1014. Q&AF: Regaining Your Edge, Rewarding Yourself Responsibly & Working In Vs On The Business

On today's episode, Andy answers your questions on how to regain your edge when you feel like you're slipping, how to reward yourself responsibly as you start earning more money, and how to balance working in vs on the business when the craft matters more to you than the business.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:17Andy Frisella?

  What is up guys? It's Andy Frisella and this is the show for the realists. Say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness and delusions of modern society and welcome to motherfucking reality, guys. Today we have Q and A F. That's where you submit the questions and we give you the answers. DJ, go ahead and tell them how they could submit their questions to be answered on the show. Yeah, guys, you can email your questions in to [email protected]. You can check the link in the description below and submit them there or drop them as always in the comment section of these Q and A F videos right here on YouTube. Guys, if this is your first time listening, we have shows within the show. We don't just do Q and A F. We have CTI. CTI is called Cruise the Internet. This is where we put topics on the screen. We talk about what's going on. We make fun of everything that's going on. We talk about how we, the people,

• 1:02Andy Frisella?

  have to solve the problems going on in society. If you want to catch that show, it will be tonight, 7:00 PM Central, live on YouTube and X, or you can catch the replay on YouTube whenever you want. Other times, we're going to have Real Talk. Real Talk is just five to 20 minutes of giving you some real talk. And then we have 75 Hard Verses. That is where people who have completed the 75 Hard Program come on the show. They talk about how they were before, how they are now, and how they use the 75 Hard Program to take control of their life. If you're unfamiliar with 75 Hard, it is the initial phase of the Live Hard Program, which is the world's most famous mental transformation program ever, and it happens to be free. You can get that at episode 208

• 1:45Andy Frisella?

  on the audio feed, the entire Live Hard Program for free at episode 208 on the audio feed. There's also a book. The book is called The Book on Mental Toughness. You can get that book at andyfrisella.com. It covers the entire Live Hard Program, plus a whole bunch of other chapters on mental toughness, why it's important, how to utilize it to create your best self. Again, you get that andyfrisella.com. A lot of you guys have been asking about the MFCEO project. M S C O project is now hosted on the operator standard app. And that is closed right now because we have a M V P group, minimal viable product group, testing the app and working out all the kinks and shit. So that will be available to the public shortly.

• 2:27Andy Frisella?

  So for those of you guys asking, now we do something different on the show that most shows don't do. We don't run ads on the show. We're the biggest show in the world doesn't run ads. And we have a trade that we like to make. So instead of us like filling you with a bunch of shit regarding advertisements, we just ask very simply, man, you help us share the show. So if you listen to the show, it makes you think it makes you laugh, gives you a new perspective. If you enjoy it, if you think it needs to be heard, it's a message we're sharing. Do us a favor and don't be a hoe.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Share the show.

• 2:56Andy Frisella?

  All right.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta yell at them.

• 2:58Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  What's up? Make them scared, you know what I'm saying? What's going on with you, Doc?

• 3:02Andy Frisella?

  Nothing.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:03Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, another beautiful day.

• 3:05Andy Frisella?

  Doing the thing.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yep, thing is being done.

• 3:08Andy Frisella?

  Every day.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  You gotta do that thing, Doc.

• 3:10Andy Frisella?

  That thing?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, everything's good though, man. I got a nice day. We're in that bipolar phase, man.

• 3:16Andy Frisella?

  Fucking ninety-eight yesterday or whatever. Today it's like fifty.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 3:20Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  It sucked.

• 3:21Andy Frisella?

  What is that?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Dude, I don't know. I'll tell you this, though, I'm sick of it.

• 3:24Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:25Andy Frisella?

  You gonna write a letter?

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yep. I don't know, to who? I'm probably right, I'm gonna write the governor. Fucking fix this stuff, Doc.

• 3:31Andy Frisella?

  Tell me you some of that weather control.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  That's right, man. Like dude, it was like a hundred degrees when we walked out last night.

• 3:37Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  At like fucking what, ten o'clock, right?

• 3:39Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Now it's like, I can't stand it.

• 3:41Andy Frisella?

  Bro, by midnight it was like fucking forty-five.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm tired of it, dude.

• 3:46Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, it was crazy.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I'm tired of it, bro. I'm over it. In fact, no.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  No, man, all is good, dude. It's for Monday, we got Q and A F lined up. Here to get people starting their week off on the right foot. So.

• 4:00Andy Frisella?

  Let's do it.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  I got three good ones for you.

• 4:03Andy Frisella?

  All right.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Let's get it, guys. Andy, question number one. Andy?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  I appreciate you more than you know. I've been able to create a better life for myself, my family, my people, all because of your free game that you've been putting out here. A lot of us are listening, brother. So, thank you for that. Um, problem is, I used to have this chip on my shoulder. I wanted to prove people wrong. Uh, prove myself right, prove I wasn't average, and now life is good. I'm not struggling like I was. And I feel, and I can feel that chip fading. If you lose the anger or the edge that used to drive you, what replaces it?

