REAL AF with Andy Frisella - MINDSET AND MACHINERY: How to Double Your Confidence to Win Big, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO269

Episode Date: October 25, 2018

I love history & when I was in high school, I wrote a paper on World War 2 fighter planes. The undisputed champion of all those fighter planes was the North American P-51 Mustang. In this episode, I use that plane & the brave pilots who flew it to explain how you can double your confidence when it comes to winning big at everything you do in business & in all of life. 

I can stack them hundreds to the roof. I ain't stopping till they stack to the moon. Without me, my family wouldn't have food. Anybody go against me, gotta lose. 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 if it is your first time tuning in, welcome. I'm not going to run a bunch of ads. I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of shit for 10 minutes, but I do have a fee for this podcast and no, it's not money. I do ask that if you listen to the podcast and you found it to be of value, that you do me a solid and you tell one of your friends, make a post about it, let somebody know about the podcast. We don't advertise this podcast like everybody else.

We go exclusively off value-driven word of mouth. And I'm proud and excited to tell you that we are doing better than ever with that method. And that should be a business lesson in itself to you. We are currently the number one rated business podcast. We are currently top five in all podcasts ahead of some of the biggest names in the world. And the reason for that is this, you guys are doing a damn good job helping get the message out. And guys, I appreciate that. That's how business works, right? Business works by providing a great product and people will talk about it. And I just want to say thank you to you guys who believe in the message and believe in the movement that we've created here, which is designed to help people become the motherfucking CEOs of themselves. And today we're going to talk about a very, very important part of becoming a motherfucking CEO and that is this. It's something called swagger. All right.

I haven't talked about this before, but I am going to talk about it today. If you guys have been listening for a while, you've heard me say how much I like to read. And if you've literally listened to every single episode, at some point you've heard me talk about how much I like to read. And if you've literally listened to every single episode, at some point, you've heard me talk about how much I love American history. I, contrary to the popular tone of our society, am really fucking proud to be American. Okay. And even with some of the stuff that we've done and the mistakes we've made as a country, we are still the greatest nation on the face of this earth. And if you don't think so, if you don't feel that way, feel free to go the fuck away. All right.

I live here. I'm proud to be here. And I am proud to be American. Now, most of you guys probably don't know this, but I recently bought a new house. And the cool thing about this house, house, house, house, the cool thing about this house is this. It's very historic. It's actually connected to the history of Ulysses S. Grant.

Now, he was a general, for those of you guys that don't know, for the Union side in the Civil War, who became the 18th president about four or five years after the Civil War ended. I think that's pretty cool. I'm excited about this move. But as we've been setting up for the move, I've been going through a lot of my old stuff and I came across a research paper that I had written in high school and it was a super long paper. It was like 70 pages long, but I loved writing it because it was about something that I loved, which is this World War II fighter planes. And I know that sounds extremely weird to be interested in, but I've always been interested in those kind of things. Anybody who knows anything about World War II aircraft knows that the undisputed champion of fighter planes in the World War II era was the American P-51 Mustang. All right. And so I read

over my research paper and I started getting on YouTube and watching some of the videos and listening to the documentaries about the P-51. And it actually led me to coming up with a really cool idea for this project that I've got going on next year, which I'll talk more about that later. But the reason I bring this up is I was watching this documentary about the men who flew the P-51 and I thought, man, you know, there is a huge lesson here for entrepreneurship and success. And that's what I'm going to talk about for the next couple minutes. And before I do, I don't want to assume that anybody knows anything about World War II, because more and more, it seems like the only thing that a lot of you young bucks are taught

in schools these days is that you're fucking special and that everybody should get some sort of participation trophy and that you're blessed, um, you know, with riches and gold coins for being fucking born. And so here is my quick history lesson for you. Nazi Germany started world war two by invading Poland. And from there, the Nazis pretty much steamrolled every single country that got in their way. The one exception was Great Britain, who somehow managed to survive brutal bombings and attacks to fight off the Nazis. And if you're English and you listen to this podcast, which I know a lot of you are, major props to your ancestors, your grandparents, because they were fucking awesome. All right. Total badasses. But for the

most part, the German war machine was unstoppable. And the Nazi air force called the Luftwaffe dominated every single air battle they were in. All right. So you have to understand they were dominant. All right. The Nazis had conquered pretty much every single country that they tried to invade. They had destroyed every single city in their path. They were effective. They were intimidating and they were fucking scary. And if anybody would have said back then that they weren't afraid of the Nazis, they would have been fucking lying. Okay. Everybody was afraid of them, even the Americans. But here's the reality. The pilots who flew the P-51 fucking dominated every epic air battle they ever had with the Nazis. They played a huge, huge pivotal role in defeating one of the most impressive military powers that there has

ever existed on the face of this earth. And I want you to think about how they did that. And I, and, and to give you some idea of how they did that, I actually have a couple of quotes I want to read to you. Okay. These are quotes from guys who actually flew P-51 Mustangs in battle. And I wrote down their quotes word for word so I didn't screw it up. These guys, keep in mind, these guys were in their 20s and early 30s during World War II. P-51 pilot Larry Powell said this, A fighter pilot is basically an individualist. Nobody in his extended family has any ego

