REAL AF with Andy Frisella - Tell The F*cking Truth, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO218

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

What's keeping you from being successful is your inability and lack of capacity to tell the truth. Throughout your day, you have the opportunity to say the things that people need to hear, but you don't do it. You don't want to hurt people's feelings. You don't want them to be mad at you. Whatever the reason, you buffer what you say or don't say it at all. But until you learn to speak the truth clearly and directly, you're never going to be the type of person who becomes wealthy or successful.

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. Today is Thursday Thunder. I'm excited. I have something that I want to get off my chest, and I'm going to hit you right in the face with it. Here's the deal, guys. I talked about in a previous podcast that you need basically two skills to move forward if you want to become an integral part of a company, or if you want to become the master of a company, the CEO, an executive, a high

paid part of an organization, or if you want to build your own company and run an effective team, there's two things that you have to become a master of. Two. One is you have to become a great leader and you have to become a great manager of people. Those are skills that you have to learn. They are not gifts. A lot of people think leadership and management is a gift. They see people who make it look easy, but let me assure you that learning the skill of management and learning the skill of being a great leader is one of the most difficult tasks that you will ever embark on. And to become a master, it's going to take a lifetime. The other skill is you have to learn how to sell. Okay. Today, I want to talk about

one component of the first part of it, being a manager and being a leader. Because if you can't develop those skills, there is no chance that you will earn a great living. There is no chance that you will kick ass at your job, in your company. Okay. Maybe you're a surgeon. Maybe you're a successful lawyer. Let me tell you something. There's still business sides to those professions that are going to need management and leadership skills. So a lot of you guys message me and a lot of you guys tell me, and to be really frank, you talk a lot of shit. You say things to me like, dude, one day I'm going to be up on that stage with you. Or one day I'm going to drive a Lamborghini or one day I'm going to blah, blah, blah.

And you know what? I hope you do. That's why I do all this stuff. That's why I put out this podcast. That's why I, you know, give my time to this mission. And that's why I look at this as a mission, because I do care about you and I want you to succeed. And that's also why I'm about to tell you the truth. And the truth is what's going to hold you back is your inability and your lack of capacity to tell people the truth. Constantly, day in and day out, you have opportunities to tell people

the truth and you don't. You brush it aside. You don't say what you mean. You buffer it because you're afraid of offending someone or you're afraid of hurting their feelings or you're afraid of some other thing. You have some other hangup that you just can't get over. Okay. And until you understand that part of being a great leader and part of being a great manager is telling people the unbiased truth about the job that they're doing, you will never be a quote unquote successful financial person. It will never fucking happen. Okay. You get many opportunities throughout the day to practice this. When your girlfriend or wife says, what do you think of this? And you say, oh, it's okay. When you mean it looks like shit, that's an opportunity wasted to practice the skill.

And I get it, right? It's uncomfortable to tell the truth sometimes because some people are incapable of seeing the truth about themselves. So when they ask you for an opinion and the answer should be obvious to you, it's not always obvious. A lot of people lack self-awareness,

meaning they can't see themselves the way the world sees them. So when they ask for feedback and you're thinking in your head, well, no shit that looks terrible. Well, they don't understand that because they lack the perspective to observe themselves. Okay. They might truly think that it looks good. They might truly think that it's something they should do. When someone asks you for advice or asks you how their meal tastes or asks you this or that,

how many times a day do you fucking lie to save somebody's feelings? Being direct and learning how to tell someone the truth is not only the right thing to do, it's an essential skill that you have to master and it's something that's uncomfortable. You have to be able to look at someone and coach them and a good coach. Let's take Bill Belichick, for example. Do you think when someone comes off the field and they did a shitty job that he says hey man uh you know you could have done a little better there because uh you know uh you you cut that you cut that route at eight yards instead of 10 yards and uh you know next time try to do a little bit no he says what the fuck are you doing running an eight yard route when we've practiced 10 yard routes all

fucking year? Okay. How that person reacts, that's on them. That's their character. Okay. They might get their feelings hurt. They might get upset, but here's the truth. Did you tell them the facts? Did you give them some feedback that they could possibly use to improve? Yes. And your lack of capacity and ability to do that is what's going to keep you in the mediocre zone of life. You have to understand that you are the coach of your team. And right now, you may not have a team, but you can practice being a leader by being the coach of the people around you.

Stop lying. Stop softening it. You don't have to be rude. You just be direct. And when someone says to you, well, you're being mean to me, or you're attacking me, or you're being negative, simply explain to them, I'm not being negative. I'm not being mean. If you take it that way, I understand that's not my problem. I want you to know the truth because I fucking care about you and I want you to do better and you can do better. Okay. People respect that. A lot of you guys think you have to go around and hurt people's feelings and be a jerk. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is that when people do a good job, you tell them they did a good job. When people do a bad job, you tell them they did a bad job. You know, a lot of people fail in life because nobody around them will tell them that they can improve this way or

that they did this that way. Okay. That's why you see people who surround themselves with yes men fail in life. I purposely surround myself with people that will tell me the truth. My right-hand guy in these companies, Jason Cain, he tells me the truth. My business partner, Chris Klein, he tells me the truth. My brother, Sal, who runs First Form day to day, he tells me the truth. We're not mean to each other. We respect each other. And if you're trying to make an impact and you're trying to learn how to make more money and you're trying to be more valuable, if you can't tell someone the truth, you will never make it

in business. All these people look around you. Look how much they lie. Look how much they fucking lie to people about stupid shit. Okay. And you're probably thinking, well, nobody will like me if I tell them the truth. If I tell people what I'm really thinking. No, that's actually the opposite. Because I tell everybody the truth. And I happen to have a pretty good fucking culture in my company. If you're doing bad, I'm going to tell you. If you're doing good, I'm going to tell you that too.