• 4:41Andy Frisella?

  That's a great question, dude. Um, you know, it's very easy for us to have that chip on our shoulder when we're just starting out. It's very easy for us to collect all the negativity when we're just starting out. Because you don't have anything to show, nobody actually believes in you. They say they believe in you, but you know they don't. And there's all these like dark doubtful emotions that sort of come from that time. And if you don't know how to use them properly, they, they will crush you. So, in the beginning, it's very easy to collect the negativity and then, you know, put it up here on your shoulder, draw from it when you need to, push yourself down the track.

• 5:25Andy Frisella?

  When you do get to a point where you are in a place of a little more comfort and you've proven yourself a little bit and people are no longer doubting you the same way that they did and they're not, they're not like, you know, putting that same negativity into your mind, the way that they used to. Uh, it can be hard to operate from a place of negativity when you're in that position, okay? And we call it, you know, the dark energy, not, not negativity, so to speak, but just dark energy, right? Like, you're not doing it because, uh, you know, I wanna go run through the field of roses. I wanna shove it down motherfuckers throats until they fucking die, okay? That's easy to have when nobody believes in you.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Andy Frisella?

  Okay, but once you're proven and once you've stepped out of that, There's a transition that naturally occurs with most high achievers. And they go from this place of letting the dark energy to drive them to this place of they're more confident in themselves. And that shit no longer works. And so what you have to do at that perk, by the way, it doesn't no longer work. You just don't have as much of it or the same amount of it. But if you want to get some more, I'm going to tell you how. All right. So when you get to this point in time, it's very important that you realize

• 6:48Andy Frisella?

  the way to really move down past that point is to expand your purpose and mission from where it was. All right. A lot of businesses come and go because they have this initial vision of where they're trying to be. All right. And once they hit that first vision and they get to that spot and they haven't like thought about the a bigger mission or a bigger path to take. It's very dangerous because what happens is is people get in a place where they're comfortable, they get complacent, they stop doing the things, they stop being driven, they stop pushing themselves down the track. And you slow down and everybody else is still running full speed and you end up losing that way.

• 7:30Andy Frisella?

  This is why I tell people all the time, you know, people that win once are actually more susceptible to losing and not regaining it than the person who's never won at all. Because the person who's won once, a couple of things happen. One, they start to believe it's them. They believe, okay, I'm gifted, I'm doing this instead of saying I am the result of the actions that I took. Okay. Two, they get to a place where, you know, they, they don't feel like they have anything else to prove. Okay. So what happens then? They stop getting better, they stop learning, they stop moving forward and it ends up crushing them, dude.

• 8:09Andy Frisella?

  So you have to understand that at some point in time, you have to combine this initial, you know, fuck you with.

• 8:20Andy Frisella?

  A bigger purpose and a bigger mission and a bigger goal. And when that goal expands and then you start talking about it, you say, I'm going to do this and this and this now. Well, the same process repeats itself as when you first started out. Okay. Everybody will start saying the same negative shit, but they'll say it a different way. They'll say things like, man, are you sure? You know, you got something good going on. You don't want to fuck that up. You know, like they'll, they'll start to talk the same way and kind of put the same things. And that will give you more of the negative, which allows you to utilize it again. So when you're in this spot that you're in, you got to be very careful. Okay. You don't want to sit there and, and get comfortable and feel complacent.

• 9:03Andy Frisella?

  The time now is to think about, okay, I'm this age, which I'm assuming they're younger. I've got all this life in front of me. What am I going to do with this business from here to there? All right. And on top of that, what would I do if I didn't have the business? What would my life look like? What do I want it to be? And you kind of have to reassess where you are and what you are. And by the way, you might get to be 60 and you might say, well, my goals have changed and my life perspective has changed. And I would like to do these things and that's okay. But if you stay still and you get in the spot of being comfortable, you are setting yourself up to get killed.

• 9:44Andy Frisella?

  And a lot of people who have won once because they think that it's them. They think that like they could just catch it right back anytime they want, right? They think they can just flip the switch. Well, I did it once so I could do it again. Dude, you've forgotten how hard it was to get the ball moving. Okay. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. All right. You want to keep the fucking, the motion moving so that it doesn't stall out. And then you end up trying to restart this shit and you know. Do what you had to do in the very beginning of what, what you were doing anyway. All right. So the short answer is this. Expand your vision, expand your goals, expand what you're trying to do from this point forward.

• 10:28Andy Frisella?

  Make it big so that you can have a big mountain to climb, which will give you lots of purpose and lots of drive. Think about the people that are going to benefit from that. Think about the obligations you have. Think about all these things. And then, once you form that plan, make the plan public. Hey, we're going to do all this shit and let everybody talk shit. And now you've got the, you've got what you needed again. You've got the purpose and the fuel, right?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Hell yeah. Dude, I want to ask you this and I, I feel like I know what you're going to say. But I feel like this needs to be said for all those people out there that might be assuming that they're going to get to a place and the negative energy. Well, just no more. They'll have no more of it. They don't have to worry about that no more.