because he's got it all all right I love that quote uh Don Blakensley said this I was young and pretty cocky actually I was a conceited son of a bitch I thought I was pretty good but the truth is you've never heard of a pilot who didn't think he was the number one fighter pilot in the world. And then a third one, Frank Gerard said this, when you come into combat with someone else, you know, you're going to beat them. If you think you're going to be a defensive fighter pilot, you've lost. If you don't think that you're a winner, you're in the wrong fucking business. Okay. There was one word that comes to mind when I hear these quotes about these guys, and that's this swagger. These pilots had it. They had to have it. And when the U S enter world war two, our military wasn't in the best fighting shape, but it didn't matter to these guys. Okay. In their minds, they were fucking Americans.

They were the defenders of the free world. They were the bravest. They were the baddest. They were ready to kick ass and it didn't matter what anybody else thought. Okay. They were winners. So guess what? They fucking won. And that's how it works. There are critical situations in life where being nice and meek and quote unquote humble is not what's called for. All right. And that's not a popular thing to say right now because everybody out there is telling you to keep your mouth shut, stay humble, be modest, be meek, be quiet. And you know what? There's value to that because you can learn by being humble. But when it comes to executing, you've got to have swagger. Okay. And modesty in that situation isn't going to help you or anybody else because the stakes in this life are way too high

for that. All right. You have to understand that it's okay when you're in the middle of battle, when you're in the middle of business, when you're in the middle of a sport to have obnoxious levels of swagger. You have to be conceited sometimes, okay? And the reality is this, you may not have a lot of resources

to justify your confidence. You may not have the talents or abilities that you can brag about. So in order for you to win, you're going to have to do the only thing that you can do. You're going to have to believe that you are there and you are going to fucking win. You have to understand that in order to be a winner, you've got to act like one first. Okay. Just like I tell you, you have to have huge goals because you're probably going to fall a little short of those goals. It's the same with confidence. You have to talk yourself into a huge level of confidence when it comes to executing, because there's going to be little things that

happen that chip away at your confidence and chip away at your self-reliance and chip away at your belief. So you have to do everything you can to keep that swagger in the fucking stratosphere so that you can win. Even if you come across a little bit like an asshole, so what? I'll tell you this much. If I were an American citizen back in World War II, I sure as hell would want to know that the men who were out there fighting for my freedom weren't timid, humble, meek, little bitty nice guys. I'd want them to be cocky. I'd want them to be confident. I'd want them to be supremely self-assured. I would want to know that they had what it takes on the inside to kick the fuck out of anybody that comes in their way. That's how you win a war and that's how you win in business and in life.

You become a winner by believing that you're a winner and acting like one. But there is another factor to consider. Those pilots were flying one hell of an amazing piece of machinery. The P-51 was superior to every other aircraft in the sky. They had issues with it at first, but when they replaced the engine with a Rolls-Royce engine, it became one of the best, most historic, most successful aircraft in the history of the world. The P-51 became the fastest plane on the planet, the most fuel efficient. It had the longest range. It was the most versatile. And the most important thing for the pilots was it was extremely maneuverable okay a

good pilot could make this plane do things that no other plane could do and that's the key because sure you have to believe you're a winner and yes you have to act like you're a winner but it's absolutely essential to have a superior product. Okay. These pilots, they were already confident in themselves. They became twice as confident when they knew that they were flying the best. They had the right attitude. They had, they had the right attitude. They had excellent equipment. They had the right mindset. And guess what? They had the best machinery. And when you put all of that together, you're going to have massive amounts of confidence that are going to take you beyond what you ever thought you could be. Okay. So if you're in

business and you think you've got the swag down, because a lot of you motherfuckers think you do, and you really don't. But the truth is, let's say you think you do, but then from time and time again, you still battle these huge doubts and lacks of confidence and you find yourself second guessing yourself. You need to ask yourself some questions. What about my machinery? What about my product or service? Is it of the highest quality? Does it solve a problem? How well does it solve the problem? Does it provide value? How much value does it provide? How could it be better? How could it be off the charts excellent? Because here's the deal, guys.

At the end of the day, you're not going to be able to sustain swagger without being able to offer the world something of actual objective excellence. All right. And that's where a lot of you guys miss. A lot of you guys, you want to make the cheapest product. You want to make the fastest thing that you can do, and you don't put the time into making something excellent. And that's why you're fucking failing because no amount of swagger is going to make up for inferior product. It's just not going to happen. You're going to have to be able to maintain the mindset by supporting the mindset with actual real excellence. Okay, guys, we defeated the Nazis with self-confidence and superior equipment. That was and is the way we do shit here in America. It's the way you're going to fly circles around your competition. It's the

way your achievements and accomplishments are going to soar far beyond what you ever imagined. It's the way you're going to win the war of business and it's the way you're going to win the war of business. And it's the way you're going to win the war of life. You have to think like a winner and you have to build something that wins. Outro Music