But my guys count on me to tell the truth. And that's my job. And you guys have to understand that this doesn't start at the top. You can't get to the top without that skill. And yes, people are going to be upset. Yes, people are going to get their feelings hurt. Yes, people are going to get angry with you sometimes, but give them some time to think about what you said. Give them some time to absorb the feedback you gave and make sure that they understand that you care about them when you're telling them the truth because that's what's going to help them get better. And if your team can't get better because you're constantly buffering shit, you're constantly sweeping under the rug

things that should be said, then you're not just hurting yourself. You're hurting them too. And that's morally wrong. Being nice is not telling people, oh, you're so good at this. And you're so great. And I love you so much and blah, blah, blah. And you're, you know, when they're out there doing half-ass work and they're doing half-ass effort and half-ass execution, and they're doing things that are hurting themselves and their families. That's not nice. That's not nice is saying, Hey man, I fucking care about you enough about your family to tell you the truth and why you're struggling at this task. And you know where this stems from? You know why you have a problem telling the truth? Two reasons. One, it's not socially acceptable

because people consider it rude. And two, you're not doing the shit yourself. You're not holding yourself to a high standard. You're not doing the things that you see the other person doing and know it's wrong. So you feel uncomfortable confronting them on that. If you're the leader of a team, and let's say you've got four or five guys, and you're not doing the shit that they're supposed to be doing, who are you to go tell them that they're fucking up? You've got to hold yourself to the truth as well. And holding yourself to the truth takes integrity, it takes discipline, and most importantly, it takes self-awareness. You have to be able to observe yourself from the outside perspective and see yourself as

the world sees you and hold yourself to the standard that you expect other people to be at. Telling the truth is not as easy as just saying, tell the truth, because all of you guys are thinking, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're also the motherfuckers that won't do any, tell the truth because all of you guys are thinking, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're also the motherfuckers that won't do any of the shit that I'm telling you. You have to practice telling the truth. You have to be honest and you have to be direct and being a person who is suggestive or who is, um, you know, passive, you know, if you're, if you're in a group of peers

and you've got four or five of them complaining about something and you know in your heart that what they're saying is wrong and you don't stand up and say, hey, I think you guys are wrong and then lay out the points of why you're wrong, you're just as guilty as they are.

You're as big of a part of the problem as they are. You know, here in my company, I have a no cancer policy. No cancer. And what's that mean? That means if I got a fucking cancer, I cut it out. And what's a cancer? A cancer is someone who goes around and fucking bitches and moans and complains to everybody else around and they spoil the culture. That's why I call it a cancer, because it spreads, it spreads, it spreads. Now, a lot of people say, well, you don't like feedback. No, that's not true. I love feedback. I love feedback that's appropriate. If someone comes to me and has a conversation and we're

able to speak face-to-face or directly, respect. That takes balls. That takes courage. I understand that. Every leader understands that. There's going to be issues. There's going to be things that need to be talked about. But if you're the kind of person that goes and gossips around and talks to all the other people and starts creating a bunch of shit, you're the cancer and you're getting fucking cut out. And that's the way it goes. That's how it goes here. And that's how it goes at all great companies to have good culture. And if you want to have good culture, I suggest you would learn how to identify and remove cancer as well. Now, the way I do that is I let everybody know, like, if you have a direct issue, if you have a, I don't care what it is, you come to the appropriate channel and we'll handle it. But if I catch you gossiping, if I catch you,

you know, speaking negatively, if I catch you doing all these things is spreading cancer, you're not, you don't belong here. That's not part of our core. Okay. So you have to be aware of this and you have to tell those people the truth. All right. If you're not standing up when you're in that, and we all know people like this, like at your work right now, wherever you work, you have people who complain and bitch that you don't agree with. Maybe you're even the one that's complaining and bitching. And if you are, I hope you'll think about this, but let's say you're not, let's say there's three or four or 10 other people that are

bitching and moaning and complaining. And you're standing there thinking like, man, I don't agree with these motherfuckers. I don't agree with what they're saying. I don't agree. I don't, I don't think it's right. And you don't set them straight and you don't stand up for yourself and you don't do that. You're part of the problem because you're passive about it. That's a great opportunity for you to become a leader. That's a great opportunity for you to earn a leader. That's a great opportunity for you to earn respect. And at first people will, you know, shit on you for it. They'll, they'll look at you and they'll say, oh, you're blah, blah, blah. But the truth is, is that they respect you for it. And they know they can't bullshit you. That's a great spot to start being a leader. Okay.

Leadership is a lifetime commitment. Most people that I know that run businesses are terrible leaders, terrible, terrible leaders because they can't tell the truth. Learn to be direct, learn to tell the truth, learn to make people understand that you're telling them the truth because you care about them and learn to stand up for what's right. And you're going to have a much more lucrative business career. I promise you that.