• 11:06Andy Frisella?

  Why would you not want, why would you not want it?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I guess the question like, does it ever go away?

• 11:11Andy Frisella?

  No. But why would you, why would you, if you had a fucking high octane, you know, race car? And you're driving down the road and, you know, don't, don't you want to put gas in the car? You know what I'm saying? You're going to run out of gas at some point. So, you know, I think it's a misconception amongst people. I think people, you know, they don't realize that all the paths you choose, every single path that you choose. No matter what you decide to do, no matter where you decide to go, no matter what you think it's doing, no matter how easy you think it's going to make things. All the paths lead to hard, all of them, all of them. And once you understand that, your perspective changes.

• 11:56Andy Frisella?

  Now it becomes what kind of hard would I like to have in my life? Okay. Would I like to have hard with a bunch of money or I like to have hard and no money? Okay. Because it's going to be fucking hard either way. So it's what hard do you want? And you have to realize, you know, I think a big eye opener for people is for them to sit down and realize, okay, man. Here's what I want to do, but this is going to be hard. And realizing that if you don't become that, it's going to be hard too. And no matter what you choose, no matter, and, and what's cool, what's, what's crazy about this is that the more you try to make it easy, the harder it gets. Okay, that's the fucking part that people miss.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:39Andy Frisella?

  So every decision that you make in your life leads to hard. They're just different kinds of hard. Okay, so there's no escape. There's no easy, there's no, there's no easy street. There's no beach with the coronas and you just sit on it and chill out. That shit is fucking bullshit. Okay, every choice you make leads to hard. Every single one. And if you grasp that and accept that, then you have a much easier time going after the things that you actually want. You see what I'm saying? So.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Being broke is just as hard.

• 13:11Andy Frisella?

  Fucking right, dude. I fucking, I said that like 15 years ago on a meme and it's been hijacked by the internet. Okay, I made a meme that went viral like 15 years ago about choosing your heart. Okay, uh, being, being successful is hard as fuck. Being broke is also hard as fuck. Choose your heart. That was something like that. And now like everybody's hijacked it to where it's like their thing.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:35Andy Frisella?

  Just like putting the shopping carts back and all this other fucking shit, but that's fine. That's what I do. I fucking set the trends.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:41Andy Frisella?

  So it's fine.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:42Andy Frisella?

  But the point is, is that it's true. Okay, you, the easier you're trying to make your life, the harder it's going to be. Okay, and if you just accept the hard upfront, the easier it's going to be. Once you're down the path.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  It's only ease of it.

• 13:57Andy Frisella?

  There is, there, there, it's a myth.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:59Andy Frisella?

  It's a myth. It's like, uh, it's like, what's that fucking planet in Avatar? You know what I'm saying? Like it's a, it's made up place. It's not a real thing.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  It's Wakanda for me, but yeah.

• 14:11Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, okay, well, yeah, Wakanda, right? Like you ain't going to Wakanda.

• 14:16Andy Frisella?

  It doesn't, it's a fucking fairy tale.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:18Andy Frisella?

  Like this easy life shit that is like people, everybody's chasing for one reason or another.

• 14:26Andy Frisella?

  It doesn't exist. It's a myth. It's a mythical thing. Tell me a decision that you've made in your life that wasn't hard, that was worthwhile. Tell me a decision that you made that you thought was easy, that ended up, that didn't end up making things harder. All right. Everything leads to hard. So you have to equip yourself to become the kind of person that can tolerate hard things. This is why it's important to build your mental toughness. This is what Live Hard in 75 were created to do. They were created to create the skill set, not the traits, the skill set of grit, fortitude, self-esteem, self-confidence, perseverance, discipline, mental toughness. These are things that you have to invest in to create in yourself. The

• 15:10Andy Frisella?

  biggest lie that's told about these qualities is that people are born with them. They are never born with them. They are cultivated through habitual actions taken over the course of time that create a resiliency inside of someone to be able to handle the hard things. If we really think about what all of you listening and watching, what your problem is, your problem isn't that you don't know what to do. You know what to fucking do. Everybody knows what to do. We live in an era where you could figure out what to do in three seconds. That's not your problem. Your problem is you can't fucking do it. So you got to develop the ability through those skills to be able to adhere to a plan. And when you can adhere

• 15:52Andy Frisella?

  to a plan, no matter what that plan is, it actually makes you limitless on what you can create. So you have to understand that everything that you're trying to do starts with these, these skill sets, discipline, mental toughness, grit, fortitude, perseverance, self-esteem, self-confidence, right? These are the things that create the foundation of successful achievement over the course of one's life. Nobody does it.

• 16:21Andy Frisella?

