. It could be for something completely different. But literally,

I just get so many ideas and I keep track of them. And then if it's something amazing, I jump on it. If it's something that I think for my business, obviously, I start working to implement that. But it definitely just gets my brain going. I'm exactly the same way. Okay. So you don't write things down because I find that extremely helpful. Second step. No, if I have an idea that I want to implement, then as far as like strategizing, then I absolutely have to go and do like an outline, an agenda, how I'm going to itemize it, a task list. That's what I meant. I didn't realize you meant idea generation. No, I've been doing this thing for years. It's called free writing, where you literally just take a notebook and you write down literally anything that comes to your

mind and you don't censor yourself. You just write, write, write, write, write. And there's a great book called Accidental Genius by Mark Levy that talks about how that's really helpful in idea generation. So that works for me. I don't know that everybody has to use a pen and paper or whatever, but getting ideas down on some form of, you know, whether it's a computer or whatever, I just think it's really helpful. See, I mean, I know for Annie and I, because we've talked about this before, it's just like when we went to dinner that one time,

it's like there's no shortage of amazing ideas. It's like we could come up with 10 ideas right now at this table in five seconds that we could turn into a business. Right. But it's having the time to be able to realistically do something successful. We all know that we only have so much time in the day. Yeah, but that is a product of constantly being in that state for years and years and years.

And you're seeing opportunities. Right. So where a beginning entrepreneur, they might not see any ideas and they might not see any opportunities because they're so blinded by the money thing. Stop thinking about the money and start thinking about solving people's problems or how things can be done better. I think the fear. I mean, I know you've talked a lot about that in your podcast, but I think that paralyzes people too. It's like they have an idea and if they could just get rid of the fear and just jump on

it and do it, then... Well, and that's the fear is right. What's the fear? The fear is, oh, it's not going to work out. Ridiculed, failing. People are going to laugh at me. I'm going to be embarrassed. I'm going to be blah, blah, blah.

But here's the truth of that fear. The truth is this. What are you more afraid of? Are you more afraid of failing a couple times? Are you more afraid of staying exactly where you are for the rest of your life? Right. You know what I mean? And I think that's something that people need to think about. I also think that people need to also think about the fear thing. I'm a big believer that you can make anything work, anything work, as long as you're willing to pay the price.

If you believe in it and you work hard, absolutely. That's interesting because something that crossed into my brain when the people ask, is this a million-dollar idea? Anything could be a million-dollar idea. You make it a million-dollar idea it a million there's no easy way like now that when people ask that question i understand what they're asking because i remember what it's like to think that way yeah you know my whole life i grew up wanting to be in business my you know from the time i was eight years old i was selling you know baseball cards and light bulbs and popsicles and shit like that. I've always been interested in business. But the thing is that I remember what it's like to look for that.

I used to always look for that quick, not quick money, but this is for sure a million. It's like this home run idea. I don't know. Fucking light bulb. Oh, I invented the light bulb. I look for these massive ideas. Started the internet.

Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs get in that mindset of we're going to think of the world's greatest idea. But the problem is, is that those ideas, while they do come around and people do have them, they're very uncommon. Right. So if you sit around and try to think of that kind of idea before you ever jump into business, you're never going to get into business. You'll never do anything.

Right. And I don't care what you say. The inventors of the Snuggie did not say, this is a million-dollar idea. And yet they probably made it. They made it. Hey, the pool noodle. The pool noodle.

There you go. Yeah. Dude, there's so many things. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that could be made into successful ventures. It's just, it's deciding. It really is. It's following what it is you're passionate about.

It's deciding that we're going to make this a business and we're going to make it work and not deviating from that fucking plan. And acting. Exactly. You're not just doing things. Well, so with that being said, though, obviously obviously you want an idea that has some viability so how did you guys go about deciding okay my idea is viable well are other people doing what you do okay that's point number one yeah is there a need really is there a market is there a need and is there a need is is part of the equation but it's

also if there is a need that's being fulfilled, how could you do it differently or better to make yourself more exceptional or remarkable? Right. Yeah. I actually am ashamed to say that I just learned this principle a couple of years ago, which was, I used to think, well, if I write this book, but there's so many books on this until somebody said, yeah, that means there's a market for it. And I think people think that sometimes they think, well, if I do this, there's all these other people that are doing the same thing. Well, good. That means there's a all these other people that are doing the same thing. Well, good. That means there's a market.

Well, how are you going to write a better book? Yeah. How are you going to write a better book? Or maybe what's the particular angle? I'm going through that right now. Yeah. What are these books lacking that I could provide? Yeah.

You look for the problems. What's going to make your book stand out? Exactly. Right. I think all good entrepreneurs are very, very good and skilled at seeing the problems in the products. They see the problems in the service. They see the problems in the business model. And that's how I live.

I see the problems. I see the problems in our industry. I see the problems with the protein products that are manufactured for human consumption. I've made a living off of that yeah you know um people just don't they don't they're looking in the wrong places you know when you start out you're always looking like i said for that that that light bulb idea you know no what are you what do you love and how can you monetize that that's where you need to start looking not not looking to like you know invent facebook right you know i that? That's where you need to start looking, not looking to invent Facebook. I mean, and there's people that do that,

but they've also been in that industry or in that sector doing other things for a long, long time to become the expert to do things like that. Right, so I'm going to take this moment and we're going to break from this compelling and captivating conversation to tell you a few things. Number one, like I said, we're still fairly new to this podcast thing, but we are available on iTunes.

Obviously, most of you are probably listening to us, but we're also available on Stitcher and SoundCloud. And, of course, you can always go to the MFCEO.com, And there you'll find, you know, back episodes, you'll find some some of Andy's blog posts, as well as some other material that can really help you succeed in business and life. We're here to serve you guys, you know, the purpose of this podcast is to give you guys information that you can use to build your own business, to give you information to help you stay motivated and just give you the truth. So if you guys have real questions, send them over and we'll hit them. We're constantly looking to answer these questions.

So send me the questions and I'll get back to you or I'll cover the information on the show. Right. You can hit me up on Instagram. It's at Andy Frisella. I'm on Snapchat too, MFCEO-1. Teresa, where's your, where people can find you at? My Instagram is bikinibossteresa, so T-H-E-R-E-S-A.

Yeah. And are you on Snapchat? I am. Okay. Bikini Boss. Bikini Boss. Okay. I am not on Snapchat, but I am on Instagram at Vaughn Kohler.

Not going to jive into Snapchat quite yet. It's boobie-free Snapchat. It's not what you think. I'm sure it's not. So anyway, guys, Teresa, thanks for being on the show. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Vaughn, thanks for making corny jokes.

Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. It's the way I contribute meaningful. I'm providing value. Guys, shoot me those questions. AskAndy at the MFCEO.com. Hit me up on Instagram, and we'll catch you next time. Thank you. Take it easy.

I'm never going to settle.