  In an easy way, it is, it's just you have to equip yourself for the fucking hard. That's the point. Okay. And once you do that, once you've built that, yeah, you've got to maintain that. But the truth of the matter is, is that it becomes easy to maintain because you're seeing how much it produces in your life. So when you, when you start to understand, okay, if I do this and this and this, I'm winning. And you believe that now your, your light bulb is going off in your head. You're starting to realize, oh shit, you know what? I am in control of my life. I am in control of the things that matter. I am in control of the 99.9% of the outcomes. I'm choosing to abandon the responsibility of creating those outcomes by being lazy and not doing what the fuck I'm supposed to do.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Amen, man. I love it, dude. I love it, man. Let's, uh, let's, uh, hit our next question, guys. Andy, guys, question number two. Hey, Andy, I'm 24 years old. I've noticed that every time I get a little money, I want to upgrade my life, better clothes, better car, just feel like I'm progressing in general. But at the same time, I've heard you talk about delayed gratification.

• 17:33Andy Frisella?

  Yep.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  How did you think about spending money when you were young? Uh, did you sacrifice everything to build? Or did you allow yourself to enjoy some of it along the way?

• 17:43Andy Frisella?

  Oh, man. I mean, obviously when I was younger, I was way more irresponsible with money. I mean, that's just like a young person thing, right? Like you see the thing, you're like, I got the money, fuck it, right?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  It's a deal.

• 17:55Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, it's a deal, right? Like, like, that's the thing, man, is like, when you're young, you know, that's just a normal part of growing up, dude, financial responsibility. So like, for me to sit here and tell you guys, oh, yeah, I fucking saved every penny and I did, no, I didn't fucking do that. I fucked off a lot, but a lot of that fucking off cost me a long time, cost me a lot of opportunity too. All right. So I think there's a balance to be had there and the balance is this. You want to, you want to touch it. You want to feel it. You want to know what it's like. You want to feel a little bit of the reward, but you don't want to put yourself in a situation where it's like financially damaging, right?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:40Andy Frisella?

  So. And you also don't want to deprive yourself of any of the reward because if you do that, you get to a place where like, what the fuck am I even doing this for? Okay, so there has to be some sort of reward along the way, right?

• 18:55Andy Frisella?

  Depending on where you come from, you know, some people don't come from much. And it's very exciting to have a few bucks to be able to go, you know, like you have a couple thousand bucks, dude, like that's a big fucking deal, right? Like, I remember what that was like, and dude, I gotta be real.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Couldn't tell me shit.

• 19:13Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, yeah. I was balling, bro. So, uh, so I, I think what I learned to do was I reward myself incrementally in little ways. Okay, I still do this to, I'll give you an example of this right now. So like, you guys all know, I'm a huge car guy, alright? And I will straight up buy cars at will. Like if you're leaving me to my own devices, four other cars will show up and you've been there.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, tractors and fucking tanks and.

• 19:44Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, like, like TJ will show up at the house, the guys will show up and they'll be like, what the fuck is, are these two things? I'm like, I fucking.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  They just came last night.

• 19:52Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  It's like fucking Amazon, bro.

• 19:54Andy Frisella?

  Look, I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's awesome too, right? Like I was, it wasn't always like that. So, but now that I can afford anything I want, it takes the fun out of it. It, it takes the fun out of it, okay? It's not the same as what it was when I really had to fucking grind to earn that thing. Like my first Lamborghini, bro, was a huge deal for me. Huge deal. I dreamed about it since I was eight years old. I took my brother, I took my dad, we all went to get it together. It was a huge fucking thing. Now these motherfuckers getting dropped off in the middle of the night. You know what I'm saying? And I'm call, I'm calling, I'm calling TJ and I'm like, hey, man, can you meet this dude and drive the thing up the house? Like, so it changes.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  It's different, it's different, yeah.

• 20:37Andy Frisella?

  So you have to realize that you've got to reward yourself.

• 20:44Andy Frisella?

  The the dopamine that comes from the reward doesn't necessarily have to be like this expensive thing, this massively expensive thing. So like for me, dude, like when I wasn't, uh, you know, balling out, you know, I was making a little money. Okay. But I wasn't like being able to buy cars and shit, right? I'd buy dirt bikes or I'd buy, I'd buy a fucking four wheeler or I'd, I'd, I'd get a, I'd get a cool, uh, you know, something that was like cool and I really enjoyed, but it wasn't like putting me in this spot.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  And that was after a goal was met.

• 21:17Andy Frisella?

  Yes, that's a whole thing. So like I do, I don't buy anything for myself ever now.

• 21:24Andy Frisella?

  Where I don't have a reason for it. So I make up little games, you know, like, hey, if I get to this, I'll buy this. If I get to that, I'll buy this. It's not always monetary, dude. Sometimes it's other things. I think it's a, it's a balance. I, and I think it's what's more valuable than even rewarding yourself. Like, bro, by the way, that reward might be a new pair of Nikes.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  It might be a nice dinner.

• 21:47Andy Frisella?

  It might be a nice dinner. And at some point in time, it was that for me. Okay. So don't take like, oh, I gotta go out and spend five grand on a this. No, it could be 200 bucks. It could be a hundred bucks. It could be whatever, man. Whatever's relevant to where you are. I've been there, bro. I've been to the exact same spot you guys are at. Like I've been, you can't get any worse than where I was. So I know what the fuck I'm talking about. Like, you know, it doesn't have to be this thing. Like as you progress, the rewards get bigger. But, um, I think the more important thing for people is to get themselves in a situation to, to, to taste the success. And what I mean by that, I used to do this thing called window shopping. All right. And what I did,

• 22:31Andy Frisella?

  well, cause I didn't really know any successful people, bro. Like I knew two dudes growing up over my first 15 years in business that had like cool shit, right? It was like not the, the internet wasn't like the way it is now. Like, you know, where everybody's renting all their shit and faking all this bullshit. The, um,

• 22:50Andy Frisella?

  So like what I would do is I would do things like I would go to the car dealership and like walk around and look at all the exotic cars, right? Or I would drive up and down the streets of, of, of the streets that I would like to live on. Funny enough, my last two houses were houses that I actually had dreamed about living in when I was in my teenage years.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Would go to and see.

• 23:11Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, I would literally drive up the street and be like, I'm gonna live on this fucking street one day.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:15Andy Frisella?

  Right?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:16Andy Frisella?

  Um, so I think that's more important than the buying of the thing, but it's okay to buy some shit once in a while. You just don't want to fucking do it to the point where it like pulls back your ability to move forward in the business. And that's where people make the mistake.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:32Andy Frisella?

  Right? And I made a mistake before too. I made the mistake before where we started making a lot of money. I started spending a lot of money and that money could have been used for other things. And, and it cost me time and I had to learn that the hard way. So you guys have to understand like, the way I'm telling you now is not the way I did it when I was fucking 25, but I'm telling you as somebody who is not 25 and been doing this for a long time, that's the way I would have done it.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 23:56Andy Frisella?

  You know what I mean?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, dude, there's something about it, dude. Uh, you know, we've, we, we talk about this stuff all the time together. And it's like, you know, one of the things that I always found super helpful that you've told me was like, sometimes it's okay to kind of be a little uncomfortable.

• 24:12Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Just to keep fucking trading.

• 24:14Andy Frisella?

  Absolutely.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 24:15Andy Frisella?

  That's a real thing.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  How important that is.

• 24:17Andy Frisella?

  That's a real thing.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:18Andy Frisella?

  That's a real thing. Um.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Just to break up that complacency.

• 24:22Andy Frisella?

  I hate, I don't like talking about this because people, people hear it the wrong way.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:26Andy Frisella?

  It's like when I talk about luck.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:28Andy Frisella?

  Okay. I don't like to talk about luck because when I talk about it, the first thing that people will fucking say is they'll say, see?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 24:36Andy Frisella?

  Fucking lucky. See? Lucky. I'm not lucky.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 24:41Andy Frisella?

  Right?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  You're not lucky.

• 24:42Andy Frisella?

  Right. Like this first thing they'll fucking say and think, is there luck?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:47Andy Frisella?

  There's shit that happens that you're like, holy fuck, I can't believe that happened.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:50Andy Frisella?

  But you can only capitalize it on it if you're ready.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:53Andy Frisella?

  Okay. You gotta be in motion, right? The luck doesn't happen when you're not in motion.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:57Andy Frisella?

  So, uh, so when we talk about like this idea of stretching yourself a little bit financially.

• 25:05Andy Frisella?

  That's a really strong, good thing for some people. Some people have the ability to do that. Some people, because what happens is if they get like too much cash, they start to get real lazy. They start, they, they don't want to get out of bed. They don't want to fucking get up and do shit. And that's why I think it's always good to deploy your cash into things that are, that are making money and bringing your cash down to a point where you're like, fuck, I need some more cash. Right? Cause it keeps you moving. So I think it's a good idea to stretch yourself a little bit. But you guys who are young, you need to understand an emphasis on a little bit. All right. You don't put yourself in a fucking, where it's going to be a real problem. But you, you can ride that line of where you're uncomfortable.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:50Andy Frisella?

  You know what I mean?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:51Andy Frisella?

  Like for me, like I have a set amount of cash that I like to have, right? And if I get below that point, I'm like, all right, I act like it's zero. I act like it's fucking, that's my zero.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  That's your new baseline.

• 26:04Andy Frisella?

  That's my zero. If I go below that, which is an absurd amount of money still, because like, I want to, I want to make sure I'm secure, right?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:12Andy Frisella?

  But if I go below that, bro, I, you, you, I'll run in here and I'll be running around like I'm fucking broke. And you guys have all seen it, you know? So, um, it's a good way to, it's a good way to create urgency in yourself by, by, by mentally training yourself to have that discipline.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:27Andy Frisella?

  Around that.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I love that dude.

• 26:28Andy Frisella?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a real thing, but.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  You gotta be very careful with it.

• 26:31Andy Frisella?

  Bro, so many people hear that and they're like, fuck, all right, cool. I go.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Let's go get the Lambo.

• 26:37Andy Frisella?

  That's not what I'm saying, man.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Get the Lambo.

• 26:38Andy Frisella?

  That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, get the Lambo if it's going to improve your quality of life. And it doesn't put you in a fucking serious bind. Okay? And that's the other thing. Remember this, you're going to be fucking dead. Okay? Like you're going to fucking die. All right? I I've been fortunate enough that I've I was kinda a little irresponsible that I did a lot of really cool shit. You know what I mean? I'm not sorry about those experiences, but I never let it fucking handicap me.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:11Andy Frisella?

  You know what I mean?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:13Andy Frisella?

  So you gotta, you gotta do things that you enjoy. Like a lot of people don't like for cars, right? Like they don't understand the car thing. They think it's about like showing off on Instagram. They don't get it, dude. Like first of all, that's a, I spend so, how much time do we spend in our cars? Quite a bit of our life, right?

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Like the average person, yeah, yeah.

• 27:34Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Quite a shit ton.

• 27:35Andy Frisella?

  Wouldn't you, wouldn't you rather spend that time as something that you felt good about and you enjoyed and that you liked?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  The AC smells different.

• 27:42Andy Frisella?

  I'm just saying.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 27:43Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, right. I'm just saying, dude.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  That's some real shit.

• 27:46Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, it's, it's not about the stuff. It's about the quality of life that the stuff creates and the experiences that it creates and the memories that it creates. And there's a value to that and that value is not always dollar and cents. You know what I mean? It's not all, it doesn't always make sense. This gets into the conversation that we talk about like, you know, logical buying versus emotional buying.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:11Andy Frisella?

  All right. A lot of people are programmed to think that emotional buying is a bad thing. It's actually not a bad thing. There are certain things that you should be emotional about when you buy. Like, do you really love your house? Are you're gonna live your fucking house? You're gonna live in a house. You gotta spend all kinds of time there. I used to never be this way, by the way. I was the guy who did not give a fuck about his house. I, I loved cars. I didn't care.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  You sleep in the fuck car.

• 28:38Andy Frisella?

  I didn't care.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Andy Frisella?

  When I got my, the house I live in now, I got it. It made sense to me because the house is so fucking awesome. And it's such a cool thing to come home and like, just see the grounds and see everything and like.

• 28:55Andy Frisella?

  Um, that's an, that was an emotional purchase for me because like dude, here in St. Louis, you know, we don't have hundred million dollar houses, right? Like that's not a thing.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:05Andy Frisella?

  So the amount of money that I've put into my house, I'll never get back. I'll never get back. Okay? I'll probably lose, if I sell my house, I'll probably lose 10 million dollars. But I knew that when I built the shit. Because that's the quality of my life.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:22Andy Frisella?

  So I said, okay, if I'm going to live here for X amount of years, am I willing to pay this much money for this experience? Yes.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Yes, I am. Yeah, right.

• 29:31Andy Frisella?

  So that's, that, there are certain things in life that are emotionally okay if you're aware of the actual logical financial sense, right? So you could evaluate all the metrics and all the data. And then you could say, all right, but I really want it. Okay. Do it.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:52Andy Frisella?

  You know what I'm saying? But you can't be emotional about everything you buy. It's about things that are going to add to the quality of your life.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:58Andy Frisella?

  See what I'm saying?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Would you say that's important?

• 30:01Andy Frisella?

  Cause like dudes, like you, you see this shit and this is totally untrue, but like, people get on the, you know, they'll, they'll see a, a post of one of my cars or something. They'll be like, ah, fucking stupid. Uh, you know, this is just depreciating asset. First of all, dumbass, um, not my cars. Okay? My cars go up in value.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  He lost 50% when he pulled off the lot.

• 30:22Andy Frisella?

  No. Yeah. So that's, that's ideally, like, if you can make an emotional decision, an emotional buy, and it fucking goes up, now you're really making smart decisions.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:31Andy Frisella?

  All right?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Would you, would you say too, cause I feel like this is important on the sense of like, you know, having those things that increase the quality of life, sometimes that's all you got. When shit is going crazy, when shit's hitting the fucking fan, when it's hard out there. Sometimes that's all you got. You know what I'm saying? You might've had a shit day, but you know, at least my house is all right.

• 30:51Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? It's like, that's the importance of having those material goals, I guess people would call it.

• 30:56Andy Frisella?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 30:57Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, man. It's your life.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59Andy Frisella?

  You know, you just gotta, you gotta think, like, you can't think like a, like a, a poor person, bro.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:04Andy Frisella?

  You know?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  That's fucking real.

• 31:05Andy Frisella?

  Yeah. A poor, a poor person. Talks about every logical financial decision from a financial aspect and then makes every single buying decision on emotion. Every single one. That's what they do. So they could talk all this shit, but they don't practice it in real life.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:23Andy Frisella?

  And that's why they stay poor.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  I love it, dude. I fucking love it, dude. We got one more for you, doc. Let's bring on home. We got a question number three, guys. Andy, I started my business because I believed in the work. Now, I spend most of my time selling, negotiating, marketing, and dealing with people. It feels like I don't actually get to do the thing I'm good at anymore. Is that just what growth requires, or is there a smarter way to structure this?

• 31:53Andy Frisella?

  To say what he does?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Uh, does not.

• 31:56Andy Frisella?

  Alright.

• 31:59Andy Frisella?

  Okay. So.

• 32:10Andy Frisella?

  You gotta understand something. Whatever your skill set is, let's say you're a woodworker and you're fucking the most amazing woodworker on the fucking planet. And you want to turn this woodworking into a business. Obviously, you have a great product and obviously, you're skilled at it. Once you start to turn something that you really love into a business, for at least temporarily, it will pull you away from that craft. Okay? And you'll have to learn this whole new set of skills, which is business. A lot, a lot of doctors, a lot

• 32:51Andy Frisella?

  of lawyers fail to understand this because they go to school for so long, their egos are so fucking inflated that they think they know how to do everything. And that's why you see them open a practice and go out of business, or open a law office, go out of business. Because they, yeah, they might be great at being a doctor.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  At the craft.

• 33:11Andy Frisella?

  They might be great at being a lawyer. They're fucking terrible at running business. And if we're being honest, dude, I'm gonna be totally honest. Doctors are the worst business people I've ever fucking met. Really? Yeah, because their egos are so fucking big, they won't fucking listen to anything and they think they know everything. I went to so and so for 12 years. I don't give a fuck. They gave me these letters. You can't sell a motherfucking thing. Yeah. Okay, so you gotta understand, these are two different skills. Your craft and the skill of business are two different things. And if you want to actually turn this into a business, you're going to have to pull away. And instead of working in the business, you're gonna have to work on the business. Until you are able to learn how to operate a business to the point where you can bring people in to help you with that process.

• 33:55Andy Frisella?

  And as you bring skilled people in, and as you build a culture, and as you build systems and start to scale, which by the way, this doesn't happen overnight either, okay? Then you could go back sometimes and do what you do, right? A really good example of this is my buddy Jesse James. Okay. So Jesse James, you guys know him, he did Monster Garage, West Coast Choppers. You guys have seen his apparel, he sold more apparel than most apparel companies. But Jesse is a craftsman. Yeah. He's a fucking artist. And I don't know anybody that loves his work more than Jesse. Yeah. Okay, he loves it. And he loves it for a lot of different reasons. It's not just because he loves to do the thing.

• 34:38Andy Frisella?

  He understands the value of the work for what it does for your mental, your, your, you guys should read his book. He's got a fucking awesome book, it's on Amazon.

• 34:48Andy Frisella?

  But when he first started out, he's building fucking bikes, okay? Then he started having to sell bikes, so he had to create a business. Now he has a whole team that helps him run the business, and guess what he gets to do? He gets to go build bikes. Build the fucking. And he builds the sickest fucking shit in the world. Bikes and guns. Bro, Jesse's got his own shop. He walks in there in the morning, he fucking works, he does what he's doing, and he gets to do what he loves. But that didn't happen in one day. You know, he had to go through that transition of, I'm building, I love this, till I'm building a business around this. To the business is very well run to back to doing what it is that he does that drives the brand. You see what I'm saying?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  What did this look like for you?

• 35:29Andy Frisella?

  Um, well, you know, funny enough, like this is appropriate for me too.

• 35:35Andy Frisella?

  You know, when I was, when we first started, we started in retail stores, I worked the counter. Okay. And I fucking loved it. I loved working the counter of the retail store. I love talking to different people, you know, 40, 50 times a day. Like dude, I can't tell you, like I get there nine o'clock, we close at nine o'clock at night and it would go by like that because I'd be just do, like I loved it. Right? 2006, when we started to really expand, I, I couldn't, I couldn't work the counter. And at first it made me feel really guilty because I was like, fuck, I can't even, these guys, I wasn't, I was uncomfortable with it. Like these guys are doing the work and like, they probably think I'm out here fucking off. But dude, without me out here quote unquote fucking off, uh, the

• 36:19Andy Frisella?

  business can't scale. Right? Which means they don't have jobs, which means they can't build careers. All right. So what it looked like for me was I worked the counter. I went over and started building the business. I became, uh, you know, pretty fucking good at operating a business, built multiple businesses and, and what I found out was that I actually liked that a lot too. So now that the business runs without my minute by minute input, I'm able to do more of the things that I like. So for me, like I may not work in the store anymore, but like we always have guests here, right? We always have people here that are training. We always have people that are in town. I'll go spend my time talking to them. Right? And I enjoy that.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  You're able to scratch that itch.

• 37:04Andy Frisella?

  Yes, for sure. So it's, it's a little bit different for me because I was never able to like, go back to the fucking store counter to work, but I do in a different way now. And, um, and to be real dude, like I'm so conditioned to the like craft of running companies now that like,

• 37:23Andy Frisella?

  I couldn't do without that at this point. You know what I mean? I'm not a craftsman though. I'm not a fucking, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not that kind of a person.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:33Andy Frisella?

  You know what I mean?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:34Andy Frisella?

  So the, the, the art of building companies is that's my craft.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:38Andy Frisella?

  That's what I love. That's what I love now.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Now, would you say most people that are, you know, maybe going through that transition phase? And are hesitant from having a transition from in to on? What do you think that, that fear or, or that hesitation comes from?

• 37:52Andy Frisella?

  Well, they

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Was it there for you originally? Like when you were making that like?

• 37:54Andy Frisella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  You said it like, no, yeah, I gotta fucking.

• 37:57Andy Frisella?

  Well, not only that, dude.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  I'm fucking off.

• 37:58Andy Frisella?

  It's scary.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:59Andy Frisella?

  Okay. You don't know what the fuck you're doing. You never ran a company before. You don't know what, you don't know what all these things mean. You don't know any of this shit. It's scary. I think the reason people hesitate is because they don't know what they, what they don't know.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:11Andy Frisella?

  Right? And it's uncomfortable to do things you don't know. So a lot of businesses will stay a one man or two man operation forever. Because they never break out of that fear to go out and scale it out, right? Um, this happened to me too. You know, when we had our first store? It took us five years to open our second store. The reason that we wouldn't open the second store was because we didn't know how to run a two store operation. We didn't have the systems. We, we didn't even know what systems were. We didn't, we didn't fucking know anything. You know how we learned it? By just doing it.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Opening up the second store.

• 38:45Andy Frisella?

  And then we figured it out.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:46Andy Frisella?

  And, and, and dude, we thought about doing that like our second or third year in, but it took us five years to like get over the fear of doing it. So. Yeah, it's scary and you're, you're vulnerable and you're like, oh man, I know how to do this, but I don't really know shit about this and I can't trust any. You're right. You can't. That's why you gotta learn it. All right. And then when you become an expert at that, now you're able to know all of this shit and you're equipped to be able to have people that work in there that are competent. So that they're not just lying to you about all the bullshit that you don't know.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:16Andy Frisella?

  Right? You gotta know your shit.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:18Andy Frisella?

  So.

• 39:20Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, that's it. The point of the question is, that's a natural progression that all people make. Typically, when especially whatever they're doing is some sort of craft. And by craft, I mean like, has a creative artistic aspect to it, right? That's a very hard transition for people to make.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Where the trades field.

• 39:43Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, a lot of people just start a business and they sell a widget and they don't ever go through this process. They're just running the business. So, but for somebody like this. Yeah, bro, it's a natural progression. It's natural to be scared. It's natural to hesitate. But just realize that if you don't do it, you're never going to get what you want. You're, you know.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Accept that, yeah.

• 40:07Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, you need to think what your life is going to look like if you don't do it. You can't get fixated on if I do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this, who gives a fuck? All that shit's gonna happen, dude. All the bad shit that you think is gonna happen, it's gonna happen. And guess what? It isn't that big of a fucking deal, right? There's very few mistakes that you make in business that will actually put you out of business. So like, you think you're the only one ever that like did this?

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:34Andy Frisella?

  You know, it's like when women have children, right? Like, and, and they have, they have a kid and all of a sudden like, like, everybody in the world's talking, like, it's the only thing, uh, you're the only person who ever did it. It's like, dude, people have been having kids for millions of years.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  That's right. How'd you think you got?

• 40:54Andy Frisella?

  Yeah, you're gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:57Andy Frisella?

  It's okay. You know, like, people have fucking kids in caves, bro. They turn out all right. You know, like, you're gonna be all right. It's the same in business. Like, you, you are gonna be all right, man. This isn't that fucking hard. Like, it's hard, but it's not like something you can't do. You know what I mean?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and plus you might get into the, the on the business shit and love that.

• 41:21Andy Frisella?

  That's what happened to me.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:22Andy Frisella?

  That's what happened to me.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:24Andy Frisella?

  So I, I just think it's a natural progression. That's a natural fear. And you need to start analyzing, okay. If I stay paralyzed, what's my life gonna look like? And you're gonna know the answer right away, and that's usually where I'll get you to move. Stop thinking about like, you know, if I do this, just no. What if you don't? What if you don't? Okay? That's how you need to be thinking about it.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  I love it, dude. I love it, man. Guys, Andy, that was three.

• 41:51Andy Frisella?

  Yeah. All right, guys, we will see you tonight. Uh, CTI Live, 7 o'clock, live on YouTube and X. And, uh, other than that, don't be a hoe.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Share the show.